Zarif's Convenient Queen

* * *

Zarif watched his bride exchanging greetings with the children of some of the guests. She was good with little ones, he recognised, watching her animated face and her sparkling eyes as she laughed and chatted, displaying the first warmth she had shown since he saw her at the church. She was so naturally beautiful in her simple elegant gown he had found it a challenge to look away. She had played the bridal role with a shuttered look in her gaze though, polite and smiling but with all true feeling edited out of the show. His wife. The designation still felt like a shock—almost as much of a shock as it had been to his uncle Halim when he phoned him three weeks earlier to break the news.

‘Of course, it is past time for you to take a wife,’ Halim has declared valiantly, holding back on the word, ‘again’, diplomatic and generous to the end. ‘And British like your grandmother? She will be a popular choice with those who wish us to look West rather than East as we move into the future. I shall look forward to meeting her.’

And for an instant Zarif had felt a piercing shame that he was about to foist such a sham on the old man, who had watched his only child, Azel, become Zarif’s first wife, queen and mother before the heart-rending car crash took both her life and that of their son. Devastated, Halim had taken refuge in his academic books, finally requesting permission to leave palace politics and return to his professorship at the university where lectures and students had, at least, distracted him from his grief.

Times without number, Zarif had crushed the futile wish that he too could find such an outlet to escape his memories because the only change in his daily life had been a constant shadow of indescribable loss. Even so, Zarif was well aware that his remarriage, his doing what had to be done and before Halim died, would be a comfort to the older man. After all, Halim had raised his nephew to believe that the stability of Vashir came first and last, before personal feelings, before everything else. And now, for the first time in his life, Zarif was suddenly shockingly conscious that he was guilty of betraying his duty because he had allowed his desire to possess Ella Gilchrist to suppress every other consideration.

Across the room, a little girl was examining Ella’s shiny new platinum wedding band and complaining mournfully that it didn’t sparkle and Ella was explaining the difference between wedding and engagement rings

, a clarification that ran out of steam when she was asked why she didn’t have an engagement ring.

Rising to her feet with a rather stilted laugh, Ella abandoned the challenge, her attention roaming to Zarif, tall, dark and extraordinarily handsome in a tailored morning suit teamed with a grey striped silk cravat, where he was chatting to her parents. He was so damned smooth and polished in his every move that she wanted to scream. Nobody would ever have guessed that the wedding was a charade that cast a respectable veil over the most basic transaction possible between a man and a woman. Inside herself she shrank, thinking there could be little difference between her and any other woman who sold her body for money, for wasn’t that exactly what she was doing?

And worst of all, with a male who felt absolutely nothing for her, she reflected wretchedly, for while Zarif’s outer façade of cool might have convinced their small select band of guests that he was a joyful bridegroom, it had not fooled Ella. That rare flashing smile of his had not been in evidence once. She just knew he was thinking about Azel because she could feel the distance and reserve in him, see the haunting darkness in his eyes. The one and only time he had discussed his first wife with her had been the day he proposed marriage to Ella three years earlier and his words then were still branded into her soul like unhealed wounds.

He had referred to Azel as irreplaceable while assuring Ella that he was not asking her to supplant his first wife in her role as that would, apparently, have been an impossible task.

And when she had asked Zarif if he loved her in surely the most poignant question a young woman in love could ask?

‘I will always hold Azel in my heart. I cannot pretend otherwise.’

And yet after that little speech, the living proof that some men wouldn’t understand or recognise emotion unless it was tipped over their heads like boiling oil, Zarif had been stunned when Ella turned his proposal down. Even madly in love and at only twenty-one years of age, Ella had foreseen what a disaster it would have been for her to have even tried to follow in Azel’s perfect footsteps. Zarif, whether he had known it or not, hadn’t been ready or able to put another woman in Azel’s place. Ella, heartbroken, had backed off from such an impossible and thankless challenge.

Accordingly, there Zarif was now mere hours after marrying Ella, no doubt looking back with regret to his first wedding day when he had had the joy of wedding a woman he loved with all his heart and his soul. The very thought hurt, just as it had hurt like an acid burn all those years ago when Ella had been forced to accept that, although she adored Zarif and longed for him with every cell in her body, he would have sacrificed her in a moment if, by some miracle, he could have brought Azel back to life.

