The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride

‘Some Italian Rashad went to uni with. I haven’t met him but I think his name is Rio,’ Polly whispered, unable to focus on anyone but Rashad because she was now wondering why her future husband looked so impossibly moody and tense. Didn’t he realise that he should be smiling for the cameras? Or was any show of human emotion forbidden to him as a ruler? Or was it even possible that he genuinely loathed figuring as a leading light in such a public event?

The ceremony was short and sweet, translated into both their languages. Polly’s hand trembled in the firm hold of Rashad’s when he slid the ring onto her slender ring finger. His slightest touch invoked a storm of churning, rippling awareness throughout her entire body and she was embarrassed by it, questioning that it could be normal to be so susceptible to a man. But that anxiety was squashed by her astonishment when she belatedly registered that her wedding ring was a feminised miniature of the famous fire-opal ring that Rashad wore on his hand. It seemed deeply symbolic to Polly that he had deliberately made a feature of the ring that had first brought them together and a brilliantly warm and happy smile softened her previously tense mouth as she looked up at him with starry eyes of appreciation.

His wide sensual lips almost made it into an answering smile of acknowledgement but his shimmering dark eyes remained cool and evasive and a faint pang of disappointment touched Polly. Yet somehow she sensed that his self-discipline was so inflexible and so intrinsic to his character that he would not allow any relaxation of his innate reserve to betray his true feelings. Simultaneously and for the very first time she wondered what those feelings actually were…

Of course she knew and accepted that he wasn’t in love with her, even respected his essentially honest nature because he had not tried to deceive her with any false show or foolish promises. But there was something so distinct about his obvious emotional withdrawal that she felt guiltily unnerved by it.

*

At least Polly was pleased about the ring, Rashad was thinking wryly. It was very probably the first positive thought he had had in the two frantic weeks of meetings and reorganisation required before it was possible for him to free up the time to become a husband. And future father, he reflected joylessly. Back to the life of being a sperm donor and praying that the seed took root this time around, he reflected with a pang of distaste. That was, after all, he believed, the only reason for him to even get married: to father a child and create the generational continuity for the throne that his people needed to feel safe in the future. He recalled Ferah’s heartbreak when she had learned that she had a medical condition that made conception a virtual impossibility and guilt engulfed him over his derisive musings. The ability to have a child would have meant the world to his first wife.

Did Polly have any idea what she had got herself into? And why hadn’t he made the effort to warn her?

Why hadn’t he? he asked himself afresh, disconcerted by that truth and belatedly recognising that he could have told Polly many things that would have put her off marrying him but that, inexplicably, he had shared not a single one of them. He breathed in slow and deep, more than a little disturbed by the worrying nature of his failure to discuss something so very crucial to the likely success of their marriage. His conscience was suddenly laden down by that awareness.

Admittedly it was a sore subject from his point of view and he saw no good reason to dangerously overshadow the present with the tragic clouds of the past. In truth he had never shared his feelings about marriage with any living person and loyalty and honour demanded that he protect his first wife’s memory. After all, Ferah had suffered horribly from the stigma of a ten-year childless marriage and in death she deserved his respect at the very least.

‘You need to smile,’ Polly whispered under her breath as Rashad guided her out of the throne room in front of an audience of clapping and cheering well-wishers.

‘Why?’ he whispered back, long-lashed dark golden eyes narrowed. ‘It is a solemn occasion.’

‘But you’re behaving as though you’re at a funeral,’ Polly muttered in instinctive complaint while they took their seats at a massive long top table in a giant banqueting room already filled with tables.

No, not a funeral but possibly the bonfire of his most unrealistic hopes, Rashad labelled cynically, his facial muscles tightening so that his bronzed skin traced his sculpted features even more closely. He had hoped to stave off marriage for at least another few months but Polly’s explosive effect on the Dharian population had killed that possibility in its tracks. But now that he had fallen dutifully into line, hopefully everybody would be happy for a while and he could relax again. With another person beside him though, with a wife… His lean, darkly handsome face tensed again, his dark eyes flashing gold with disquiet until he looked at her afresh. His very beautiful wife, who had shivered with excitement when he’d kissed her hand. He almost groaned at how hard that tantalising memory made him.

