The Desert Sheikh's Captive Wife

was convinced that there were no words adequate to such a massive challenge. Especially after what he had gone on to do to Tilda and her family. He could blame only himself for the fact that he had added the pursuit of revenge to his tally of sins. Shame cut through him as keenly as the slash of a knife. He forced his taut shoulders back against the cold tiles. A boiling knot of rage was forming in place of his usual reasoned restraint. He shuddered at the memory of that file and what it had cost her…and him.

Such slander could only have been authorised at the very highest level. Sweat broke on Rashad’s brow. He looked back five years. He remembered his father’s lukewarm attitude to the prospect of his son taking an English wife. The king had urged his son to wait and consider before embarking on such an important commitment. Accustomed to independent, decisive action, Rashad had resented the suggestion that he could not be trusted to choose his own wife. No comment had been made when Rashad had let it be known that the relationship was at an end. Now Rashad was suspicious of what he had regarded at the time as his father’s tactful silence. All his life he had awarded absolute loyalty to his parent. But he also knew that if the older man had sanctioned the sordid destruction of Tilda’s reputation, he would never be able to forgive him for it. It was an issue, he recognised bleakly, that had to be dealt with immediately.

Rifling through Rashad’s briefcase, Tilda finally came on what she sought. Swallowing hard, she withdrew the slim folder. She pushed the case back under the desk and returned to her bedroom, wondering if Rashad had noticed yet that she was missing and, if he had, what he would do about it. In the distance she could hear the sound of lively music and revelry: the royal wedding guests were still celebrating.

She sat down on the bed and opened the file. Her heart was in her mouth and she scolded herself, for all she was expecting to see was the source of the misunderstanding that she believed must have taken place-possibly, the name of a male friend had been erroneously linked with hers. Her address was given as the student house in which she had rented a room that summer. What she was not prepared to see was a fabrication of lies that listed a string of men, whom she had never heard of, and declared that they had all stayed overnight in her room. It was very precise as regards dates and times. Evidently she had been the victim of a sordid character assassination. She was devastated by the realisation that Rashad could have believed her capable of such rampant promiscuity.

Just as suddenly she was flooded with an explosive mix of rage and pain. When was enough enough? What did it say about her that she was willing to take whatever Rashad threw at her? Five years ago his rejection had destroyed her pride, her peace of mind and her happiness. Having encouraged her to care about him, he had broken her heart in the cruellest way available to him. When she had approached him recently in search of some compassion, he hadn’t had a scrap of pity to spare. He had treated her like the dirt beneath his royal feet! He had offered her the chance to pay off the debts with her body. Only her concern for her family’s future had persuaded her to agree to those degrading terms.

Yet when Rashad’s ruthless plans had run aground and blown up in his face and he had needed her support, had she refused? Oh, no, she hadn’t refused him anything but immediate sexual gratification! How could she have been so understanding? So ready to make allowances and forgive? In a passion of denial and self-loathing, she peeled off the kaftan and stalked through to the bathroom to wash her face clean of make-up. In the dressing room she dragged out fresh underwear, a shirt and cotton trousers, choosing from her own clothes, not from the designer wardrobe he had bought her. She was leaving him, she was going home to her mum. He could get stuffed! He could keep the fancy togs and all the ancestral jewellery, as well. She set the diamond engagement ring on the chest by the bed. She wasn’t hanging on to that as though it were a sentimental keepsake! Her throat was thick with tears. It was better to travel light.

Tying her hair back, she put on a jacket and checked her passport. She ripped a sheet of paper out of a notebook and put it on top of the file, which she left lying on the bed. She wrote: ‘You don’t deserve me. I’m never coming back. I want a divorce.’

Only when she reached a side entrance of the palace did she appreciate that her bodyguards had seemingly come out of nowhere to follow her every step of the way. Consternation assailed her, because, not only had she hoped to make a sneaky exit, but she had also thought that she was barely recognisable in her plain and ordinary outfit.

