A Whisper of Disgrace

She tried telling herself she was okay with it, when Kulal announced that their honeymoon was over and that he was planning to return to work at his foundation the following Monday. But the reality was that she’d wanted to cling to him and beg him not to go and that feeling had scared her more than her very real dilemma—about how to usefully spend her days while he was working.

‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do all day in Paris, with you back at the office full-time,’ she said.

He glittered her a smile. ‘Do more of what you did in Sicily. You were a lady of leisure there, weren’t you?’

Rosa didn’t let her smile slip, even though it wasn’t the most flattering way to describe her former life. It was true she hadn’t had a career, though she’d been awarded a respectable languages degree from the University of Palermo. But it had been difficult to find a job which hadn’t been vetoed by her controlling family. She’d done bits of interpreting work whenever she could, but opportunities were scarce. So she’d ended up with a part-time administrative job at the university where she’d studied—and it had felt a bit like stepping back in time. As if she hadn’t progressed much beyond the student she’d once been.

‘I wasn’t exactly a lady of leisure,’ she defended. ‘I did have a part-time job—’

‘Well, there’s no need for you to have a part-time job now,’ he said, a touch impatiently. ‘Just enjoy your days and let me pick up the bill.’

Rosa tried not to feel offended by his dismissive words just as she tried to throw herself into her new life as a stay-at-home Parisian wife. She explored more of Paris and the many attractions it had to offer. She walked everywhere—always tailed by the ubiquitous bodyguard—and began to gain the confidence which came from learning the geography of a once-strange city. In the mornings she took in a gallery or an exhibition, and in the afternoons she went to see a film and her once-fluent French began to improve as a consequence.

But she got a distinct sense that she was simply filling in time, that she was becoming like many of the other rich expatriates who counted away their hours with culture. She began to look forward to Kulal’s homecoming with more enthusiasm than she told herself was wise. He didn’t want an eager woman throwing herself at him like an underexercised puppy whenever he came home from work, did he? He wanted a woman who’d had an interesting day, because surely that way she’d be more interesting herself.

One evening, he came back late from the office and went straight into the shower, and when he walked into the bedroom, Rosa was sitting in front of the dressing table in her bra and pants, blow drying her hair.

‘You haven’t forgotten we’re out to dinner tonight?’ he questioned, momentarily distracted by the sight of the lace-covered globes of her breasts.

‘No, of course I haven’t.’ She put the hairdryer down and watched his reflection as he began to rub a towel over his damp body. ‘We’re seeing someone from a TV company, am I right?’

‘You are. Actually, the executive producer of one of France’s most successful independent companies, who wants to make a documentary about Zahrastan.’

She met his eyes in the mirror. ‘Maybe that’s a good thing—to place it in the minds of the public.’ She leaned forward and slicked some lipstick over her mouth. ‘I’d never heard of Zahrastan until I met you.’

‘Precisely.’ Roughly, he rubbed at his hair. ‘We need to let the world see that we’re not some big, bad oppressive dictatorship. The biggest problem was persuading my brother to allow a foreign crew to enter the country in order to film.’

‘And he was agreeable?’

Kulal laughed. ‘Oddly enough, he was very agreeable—since he’s notoriously prickly about foreign opinion. But I think he’s decided that Zahrastan has to be seen as embracing the modern world.’

‘And do you.’ She hesitated, because since that first night, when he’d poured out the blame and guilt he’d felt about his mother’s death, he’d barely mentioned his brother. In fact, the frankness of that night had not been repeated, even though she had tentatively tried to get him to open up on more than one occasion. But he had blocked her moves with the skill of a seasoned chess player. She got the feeling that he had allowed her to see a rare chink in his armour and had no intention of repeating it and it frustrated the hell out of her. Because wasn’t it natural to want to chip away at that armour and see more of the real man beneath? Didn’t that kind of intimacy feel just as profound—maybe even more profound—as anything which they shared during sex? She sucked in a breath as she watched him pull on a white shirt. ‘Do you talk to your brother much?’