She thought of turning him down and then asked herself why she would do something that insane. And really, what alternative did she have, when the thought of him walking out of her life made her feel as if someone were trying to hack open her heart with a blunt chisel?
That was when and how she had become a rich man’s mistress. She had gone to London to be with Murat and slowly but surely her independence had begun to ebb away. The job she’d found at a big hotel soon proved incompatible with her new life, because quickly she learned that was the first rule of being a mistress.
You always needed to be available.
Murat told her that his world was full of pressure and that she—uniquely—soothed his frazzled nerves. He liked her being there when he arrived in England and didn’t want her working shifts and wasting precious time when she could be with him. He waved aside her initial protests that she couldn’t possibly use his charge card. He told her that he had more than enough money for both of them. That she was, in effect, acting as his housekeeper since she made his apartment feel like a home.
So she had let him slide that plastic card into her brand-new designer wallet. Just as she’d let him kit her out in silks and satins and started having her hair done regularly at one of London’s most exclusive hair salons.
She hadn’t thought about how long it would last. She hadn’t thought beyond each glorious day. But she had started to like him more and more. And that was when she had started trying to make it perfect. The perfect relationship to make up for her very imperfect childhood.
She learned that expensive fabrics felt better against the skin than cheap ones. She learned to enjoy visiting the spa in preparation for his visits, and having her body pummelled and anointed with buttery creams. She learned to fill his many absences with the short courses available to rich women with plenty of time on their hands. She did musical appreciation and flower arrangement. She got herself a cordon bleu certificate and learned about different wines. She found that she had a real passion for the history of art. Suddenly, she was getting herself an education.
He introduced her to first one colleague, and then another. Sometimes they brought their wives, sometimes their mistresses. She discovered that her time at the Hindmarsh Hotel had proved very useful, because she could talk to almost anyone with an easy charm. She learnt to read up about people before meeting them and to impress them with her knowledge of wind farms, or fracking—or whatever was currently occupying the business life of her royal lover.
In a way, she was teaching herself to become the perfect consort of a powerful man, but there was no prospect of such a permanent role. Not for her. He needed to marry a pure-blooded royal; a bona fide desert princess. He had been very honest about that, right from the start.
They had understood each other, or so she’d thought. And because there had been no lies or pretence, she’d thought it would be easy to accept the rigid terms of their relationship.
And it was. At least, at the beginning it was. It was love which was the killer. Love which made her want more than she was ever going to get...
* * *
‘Cat?’
Murat’s shuddered use of her name brought her thoughts crashing back to the present and Catrin opened her eyes to find his face inches away from hers. She could see the gleam of his black eyes and feel the warmth of his breath as his naked body melded close to hers, her breasts flattened against his hair-roughened chest.
‘What is it, my beauty?’ he questioned, his breathing unsteady as he ran his hand possessively down over the curve of her hip. ‘You were miles away.’