The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride

Yet when it came to marriage all that went with Rashad in terms of baggage and culture and his people’s expectations was simply huge. Even so, she quite understood why he was willing when his next-best option was a marriage to a complete stranger about whom he would essentially know nothing.

‘Of course, you’d get the ring back if you married me,’ she said with a flat lack of humour.

‘And gain a gorgeous blonde wife,’ Rashad traded with a sudden charismatic smile that lit up his bronzed face, illuminating the hard cheekbones and hollows that gave his features such strong definition.

Polly glanced across the fire pit at him and the knowledge that if she said no she would never see him again sliced into her like the sudden slash of a knife blade. That prospect, she registered in mortification, was not something she wanted to think about. No more easily could she imagine being forced to walk away from the new family she had found. Perspiration beaded her upper lip as she fretted.

Marrying Rashad would be like taking a huge blind leap in the dark and she wasn’t the sort of woman who took risks of that nature, was she? But if it worked, there would be much to gain, she reasoned ruefully. She would have her grandparents for support. She was already powerfully attracted by Rashad.

‘The answer is…yes. It’s insane but…yes,’ Polly muttered almost feverishly before she could lose her nerve.

Although relief slivered through Rashad at her agreement that relief was threaded with undeniable resentment over his predicament. After all, he had been backed into a corner and forced to marry again. This was his choice, he reminded himself sternly. She was his choice and far superior to a bride who would have been a complete stranger, but the stubborn streak of volatility Rashad always kept suppressed had flickered from a spark into a sudden burning flame, for it was impossible for him to forget how very much he had hated being married.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘IT’S NOT TOO late to change your mind,’ Ellie said with a hint of desperation while she watched the television to see the partying taking place in the streets of Kashan to celebrate Rashad and Polly’s wedding day. ‘Well, they probably do have you on the tea towels and you would need to be smuggled out of the country in disguise if you jilted him!’

‘Obviously, I’m not going to jilt him,’ Polly said quietly, wishing her sister would stop winding up her nerves with her dire forecasts.

Ellie had landed in Dharia forty-eight hours earlier and she had given her elder sister every conceivable lecture against marriage since her arrival.

‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Do you realise what you’re getting into? Are you even sure you will be his only wife? What if everything Rashad shows you on the surface is simply a front to persuade you to marry him? Look at those people partying at the announcement! He needs you more than you need him. That should make you suspicious. What if he has another woman hidden somewhere? A woman he really loves?’

Polly had dutifully listened to every possible argument but she had absorbed few of her sibling’s warnings for the simple reason that she suspected that she was falling in love with Rashad. Yes, she had finally worked that out all on her own. How else had she contrived to overlook his threat to throw her out of the country if she didn’t agree to marry him?

On her side of the fence, her reasons for marrying Rashad had become resolutely practical over the two short weeks that had passed since his proposal. One, her grandfather spoke very highly of his ruler, and she trusted Hakim and his wife Dursa because she was genuinely convinced that they would rate her need for happiness higher than any desire to see their grandchild wed their King. Two, Rashad had been honest with her. He had paid her no extravagant compliments and had made no mention of love and she had accepted that latter handicap with the strength of a patient, optimistic woman because she hoped that in time his feelings for her would change. Three, there was just something very powerful about Rashad that called to Polly on a very deep level and she couldn’t put it into words or explain it, so she had come to think of it as the start of love. She simply knew that she wasn’t capable of walking away from him.

And how did she know that? she asked herself as the cluster of chattering maids surrounding her twitched at the skirts of her elaborate wedding outfit and attached more jewellery to her, although she was already laden down with gold and precious gems because Rashad’s uncle had saved the family jewel collection along with his youngest nephew. How the fire-opal ring had become detached from that collection would probably never be known but Hakim believed that his son had very possibly taken it and given it to Polly’s mother, Annabel, for safekeeping during the chaos following the explosion that had claimed the lives of Rashad’s family. Her father, Zahir, had after all been the most senior soldier in the palace that awful day and had died himself within twenty-four hours.

She could never walk away from Rashad when her own family was so deeply involved with the country of Dharia. No, she knew that even if her marriage turned out to be a bad marriage she was very likely stuck with it until the day she died because her grandfather had spelt out to her that she had to think in terms of for ever when it came to marrying a ruling king. Rashad’s father had divorced twice before wedding Rashad’s mother and those matrimonial breakdowns had been interpreted as signs of his general instability and his lack of staying power and sense of duty as a monarch.

