The Mistress Bride

by Michelle Reid

  'Asim,' Evie breathed. 'What are you doing in here?' 'I am Sheikh Raschid's personal physician,' he reminded her. 'Which now means I am his child's personal physician. '

  'Is that a joke?' she demanded, using her hands to slide herself up the pillows and into a sitting position.

  'No joke,' Asim blandly denied. 'Where Sheikh Raschid's child goes, I go from now on- Oh, come,' he said when he saw her expression. 'We are good friends now, are we not? You do not find me too overbearing. We will get along very well together, I am certain of it.'

  'And where does Raschid fit into all of this?' Evie enquired acidly.

  'At this precise moment he sits exactly where he has been sitting since he arrived here two evenings ago,' Asim replied. 'Where he now awaits my report on his child's state of health.'

  'But not the mother's,' Evie bitterly assumed from all of that.

  'At this stage in the proceedings, the child's health depends entirely on the mother's health so of course she matters. But as for the woman,' Asim continued smoothly, 'he accepts now that he is beyond her forgiveness. Which matters little when it is clear that he will never learn to forgive himself.'

  'If you're trying to play on my sympathies, Asim,' Evie sighed, reaching out for the flask of water sitting on her bedside cabinet, 'it isn't working.'

  'Here,' Asim offered instantly. 'Let me do that for you.' Taking the flask from her, he unscrewed the cap and poured some of the chilled water into a glass before handing it to her. In silence he stood beside her and watched her drink the water, took the glass from her when she had finished and smoothly replaced both glass and flask back on the cabinet.

  Then he pleaded soberly, 'See him, madam. For two nights and a day he has neither slept nor eaten and I am seriously worried about him.'

  'He kept me waiting for two weeks before his henchmen came to evict me.'

  'They were not his henchmen.' Asim denied the charge. 'And if you force him to he will wait two weeks in that waiting room just down the corridor, I promise you.' Evie could believe that, knowing the man as well as she did.

  'Okay,' she wearily conceded, deciding that she might as well get it over with. 'I'll see him.'

  'Thank you.' Asim sent her one of those bows that reminded her of Crown Prince Hashim's messengers, and she shuddered.

  'He can have five minutes then you make him leave,' she added on the back of that shuddering reminder.

  'As you wish.'

  What Evie wished for was to never set eyes on Raschid again, but she kept that thought to herself as Asim quickly left the room now he had what he had come for.

  The door opened again in seconds, and what she saw as Raschid strode into the room almost-almost caused the shell she was hiding behind to crack. Not with sympathy but with anger, because if this man hadn't eaten or slept in two nights and a day, he was looking disgustingly well for it! Evie felt conned.

  Conned by the pristine neatness of the clothes he was wearing, by the clean-shaven smoothness of his face and the arrogance with which he stood there by the closed door studying her with absolutely no hint of remorse written anywhere on his lean dark face.

  'How are you?' he enquired.

  'I'm sure everyone has told you exactly how I am,' Evie replied, in no mood for pleasantries.

  He nodded politely, taking the words at their face value, then strode smoothly forward to pull out and sit down on the chair beside the bed.

  It was only when he came this close to her that Evie saw the slight bruising around his eyes, which showed that the man had been going without sleep but even those bruises added to his dark brooding sensuality, she noted resentfully.

  That gut-wrenching sensuality that had been catching her out from the first time that she'd ever looked at him.

  In an effort to stop herself from feeling like that, Evie dragged her eyes away and slid her knees up so she could hug them loosely with her arms. Then, head lowered, mouth clamped shut, she grimly waited for him to say what he had waited around this long to say.

  Yet he didn't speak. He dragged out that silence like a taut piece of string that seemed to be trying to tug her chin up so she would look at him. But Evie refused to look at him, because looking meant communicating, as they had always been able to do with just the merest clash of their eyes. And she didn't want that kind of communication with him any more.

  'I won't go away just because you wish it, you know,' he murmured eventually.

