White as snow and deeply shaken, Bethany made a tiny, uncertain movement with one hand and then her fingers dropped again. ‘Razul, I—’
‘In the name of Allah, an apology would be an even grosser offence. No doubt you are still suffering from the fantastic notion that my family harbour concubines as well! We may be primitive, backward and painfully unwesternised in our ways, but our standards of sexual behaviour are far higher than those of your own society!’
Sinking ever deeper into a pool of stricken self-examination while being engulfed by the greatest mortification she had ever been forced to endure, Bethany could no longer meet that coldly condemning appraisal.
‘After the death of Hiriz, young women were sent to my father in the hope that I would choose a bride from their ranks. While they were within our household they were strictly chaperoned. They were also educated, clothed and dowered at my family’s expense...one very practical reason why those daughters were offered by their fathers. Until the spoils of oil wealth were shared, many of them found it impossible to arrange suitable marriages for their daughters. My relatives made matches for them.’
‘How could I have known that?’ she whispered unsteadily.
‘You did not want to know it,’ Razul condemned. ‘You preferred to believe the outrageous slander which appeared in newsprint. That article was a deeply offensive vilification which caused great distress to my family and to the families of the young women concerned. It was beneath our dignity to issue a denial of such salacious rubbish.’
Her head was spinning. He accused her of not having wanted to know the truth—a charge which pierced right to the heart of her turmoil, forcing her to see herself in a light which painfully exposed her every flaw. Her throat ached. It was as if he had held up a mirror and she wanted to shrink from her own reflection. Like most of her colleagues she had been willing to believe that newspaper article...why? It had provided them with a wonderful opportunity to pontificate on the outright hypocrisy of a society which demanded that young women live as cloistered ideals of perfect purity before marriage, while at the same time permitting the highest in the land to maintain concubines.
But Bethany had had the deepest motivation of all in choosing to accept that story as if it had been written in stone. Anything which she could use to reinforce the barriers she’d seen between herself and Razul had been welcome. It had been more grist to her mill of determined resistance, positive proof that he was every bit as alien in his way of life as it suited her to believe.
Suddenly Bethany, who had always prided herself on her seeking, open mind, was appalled by the unreasoning prejudice that she had unquestioningly chosen to harbour...simply because it suited her to do so. How much of that instinctive bias had she acquired in her teens when her mother’s kid sister, Susan, had been going through the tortures of the damned in her ill-fated marriage to an Arab?
‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Bethany muttered unevenly.
He wasn’t married. He had never been married. He had no other women in his life. Her brain was working in short, electrifying bursts, bringing down the barriers that she had hidden behind for years. Without that protection she felt frighteningly weak and vulnerable. Already she could sense a terrifying surge of relief longing for release inside her. Razul was free...and her last realistic line of defence was being smashed and put out of her reach. That scared the hell out of her!
‘How did you injure yourself?’
Her lashes fluttered in bemusement as, without warning, Razul dropped down to her level and reached for her hand. The angry scratches which Fatima had inflicted stood out in stark contrast against her pale skin.
Her fingers quivered in his warm grasp. She looked down at him, watching the ebony crescents of his silky lashes drop near his cheek-bones, scanning the narrow blade of his nose, and her sensitive throat closed over altogether. When he wanted to be, he could be achingly gentle.
Gulping, she threw her head back, anguished guilt sliding like a knife into her heart. Did you really think that he was going to beat you up? she thought. Well, he knows now that you thought that too, and he can take it in his stride beautifully because you have taught him to expect nothing but misjudgement from your corner. She trembled, struggling to rein back the powerful emotions shuddering through her.
‘Fatima did this,’ he breathed.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said chokily, not even caring how he knew that the brunette had been responsible for getting her out of the palace, or how he’d instantly divined who had inflicted those abrasions. Obviously he did know as he hadn’t asked any questions.