‘You would like a car, Your Royal Highness?’ Musraf, the only English speaker in her protection team, asked with a low bow.

‘Yes, thank you. I’m going to the airport.’ Tilda endeavoured to behave as though a late run to the airport on her wedding night was perfectly normal. But the Royal Highness appellation almost totally unnerved her, because she had not known she was entitled to that label and it made anonymity seem even more of a forlorn hope.

Within minutes a limousine pulled up. Ushering her into it, Musraf enquired about the time of her flight.

‘I want to go to London-but I haven’t organised it yet,’ Tilda informed him loftily.

She was assured that all such arrangements would be made for her. A private room was made available to her the instant she arrived at the airport. There she sat for two hours before being taken out to a private jet with the colours of the royal household painted on the tail fin. She crept aboard, feeling it was rather cheeky to leave Rashad by fleeing the country in one of his own aircraft. As it occurred to her that a wife who vanished within hours of a state wedding would cause him rather more serious embarrassment than that, she came up with an invented cover story for Musraf to relay to Rashad.

‘Say my mother’s not well and that’s why I left in a hurry,’ she instructed him helpfully before take-off.

Dawn was breaking when the jet landed in the U.K. Tilda had slept several hours and felt physically refreshed, but her spirits were at rock-bottom. Her protection team stayed close and while she was struggling to work out how to dismiss them politely her mobile phone rang.

‘It’s Rashad,’ her husband murmured, making her stiffen in dismay. ‘I’ll see you at the town house in an hour.’

‘Are you saying that you’re in London, too?’ Tilda vented in a hastily lowered voice that was the discreet version of a shriek. ‘That’s impossible!’

‘One hour-’

‘I’m going to see Mum-’

‘One hour,’ Rashad decreed.

‘I won’t be-’

‘If you’re not there I will come to Oxford for you,’ Rashad informed her with ruthless clarity. ‘You are my wife.’

Her face burning, Tilda thrust the phone back in her bag. He must have flown out of Bakhar very shortly after she had. His wife? His accidental wife would have been a more accurate description. How many women got married without even getting a proposal? Her teeth gritted. Well, if Rashad was that determined to stage a confrontation, he could have one with bells on! She had done nothing to be ashamed of. Although dating him in the first place struck her as being a hanging offence; he’d looked like trouble with a capital T. From start to finish, that was what he’d proved to be.

But even as she fought in self-defence to keep her furious defiance at a high, she remained miserably conscious of how devastating she had found the contents of that file. Actually seeing in print the kind of stuff that Rashad had believed her capable of had ripped any sentimental scales from her eyes. Love was a total waste of time with a guy who could happily make love to a woman he believed to be a total slut. That file had also resurrected the terrible pain that he had inflicted on her five years earlier. Well, there would be no more of it. He had done enough damage.

It was closer to two hours before Rashad strode into the drawing room of the town house where, just six weeks earlier, he had enforced his terms for their relationship. From the window, Tilda had watched him arrive and her chest had tightened and her breathing had shortened as though she was on the brink of a panic attack. She didn’t want to notice that he looked drop-dead gorgeous in a very snazzy black designer suit. She didn’t want to feel a hot, quivery sensation of near dizziness when she inadvertently collided with his smouldering tawny gaze.

Dark vibrations of anger were rippling through Rashad. ‘You went into my briefcase to see that file.’

Her chin came up. ‘I’d have blown up a safe to get a look at that file and I’m really glad I did.’

‘That’s not and will never be an excuse to walk out on our marriage.’

‘I didn’t walk, Rashad. I ran! And where were you? What was your reaction to the discovery that everything you accused me of, everything you dared to think about me, was hopelessly wrong?’ Tilda demanded grittily, her wide eyes burning with tears. ‘You went for a shower.’

Rashad vented a phrase in Arabic that sounded like a curse. ‘I was in shock-I was upset-’