A Royal Bride at the Sheikh s Command

Those couture clothes with their intricate stitching and beading surely epitomised everything that she so passionately wanted to see changed about the monarchy and its relationship with the people of Niroli. In these modern times true respect surely came from having a monarchy that could be truly respected for the way the members of it lived their lives and cared for their people rather than being feared and admired for the power of their wealth and status.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘MY SON…’ King Giorgio murmured emotionally as he reached out to place his hand over Kadir’s and shook his head in wonderment.

‘Even now I still cannot believe it. It is like a miracle…’ His expression changed, becoming harsh and stern. ‘Your mother had no right to conceal your existence from me. But then that is women for you—enchanting creatures though they can be, they are not to be trusted to think or behave logically. It is a poor apology for a man, in my opinion, who allows a woman to rule him. But you, I can see, are not such a man, Kadir.’

Kadir could see the old king’s emotions threatening to overwhelm him as he blinked and shook his head.

‘To think that all this time when I had begun to despair of ever finding someone of my blood who was fit to rule Niroli after me, you should be there, the best and most suitable of all. My son…my son,’ he repeated, clasping Kadir’s arm firmly.

‘Your mother did us both a great disservice in not revealing your true paternity earlier.’

His father’s angry bitterness reflected his own feelings, Kadir admitted. In that as in so many other things—he was quickly coming to discover that he and the man who had fathered him were very alike. However, from the moment he had arrived at the palace, ahead of schedule, and not because of anything whatsoever to do with the woman who had so enflamed his desire in Venice, he had fought against picturing his mother here, a young virgin on her way to her marriage succumbing to the experienced sensual charm of the island’s powerful King. These were not the mental images of his mother he wished to have, and so, like his unwanted memories of Venice, Kadir firmly refused to allow them space inside his head.

‘Your mother would have deprived you of a truly great future if she had not acknowledged your true paternity,’ the king was boasting.

‘There are those who consider that becoming Ruler of Hadiya is a great future,’ Kadir pointed out.

‘Hadiya…’ The king gave a dismissive shrug. ‘How can ruling a few square kilometres of desert compare with ruling Niroli?’

‘It is what lies beneath Hadiya’s desert that gives it its wealth,’ Kadir told him dryly. ‘And there are many so-called rich Western nations who would sacrifice their pretty views for Hadiya’s sands—and its oil.’

Kadir could tell that the king didn’t like what he was saying, but he had no intention of allowing his newfound father to bully him. The late sheikh, his father, had been a powerful and autocratic ruler and one who commanded and indeed demanded obedience from all around him. Whilst his younger brother had accepted this easily and good-naturedly, Kadir had always fought against it and fought too to establish his own independence of spirit and outlook. He was not about to allow another autocrat to think he could rule him now at this stage of his life, even if that autocrat was his father, and, despite all his efforts to conceal it, growing tired and vulnerable.

‘Here on Niroli when its crown is placed on your head you will be inheriting more than mere wealth,’ the old king told him. ‘You will be inheriting your true birthright.’

At forty he was surely old enough not to be swayed by such blatant emotional manipulation, Kadir told himself wryly, but there was a suspicious sheen of moisture in his father’s eyes and a small tremor in his voice that threatened to undermine his own cynicism. Despite the king’s outer shell of arrogance and disdain and his apparent lack of regard for those he considered to be of lower status than himself, especially the female sex, there was hidden within him some emotional vulnerability. Kadir was not easily swayed by the emotions of others, though. He had spent too many years concealing and even denying his own emotions to feel sympathy with emotional vulnerability in others. The truth was that he had spent far too long learning to protect himself by remaining ‘apart’ from society to abandon that defence system now.

It was in King Giorgio’s interests, after all, to make him feel welcome and wanted. That did not mean the older man really felt like a father towards him. For the same reason Kadir did not allow himself to believe now that simply because King Giorgio was his natural father that meant that the people of Niroli would accept him with the same emotional delight as the king. Or that he himself would be able to feel the same sense of commitment and belonging that his father felt for his country. After all, he had not grown up here; as yet he felt no sense of kinship with it or with those who had.

What he did have, though, was the strong belief that here on Niroli he could put into practice the skills of government and diplomacy and leadership in his own way. His hope was that Niroli would give him the opportunity to stretch himself politically in the mainstream of the world arena in all the ways that Hadiya never could. And that in doing so he would find the inner peace and sense of himself that had previously always eluded him.

‘Our people are already gathering in the square, crowding into it now according to the Chief Minister. They will welcome you, Kadir, because I, their King, am welcoming you, just as they will recognise you as their future King. All the more so, of course, when they learn that you are to marry Natalia Carini. I personally have chosen her to be your bride. She comes from an old Nirolian family, much respected on the island. Natalia lives and breathes Niroli; she will teach you all that you will need to know about the ways of the people. She is close to them and understands them.’

The picture his father was painting of his bride-to-be was not exactly one to stir a man to desire, Kadir thought cynically. Not that it mattered whether or not he desired her, just so long as he fathered a son on her. Those were the rules of the game as he had grown up knowing it to be played and it did n

ot concern him that he might not find Natalia Carini physically attractive. That was what a man who had to make a dynastic marriage accepted. He did, however, think it ominous that this father had not made any attempt to introduce them to one another prior to the imminent public announcement of their betrothal.

‘I do not know how much time I may have left and for that reason, if no other, I have decided that your marriage to Natalia will take place in ten days’ time,’ the king told him. ‘The arrangements for it are already in hand.’

Kadir frowned. He might have grown up in a royal household and indeed expected to succeed to its throne, but he was still not used to having such an important part of his life arranged for him in this autocratic manner, without being consulted beforehand. In Hadiya he would have had his own choice of bride, and not had one forced upon him.

‘Won’t the people find it somewhat suspicious that we rush into such a swift union?’

‘If by suspicious you mean they might think you have already got her with child, then surely that would be all to the good. I know my people. There is nothing that will make them embrace you as their future King more eagerly than the birth of your son to a Nirolian wife.’

First marriage and now fatherhood, Kadir frowned.

‘I still have certain duties I must perform in Hadiya, duties connected with the official handover of power to my younger brother, and which require my presence there.’

‘That is easily dealt with. As soon as you are married you and Natalia can travel to Hadiya on honeymoon.’

Their conversation was interrupted as the Chief Minister came hurrying into the room.

‘Your Highness,’ he addressed the king, ‘it is almost time. The people are already gathering, and Prince Kadir needs to change into the formal robes of state ready to be proclaimed your heir.’

‘You don’t really expect me to wear that!’ Natalia stared in revulsion at the satin corset with its heavy-jewelled beading. It looked more like an instrument of torture than an article of clothing.