Darker Side of Desire & the Sheikh's Pregnant Prisoner(20)

Numbly she nodded her head, turning away so that he wouldn’t see the pain in her eyes. Of course, she should have expected nothing more. Raoul was a man of the East, accustomed to satisfying his physical desires with women who would be pliant and accepting in his arms. She had been nothing more than a brief aberration which already he was regretting.

Please God, don’t let there be a child, she prayed mentally. If she was to bear Raoul’s child, how on earth could she bring herself to leave them; and how could she stay, falling deeper in love with Raoul every day and knowing that her love could never be returned? Perhaps even one day being forced to witness his love for someone else? Had he loved the Muslim girl he had nearly been betrothed to?

* * *

They were married quietly and discreetly later that afternoon in a suburb of Paris. Not the wedding she had always envisaged for herself. As they had stepped off the plane, Raoul had turned back and then reappeared, handing her the large box in which Zenaide had placed her hat as they stepped into the waiting car.

‘It is perhaps not the bridal array you might have expected, but I asked Zenaide to pack it for you.’

As he had asked her maid to put out the cream suit, Claire wondered, stealing a brief look at his shuttered profile, before taking the hat from its box. It was true, it did make her look more bridal, but her heart was heavy when the car came to a stop outside the small town-hall where the wedding ceremony was to be performed.

Now it was over and they were man and wife, Raoul’s gold ring glittering on her finger. Outside their car still waited, the engine purring almost soundlessly. The brief ceremony had taken little more than fifteen minutes, and as Raoul replaced their passports and marriage certificate inside his jacket, Claire stared numbly ahead. Fifteen minutes. That was all it had taken to change the course of her life. Automatically her hand crept to the reassuring flatness of her stomach.

‘Praying your body is not cherishing my seed?’ Raoul demanded harshly. ‘Try to look on the bright side, Claire. If you are carrying my child you may be sure that you will be generously recompensed for the… inconvenience.’ His lip curled disdainfully, and Claire was overwhelmed by the need to lash out and hurt him as he had wounded her.

‘That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?’ she stormed at him. ‘Money… Well, there are some things money can’t wipe out. I don’t want your money, Raoul. I don’t want anything of yours!’

‘Especially not my child.’

The words lay between them like a gage, but Claire was too bitter to back down now. ‘Especially not that,’ she agreed, watching the anger die out of his eyes to be replaced by a cold, blank dislike.

He leaned forward and said something to their driver, then settled himself back in his seat without another word. Claire longed to ask him where they were going and how long he intended them to remain in Paris. Already she was missing Saud. Her hand covered her stomach again. What would it be like to have Raoul’s child? In other circumstances, if there was the merest chance that he might return her love, there was nothing that would bring her greater happiness, but as it was she dreaded the prospect of finding herself pregnant. For the rest of her life she would be torn in two. Torn between wanting and loving her child, and knowing that if she stayed with it she would be risking the untold anguish of living in proximity to Raoul, thirsting more and more with every day that passed for his love, like a man separated from an oasis by a thick glass wall. How could she possibly endure it?

Their car slid to a halt, jerking her out of her thoughts. They were outside a hospital, and Raoul got out, politely opening Claire’s door, his hand on her elbow as he escorted her inside.

‘We are in Paris to visit my father, remember?’ he murmured as they walked into a tiled reception area decorated lavishly with flowers. The receptionist greeted them with a smile, her eyes widening fractionally as she looked at Raoul. No matter where he went, he would always draw those looks of appreciation from her sex, Claire recognised, the ache in her heart increasing. They were directed down a corridor and Raoul paused outside the room they had been told was his father’s.

Lucien D’Albro was sitting up in bed reading a book, and he greeted them both with a smile. ‘I had not realised that being in hospital could be such a pleasant experience,’ he said to Claire, his eyes twinkling. ‘One has every comfort. Indeed one might almost be in the most luxurious of hotels, and then of course, there is the added bonus of the nurses. So,’ he turned to Raoul, ‘it is done?’

