She was mocking him, Kadir realised angrily. Had she guessed that just now when he had touched and held her that the only kind of duty he had been obeying had been his duty to show her just how much he desired her? Just as other men had desired her and possessed her before him. Men whom she had loved? Did she think of one of them when he held her in his arms just as his mother had thought of her lover and not her husband, secretly longing for that lover whilst obeying the ‘rules’ imposed on her by her royal marriage? Did every prince with a kingdom to inherit share this bitterness he felt at the thought of being tolerated, endured by the woman to whom he was married because of what he was? And what was it exactly that he wanted? He was forty, not a boy—he had long ago become cynical about the reality of ‘love’.
Why was he experiencing these contradictory feelings that were pulling him in two such completely opposite directions? It wasn’t necessary for him to share any kind of emotional intimacy with Natalia, and therefore it wasn’t necessary for him to be feeling what he was feeling right now. Maybe not, but he must have absolute loyalty and fidelity in his wife. He must be able to trust her moral stature, knowing the pressures their position would put on her, and he was a fool if he didn’t recognise that a woman who had so easily given herself to him on a mere whim did not have that moral stature, no matter how much he might wish to convince himself that she did. It wasn’t for his own sake he must remember this, it was for the sake of his role as Niroli’s future King. If he knew that Natalia could be not trusted, then he knew also that she must be morally policed to ensure that she did not bring disgrace on the crown and a bastard child into the royal nursery. Giving in to his desire was not policing those morals, it was indulging himself. Trying to convince himself that he might have been wrong about her was the worst kind of self-indulgence there could be for a man in his position, and he must not do it. He must not let her think that he had any weakness for her. Angrily he crushed the unwanted and unnecessary tender feelings that had come from nowhere to challenge the reality of their relationship.
‘I can assure you that no one will be happier to abandon that dedication than I,’ he told Natalia harshly. ‘You cannot surely think that I have any real personal desire to possess you.’
His words cut into her like a razor and in the agony of her emotional pain Natalia didn’t think of the consequences of what she was saying when she told him recklessly, ‘Well, you may as well abandon it right now, then.’
There was a small ominous silence and then Kadir was reaching up and switching on his bedside lamp so that he could look down at her.
‘And what exactly does that mean?’ he demanded.
‘It means that I am pregnant,’ she told him quietly. It was too late now to wish that she had been more cautious.
Kadir started to frown. ‘That is good news, of course,’ he told her formally, ‘but isn’t it too soon for you to be sure…?’ Here thankfully was a way out of his impasse, at least for the duration of her pregnancy.
Here was her opportunity to backtrack and lie by default by accepting the get-out he was unwittingly offering her. What difference would it make, after all? She knew that this child she was carrying was his. A baby born a matter of about two weeks short of nine months would not cause any undue comment, and there was surely no point in risking what she knew she would be risking if she told Kadir the truth.
But how could she lie to him feeling about him the way she now knew that she did? She already knew how little he trusted her sex; she was not his mother, a young girl forced by fear and circumstances to foist her lover’s child on her husband; this baby was after all Kadir’s. She did not want the baby or their marriage to be shadowed by the burden of any kind of deceit. Who knew what the future might hold or how close to one another the years might one day bring them? It was perhaps foolish of her to have such dreams, but she did have them and she could not bear to prejudice them by building into the foundation of their future now a deliberate lie.
As though her silence had alerted him to the truth, Kadir’s frown deepened. ‘When?’ he demanded curtly. ‘When was this baby conceived?’
Natalia took a deep breath.
‘In Venice,’ she answered him. ‘I conceived in Venice.’
To her shock he thrust back the bedclothes and got out of the bed.
‘Kadir!’ Natalia protested.
Her admission coming so closely on the heels of his own private thoughts felt almost as though they had been some kind of warning omen. If so it was one that he could not afford to ignore.
‘That is impossible. We used protection, as you very well know.’
‘I know you did, but condoms aren’t always infallible,’ Natalia pointed out. ‘They do occasionally fail.’
‘How convenient for you, but I don’t accept your argument, not having had firsthand experience of your promiscuity. What happened, Natalia? Did you allow a lover to be over-enthusiastic and then decide that you had better ensure that you had sex with me, as well, just in case you might be carrying his child? Did you deliberately seek me out in Venice, knowing perfectly well who I was? After all, I have used my polo playing alias for many years now.’
Natalia gave a gasp of shocked disbelief.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ she told him shakily. ‘I had no idea who you were and there was certainly no previous lover. I don’t—’
‘You don’t what? Have sex with strangers?’
Natalia could feel her face starting to burn. There was no way she could defend herself from that charge.
‘Nothing you can say to me will convince me that the child you are carrying is mine,’ Kadir told her coldly. He had picked up her scent bottle and was holding it in the palm of his hand; almost absently Natalia watched it start to glow with growing brilliance. Kadir could make the glass shine with his purity of heart and his goodness? There must surely be some mistake.
‘I will not allow you to foist this child off on me,’ he repeated savagely, replacing the bottle on her dressing table before turning away from her.
Kadir could hardly bear to look at Natalia. So much indeed for those feelings, those hopes he had begun to allow himself to acknowledge he was experiencing, those cautious, vulnerable tendrils of the beginnings of a need within himself to forget the past and allow himself to believe that here on Niroli he could put aside the ghosts of his childhood and build a true future with Natalia and the children she would give him.
His own bitterness tasted sour on his tongue where so recently it had known the sweetness of Natalia’s kiss. What sweetness? he challenged himself savagely. That so-called sweetness had masked acid-sharp poison. Did she really think he had become so vulnerable to her that she could openly foist another man’s bastard on him without him challenging her? And running behind the violence of his justifiably angry thoughts was the pride-scouring knowledge that a part of him actually wished that she had not answered his question truthfully and that instead she had…that she had lied to him? Allowed him to believe that the child she carried was his?
Natalia waited until Kadir had left her to shut himself in his dressing room before daring to give way to her tears.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SHE was not going to let them see how she felt, not now not ever, Natalia thought to herself as she watched the way Zahra clung to Kadir’s arm as she laughed up flirtatiously at him.