The Mistress Bride

by Michelle Reid

  'Raschid?' Concern for him had her hand reaching out to grasp one of his.

  'Be at peace,' he soothed her. 'It is nothing to worry about.'

  His voice was unsteady as he said the words, and if he wasn't worried then something extreme was certainly disturbing him.

  'You look hurt,' she whispered, feeling her own throat thicken in aching response to his distress.

  'No,' he denied. And at last turned suspiciously moist eyes in her direction. 'They are welcoming us,' he informed her gruffly. 'They ... ' One long-fingered hand lifted to make an expressive gesture towards the car window. 'My people,' he extended, 'are welcoming us .. .'

  Evie's heart flipped over, the breath seized in her breast as full understanding finally hit her. His people were welcoming them and Raschid was so moved by the gesture that he could barely contain his feelings. 'Are you okay?' she asked softly.

  'Yes,' he replied, but it was very obvious that he wasn't.

  This had come as a real shock to him. He had not expected it and that was why it was having such a powerful effect on him. An effect that had Evie's own eyes glazing over as she wisely said nothing more while she gave him the chance to get himself together.

  My people, he had called them. My people, in the truly possessive sense of the words. My people, whom he so obviously loved and whose love and respect he had been prepared to sacrifice for her' sake.

  As Evie sat there beside him while they drove between the cavalcade of lights and sounding horns that lined their route as far as the eyes could see, she finally began to understand what Raschid's Kismet was doing for them here.

  And she was humbled. Humbled by its force and by the man beside her who'd had the courage to reach out and grasp his own personal Kismet no matter what the cost might be.

  For she hadn't been the brave one here, not really. All she'd done was follow where her heart led her, but Raschid possessed two hearts, one of which had been in conflict with the other since the day he'd set eyes upon her. He must have always known that one day he was going to have to risk breaking one of those hearts. The heart that belonged here with his people or the heart that belonged to Evie.

  What he had done was place his trust in Kismet. And this was his reward, not hers. She was so very, very humbled by that.

  'I love you,' she told him softly, although why she did she didn't really know now; those words seemed so inadequate when set against all of this.

  Yet he turned and smiled at her, and that smile was so warm and dark and soul-stirringly tender that she knew the words were not inadequate to him.

  'Look,' he said then, drawing her attention back to her own window. 'My father's palace,' he said.

  Out there, beyond the glaring headlights, Evie found herself staring at a gold-lit stone building standing on its own raised piece of desert with a star-studded black velvet sky as its backcloth.

  Surrounded on all sides by what looked like a twenty foot high boundary wall, complete with domed lookout towers on each of its four corners, it was as if the whole scene had leapt straight out of an Arabian nights picture book she remembered having as a child.

  Awesome, mysterious, breathtakingly dramatic.

  Two huge wooden gates cut into the wall swung inwards as they approached them. As tall as the wall itself, they were a commanding sight on their own, but when Evie realised that they guarded an entrance that was as deep as it was tall she began to understand what true awe was.

  Inside was a vast courtyard, softly lit by concealed lighting that sparkled against fine sprinkles of water spouting from ornamental statues set within the exotic shrubs that grew in abundance on either side of the driveway. The entrance to the house was a flower-hung archway of pure white marble. Clear blue light was seeping out from beyond it, and as the car stopped by a pebbled area that covered the last ten feet or so to the entrance Evie saw a woman step out from beneath the archway.

  She was beautiful, dark-haired and slender but exquisitely rounded, and was wearing a long dark red silk dress that shimmered as she moved.

  'Ranya,' Raschid murmured softly, and climbed out of the car to stride quickly towards her, too eager to greet his sister to remember his usually impeccable manners.

  It was therefore left to Asim, who had travelled in the front of the car with them, to open Evie's door and help her to alight. Despite the fact that the hour was so late, the air was hot and very humid, and redolent with the fragrance of gardenia, oleander and heavily scented jasmine-all overlaid by a seductive aroma of some exotic spice Evie couldn't quite capture. Music was playing somewhere that distinctly Arabian sound that was so evocative of her surroundings.

  Strange, alien, yet so disturbingly seductive it made her toes tingle and her heart thump heavily in her chest. Or maybe those feelings had more to do with the way Raschid and Ranya were embracing each other with an affection that reminded her of herself and Julian.

