The Desert King's Blackmailed Bride

And it was that twisting round to make that final response that unbalanced her. She missed a step and lurched. Her feverish grab at the stone bannister failed and she fell, instinctively turning her body into herself as she had been taught to fall from a horse. Her hip hit stone and she cried out in pain and then the back of her head struck a step and she knew no more…

CHAPTER TEN

A FAINT MOAN parted Polly’s lips because her head was aching and she came awake with a sense of frightened confusion. Her eyes opened on an unfamiliar room. She saw a bewildering number of faces, blinked and registered that she was in a hospital bed with the side bars raised.

‘Polly?’ Rashad breathed tautly, springing out of the chair beside her.

‘What?’ she mumbled because moving her lips felt like too much effort. ‘My head’s sore…my hip.’

As she focused blearily on him he stepped back to allow the medical staff to attend to her and she wondered why he looked so tired and why the sun was shining into the room when only minutes ago it had been dark. A nurse checked her blood pressure and gave her a drink while a doctor asked her a series of questions. Her attention, however, stayed squarely on Rashad while she struggled to recall what had happened to her. Black stubble accentuated his stubborn passionate mouth, his luxuriant hair was dishevelled, his eyes shadowed, his powerful anxiety unconcealed. Recalling her fall on the stairs and the argument that had preceded it taxed her concentration and then, with a sudden whoosh of awareness, all that fell away on the shocking surge of apprehension that shot through her. She pressed a stricken hand against her stomach.

‘My baby?’ she gasped fearfully.

Rashad strode forward and rested a hand over hers in a soothing gesture. ‘Our baby is fine—’

‘For the moment. There has been no bleeding but you must rest. The next twenty-four hours are crucial to your recovery,’ the grey-haired doctor told her firmly as he urged her to lie still.

Rashad’s hand was trembling over hers and just as she noticed that he withdrew it in a sudden gesture and dug it into the pocket of his trousers. He knew that she was pregnant; he knew about the baby. She assumed that Dr Wasem had told him after she fell and knocked herself out. Polly closed her eyes, guessing just how guilty Rashad would be feeling. She was still furious with him but she knew his habit of blaming himself for everything bad that happened around him. If she lost their baby he would never forgive himself for upsetting her. How could she be furious with him and yet aching inside herself for what he was feeling at the same time? It was that crazy conundrum called love, she decided ruefully. dpg

While the doctor talked to her about the concussion she had sustained, Polly tried to think clearly and focus but it was no use, she simply couldn’t. Both her head and her body ached. The mental confusion and the extreme fatigue the doctor had warned her about were steadily closing in on her because there was far too much to think about and it was infinitely easier to close it all out just then and drift. She still had her baby, she reflected with passionate relief, and that was the last clear thought she had.

*

Rashad paced the silent room. He had tidied himself up in response to Hakim’s pleas but he had not eaten, he had not slept. How could he? His temper, that wild surging rage he couldn’t always control, could have killed Polly. He looked at her, lying so still in the bed, white-blonde hair tumbling across the pillow, her face showing a little colour now, no longer that wan grey that had terrified him. She was so fragile, so precious…

And the baby? Rashad was still stunned by that development, that incredulous realisation that, if there was nothing medically amiss to prevent it, a pregnancy could happen so quickly, so easily, so…so normally, he recognised. He hadn’t expected that, hadn’t prepared for it either. In fact he had pessimistically assumed that although they might conceive a child eventually it would undoubtedly take a long time. Once again he had made the mistake of allowing past disappointment and disillusionment to influence his expectations in the present. And how could she ever forgive him for that?

He was fatally flawed, almost programmed to disappoint Polly. He had even failed to protect her from Hayat’s malice. ‘Either you’re mine or you’re still hers,’ Polly had flung at him, referring to Ferah, and he could see that now—could see that he had failed to make peace with the past and move on to embrace a wife far superior in every way to his first. And if it was wrong and disrespectful to think that then it was better to be wrong but at least rational enough to recognise that truth. Fate had rained gold on him when he least deserved it and he had virtually thrown away the opportunity he had been given, he conceded grimly.

‘You must eat and rest, Your Majesty,’ Hakim whispered fiercely from the doorway. ‘How can you support your wife if you are exhausted?’

‘As always, the voice of reason,’ Rashad conceded wearily, but his every instinct still warred against leaving Polly alone. At least while he watched over her he could actually feel as though he was doing something to help, but in reality, while she was under medical super

vision, he could only be an onlooker.

*

Polly wakened and slowly savoured the strength returning to her body. She pushed down the bedding and tugged up her gown to squint at the horrid blue-black bruising covering her hip and stretching down her thigh. Better her hip than her stomach, she decided as a nurse came in and gently scolded her for sitting up in bed without help. Suddenly she was surrounded by staff again and she was changed and the bed was changed and then breakfast was ushered in.

An hour later, Rashad arrived, sleek and shaven in a beautifully cut dark suit. He looked fantastically handsome and considerably more groomed and calm than he had the day before. His stunning dark golden eyes immediately sought hers and instinctively she evaded his gaze, too full of conflict to meet it. He had revealed his lack of trust in her. He had believed that even though they were married she could still be tempted by another man and that she could be unfaithful. How could she overlook or forgive that?

‘I have a lot to say to you,’ Rashad murmured tautly. ‘But first your grandparents are waiting to see you and you should see them now to reassure them.’

‘Of course,’ she muttered uncertainly, wondering what he had to say to her, wondering what she would say to him.

‘If your medical team agree, I can take you home later.’

Polly compressed her lips in silence.

‘Hayat has now gone home to her mother. She won’t be returning to the palace staff,’ he told her in a harsh clipped undertone. ‘I was foolish to trust her near you—’

Polly studied him directly for the first time. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

His lean, strong face went rigid. ‘Apparently Hayat was angry and jealous that I had married you and she decided to cause trouble between us…and in that she succeeded,’ he divulged grudgingly. ‘I told her to cancel that dinner with Rio before I left the palace the day before yesterday. But she didn’t cancel it. She set you up instead, set us both up…challenging you to dine alone with him, knowing that I am not—at heart—the liberated male I must strive to be for your sake…’

Polly was shaken by that explanation. ‘But why would Hayat be angry and jealous? Were you involved with her before I came into your life?’

Rashad frowned. ‘Of course not…she is Ferah’s kid sister. I found it hard to warm to her personality, though—’