The Sheikh's Secret Babies(51)

‘My goodness, she must be quite an age now,’ Chrissie remarked.

‘I understand that she is travelling with her daughter, Rose. Obviously at some stage she remarried...my grandfather did not,’ Jaul could not resist reminding her.

‘I suppose, taking into account how he and your father felt about her, it would be an awkward and uncomfortable meeting for you but—’

Jaul froze and fell still.’ I have no intention of agreeing to a meeting with the ladies. I have instructed Bandar to send my apologies and an appropriate gift.’

Chrissie closed a dismayed hand over his arm and tugged him into one of the many cluttered reception rooms off the ground-floor hall of the palace. ‘You can’t mean that?’

Jaul frowned down at her, his stunning bone structure rigid. ‘Please try to understand, Chrissie. I have never heard any good of Lady Sophie, only that she is a terrible troublemaker and I have quite enough to deal with at the moment without encouraging that sort of personality into my life.’

Chrissie was disconcerted by the force and strength of his comprehensive rejection of his grandmother and his aunt and had to resist an urge to risk changing the subject by asking him what else he was struggling to deal with that was so onerous that he could not spare an elderly woman a fifteen-minute hearing even when she had come so far to see him.

‘You have to change your mind about this, Jaul.’

‘Although I have every respect for your opinion, I will stand firm on this,’ Jaul grated, temper licking along the edges of his roughened voice. ‘This is not your business.’

‘Lady Sophie is the twins’ great-grandmother and that makes her my business as well.’#p#分页标题#e##p#分页标题#e#

Jaul shot her an impatient glittering golden glance and compressed his wide, shapely mouth as he took an impatient step closer to the door. ‘I refuse to discuss this any further. I have told you how I feel and why.’

‘I’ll go and see her in your stead.’

Jaul swung back lightning fast from the exit he had been making. ‘No, you will not. I forbid it.’

‘You forbid it?’ Chrissie repeated in an almost whispered undertone, wondering when and where her husband had developed the belief that he had the right to forbid her from doing anything.

‘Yes, I do,’ Jaul repeated grittily and he strode off.

Forbid away, my love, Chrissie thought ruefully, I’m afraid it won’t get you anywhere because it is no longer the sixteenth century when wives blindly obeyed husbandly dictates. As far as she was concerned, good manners alone demanded that Jaul meet with the two women when they had flown out to Marwan purely on his behalf. On the other hand she could quite understand his attitude when both his grandfather and his father had made his grandmother out to be such a horrible person. Before she could lose her nerve, however, she was determined to do what she believed was right and she asked Zaliha to track down Bandar and discover which hotel Jaul’s grandmother was staying in.

A couple of hours later, a well-dressed middle-aged woman introduced herself as Rose to Chrissie at the door of the hotel suite and thanked her warmly for coming in Jaul’s place. ‘As I said when you phoned, my mother is becoming increasingly frail and your willingness to meet her lifted her spirits.’

‘But I don’t know if I can do anything to break the family stalemate,’ Chrissie warned the older woman ruefully.

‘When my mother read about your marriage to Jaul in the newspaper, there was no stopping her,’ Rose confided. ‘She was convinced that her grandson’s marriage to a British woman would make a difference to her grandson’s attitude.’

A tiny old lady with a fluff of white hair and faded blue eyes sat in a high-backed armchair with a cane clasped between her gnarled hands. ‘I’m Sophie, your husband’s grandmother,’ she said simply.

Chrissie stretched out her hand. ‘I’m Chrissie.’

‘How much have you been told about me?’

‘The barest facts,’ Chrissie admitted. ‘Perhaps I should share my experience with Jaul’s family with you.’

Tea was served while Chrissie confided her own story, feeling that it was better to be honest and admit the difficulties she had had with Sophie’s late son, Lut.

At the end of Chrissie’s account, Sophie sighed. ‘It’s a sad thing to accept that even had I got to know my son as an adult I don’t think I would’ve liked him. Your husband’s grandfather Tarif twisted Lut against me. There was never any hope of my son listening to my side of the story. Indeed Lut accused me of being a liar but I am not a liar. I married Tarif when I was nineteen.’