The Desert Bride

‘Wonderful,’ Bethany muttered rather weakly, and wandered across the width of the hall to walk into a highly traditional Arab reception room complete with sunken coffee hearth, heaps of cushions and the usual paucity of furniture. The same picture continued right down the length of that enormous hall—on one side, westernisation complete with elaborate furnishings and ornamental clutter, and, on the other, the simpler Islamic backdrop. It was peculiar, she reflected as she walked back outside again. Had the Western half been created for the purpose of entertaining foreign VIPs?

The sound of steps jerked her head round as she stood contemplating the fountain in the outer courtyard. Razul stilled several feet away, his suddenly screened dark eyes resting on her in much the same way as he might have regarded a grenade with the pin pulled out...very wary, coldly defensive, poised for a fight. And it disturbed her that she could tell exactly what he was feeling before he even opened his beautifully shaped mouth.

‘Now you tell me why you did not leave when you had the opportunity,’ Razul commanded.

Bethany’s teeth gritted. ‘Right now that is completely irrelevant.’

‘Be warned that now you are my wife I will be less tolerant of your evasions.’

A shudder of raw resentment jolted through her. His wife... The unwelcome reminder was sufficient to send her temper rocketing again. Nor was she mollified by that stern intonation which implied that he was handing down a generous warning to a misbehaving child! She threw her vibrant head back, her emerald eyes flashing sudden fire. ‘You run so true to type, Razul—’

‘Explain yourself!’ he breathed harshly.

Bethany loosed a laugh of scorn, thinking of how fast her aunt’s adoring husband had changed his tune after their marriage. ‘I’m well aware that the Arab male drops all charm and persuasion the minute he gets a wedding ring on a woman’s finger. Then he feels secure. Then he feels he’s free to be himself, master of his household and lord of all he surveys...and the much desired and courted bride becomes just one more possession to be used and abused according to his mood. Well, before you get totally carried away with that heady sense of being all-powerful, allow me to assure you that that ring on my finger means less than nothing to me!’

Razul stared back at her, and it was like standing in the centre of a swirling storm. Every poised line of his lean length was utterly still. And yet the fierce tension that emanated from him hit her in electric waves. His silence alone was a form of intimidation. Inside herself Bethany felt the compelling force of a temperament that was stronger by far than her own, and in immediate rejection of that disturbing suspicion she wrenched off the ring on her finger and sent it spinning into the pool. It vanished in one tiny splash.

The charged silence began to feel like a swamp that she was trying to wade through—heavy, unyielding...

‘That ring is the symbol of a farce!’ Bethany condemned, furious that she sounded defensive.

Razul was rigid and very pale. He appraised her with hard dark eyes as cold as a wintry night. ‘Your manners are appalling and you have a temper as unruly as that of a spoilt child. You lash out blindly, careless of the insults you offer. I suspect this comes from a lifetime of regarding no counsel but your own, but you are foolish indeed if you believe that I will endure such displays. Retrieve that ring,’ he ordered.

Furiously flushed and outraged by his censure, Bethany glared back at him, breathing fast. She was so mad that she wanted to jump up and down on the spot.

‘Without it you will not enter my home,’ Razul informed her grimly.

‘Fine! I didn’t want that stupid ring in the first place!’ she slung back.

‘No...you wanted me to treat you like a whore...but that hope could yet be fulfilled—’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Bethany gasped.

‘With every offensive word and gesture you diminish my respect for you. I look at you and I ask myself, Was it for this woman that I have offended an honoured father?’ Razul derided harshly. ‘What should have been a day of joy has descended into a vale of tears, dissension and regret, and I have no patience left. Retrieve that ring or spend the night out here... Without it I will not recognise you as my wife!’

‘And you think that matters to me?’ Bethany blistered back shakily, her hands curling into fists.

‘I believe that you should learn what it is like to be treated like a possession to be used and abused according to my mood. Only then, perhaps, will you appreciate that I have never treated you as a lesser being...until now.’

If he seriously thought for one moment that she was about to clamber into that wretched pool and get soaking wet, he had better think again fast! Bethany thought. She stood there like a stone statue as he swept off. She could see two guards standing just inside the door of the entrance into the palace; their presence was natural when Razul was within but, even so, rage engulfed her at the sight of them. She now had an audience. Her teeth ground together, murderous heat quivering through her. So he actually thought that he was going to teach her a lesson, did he?

How dared he stand there and tell her that she had appalling manners...how dared he? How dared he come over all superior and look down that arrogant nose at her with that aura of icy hauteur? Had she asked to be dragged out to Datar and married twice over? And if he had offended his father by marrying her was that her fault? The sun beat down on her unprotected head. She drew back into the shadows and finally dropped down onto her knees, which was damnably uncomfortable on that cold marble floor. I hate him...I hate him, she raged inwardly with real violence.

An hour passed painfully slowly. Who was the clever woman who hadn’t got into the helicopter? Who was the clever woman who’d fondly imagined that she could reason with Razul...contsol him? Who had got up on her feminist soapbox and accused him of sins that he had not yet had time to commit...and who had put this blasted exercise in humiliation into his head in the first place?

