A Royal Bride at the Sheikh s Command

‘And that is?’ Natalia demanded shakily.

‘A document must be drawn up which you will sign stating that this child is not mine and therefore cannot be my heir nor ascend to the throne of Niroli on my death.’

Natalia stared at his unbowed back. ‘I don’t understand what you are saying,’ she told him, but she was horribly, sickeningly afraid that she did. ‘Do you really expect me to sign away my child—our child’s rights to its paternity? Do you really think I would do that to our baby?’

‘Your baby,’ Kadir corrected her coldly. ‘This child is none of my doing, Natalia, and I will never accept it as such. So either you agree to sign such a document or I will have to go to King Giorgio and tell him that the marriage will have to be put aside and why.’

‘You can’t do that,’ Natalia whispered.

How could she tell him after what he had just said that she had truly come to believe that, somehow or other, illogical and fantastical though it seemed, something deep within her had somehow recognised in Venice all that he would come to mean to her, and that as a result fate had willed that she would conceive his child.

‘I don’t want to,’ he surprised her by admitting. ‘I have my father’s feelings to think of. He personally chose you to be my wife. He is a very proud man, and to learn what you are would humiliate him. Plus, your lack of sexual morals aside, rather surprisingly in the short time in which we have been married I have come to recognise how well equipped in other ways you are to be Niroli’s Queen, and how much the island will benefit from having you as their Queen,’ he told her sombrely. ‘Together we can work to give this island and its people all that they deserve to have, but I cannot and will not allow this bastard child to claim me as its father. You will do well to keep the child out of my way because it will for ever remind me of all the reasons why I have learned to doubt and mistrust your sex.’

Kadir thought about the hours he had just spent battling with himself, with what he truly believed was right. He had forced himself to admit how much she had already come to mean to him, and how much he wanted her by his side, but he could not overcome his fury that she continued to try to force on him a child he knew could not be his.

‘The choice is yours,’ he told her as he got up off the bed.

‘And if I refuse?’ Natalia asked him, dry-mouthed. But of course she already knew the answer. ‘Kadir, please, this is your own child you are talking about,’ she begged him. ‘The condom must have perished. The baby can have DNA tests and I promise you this is your child. You can monitor them yourself. Kadir, you grew up with a father who turned his back on you. You know how much that hurts and the pain it causes a child.’

‘Don’t ask me to lie to you, Natalia, because I won’t. I’m afraid I can’t see how this can be my child. I will sleep in my dressing room tonight.’

Natalia lay back against her pillows after he had gone.

He was offering her so much that she wanted, but at such a dreadful price. She could not and would not allow him to deny their child its right to his or her true paternity, but she could not force him to give the baby his love any more than she could force him to give it to her. Why, why, why had this had to happen? If only she had not gone to Venice, if only she had not met him until their wedding day…But why say that, why not ask herself why Kadir could not accept her word, why could he not accept the gift of herself she had already given him and the gift of his child that came from that night? But she knew the answer to that, didn’t she? Kadir’s inability to trust the female sex was very deeply rooted indeed.

Well, she would not let him punish their child because of what he himself had suffered in his own childhood. If he rejected it, then she would find a way of providing it with loving male influences from within her own family. She would protect and love their baby no matter what Kadir said, and even if it meant closing the door for ever on the love she had so longed to see grow between them.

CHAPTER TWELVE

NIROLI was experiencing one of its fortunately rare periods of bad weather, with fierce winds lashing the coast and whipping up the waves; grey skies had replaced the normal sunny blue and the outlook from the window of t

he salon in their private apartments looked dauntingly bleak. But nowhere near as bleak as her own future and the future of the child she was carrying, Natalia acknowledged.

She had planned to spend the morning working on her notes for a series of talks she’d been invited to give to Niroli’s young women, the mothers-to-be of the next generation. She had planned to talk to them of the many opportunities she hoped would be available, not just for their unborn children, but for them, as well, but now the words of hope and encouragement and excitement simply would not flow. All she could think of was the poor child growing within her body and the fact that it would not have the opportunity to be loved by its father, the opportunity to grow up confidently and happily in a loving atmosphere, secure in its knowledge of its place in the world. Maybe these were the issues she should be addressing in her speech; the sadness of children born without love, unwanted, their chances of human fulfilment in all its most important senses pitifully crushed before they even drew breath. What did her vision of a new wonderful Niroli have to offer these children? Natalia pushed back the laptop on which she had been working and stood up. Today, because there’d been no formal engagements, unlike Kadir who was due to go on a tour of the island’s vineyards, she had dressed in her own clothes, a soft off-white fine wool long sleeved top worn loosely beneath a tunic top in pale grey, worn over a gently flowing black shirt. It was one of her favourite outfits, designed by a talented young local designer. It was one of Natalia’s dreams to be able to establish the kind of art college on Niroli that ultimately would attract tutors and students from all over the world.

She heard the door to the salon opening and turned round to see who it was, her heart sinking when she saw Zahra closing the door and standing between her and it.

The last person she felt like being with right now was her husband’s mistress; her husband’s ex-mistress, she corrected herself.

Kadir had after all sworn that that was the truth, and if she expected him to accept her own words as the truth then she could do no less for him.

‘Is it true that you are to have Kadir’s child?’ Zahra demanded without preamble.

Her bluntness took Natalia slightly aback, but more importantly and more hurtfully was the knowledge that the only way Zahra could know about her pregnancy was because Kadir had told her about it himself. So much then for there not being any intimacy between Kadir and Zahra. After all, it was hardly the kind of information one would just throw into a conversation with one’s supposedly ex-mistress, was it?

And when had he told her? Last night after she had finally drifted into an exhausted and unhappy sleep? Had he gone then to his mistress seeking solace with her because of his feelings about their child?

‘Is it?’ Zahra pressed her.

There was an almost fevered look about her, Natalia noticed uneasily, a wildness about her eyes and her manner, her movements uncoordinated and slightly jerky as though she was not fully in control of herself.

‘Whether or not I am to have a child is surely a private matter,’ Natalia answered with quiet dignity.

Zahra ignored her attempt to apply discretion to the situation by telling her passionately, ‘Kadir has no secrets from me. He tells me everything. Everything,’ she repeated fiercely. ‘Do you understand? I know you are to have his child, but of course he doesn’t want it. How could he?’

Natalia felt a wave of sickness surge through her, draining her strength. Until she had heard those last few telling words she had tried to convince herself that Zahra was exaggerating the extent of the intimacy she shared with Kadir, but now with that damning ‘he does not want it’ she was forced to accept the truth. Kadir had called her a liar, but he was the one who was obviously lying. No, she could not bear to go there. She must not let Zahra see how much she had upset her; she must think of her child instead.

‘You say nothing, but I know it is true. Your very silence gives you away,’ she could hear Zahra raging. ‘You think you’ve won, don’t you?’ she told Natalia furiously. ‘You think that just because Kadir has impregnated you he is yours, but he is not and he never will be. You may have conceived but you have yet to give birth. A king needs sons, heirs, live children…and you will never bear those.’