“You were offering me plausible deniability? How kind.” His voice peeled a layer off her, astringent as paint thinner.
She jerked her gaze up, not liking the acerbic response when she’d honestly been trying to put his needs ahead of her own. “I won’t pretend to be an expert on your country’s politics, but I know this is the last thing you need. I’m doing what I can to keep the baby secret—”
“Obviously,” he said with a bite. “But I’m not here to pay you off. I’m here to claim my child. I want him or her in my life.”
Her heart shook in her chest, quaking with both intimidation and the ferocity of a mother whose child was threatened. “Did you miss what I just said? I have no intention of giving it up. Not even to its own father!”
“Then you’ll marry me,” he stated, like it was as easy as snapping fingers.
And her nerves twanged, mind skewing in a thousand directions because in all her scenarios of what could possibly happen if he learned of this baby, none of them had included his proposing. Even as coldly and flatly as that.
“I...” Her heart, already taxed with stress and emotion, pounded extra hard. The feeling was nearly painful, making tears spring to her eyes. Live the rest of her life under that baleful glare? After the first twenty years of her life had been blistered by the same? No thanks. “I can’t. Or do you mean just to make it legitimate? And I’d stay in England while you—”
“No,” he interrupted, adamant. “You’d live with me and Tariq, in our palace.”
Which sounded like a fairy tale except for the part where she’d be treated like a troll.
She realized she was biting her lips together and forced them to relax, soothing them with her tongue. But he made her so nervous, standing there like a—well, like a damned sultan who could demand she give him a baby. She’d seen this uncompromising side of him at the oasis, when he’d taken control and insisted on treatment for the Bedouin girl. It wasn’t a level of command she wanted to pit herself against.
Especially not when he was demanding to be part of his child’s life. Her own father hadn’t even bothered sticking around to find out if she was a boy or a girl. There was a huge part of her that melted beneath Zafir’s show of fatherly interest.
But what about her?
Now she began to understand her mother’s sense of lost entitlement. Sure her baby would force her to make certain compromises, but for the most part, alone as a single parent, she controlled their fate. With Zafir in the picture, she faced huge concessions.
See, Mum? You were actually lucky not to have this dilemma.
“Marriage isn’t on my radar,” she murmured.
“Put it there.”
She shook her head.
“Why the hell not?”
Had he listened when she had introduced him? “Think about who you are—”
His head snapped back like she’d struck him.
“That wasn’t—” What she’d meant...
Miss Ivy clattered her tray into the room, killing Fern’s chance to explain.
A hoar frost coated the room as Miss Ivy set everything out and poured. Into the condemning silence, she said, “Shall I take mine into my room?”