  And why should they not? she asked herself. They were brother and sister-true brother and sister, born to the same mother and the only children of a man who, on the distinction alone of being a rich Arab Prince, should have produced a hundred children to a hundred different wives.

  Yet he had not. Crown Prince Hashim Al Kadah had only ever taken one wife. When she'd passed away while his children were still young, he hadn't bothered to replace her.

  But then, she mused as she stood there by the car waiting to be remembered, if his wife had looked anything like his daughter Ranya, then it was perhaps understandable why the Crown Prince had never found another woman who could take his wife's place.

  It was Ranya who noticed Evie standing there, but as she went to move around her brother with the intention of coming forward Raschid stopped her with a question. Pausing, Ranya answered him, and there followed a hurried discussion in soft-voiced Arabic that to Evie, witnessing their body language, verged on the heated. Then Ranya sighed, touched her brother's arm with what Evie read as a gesture of sympathy, before firmly stepping around him to walk towards Evie.

  After witnessing the heat in their altercation, Evie wasn't quite sure how she should greet this new sister law of hers-with open warmth or defensive coolness? she pondered.

  But the lovely creature made the decision easy. 'At last we meet.' Her embrace was both warm and welcoming, touching her lips to each of Evie's cheeks. 'I am Ranya, Raschid's beloved sister, in case he has never bothered to mention me,' she said with a teasing smile that literally stopped Evie's breath because it was so like the smile her brother could use on occasion. 'May I call you Evie, as Raschid does?' she requested while gently urging Evie into movement. The house waited; Evie wasn't at all sure, now that she had come this far, that she wanted to enter it. As she drew level with Raschid, she noticed his tension was back again. 'What now?' she whispered tautly.

  He didn't answer; instead he reached for her hand then turned grimly to the archway. In silence they walked into his father's home, where the hot desert air instantly tempered to a delicious coolness.

  Evie found herself standing in a vast reception hallway the likes of which she had only ever seen in history books. It was as big as a moderate theatre hall, with a high domed roof elaborately decorated with pale blue and gold mosaic tile work. The floor beneath her feet was white marble, the eggshell-blue painted walls broken by a dozen archways that led off into what she suspected was a maze of corridors. Above each arch, diamond-shaped grilles covered what Evie presumed were the Arabian equivalent of interior windows where people could look down unseen on the hallway beneath.

  'This is lovely,' Evie breathed softly.

  Other than giving a brief smile of acknowledgement, Raschid seemed barely to hear her; his hand touched her arm to indicate which corridor he wanted to take. And the further they went down that corridor, the tenser he became.

  'Raschid, what is it?' she asked anxiously, very conscious of his sister walking with them.

  This time he didn't even attempt to dissemble. Instead he stopped walking suddenly, turned to
take her by the shoulders then pushed her up against the corridor wall so he could stand right over her while his sister paused several delicate yards away.

  'We have yet another ceremony to go through tonight,' he announced, sounding clipped and grim and beginning to look just a little jaded around the edges. 'Again, my father has arranged this. And again I find I am in no position to argue with his decree.'

  'A marriage ceremony, you mean?' she asked.

  'Of course.' He grimaced. 'What else? Do you think you are up to it?'

  Like him, Evie didn't think she was being given very much choice in the matter. 'What do I have to do?' she asked heavily.

  'Nothing but stand beside me and repeat the vows you will be asked to say in Arabic. And I pray to Allah that then we will be allowed to do what we came here to do and be private,' he sighed out sardonically.

  'But you don't hold out much hope,' Evie dryly assumed from all of that.

  'No,' he confessed. 'I do not.'

  'Raschid-' Ranya's voice softly interrupted them. 'We really must go now.'

  Another sigh, then his mouth clamped into a flat line of grim perseverance. 'Come,' he said, taking hold of Evie's hand again. 'Let's get it over with.'

  Not the most diplomatic thing to say to his bride. But then, Evie mused as they began walking along that long corridor again, how many times did he have to marry this wretched bride before he could be allowed to feel married? They stopped at a door. Raschid seemed to need a moment to compose himself for what was to come next, and his fresh bout of tension became Evie's tension as, with a perceptible straightening of his broad shoulders, his fingers tightened around Evie's hand and his other hand reached out to open the door. What followed became lost in the realms of a dreamlike sense of unreality. The room was dark, lit only by wall-mounted candles that gave off too little light for her to see very much of what was around her. She was vaguely aware of people standing in the dimness, vaguely aware of their curious scrutiny as Raschid led her forward. The ceremony was short-shorter than she had expected. Beside her, Raschid quietly translated every word into English for her, before she was then required to repeat them in Arabic. And through it all she kept her body in touch with his body, needing to feel the security of his presence in this alien place with its alien service and its alien sounds and scents and language.