He wouldn’t have wanted Azel purely for sex, Ella acknowledged unhappily. He had loved and respected Azel and Ella was challenged to understand what she herself had done to rouse such hostility in Zarif that would incur such a devastating revenge. Three years ago, she had said no and her excuses had gone down like a brick on glass but even though she had been in an agony of pain at his virtual rejection of her she had certainly not intended to cause offence.

Of course, rejection had to have been something entirely new to Zarif, she acknowledged ruefully. All women noticed his stunning dark good looks, automatically turning to take a second glance when he was nearby. Those brief weeks she had dated him it had been like going out with a movie star, for everywhere they went women had watched, giggled flirtatiously and tried to catch his eye. He had seemed sublimely unconscious of the effect he had on her sex. He seemed not to have an ounce of vanity but how reliable a character witness was she?

After all, it would never have occurred to Ella three years ago that Zarif would sink to the level of literally paying her to share his bed. As soon as she thought that, Ella frowned, reminding herself that she had agreed to his terms for the sake of the parents she loved. Her choice, then, and even if she couldn’t quite manage to be grateful that he had given her that choice, she knew it would be unjust to blame Zarif for how she felt now that she had accepted the role of mistress within marriage from him. Unhappily, the ‘sex and nothing but sex’ label made her feel worthless and degraded.

There could be no denying that Zarif had changed and much more than she could ever have expected. The man she remembered had been so upright and so straight in every way and it was ironic that only now when she no longer loved him was she learning that he had a much darker, more complex side to his character and that could only make her fear for her future.

* * *

Ella stared wide-eyed at the opulence of the private jet with its cream leather sofas and luxurious fittings, not to mention the four uniformed cabin staff bowing and scraping respectfully in their presence. She finally sat down, nerves bubbling in her tummy at the knowledge that once the craft was airborne she was leaving home and everything familiar behind. Who knew when she might return?

Already it felt as if the day, which had begun with such drama, was turning into the longest day in existence. They were flying to Vashir and tomorrow would undergo a second wedding ceremony in the presence of Zarif’s ailing uncle Halim and the local VIPs. Just then it felt as if she were facing another endurance test in how to please everyone other than herself.

Zarif studied his bride with barely repressed hunger burning in his veiled gaze. Her delicate profile was as taut as her slender body and his attention lingered on the flutter of her lashes, the slim, elegant hand resting on her lap and, more potently, on the thrust of the luscious breasts he had stroked. The hem of her royal-blue dress exposed long shapely legs and he breathed in slow and deep, disturbed by the force of desire gripping him and unaccustomed to such a challenge to his self-control.

No other woman did this to him. He didn’t know what it was about Ella but he had barely to look at her to get hard and he shifted in his seat because the tight heaviness at his groin was uncomfortable. Temptation lurked in the existence of the sleeping compartment at the back of the main cabin but it was cramped and time would be short. He didn’t want a quick snack, he wanted a feast, a consummation worthy of the time he had waited for her. His, at last, he savoured, in name if not yet in action.

Ella leafed through a glossy fashion magazine with blank eyes, her tension rising in the silence rather than abating. ‘I was surprised your brothers weren’t on the guest list today,’ she said abruptly.

‘They will be attending our wedding tomorrow,’ Zarif proffered. ‘I imagine you will be glad of Betsy and Belle’s company.’

‘I hardly know them, but I suppose so,’ Ella conceded in such a limp voice that Zarif wanted to shake her.

Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that marrying him and becoming a queen was a cruel and unusual punishment, Zarif reflected in exasperation. Of course, it was only for a year, he recalled absently, wondering why he hadn’t demanded two years or even three until he remembered that sooner rather than later he had to marry for real and reproduce and he marvelled that he could even have momentarily forgotten that salient fact.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that your mother had had a heart attack and your father a breakdown?’ Zarif demanded without warning. ‘Your father’s friend, Jonathan, spoke to me at the reception and clearly assumed that I already knew.’

Ella compressed her lips. ‘I didn’t think that plucking a thousand violin strings would cut any ice with you.’

‘Telling me would not have been plucking strings,’ Zarif censured. ‘It would have been giving me relevant facts and it would have changed my outlook.’