‘Thank you. I can look after myself,’ Azrael asserted, pouring a cup of black coffee and heaping several spoonsful of sugar into it.
‘You use a lot of sugar,’ Molly could not resist remarking.
‘Yes. I like it.’ The flash of perfect white teeth gleaming in his half-smile made a lecture on dental health seem redundant. ‘We have a problem that we must discuss. I want you to take a deep breath if you feel like shouting and listen. Do you think you could do that?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Molly parried a tinge weakly, still reeling as she was from that utterly alluring smile of his.
‘But you can try,’ Azrael pointed out with emphasis. ‘Because shouting will get us nowhere in our current predicament.’
Her smooth brow indented. ‘What predicament?’
‘First, I will admit that this is all my fault,’ Azrael intoned gravely. ‘I said something on impulse which turned out to be a very bad idea but my intentions were good.’
Molly nodded, wondering what on earth he was talking about.
‘When we walked out of the cave I made an announcement. I was unable to be honest about why you were staying with me at the desert fortress as that would have meant exposing Tahir,’ he explained. ‘I knew that there would be speculation that you were my mistress—’
‘Your mistress?’ Molly stressed in lively astonishment. ‘Are you serious?’
‘What else would I be doing hidden away at the fortress with a secret female guest?’ Azrael fielded drily.
Molly clashed with glittering dark golden eyes and her face suddenly burned hot as fire, forcing her to trail her gaze away again and focus on the ornate coffee pot. Was the desert fortress where Azrael took women? Of course, there were women in his life, she told herself impatiently. He was too heart-stoppingly beautiful not to have a constant procession of equally beautiful women in his bed and because Djalia was a conservative place he would naturally have to be discreet about his liaisons.
Azrael breathed in deep. ‘I didn’t want you to be subjected to that type of unpleasant rumour and targeted by the press. It would have damaged your reputation.’
Molly tilted her head back and studied him in wonderment. ‘If I lived in Victorian times, I expect I would have worried about my reputation but not these days—’
‘I do not think you—an innocent woman—would have enjoyed the sort of opinions that would have been bandied about in the press,’ Azrael asserted. ‘And you did not deserve such a humiliating experience after what Tahir had already done to you. When I faced the crowd outside the cave I wanted to protect you from adverse comment of any kind and for that reason I said you were my wife.’
A pin-dropping silence fell. Rigid in her chair, Molly stared at him as if he had been telling a joke and she were still waiting to hear the punchline.
Relieved by her lack of reaction, Azrael went on talking. ‘I spent six months in London last year, forging useful alliances while I waited to make the final push of our campaign against Hashem. Few people have any idea what I did during that period and, if asked, I intended to say that I had met and married you while I was living in London—’
Molly’s green eyes were huge and her lower lip had dropped. He had so much more imagination than she would ever have dreamt, she registered in awe, but he also had an insanely honourable streak a mile wide. ‘What a crazy, crazy thing to have done in your position!’ she exclaimed in consternation. ‘What on earth got into you?’
‘Sadly that is not the end of the story,’ Azrael extended grudgingly. ‘I have since learned that that simple public statement that we are married is accepted in law in Djalia as a legal declaration of marriage. That is what I have to tell you. According to our most senior judge we are genuinely husband and wife now.’
Very slowly, as if her limbs were stiff, Molly rose from her seat. ‘No...that’s not possible,’ she told him firmly.
‘I wish it were not but that is the situation as it stands,’ Azrael countered grimly. ‘We are legally married.’
Molly looked at him in disbelief. ‘We can’t be. You admitted it was your fault and that it was a mad impulse. You said something...foolish, so now you fix it.’
Azrael threw his wide shoulders back. ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘Of course you can,’ Molly shot back at him half an octave higher in her mounting frustration. ‘Of course you can fix it! You told me that you were the law in Djalia.’
‘If only it were that simple, Molly,’ Azrael sliced back. ‘But it is not. Many other factors are involved here—’