‘Let me assure you,’ he said, aware of three pairs of eyes studying them intently, judging their interaction, instead of watching the dancers like everyone else, no doubt hoping for more sparks to further entertain them. ‘You need have no concerns on that score.
‘And one more thing,’ he added almost as an after-thought, when he noticed she was now making an entire course of grape number two. ‘If I might suggest something?’
‘What?’
‘In the interests of allaying any and all concerns you have about my sexuality, you would be wise to eat something much more substantial. You’re going to be needing your strength tonight.’
The grape went down the wrong way, the dancers finished, and it was only that the applause drowned out the sound of her coughing that hardly anyone realised she was choking.
Bastard!
Her father topped up her water but she was already on her feet, one of her attendants coming to help her manage her robes. ‘Where are you going?’ Zoltan demanded to know, rising to his feet beside her.
‘The bathroom. Is that permitted, Your Arrogance?’
He let her go this time and she swept from the room, on the outside a cloud of sparkling gold, on the inside a raging black thundercloud.
She bypassed the bathroom, needing to stride the long corridors, needing to pound the flagstones in an effort to pound the man out of her psyche, until finally she stopped by an open window looking over yet another shady garden. She breathed deeply of the fragrant air, praying it lend her strength. She needed space. Space from that barbarian she was now wedded to. Space from the knowledge that tonight he would expect to make her his wife in every sense of the word.
And she was so very afraid.
She should never have goaded him. She should have known he would find a way to strike back at her, that her tiny victory would be only short-lived.
She looked up to see the vapour trail of a jet neatly bisecting the endless blue of the sky with a thin white line, the tiny plane no more than a diamond sparkling in the sun. She wished with all her heart that she were on that plane right now, flying as far, far away from Al-Jirad, Zoltan and her birthright as she could possibly get.
But she was not, because she was a princess, and duty ordained that she do this thing, that she marry a man she didn’t love.
Duty.
Such a little word. Such a huge impost. And tonight Zoltan would expect her to do her duty again and let him bed her.
She shuddered at the thought, suddenly assailed by myriad images and sensations cascading over her: the feel of his strong arms around her in the library, his hot mouth seeking hers, plundering hers, the sight of his body, fresh from his swim, the slide of droplets down his satin-skinned chest.
She breathed in the perfumed air and watched the tiny speck of a plane disappear into the distance as she thought of her shattered dreams and hopes. No hope of marrying a man she loved. No escape from a forced marriage. Not now.
But that did not mean she was completely powerless.
‘Princess,’ Rani said beside her, ‘the Sheikh will be worried.’
She nodded as an idea formed and took shape in her mind, but knowing what Rani said to be true. Any moment Zoltan was sure to send out the storm troopers to find her and drag her back.
So there was no escape. She was stuck in this marriage with him. But Zoltan was a fool if he thought that meant he would have it all his own way and that she would deliver herself up to him on a platter.
She would not waste herself that way.
She had not saved herself all these years to be taken by a barbarian.
‘What are you doing here? ‘
She stilled at the desk where she was sitting, pausing mid-sentence in the letter she was writing longhand to her sister to tell her about the wedding. In all likelihood it would never be sent, the details too baring, too revealing, but it was cathartic, writing it all down, putting her thoughts and shattered dreams into words.
But partly it had been something to pass the time, something to placate her mounting nerves, to do while waiting for the inevitable knock on the door.
She’d known that eventually he’d finish his drinks with his friends or whatever it was that he’d excused himself to do and that had kept him so long after the ceremony, wonder where she was and come looking for her. She should have known that he wouldn’t wait for her to open the door to barge in, all aggrieved and affronted masculine pride.
She rose to face him, willing away the heat in her cheeks. Against Rani’s shocked protests, she’d unwound herself from the metres and metres of golden fabric, pulled down her hair and scrubbed her face clean, dressing instead in a simple white nightdress, with a white robe lashed at her waist. Now only the henna tattoos adorning the backs of her hands and feet remained, but even they would fade in time and at least she no longer felt like some kind of prize to be fought and waged war over and dressed up like some kind of triumph. She felt like herself. Not even a princess any more, but a woman.