  'I can't deal with you right now,' she answered flatly. 'Anyone with a bit of sensitivity would have understood that and left me to myself.'

  'Because you blame me for what happened?'

  Yes, she blamed him. She'd felt used, ignored, abandoned and abused by the time those two men had left her alone. Raschid had promised her protection. He had promised to call her. He had vowed to make everything work for them.

  'I'm sorry my father's people frightened you so badly.' 'Your father's people are also your people,' Evie reminded him. 'I don't particularly want you to differentiate between yourself and them.'

  'Why not?'

  Why not? she repeated grimly to herself. 'Because you are no different, and I don't want to see you as such any more.'

  'Meaning?'

  'Meaning, I have been shown the light,' she answered with spiked mockery. 'And will you stop throwing questions at me as if I am the one standing on trial?' she flashed. 'In case you haven't realised it yet I am the victim here!'

  'And you think I am not just as much a victim?' His wide chest heaved, lifting and falling on a tense pull of air. 'I had no idea my father could stoop so low as to pull a lousy stunt like that!' he said savagely. 'He now deeply regrets what he did,' he added, sounding so short and clipped that if she had been anyone else Evie would have read stiff reluctance to offer that information in that haughty tone.

  But she wasn't anyone else. And she knew this man inside out, so she also knew what that tone of voice really meant.

  Raschid was struggling to keep his real feelings about his father under tight wraps.

  'He sends you his most sincere apologies-'

  'He's already done that,' she clipped, her face going white when she remembered the last person who had said those words to her.

  'And begs your forgiveness,' Raschid doggedly continued as if she hadn't spoken.

  Evie clamped her lips together and forbore to repeat that his father had also done that before.

  'He will, of course, tell you these things personally as soon as he is fit enough to leave hospital.'

  That brought her eyes up and around to stare at him. 'What hospital?' she gasped.

  'The one I put him in,' he replied, the words hard with a mockery that had no hint of humour. 'When he refused to accept that I intended to marry you and not Aisha,' he went on to explain, 'I abdicated my right to succession. The shock almost killed him.'

  'Oh, Raschid, no,' Evie groaned, and wondered wretchedly how many people this whole horror story was going to hurt before it was done.

  'Still,' he went on coolly, 'all's well that ends well, as you British like to say. My father now has a heart which beats as healthily as my own does, and he is also reconciled to the fact that I will marry where I choose to marry.'

  'Not if that marriage includes me, you will not,' Evie said stiffly.

  His dark head turned, and it was only as it did so that Evie realised that he too had been avoiding all eye contact between them.

  But not now. Those liquid gold eyes now pierced her with a deep, dark, grim intent. 'You will marry me,' he proclaimed. 'I have not spent millions of pounds and too many precious days scouring the Middle East searching for a suitable substitute to take my place as Aisha's husband, nor did I almost put my own father in his grave and place at risk both you and the child you carry simply to hear you now tell me it was all for nothing!'

  'Did I ask you to do all that?' Evie countered tersely. 'Yes!' he declared. 'Every time you told me you loved me, you asked me to do those things!' he rasped. 'Every time w
e simply look at each other, we are demanding from the other that we go to any lengths necessary to be together!'

  He got up, the passion sounding in his voice reflected in the angry movement of his body as he walked across the room to stand glaring out of the window. While Evie sat, stunned into utter silence by his vehemence. And the worst of it was that he was right! The kind of love they had shared during the last two years had demanded that they go to any lengths to hold on to it!

  But not any more, Evie thought on a shudder. Recent events had gone too far and turned too nasty to hang on to romantic ideals that had no place in reality.

  'I can learn to live without your love,' she told him huskily. 'I can even live without people's respect!' Hadn't she been doing that very successfully for two whole years now? 'But I've discovered that I cannot live with hatred.'

  'My father doesn't hate you,' he sighed. 'He simply saw you as a pawn he could use in the battle he was waging with me.'

  'That makes it all right, does it?' Evie flashed back bitterly.