‘She threatened Zulema’s family. Zulema had the presence of mind to approach me, but by the time she was able to see me the hour was late. I was with my father. These scratches need to be attended to in case infection should set in. They should have been dealt with last night,’ Razul murmured, with a frown, releasing her fingers and straightening again.
She couldn’t bear him to move away but she could feel the distance in him like a cold wall holding her at bay. And she didn’t blame him—she really didn’t blame him for his hostility. Green light...red stop-light. A hectic flush replaced her pallor. She remembered him saying that if he let her go she would regret it for the rest of her life. She remembered how outraged she had been when he’d told her that he was giving her a second chance.
Some truths were very tough on your pride, she acknowledged painfully. What a coward she had been two years ago, huddling blindly behind her prejudices, refusing to listen to her own intelligence except when it told her what she wanted to hear. The reality was that it had been easier for her to refuse him. She hadn’t had the guts to cross over the barrier of her own insecurities. She had been afraid of the strength of that attraction, afraid of being hurt, and neither had been an unreasonable fear.
After all, there was no prospect of a future with Razul. To talk of marriage was insane. Of course, he hadn’t been talking about a real marriage, she recalled—at least, not what she understood as a real marriage, though she had no doubt that he viewed this temporary contract business in quite a different light. Naturally his father, whose distrust and dislike of foreigners was well-known, didn’t want one in the family on any other basis.
What she didn’t understand was how to handle her own emotions. Why the hell hadn’t she had an affair with him in England? She would have got this insanity out of her system then and been cured, she reflected resentfully. Within a very short space of time she would have realised that they didn’t have a single thought in common, and her infatuation would have died a natural death. There would have been no complications, no agonies, no past to come back and haunt her now with regret and bitterness.
‘I think we need to talk...’ Bethany muttered uncertainly.
‘I am always prepared to talk.’ Disconcertingly, Razul’s set mouth came very close to a smile.
Bethany swallowed hard, still so bewildered by her own emotional conflict that she was not at all sure that she ought to be saying anything to him. ‘I have a...a suggestion to make.’
‘Does it relate to your departure?’ he breathed tautly.
‘Yes...well, obviously it would be sensible for me to go home. But that...well, that doesn’t mean that I...well, that I wouldn’t be...’ her skin burning, she stumbled helplessly over the words to verbalise her own thoughts ‘...open to the possibility of—well...er...not here in Datar, of course, but you can’t be here all the time!’
Razul scanned her with unhidden fascination. ‘I am lost.’
He wasn’t the only one. Bethany had got cold feet. How could she possibly suggest to him that they had an affair? That sounded so cold-blooded, not to mention brazen, but on the other hand it was a considerably more realistic proposal than the idea of marriage in any form, she reminded herself staunchly.
‘I am attracted to you,’ she began again in a flat tone which concealed her embarrassment, ‘and I am prepared to admit that I have not reacted in a v
ery reasonable manner as regards that...er...situation. Had we explored that situation in a relationship two years ago...and again I admit that it was my fault that we didn’t...but, had we done so, that would have been by far the most sensible solution—’
‘To the problem of this attraction...excuse me...this situation,’ Razul slotted in smoothly.
Relieved that he had so easily followed her reasoning, Bethany’s gaze collided involuntarily with shimmering golden eyes and she snatched in a deep breath. ‘Therefore it naturally follows that employing marriage as a resolution of the situation would be ridiculously excessive. This is not the nineteenth century, after all, and—’
‘This is how I imagine you might speak in the lecture theatre,’ Razul remarked.
A pin-dropping silence stretched.
Flames of angry pink burnished her fair skin. She decided to ignore that ungenerous comment. ‘And we are both adults—’
“That is indeed a matter of opinion.’
‘Look...will you stop interrupting me?’ Bethany hissed at him in frustration. ‘I am only trying to point out that, while I am not prepared to marry you, I am willing...well, open to the possibility of—’
‘Exploring the situation in my bed?’ Razul incised in a raw undertone.
Bethany turned scarlet. ‘If you must put it that way...but I was thinking in terms of—’