A woman with a mind of her own. A woman who knew about duty, but who also had her own hopes and dreams for the future.
That woman faced up to him now.
‘Why wouldn’t I be here?’ She swallowed and tugged on the ends of her robe’s ties, taking both mental and physical reinforcement from the action. ‘After all, this is my suite, Sheikh Zoltan.’ She put the emphasis squarely on the ‘my’.
‘And this is our wedding night!’
Packed with memories she would cherish for ever. What a laugh. She shrugged, realising she hadn’t been the only one to divest of her wedding garb. He’d changed too out of that crisp, white wedding robe and into a pair of perfectly tailored trousers and a smooth fine-knit shirt that clung to his chest like a lover’s caress. But no, she would rather not think of his lovers right now, or how many he must have had, or what their hands might do with a chest like that to explore. Not that she was jealous, exactly. It was just that she did not care to know the details.
She lifted her gaze to his face, plastering a disingenuous expression on her own. ‘Your point being?’
‘You are supposed to be in my chamber. Didn’t they tell you I was expecting to find you in my suite?’
She sniffed, looking down at the desk and fingering the hand-written pages, thinking about all the things she’d talked about, all her hopes and her disappointments, exposing herself and her pointless dreams. No, she probably wouldn’t end up sending it, come to think of it. Her seize-the-moment sister would probably only laugh and say that no man was worth waiting for, especially the one you didn’t even know existed. She looked back up at Zoltan, waiting like a mountain before her. ‘I do believe someone mentioned something like that, yes.’
‘Then why did I have to come looking for you here?’
‘Because there seemed no point in going to your room.’
He raked one hand through his hair. ‘What the hell are you talking about? Why not, when you knew I had been expecting to find you there?’
‘Simply because I thought it might give you the wrong idea,’ she said, pausing to enjoy the mess of confusion on his features and the questions flashing across his eyes before deciding to put him out of his misery. ‘Given the fact I have no intention of sleeping with you.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE mountain before her turned volcanic, the face glowing hot with the magma so close below the surface, eyes wild. She braced herself for the eruption, knowing she was courting disaster and yet feeling a strange sense of elation that she’d succeeded in throwing him so completely off-balance. But the expected eruption did not eventuate. Zoltan somehow managed to hold himself together, his rage rolling off him in searing waves of heat. ‘Is this some kind of joke?’
‘Rest assured, Sheikh Zoltan,’ she said, aiming for meekness. ‘I would never joke about such a thing. I am deadly serious.’
‘But you are my wife!’ he roared, rigid with fury. ‘Let me remind you of that fact, in case today’s ceremony had somehow slipped your mind.’
This time she could not help but laugh. ‘Do you seriously think for a moment I could forget, when I was handed over to you like little more than a stick of furniture?’
‘Oh,’ he said, pacing out the width of the Persian rug that took up one half of the room before turning to devour the distance back in long, purposeful strides, his thumb stroking his chin as if he were deep in contemplation of some highly complex problem. ‘I see your problem. You think it should have been all about you, the poor little princess forced to do her duty for once in her life? Do you think we should have got down on hands and bended knees and thanked you for so generously sacrificing yourself on the altar of martyrdom? For so generously agreeing to do what was your duty?’
She closed her eyes as she took a despairing breath, ignoring his barbs and insults except to use them to fuel her resolve. If she had a problem, it was standing not ten feet from her. ‘No, I don’t think that at all. For, while I’m not overly fond of finding myself a pawn in someone else’s game—a game, it seems, where I find myself a loser from the very beginning—I actually don’t think I’m the one with the problem here.
‘You needed a wife—a princess, no less—in order to be king and today you got one. So now you can be crowned King of Al-Jirad. You have my heartiest congratulations.’ She looked towards the door. ‘And now, if you wouldn’t mind leaving, Sheikh Zoltan, I will finish my correspondence.’