‘And even worse, you’ve hardly seen Rashad since you agreed to marry him,’ Ellie reminded her with anxious green eyes.

‘He’s had so many people to meet and so many arrangements to make,’ Polly responded quietly, for Rashad had spent the last fortnight travelling around Dharia. ‘He has to consult with others about everything he does to come up with a consensus. It’s the way he operates to keep everybody happy that they’ve had their say and Grandad says it works beautifully.’

Ellie stood back a step to examine her sister’s gorgeous appearance. Traditional red and gold embroidery and rich blues had been laid down on the finest cream silk fabric that flowed like liquid and screamed designer just like the matching shoes. Her head was bare, her hair loose, as was the norm in Dharia for a bride. A magnificent set of sapphires glittered at her ears, her throat, her neck and her wrists. Delicate henna swirls decorated her hands and her feet and beneath the dress she wore a chemise with a hundred buttons for her groom to undo on the wedding night. Ellie was more intimidated than she wanted to admit by the pomp and ceremony of Rashad and Polly’s wedding and the deep fear that she was losing her sister to another world and another family. She knew that Polly’s affections ran loyal and true but how could she possibly compete?

As for Rashad? Well, it went without saying that he was very, very nice to look at, very well spoken as well as educated and civilised but, like the buttons waiting to be undone beneath Polly’s dress, what was her future brother-in-law really like below the smooth polished façade? That was the main source of Ellie’s concern because in her one brief meeting with Rashad she had reckoned that a great deal more went on below that smooth surface than trusting, caring Polly was probably willing to recognise. A man traumatised as a boy by the loss of his entire family, forced into marriage at sixteen, widowed ten years later and then raised to a throne over a population who worshipped him like a god because he had rescued them from a dictator’s tyranny? That was quite a challenging life curve to have survived. How much did her sister genuinely know about the man she had agreed to marry?

‘Would you please stop worrying about me?’ Polly urged Ellie with troubled blue eyes. ‘I want this to be a happy day.’

‘I’m always happy if you’re happy,’ Ellie declared, giving her a gentle but fond hug of apology.

But Polly knew different. Ellie had always been a worrier, expecting the worst outcome in most situations. She refused to borrow that outlook, wanting to look forward with all the hope and optimism that her wonderful discovery of her loving grandparents had already fanned into enthusiasm. Why shouldn’t their marriage work out? She wasn

’t expecting an easy ride. Of course there would be obstacles and surprises and disappointments but surely there would also be joys and unexpected benefits along the way?

She refused to admit even to her sister how isolated and rejected she had felt at having barely spent even a moment with Rashad since agreeing to marry him. And worse still and far too private for her to share, how very apprehensive she actually felt at the prospect of having sex for the first time with a man she had yet to even kiss…

The wedding was to be very much a public event and screened on television. Refusing to give way to nerves, Polly went downstairs with her sister and her bevy of chattering companions to be ushered into the throne room that had been set up to stage the ceremony.

A sharp pang of regret pierced her that she should still have an unknown sister who could not be part of her day and she wondered how soon after their marriage it would be acceptable for her to ask Rashad for his financial help with that problem. How else was she to locate their missing sister, Penelope?

As she strove to ignore the camera lenses while at the same time studiously trying not to do anything unsightly with her face, her nervous tension surged to an all-time high. And then she saw Rashad, exotically garbed in magnificent red and gold ceremonial robes, and all her anxiety was swallowed alive by a sense of awe and wonder that she was on the very brink of marrying such a divinely handsome male. She felt ridiculously schoolgirlish when she looked at him but, on another, much more intimate level, she also felt surprisingly wanton.

Rashad made her wonder about stuff that she had truly never wasted time thinking about before because for so long sex had been part of other people’s lives but never hers. That was just how it had been while her freedom was restricted by her grandmother’s long illness. Her gaze locked onto the wide sensual curve of Rashad’s mouth and she simply tingled as she wondered what he would taste like, what that glorious long bronzed muscular physique of his would look like naked and, inevitably, what it would be like to be in bed with him. As her colour fluctuated wildly, a tide of heat claimed her innermost depths to encourage an embarrassing dampness at the heart of her and she pressed her thighs together and stood rigid as a rod to discourage her colourful imagination. It embarrassed her to be so very impressionable.

‘Wow…’ Ellie mumbled at her elbow, overpowered by the sheer medieval splendour of their surroundings. ‘Who’s that guy with the bridegroom?’