But you’re not feeling very positive about this, Evie thought as she felt all that bravery he had attributed her earlier drain right away.
‘What do I have to do?’ she asked, glancing warily sideways to see what looked like a dozen people in flowing robes making determinedly for the plane.
Her stomach flipped, her legs turned to jelly. Maybe she even trembled a little, because Raschid reached across her and slammed the shutter down over the window.
‘You will be yourself,’ he firmly replied. ‘I ask no more of you.’
‘Be myself in a cloak and veil?’ she drawled suggestively, expecting him to instantly deny the challenge.
But he didn’t. Instead his expression darkened perceptibly. ‘I would request that you wear the gown you married me in today,’ he said. ‘As a sign of respect,’ he quickly explained. ‘For those people who have come here so late in the evening to officially greet you.’
‘One being your father,’ Evie murmured grimacingly.
‘No,’ he denied. ‘My father is not quite strong enough to leave his palace. So we,’ he added slowly, ‘are to go to him.’
‘What, now?’ Evie jerked out, twisting her head to stare at him. ‘Tonight?’
‘It is perhaps a sensible alternative, when my father’s palace is only a few minutes’ drive away from here,’ he said. ‘Whereas my palace is still another hour’s flying by helicopter away.’
But, sensible or not, Raschid was still angry at the way his plans had been outmanoeuvred; Evie could see that in the grim set of his jaw. He was also uneasy about what all of this really meant; she could see that in the frown that still pulled at his brows, and in the perturbed glitter he was trying hard to hide beneath the heavy droop of his lashes.
‘What do you really think this all means?’ she questioned huskily. ‘And be honest with me, Raschid,’ she added. ‘I would rather be prepared for the worst than have it suddenly dumped on me so late that I have no time to react.’
‘As I dumped this trip on you too late for you to react?’ He grimaced.
‘No.’ Evie smiled, and to her own surprise the smile relaxed some of the tension out of her. ‘Because your instincts were right and if you’d warned me that you were going to bring me here before we left England, I would probably have refused to come,’ she admitted.
Seeing the smile seemed to relax him too, and he reached out to touch a gentle finger to the corner of her upturned mouth. ‘I am going to take my own advice and be very positive about this,’ he murmured softly to her. ‘So I am going to put to you that I think my father’s intentions are entirely honourable, and he is attempting here to heal the breach at the first opportunity we are handing him.’
‘And you want me to do the same,’ Evie concluded from that.
‘Can you?’
‘I can try,’ she agreed. ‘But I can’t say I’m looking forward to any of this.’
It took only a few minutes to change back into her antique gold wedding gown. Asim found her a long white silk scarf from somewhere, which he advised her to drape loosely around her face.
Stepping back into the main cabin, she found that Raschid, too, had changed the dark blue outer robe he had been wearing for a much more dramatic black silk one trimmed with gold. And as he turned to face her she saw that a wide gold sash was now wrapped around his lean waist.
The black and gold made him look different somehow, taller, darker—disturbingly alien as he ran golden eyes still sharpened by anger over her covered head to her satin-shod feet.
‘Well?’ she said, smiling tightly across a tension that was beginning to make her face muscles feel very brittle. ‘Do I look presentable enough for your welcoming party now, do you think?’
Those lushly fringed, heavy-lidded eyes lifted up to clash with mocking blue. They saw the anxiety hiding behind clear-cut crystal, and the strained pallor behind the creamy smoothness of her skin framed by the silk scarf.
Without saying a word he came to her, placed the tips of his long brown fingers beneath her chin to raise it—then kissed her, hard and hot, arrogantly uncaring that Asim stood by the closed exit door witnessing the embrace.
By the time he let her back up for air again, the pallor had altered to a soft flush of pink pleasure, and those cut-crystal eyes had darkened. ‘Now you look delicious,’ he murmured huskily, a teasing amusement suddenly dancing in his eyes. ‘Quite the shyly blushing bride in fact.’
Shyly blushing bride indeed! Evie thought caustically. ‘Well, whatever you say, this blushing bride is not walking two paces behind you,’ she warned, taking a firm grip on one of his hands while valiantly hiding her fears behind a mask of black humour.