The Unlikely Mistress

‘So what did you do?’

‘Darkness was falling as I saddled up one of the horses and rode to the nearest village. I got lost several times along the way and it was almost morning by the time I got there, when all hell broke out. My father returned from Maraban and organised groups of men to search and find my mother.’

Jane closed her eyes. She knew the end to this story for it was well documented. Zayed’s mother had been found lying dead after a rock had fallen on her during the long ride back to Mazbalah. A rock which had hit her skull and crushed it, like a melon. But up until this moment, she’d never known the reasons why. The abduction had never made it into the historical documents and the vagueness of the facts had enabled the establishment to make it sound like a terrible accident. Slightly confused, she looked across the sumptuous suite at Zayed, silhouetted so still against the window, his shadowed face ravaged with pain.

‘And your father?’ she whispered.

He let out a long and ragged sigh. ‘He caught up with the King and challenged him to a duel and inflicted a fatal blow to his heart,’ he said grimly. ‘But in so doing—was himself mortally injured. They brought him back to the palace, where I spent those last hours by his bedside.’

‘Oh, Zayed.’ She clamped her fingertips over her lips as she pictured the scene. A little boy of seven, still grieving for his mother, while his father lay dying in front of him in the vastness of that gilded Kafalahian palace. What terrible loss and pain he had known at such an early age—why, it made her own fractured childhood seem like nothing. Instinctively she got up from the bed and walked across the room towards him because the distance between them seemed too great to say what she wanted to say. And when at last she was standing in front of him and could see the indescribable sadness in his black eyes, she whispered out the hopelessly inadequate words. ‘I’m so sorry.’

He inclined his head in a stately gesture as he acknowledged them.

‘Do you want to tell me what happened next?’

There was a pause before he nodded, his accented voice shattering the silence. ‘My father told me that what was done was done, and that was to be an end to it. He made me promise never to seek any more vengeance, nor to risk spilling my own blood for a cause that was now lost, because it would break my mother’s heart if I were to do so—and nothing could ever bring her back. One of the reasons we deliberately kept the circumstances so vague afterwards was to deter rival factions in either country from seeking revenge.’

‘That’s why you were brought up by courtiers as the youngest regent monarch the region had ever known,’ she said slowly.

‘Yes.’ There was a pause. ‘And that was what caused the final severing of my relationship with my grandfather. His daughter had been his heart’s joy. He blamed the Al Zawba family for interfering with her destiny and causing her death, and maybe he was right. If she hadn’t listened to her heart, she might be alive now. If she hadn’t married my father she would probably have lived to a ripe old age—’

‘Zayed, you can’t know that.’

‘Can’t I?’ His voice had become fierce. ‘Perhaps she would also have lived if I hadn’t listened to her instructions to hide myself away. If I had gone after them, or challenged the King—’

‘What? A seven-year-old boy, challenging a king?’

‘And why not?’ he argued fiercely. ‘Mightn’t it have struck at his conscience to realise just what he was doing by removing a mother from her son? But instead I just hid away, like a coward. I hid longer than I needed to hide. Too frozen with fear to dare to emerge.’

‘You did what you did because your mother asked it of you,’ she argued. ‘You achieved what any mother would have wanted for her child...you kept yourself alive.’

He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Yes. I lived so that I might remember what I had done.’

She shook her head. ‘No, Zayed. Deep down you must realise that isn’t true. Just as you must realise that your grandfather must have been seeking to make amends for his anger by leaving you Dahabi Makaan in his will—and you were big enough to accept that offer and to offer him your hand on his deathbed. Can’t you just concentrate on that—on the good things which eventually emerged from such a terrible situation? Because that’s all we can do in life, to make the best out of the bad things.’

Zayed nodded. She was standing in front of him and in that moment he thought she’d never looked more beautiful. Maybe it was because her amber eyes were shining with fervour—as if her peace-making passion had the ability to cleanse his troubled soul. Did it? Had the telling of his story lessened some of its power over him? He wondered if the old saying was true—that a problem shared was a problem halved. And it wasn’t really a problem any more, was it? He had done what his mother had asked. Done what his father had asked, too. By the time he’d reached manhood there had been no vengeance left in Zayed’s blood—and no desire for subsequent wars with innocent lives lost. He had honoured all his promises—and if that had left him with an empty space where his heart should have been, was it really so surprising?

‘I repeat my demand that this goes no further,’ he said grimly. ‘I don’t want you writing up some learned essay on the subject after our divorce.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of doing that.’ She flinched. ‘You

told me that you trusted me.’

‘Yes.’ But at that moment he felt more than trust. He felt desire. He could feel it flooding his veins. Like honey, it thickened his blood and pooled to harden at his groin as he stared into the face of his bride. The autumnal sunshine made her hair resemble gleaming gold and he wanted to brush his lips over its silken spill. And more. Couldn’t he pull her into his arms? Bend his head and lose himself in the softness of her lips? Kiss her hard until she was writhing in his arms, wanting more? His mouth dried. Yet the crazy thing was that he didn’t really do kissing. It was almost too intimate an act of foreplay, which gave women unrealistic expectations. Kissing made them buy into the fairy tale of love, which he was incapable of delivering. He preferred the baring of breasts or that first indefinable taste, when you put your head between a woman’s thighs and licked her until she came in your mouth.

Yet he could sense that Jane was hungry for him, too. He could feel the answering desire which was radiating from her curvy body. Temptation washed over him and his groin grew even harder as he thought about just giving in. For a split second he tensed, seeing the hopeful darkening of her amber eyes as if she anticipated what he was about to do. And never in his life had he wanted a woman more than he did right then.

Until he remembered their deal.

No consummation meant a simple dissolution of their marriage and that was the way he wanted it.

The only way it could possibly be.

‘Why don’t you freshen up after your journey?’ he suggested and watched her body jerk, like someone who’d been stung. ‘I have papers which need my attention before tonight’s reception.’ He gave her a cool smile before walking back over to the desk. ‘And you’ll need to pretty yourself up before the party, won’t you?’

CHAPTER EIGHT

JANE FELT HURT, even though she told herself she had no right to be. She tried to rationalise her thoughts in a way which usually came as easily to her as breathing but for once it was proving difficult. Okay, so Zayed had pushed her away straight after he’d taken her into his confidence and told her the full and shocking facts about his mother’s death. He’d been cold towards her at a time when they could have been close, when she could have offered him comfort. But why was she hankering after closeness when he’d explicitly said he didn’t want it? He’d told her about his past because she’d asked him about the nightmares, that was all.