  'No,' he heavily conceded.

  'And I wasn't the real pawn,' Evie added. 'My baby was.'

  'Our baby,' Raschid grimly corrected.

  But Evie shook her head. 'No matter how you want to cover it up, Raschid, your father wanted this baby dead. I can't forgive that. I refuse to forgive that! So as far as I am concerned for him this baby is dead,' she announced. 'I will not acknowledge you as his father, and he will not bear your name. I will not place his life at risk like that from anyone again.'

  'And I have no say in this? Is that what you're saying?' 'I am saying,' Evie wearily asserted, 'that if you care for this child then you will do the right thing by him and forget you ever conceived him.'

  He didn't say anything for a long time after that. And the silence pealed like the toll of a funeral bell while Evie waited to find out what he was going to do.

  And he looked every inch the heir to a kingdom, she noted helplessly. Body straight, chin high, that lean dark aquiline profile revealing absolutely nothing when in actual fact she knew she had just cut deep into the very heart of him with those brutal words.

  'So be it,' he said suddenly, turned and walked stiffly to the door.

  It came as such a shock, such a terrible, terrible shock to have him concede defeat like that that it literally smashed her control to smithereens. And her shrill cry of, 'Raschid no!' filled the room with more agonised despair than it could accommodate.

  It made him reel around in its shock-waves, dark face certainly showing emotion now as he strode back to the bed and bent over her, his skin wiped clear of any colour, golden eyes ferocious.

  'I should damn well think so!' he ground out savagely. 'I am your other half, don't you dare discard me like that again!'

  Her arms were already clutching at his shoulders, his sliding beneath her so he could scoop her out of the bed.

  'Now we talk sense,' he gritted, sitting down on the bed with her then, using hard fingers to angle her face so she could see the power of his fury. 'For if you think I have risked so much only to concede surrender to your sudden cowardice, then you don't know me as well as you ought to do by now!'

  'You set me up!' she sobbed out accusingly. 'I am supposed to avoid that kind of stress!'

  'Your stress,' he said angrily, 'was there because you were playing the ice-princess to the hilt again!'

  His chest heaved on a taut rasp of air; Evie clutched all the harder at him. 'What your father did was unforgivable!' she choked.

  'Then don't forgive him!' he declared with a shrug that completely dismissed the problem. 'But you will marry me, Evie,' he grimly ordained. 'Proudly and openly. We will bring up our child together and he will bear my name!'

  CHAPTER TEN

  'You look stunning, Evie,' her brother murmured huskily. 'Raschid is a very, very lucky man.'

  Is he?

  Standing there gazing at herself in the mirror, Evie wondered if Raschid was feeling lucky to be marrying her today. Oh, he was quick to say all the right things to pronounce his good fortune. No one but no one could deny that Sheikh Raschid Al Kadah had been very vocal about his good luck when he'd announced his forthcoming marriage to Evangeline Delahaye to the world's press three weeks ago.

  But did he feel lucky, when there was so much he was placing at risk by marrying her?

  And, more to the point, did she feel lucky? Just because, three weeks ago in that hospital bed, she had finally come to terms with the knowledge that she couldn't let Raschid go no matter what that decision was going to mean to both of them, it did not automatically follow that all the concerns she had been struggling with then had melted away.

  And as she stood here now, in her old bedroom at Westhaven, alone with her brother because the rest of her family were already making their way to the registry office where she was to marry Raschid in less than an hour's time, it was those concerns that came back to haunt her.

  Like the worrying ring of tight security Raschid had thrown around Westhaven when it was decided that she would come here to convalesce until they married.

  Funny really, she mused, but having been with Raschid two years and having always been aware that he was an exceedingly wealthy man in his own right, she had never known him make such a dramatic show of that wealth - until they'd come to Westhaven.

  But that wealth had certainly been put on show in the very high-profile cordon that secured both the grounds and the property. Even Julian had found it necessary to prove his identity before he could gain access to his own home! The curious press loved it; her mother serenely ignored it. Evie, on the other hand, was horrified by it.