‘Yes.’ Raoul kept his back to his father and walked across to the window. ‘I have not yet thanked you for the part you have played in this. Time was short and there was no one else I could ask…’

His voice was low, the words terse and bitten off, but Claire was facing Lucien and was able to see the pain in his eyes as he said quietly, ‘Is it so very hard to come to me when you need help, Raoul? I am after all your father…’

‘Genetically, yes,’ Raoul agreed harshly, ‘but as a child…’

‘It was your mother’s wish that she return to her people. She wanted me to go with her, but my work, my life, was here in Paris. I explained that to her when we married. My tour in Omarah was only a brief one. She knew that once it was over I would be returning to France. I did not want to let you go, Raoul, but she reminded me how much more her people could give you than I. Our name is an ancient one, but financially…’ He spread his hands. ‘It was no secret that I married your mother for financial security. I had intended to use her dowry to restore the family château. It had been the dream of my father,’ he sighed.

‘You are lying,’ Raoul interrupted angrily. My mother told me how you used her dowry—in gambling, escorting other women, living the life of a wealthy playboy.’

‘No. You are wrong. That is how I made my living.’

There was a tense silence, and Claire wondered if she ought to leave them alone. She had a feeling that what was about to be said in the privacy of this room was something between father and son alone, but even as she made a move to leave Lucien grasped her wrist.

‘No, Claire, please stay,’ he said gently. ‘If what Raoul tells me is true it could well be that you carry my grandchild.’ He smiled when she blushed. ‘I must confess I suspected all along that you were not the mother of Saud. You looked too innocent… and far too unknowing to have been the lover of a man like my son. I hope you will learn well from my mistakes, Raoul. I should never have let your mother take you, but I was tired of having her wealth thrown in my face. When she left I made a vow that I wouldn’t touch a penny of her dowry and I haven’t. Shortly after she had gone, I became ill and I lost my position in the Ministry. When I recovered I had to make a living somehow. I had always been lucky as a gambler…’

He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘You know the rest. The château still stands, but only just. I have willed it to you, together with your mother’s money. Both are, after all, yours by right. Perhaps in time you will bring my son to Paris again, Claire, this time with the true purpose of effecting a reconciliation between us. Never let pride stand in the way of your happiness, my son,’ he said quietly to Raoul.

They left the hospital in silence, Claire not daring to look at Raoul. How had he taken his father’s revelations? That Lucien had spoken the truth Claire did not doubt, but it would take more than verbal explanations to cure the wounds of the past that still went very deep with Raoul.

They stayed once more at the George V, occupying the same suite they had had before. When Claire asked uncertainly if it was possible to telephone the palace to check up on Saud, Raoul glanced at her curiously. ‘One might almost suppose you were genuinely fond of that child…’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ Claire responded bitterly. ‘Oh, I know you think my affection for him springs from avarice, but you are wrong. I was instrumental in saving his life,’ she said almost to herself. ‘I feel almost as though he is my child…’

‘And yet feeling like that you are prepared to desert your own child, because he is also mine?’ he threw at her harshly. ‘How you must hate me, Claire. Why? Because I took from you that which you were saving for another? Or is there more to it than that? Is it not simply that I took, but that I gave too, more pleasure than you can ever hope to find in the arms of your cold English lover, who does not even want you enough to storm the citadel of your virginity…’

He had gone before she could think of a fitting enough retort to silence him, and it was well after midnight when Claire heard the door to their suite opening quietly. Where had he been all evening? With someone else? The thought was like a knife thrust in her heart.

* * *

Two days later they were back in Omarah, but this time she was in reality Raoul’s wife. ‘Saud has missed you,’ Zenaide told her. ‘He will be glad that you are back.’ There was a small piece in one of the French papers about Raoul’s visit to the bedside of his supposedly sick father, which Raoul pointed out to her one evening after he had returned from the city.