Bethany had closed her eyes and turned away. She was devastated, her bitter fury quelled by shocked disbelief at the fact that he had actually answered her, called her sarcastic bluff with a candour that was savage. In a daze she stood there, heard him leave the room. The kitten scrabbled at her feet playfully, and as her knees gave she sank clumsily down on the beautiful rug and watched the tiny creature frolic innocently around her without really seeing its antics.
The deep-freeze effect of shock slowly receded, and her mind began to work again. She’d heard Razul describing his second wife not with pleasure...no, not with pleasure but with barely concealed revulsion. He did not want a not very well-educated wife, content to gossip and shop and watch TV and treat him like a god who could do no wrong. That might be his father’s standard of a good wife but it was not Razul’s. That, she realised dazedly, had not been his dream.
Tears of released stress suddenly stung her aching eyes. She had wilfully misunderstood what Razul had been telling her from the beginning. He had told her that he had no freedom of choice and she hadn’t listened. He had told her that his father did not want him to marry her and she hadn’t listened properly to that either.
In King Azmir’s eyes she was not an acceptable wife for his only son and nothing was likely to change that fact. The old boy might be a fond and over-protective father but the only way Razul had been able to win his consent to bringing Bethany here had been by promising that it would only be a temporary alliance. It had been one last chance for them to be together before he did his filial and princely duty by marrying some brainless bimbo and settling down to produce children.
Not his choice; not his dream. How could she have been blind enough to believe that Razul would go to such extraordinary lengths merely to get her into bed? She remembered his panic when he’d realised that she was ill, and his distress at the hospital, and the tears fell faster than ever. Maybe it wasn’t quite love but Razul really did care about her and he had never tried to hide the fact even when she was being more of a nightmare than a dream.
She covered her face with splayed fingers and sobbed with noisy helplessness as she thought of that ring lying at the foot of the pool. He had been trying to show that he respected her, that even if the marriage couldn’t last it didn’t mean that it had to be a mockery.
His father was a horrible, mean old man, rotten with prejudice and as cruel as some Dark Age medieval tyrant, she thought wretchedly. Just because he had made a mistake and had been humiliated and hurt by Razul’s mother, he had decided that Bethany was unacceptable, unsuitable and not even worthy of a meeting or a chance to prove that she could be the right wife for his son. It was just as well that he was suffering from ill-health. At that moment Bethany decided that, if she could get close to the old misery guts, the sheer shock of hearing her opinion of him would finish him off altogether!
As she rooted around blindly for a hanky one was planted helpfully into her hand. With a start she opened her reddened eyes and focused strickenly on Razul as he crouched down on the carpet beside her. ‘Go a-away!’ she sobbed, cursing the sneaky silence of his approach.
‘I have upset you.’
Her teeth gritted as another sob shuddered through her. ‘Why sh-should you think that?’
‘I have never seen you cry before.’
‘What did you expect after saying what you did?’ she flared at him on the back of another howl.
‘You drove me to it,’ he grated unevenly.
‘That’s right...b-blame me!’
He pulled her into his arms and she went rigid. But the achingly familiar scent of him washed over her and her resistance broke with dismaying abruptness. She buried her face against his shoulder and struggled for breath.
‘I should not criticise you for being the woman you are,’ Razul whispered, not quite steadily. ‘For if you were not the woman you are I would not want you.’
She sniffed. ‘That’s perverse.’
‘Then I am perverse...what does it mean?’
She very nearly laughed. ‘Stubborn, contrary.’
‘We are both these things.’
‘Quick-tempered, aggressive?’
‘These too.’
This time she did let an involuntary gurgle of laughter escape her. ‘A match made in hell?’
‘No...never that, aziz. Although I cannot face the end of the summer, I will hold these weeks with you in my heart for ever.’
Any urge to laugh was instantly banished. Bethany horrified herself by bursting into floods of tears again. She had never been more miserable in her life. He smoothed her hair back from her brow and muttered soothing, incomprehensible things in Arabic as if he were trying to calm a distressed child, and she had the lowering feeling that he was totally at a loss as to what to say or do. For what was there to say? she thought tragically. Like it or not, the end of the summer would come.
‘You are exhausting yourself,’ he murmured, but she had the oddest suspicion that he was actually quite cheerful about the fact, which was, of course, a quite ridiculous idea in the circumstances and one more symptom of her seemingly ingrained need to find fault with him, she scolded herself fiercely.
‘I want my ring back,’ she mumbled.
‘You did not want it before.’
‘I’m not crawling for it either!’ she asserted jerkily into his shoulder.
‘I have never wanted you to crawl,’ Razul sighed. ‘Only to give us this chance.’
Her throat threatened to close over again. Dear heaven, why did he have to keep on saying distressing things like that? If she cried any more she would be suffering from dehydration! She drew in a deep breath to calm herself. ‘I will.’
‘You will have changed your mind again by tomorrow—’
‘No, I won’t...I promise!’ she told him frantically, clutching at him with feverish hands while the kitten settled into the folds of her dress and went to sleep, having given up on the hope of receiving any attention from either of them.
‘But what has brought about this change in you?’ he demanded.
‘The thought of you with another woman...you idiot!’ Bethany sobbed, wanting to kick him just as much as she wanted to cling to him. Did he need everything spelt out?
‘You are jealous?’
‘Of course I am...do you think I have the feelings of a stone?’ she accused in disbelief.
‘Occasionally I have thought this,’ he admitted gruffly, holding her so tightly that it was an effort for her to breathe, and no use at all for her to go stiff with outraged pride and attempt to peel herself away from him, because he was infinitely stronger than she was.
She subsided again, too exhausted by her emotional breakdown to continue a struggle against an embrace that she was thoroughly enjoying. She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, comforted by the hard, warm feel of him. A strange sense of peacefulness was creeping over her, along with a bone-deep tiredness. She stifled a yawn.
‘Am I allowed to carry you to bed?’
‘Absolutely.’
He smiled down at her, and even on the edge of sleep she felt her drowsy pulses speed up and her heart accelerate. ‘Unfortunately I am dining with my father tonight.’
She tried not to let her facial muscles freeze but it was hard. Although very possibly she did not have the right to censure King Azmir’s decision. Her tempestuous emotions had drained away, leaving room for a little intelligent reflection. Maybe she was a genuinely unacceptable wife for Razul. Razul was half-French. He was not wholly of Arab blood. It was very possible that a British wife and the son who might eventually be born of such a union would not be acceptable to the people of Datar as the family of a future ruler. It was a thoroughly depressing suspicion but a realistic one.
Exhausted as she was, it was nonetheless hard for her to get to sleep. She was thinking helplessly of the empty, narrow life she would return to in England. The idea stirring at the back of her mind was madness, sheer madness, she told herself...or was it? She had
to have something if she had to face that future without Razul, and lots of women managed to raise a child alone. But to deliberately bring a child into the world without a father... But then what else would she ever have of Razul? she asked herself fiercely.
She wanted his child, his baby. Was that so wrong? He would never know. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Two months...two months in which to become pregnant by a male scrupulously guarding against the possibility. It was a tall order but not an insuperable challenge, she decided, pitting her wits, against the problem and coming up with one or two possibilities which made her smile to herself as she finally drifted off to sleep.
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN Razul saw Bethany walking across the stableyard towards him, his brilliant smile hit her like a shot of adrenalin in her veins. Crawling out of bed in darkness suddenly felt worthwhile. He caught her hand in his and introduced her to the inmate of every stable on the block before finally drawing her over to a doe-eyed mare whom Bethany cheerfully petted.