  'Is there something going on that you aren't telling?' she'd demanded of Raschid when he'd come down to Westhaven to join them for dinner one evening. 'Am I still at risk, is that what all this security is for?'

  'No,' he'd denied. 'But I learn my lessons the first time they are taught to me, and by leaving only Asim to take care of you at my apartment I devalued your importance to me in the eyes of those who gauge worth by the strength of its protection.'

  'The Arab mentality, you mean.'

  'If you wish to call it that,' he'd conceded, refusing to take up the provoking derision pitched into the remark. 'But it is an impression that has now been rectified. No one will ever dare to approach you again in threat.'

  'Does that mean I have my eunuch at last, sneaking up to guard my bedroom door every night after I've retired?' Again the remark had been sharp with acid.

  'Quite obsessed with this eunuch thing, aren't you?' he'd drawled, a sleek black eyebrow arching in amused mockery at that suggestion. 'Could it be you have been weaving secret fantasies in your lonely bed at night? Maybe as a punishment to me because I refuse to share it?'

  His determined abstinence in this area of their lives was just another form of protection he imposed on her that Evie found worrying. In all their two years he had never been able to resist her, she only had to remember that brief episode in her bedroom at Beverley Castle to prove that point! But now, suddenly, Raschid rarely even laid a finger on her. Why? What could he possibly hope to gain by his abstinence now, when the damage of their loving had already been done with the conception of their baby?

  He had, until now, avoided the question whenever she had challenged him with it. And it was just another worry she was having to contend with as she stood here staring at herself in the mirror.

  'If you were me, Julian,' she burst out suddenly, spinning round to look anxiously at her beautifully tanned brother who had not long been back home from his month long honeymoon sailing round the Caribbean, 'would you be marrying yourself to an Arab who lives in a Muslim state?'

  'I thought true love could conquer all,' he replied with a teasing grin.

  But Evie was in no mood to be teased. 'His family don't want me to be his wife,' she explained tautly. 'His people don't want me! For all I know, I may be walking myself straight into purdah!'

  'Or simply suffering from a bad
case of wedding nerves,' Julian suggested. 'Oh, come on, Evie!' he sighed. 'Since everyone knows exactly what Raschid feels for you, I can't see purdah being much of a problem when it would most definitely necessitate him having to share it with you!'

  Then why does it feel as if I'm doing the wrong thing? she asked herself tautly as she turned back to the mirror. What she saw standing there was a woman who was anxiously attempting to respect the traditions of two completely different cultures. Her outfit had been made for her in-house by a top designer who had been drafted in at enormous expense by Raschid and instructed to create something incomparable, and what he had come up with was both startlingly simplistic and breathtakingly effective.

  The dress was really nothing more than a long and narrow tunic with a simple high neck and long loose sleeves designed very much on Middle Eastern lines. Made of a fabulously rich antique-gold silk, its only decoration was the narrow band of delicate seed-pearls sewn down the front seam and around the tiny stand-up collar. But it was the addition of a fine gold mesh skullcap dotted with yet more seed-pearls that gave it that special touch of glamour. On the advice of the designer, Evie had left her hair loose so the long silken mass tumbled down her spine in fine gold tendrils.

  'Medieval England meets mysterious East.' Christina had softly described the effect just before she'd left for the registry office with Lucinda, putting in a nutshell exactly what it was that the designer had been trying to achieve when he'd created this look for Evie. But what would Raschid see when he looked at her? A woman who was trying just a bit too hard to bridge the gap between two cultures?

  Outside a long white limousine stood gleaming in the summer sunshine that hadn't eased its grip on England for more than two months now.

  'Cheer up,' Julian gently admonished her as they drove away. 'You are supposed to be going to your wedding, not your funeral.'

  Too true, Evie thought, but still couldn't shake off the chilling feeling that a dark presence was casting its shadow over the car as they drove towards Hertford.