As the reception wore on Polly became increasingly troubled by Rashad’s grave demeanour. For a split second she glimpsed Ellie laughing uproariously at the side of Rashad’s friend, Rio, and that stark contrast sobered her even more. Surely the bride and groom should appear even happier? But Rashad wasn’t talking, he wasn’t smiling, he was the very antithesis of happy and she was shocked and unnerved by it. Most particularly, Ellie’s warnings were haunting her again.

How much do you really know about Rashad?

And all of a sudden Polly was in the deeply unenviable position of admitting that she knew virtually nothing about the man she had just married. As soon as the meal was

done she submersed herself in her grandparents’ sincere happiness on her behalf and their evident conviction that she had married a man who would move heaven and earth to make her happy. Seemingly they saw nothing amiss with Rashad’s behaviour.

Was he one of those very moody men one heard about? Oh, dear…oh, no, she thought in dismay at the prospect of being wed to a man who switched from sun to shade at the roll of a dice. Or was it only her that was noticing—or imagining—that something was wrong? Was she seeing Rashad from a different perspective now? After all, Hakim was very much a man who served his King and as long as Rashad was courteous her grandfather would be content with the surface show and question no deeper. But it was a little more complicated for a wife, Polly reasoned anxiously, particularly a wife, who suddenly felt as though she had married a stranger…or a Jekyll and Hyde character.

A white open-topped limousine, accompanied by a heavy escort, drove them slowly through the streets of the capital city to the airport. Hundreds of soldiers and police held the excited crowds back behind barriers. Polly waved and smiled as her grandfather had told her she must while marvelling that Rashad’s marriage could ignite such demonstrations of sheer joy. She could only hope that she would somehow manage to live up to the people’s no doubt high expectations of her and in an undertone, above the loud clamour, she shared that thought with Rashad.

‘Get pregnant. That’s probably the only thing they really want,’ Rashad pronounced very drily.

Polly’s blue eyes widened to their fullest extent as her head whipped round to stare at his lean, darkly handsome face in shock. ‘Are you serious?’ she framed, shrinking not just from his blunt words but from the harshness with which he voiced them.

‘You can’t be that naïve,’ Rashad responded drily. ‘It’s not as though either of us have a choice in that department and that cliché about honeymoon babies would be a real feat to pull off.’

Polly had paled, the delicate lines of her face freezing as she carefully turned her head away again to dutifully continue waving and smiling. But neither the wave nor the smile came as freely or as easily as earlier because her heart had frozen inside her and her tummy had turned over sickly at his response.

When Rashad had said, ‘I want you’ was that why? He simply needed a wife to impregnate as quickly as possible? And why, oh, why was she only now thinking about something that should have been obvious to her from the outset? Obviously a king wanted and needed an heir. She hadn’t even thought about birth control and now she could see that even the mention of it would go down like a lead balloon. Was she ready to get immediately pregnant? Were they to have no time to become accustomed to living together as a couple before they became a family?

Rashad noticed that Polly had transformed into a still little statue by his side and faint dark colour flared along his cheekbones because he was discomfited by the reality that he had taken his bitterness out on her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said instantly. ‘I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded.’

As if from a distance, Polly looked down at the lean brown hand suddenly resting warmly on hers but it was too little, too late from a bridegroom who had avoided all physical contact throughout the long and exhausting day they had shared.

Freeing her hand without making a drama of doing so, she said flatly, for the sake of peace, ‘I’m sure you didn’t.’

I’m sure you didn’t mean to be that blunt and insensitive.

I’m sure you didn’t mean to make me feel like a rent-a-womb.

I’m sure you didn’t mean to pile so much pressure on me when conception is not something I can control.