The Unlikely Mistress

No, she hadn’t seen it—even though there was a pile of neatly ironed international newspapers on the desk right next to all Zayed’s official stuff, which she could have gone right ahead and looked at. But she didn’t care about personal acclamation, probably because none had ever come her way before now. And how could she possibly explain that it felt so empty? So meaningless. What was the point of looking beautiful for a man who wouldn’t touch you? Who couldn’t touch you. A man who kept his past hidden away, even though he knew so much about her. Wouldn’t attending parties inevitably put them under the microscope? Wouldn’t it enable people to see through them and discover the insubstantial core at the centre of their marriage—and thus risk making them a laughing stock?

‘People are going to be watching us,’ she said. ‘Analysing our body language in the way that people do. They’ll know our marriage is fake.’

‘They won’t know.’

‘Then they’ll guess.’

‘So what is it you’re asking?’ he demanded. ‘That I should shower you with kisses in public? Brush my fingers against your waist in an unseemly show of affection whenever there’s a camera pointed in our direction? Build myself into an unbearable state of sexual frustration, knowing I can’t act on it when we’re alone again? Is that what you want, Jane?’

One word leapt out at her, dominating even the rather pleasing fact that he didn’t dare touch her. ‘Unseemly?’

His mouth twisted impatiently. ‘I despise this idea that the image we present to the outside world is who we really are. It’s what makes social media so dangerous. I won’t play-act the part of lovestruck groom and risk ridicule when our marriage is quietly dissolved in a few months’ time. I can only be the man I really am.’

She stared at him, frustration vying with admiration because so many of his traits appealed to her, even though she didn’t want them to. He was so proud. So indomitable. So utterly

sure of himself. And yet didn’t his nightmares contradict some of that swaggering assurance? As if at the heart of Zayed Al Zawba was a dark vulnerability so much at odds with the man he presented to the world. Was it so wrong to want to understand the person behind the King she’d married? She’d told him stuff about herself but so far he hadn’t reciprocated.

‘You realise I know practically nothing about you,’ she said.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘On the contrary—you know more than most people. You know all about my ancestors and their history.’

‘That’s not what I meant and you know it. I’m serious, Zayed.’

‘And so am I, Jane. Deadly serious. I don’t talk about myself. I don’t bare my soul—not to you, not to anyone.’

She knew that it was pointless to say But I’m your wife because she wasn’t—not in any way that counted. So she tilted her chin and stared straight into the night-dark beauty of his eyes instead. ‘Why not?’

He shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘Because trust is an issue and a lot of people in my position feel the same.’ He hesitated. ‘Being royal is different. You risk too much when you let people close. Because people will betray you, or sell-out.’

‘You don’t trust me?’

There was a pause. ‘Actually, I do trust you. I don’t know why, but I do.’ His glance was impatient, as if he wanted the conversation to be over. ‘But there is little point in telling you the things I suspect you want to know.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because telling you stuff would indicate that I wanted a deeper level of understanding between us, and I don’t.’

For some reason that hurt far more than it should have done but Jane kept her expression implacable. ‘Or perhaps it might help release some of the demons which are locked up inside you.’

His body tensed. ‘I don’t have any demons, Jane.’

‘Don’t you?’ she questioned quietly. ‘Have none of the previous women you’ve slept with ever asked why sometimes you have nightmares? Why your body tenses up and you shout out strange and muffled things in the middle of the night? Things I don’t understand but which chill my blood every time I hear them.’

Zayed stilled as he stared into the open gaze of her amber eyes, trying to dampen down the flare of anger and indignation. He’d thought the nightmares had ended. Had prayed they had—and that the one he’d had on his wedding night had been an aberration. Logic told him they were nothing but a recurring pattern—dark dreams kick-started by key emotional events in his life, but which would soon pass. And they did. It was just that every time they came back they were worse than the time before. The place they took you to was more unendurable. The residual feeling they left was behind was even more bitter. Maybe because the older you got the more you realised how much you had lost. Realised, too, just what you had failed to do... ‘No,’ he said roughly. ‘They don’t ask me and if they dare try, then I shut them down.’

‘And they let you, I suppose. They let you do whatever you want because they don’t want to displease you.’

‘Something like that.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Whereas you don’t seem to care about displeasing me, do you, Jane?’

‘That isn’t my aim. I just don’t see the point in tiptoeing around you,’ she said, touching her fingertips to the diamond studs which were fixed to her ears, as if checking they were still there, before fixing him with a steady look. ‘We already have enough areas in our lives which are off-limits without adding any more. Don’t we?’

A great silence rolled between them, as big as those great waves which used to swell up on Azraq al-Haadi beach during the family holidays he and his parents used to take before the only world he’d ever known had been destroyed one springtime, when the desert had been carpeted with wildflowers. Zayed met the question in Jane’s steady gaze. Why wasn’t he silencing her with a curt command that she know her place, and why was the temptation to tell her tugging at him, like a kite being tugged by the insistent wind? He swallowed, knowing that such a disclosure would break a taboo, for he had never discussed it with anyone. Not even with his father, though he suspected he must have guessed at some of the things he’d been too stricken to hear at the time.

‘You get one question, Jane,’ he gritted out. ‘That’s all. What do you want to know?’

There was a moment’s pause. ‘What causes the nightmares?’ she said eventually.

He had underestimated her intelligence. How very short-sighted of him. She was clever enough to realise that this one deceptively simple question would open up a whole web of explanation. He thought about prevarication. About inventing something to pacify her. But even if he’d wanted to, he could not lie to her, and not just because theirs was a relationship which had been grounded in brutal honesty right from the start. Something told him that those clear amber eyes would see right through him if he did.