She stood up again, stiff as a board, and tears of furious frustration scorched her eyes. Razul was the only person alive who could make her lose her temper to such an extent! Oh, to hell with it; she wasn’t prepared to sit here all night and freeze and starve to make some stupid, childish point! And possibly throwing away the ring had been a little over the top, but what she had really been doing was letting him know that, when he had uttered those fatal words, ‘I take another wife’, as if wives were exchangeable commodities, she had experienced a powerful need to demonstrate that their marriage-meant nothing to her either.

Down on her knees, she slid a hand into the pool and delved. It wasn’t very deep and the water was crystal-clear, but could she see that wretched ring with the sun reflecting off the surface? Then a particularly bright glitter caught her eye near the centre. Her mouth compressed into a mutinous line. She stretched perilously across the surface of the pool and lost her balance, one knee sliding over the edge into the water, swiftly followed by the other. In a tempest of fury she picked herself up again, soaked to the skin by the splash, snatched at the ring and climbed out. She stalked, dripping, into the palace, leaving a trail of tiny puddles in her wake.

He’s dead, Bethany swore to herself. He may still be walking around but he is dead! If he wants war, he has got war.

He didn’t know you didn’t want to marry him, a little voice whispered. She crushed it but the voice was remorseless. You wrecked his wedding day, you ember-rassed him with his sister and brother-in-law, you insulted him all over again.

Her nose wrinkled as the tickly sensation of tears threatened. All of a sudden Bethany felt that she was at her lowest ebb of all time. So why didn’t you get into that helicopter? she asked herself desperately.

And the answer came back loud and clear—simple, straightforward and yet devastating to her pride. The threat of never seeing Razul again had paralysed her and wiped out her self-discipline. The same sort of uncontrollable attraction which had made such a mess of her mother’s life, and threatened to do the same to her aunt’s, had

found another victim in her. Maybe that self-destructive streak ran in her genes like poison, for this time she hadn’t had the strength to walk away from Razul... He had pulled her in too deep and too fast, drowning her in the desperate force of her own hunger.

And that was her own fault, she conceded miserably. To protect herself she had refused to allow men into her life, but that self-chosen isolation had not prepared her to deal with Razul. Yet the biggest enemy she had was not him, but what lay within herself.

He was the ultimate forbidden male, the epitome of her most secret fears: phenomenally handsome, just like her father, incredibly charming, just like her father, polished at making extravagant gestures, just like her father, highly successful with women, just like her father. A truly killing combination of the worst possible male attributes. So how could she possibly want a man like that? What was wrong with her that she could see all those things and still not be able to switch off this terrible, weak craving?

She stood shivering in a strange room with blind eyes while Zulema ran a bath somewhere close by. Shell-shocked by a sense of her self-betrayal, Bethany hovered while Zulema helped her out of the wet, clinging caftan. Like a sleepwalker she sank into a warm bath. Abstractedly she rubbed at her arm, feeling a slight ache above her wrist.

‘You like something to eat now, my lady?’

Bethany emerged from her punishing self-absorption to find herself garbed in a diaphanous white silk nightdress. As she looked down at herself uncomfortably and noticed the way her pale skin gleamed through the whisper-fine fabric, a hectic flush lit her cheeks. ‘No, thanks...’

‘You should not be afraid, my lady,’ Zulema whispered soothingly.

Bethany blinked. ‘Afraid of what?’

‘Of Prince Razul...’

‘I’ve never been afraid of a man in my life!’ But even as Bethany loosed a shaky laugh of scorn she knew that she was lying. Razul had already tied her up in terrifying emotional knots, and only his sheer, appalling persistence had forced her to acknowledge just how far out of control she was. She had actually been prepared to offer him an affair...on her terms, on her ground, at her speed...but that hadn’t been enough for Razul. Razul wanted total, absolute surrender. Never! she swore to herself fiercely.

‘When a man comes to his woman for the first time it is natural for her to feel a little nervous.’ Zulema gave her a shy, teasing smile. ‘But on this night many women will sigh with envy and dream of taking your place in the Prince’s bed.’

Bethany stopped breathing altogether and sent an incredulous glance in Zulema’s direction, but the little maid was already backing out of the room. Then she shook her head in mute disbelief and breathed again. Of course Razul wasn’t coming to her! This was not going to be the average wedding night, but then Zulema was blissfully unaware of the circumstances of their marriage and of the current level of animosity between them.

Restively she lifted one of the books that she had brought with her to Datar—a nineteenth-century travelogue on the desert way of life. It contained some extravagant, even laughable errors, illustrating the writer’s misinterpretation and ignorance of Arabic customs and superstitions. But had she been any less arrogant or any more fair in her response to Razul? Anxiously she hovered, suppressing the suspicion that she had always behaved in a downright unreasonable fashion with Razul—wanting him...and yet hating him for her own weakness...

When the door opened she spun round with a frown of surprise and saw him. A stifled hiss of shock escaped her and momentarily she was paralysed. His brilliant dark gaze crossed the room, closed in on her, and then wandered over her scantily clad figure with a kind of deeply appreciative intensity which filled her with a fiery mix of furious resentment and embarrassment. She snatched up the robe that Zulema had left across a nearby chair and held it in front of her like a defensive barrier.