  When it was over, Raschid's attention was claimed almost instantly. As he turned to speak to the several men who had come up to him, Ranya appeared at Evie's side. 'Come,' she said quietly. 'We must go this way.' 'But-' Evie did not want to leave Raschid; glancing around her, her eyes caught sight of him standing several feet away. Her hand went out, anxious to catch his attention, but even as she did so the group of men closed in around him, and Ranya's hand on her arm was firmly guiding her away through a door that led into frighteningly unfamiliar territory. Not a corridor, but another dimly lit room which then led through to another and another. All were richly furnished; all wore the stamp of eastern luxury. At a fourth door, Ranya paused and turned what Evie presumed was supposed to be a reassuring smile on her before she was knocking on the door. Someone called out in Arabic. A man's voice. A sudden sense of dreadful foreboding shot like a steel rod along her spine. Ranya opened the door and stepped inside with Evie in tow.

  After the eastern splendour of all the rooms they had passed through, Evie was expecting to find herself stepping into yet more of the same. She was therefore surprised to find herself standing in a big but definitely old-fashioned library that could have been transported right out of Victorian England. It was all oak panelling lined with shelves upon shelves of leather-bound books. Richly coloured Persian rugs covered the polished wood floor and there was even a large polished oak fire surround with a log fire burning in the grate-although it did so behind a shield of heat-reflective glass.

  The chairs and sofas were of old English dark red velvet, and several huge desks were groaning under the weight of the books and papers scattered across them. And it all felt so very strange, as if she had just walked into her grandfather's study on one of those duty visits she used to make to his home with her mother when she was a child.

  Her grandfather had been a stem, sombre man who'd married very late in life and never seemed to quite understand how he had produced someone as beautiful and sophisticated as Lucinda.

  But this wasn't England, this was not her grandfather's Victorian study, she reminded herself. This was Behran, and the man who was at this precise moment carefully pushing himself up from one of the wing-backed chairs was most definitely not her grandfather.

  'I bring Raschid's wife to you as requested, Father,' Ranya quietly announced. And it was at that precise moment that Evie froze. Eyes cold and fixed, the breath catching in her throat, Evie found herself staring at the tall and lean figure off the enemy.

  An enemy that could be no other person than Raschid's father, simply because looking at him was like taking a glimpse into the future and seeing exactly how Raschid was going to look thirty years from now. Even the eyes were the same colour-though this pair was guarded as they studied her stiff form. He seemed to be waiting for her to do something. Make some gesture in respect of his high station maybe. But for the life of her - call it pride if you will - Evie could not offer this man any kind of gesture of respect.

  Instead her chin came up, her eyes glassing over in a way Raschid would have instantly recognised if he had been here to see it happen. His ice-princess was still alive and flourishing.

  But Raschid wasn't here, and the slick way she had been separated from him had her turning those cold eyes on Ranya in accusation. The other girl's lovely cheeks flushed slightly in response, her soft lips mouthing a silent sound of apology.

  'Thank you, Ranya,' Crown Prince Hashim murmured coolly. 'You may leave us.' .

  'No!' It was sheer self-preservation that forced the protest from Evie's throat. 'Don't leave me alone with him,' she pleaded with Ranya.

  Ranya looked uncertain suddenly. 'Papa .. .' She turned anxious eyes on him. 'Go!' he commanded. The voice was strong, dictatorial, yet right on the back of that harsh command came a sudden weariness. 'Please, child,' he added heavily. 'Trust me. Give me some privacy to do what I have to do.' With a rustle of silk and a touch of her hand to Evie's arm in mute apology, Ranya obeyed without further hesitation. The door closed softly behind her, leaving a stifling silence behind.

  Neither moved. Neither spoke. Evie felt that tension in her back increase to tingling proportions. Once again, the Crown Prince seemed to be waiting for her to say something, but once again Evie refused to utter a 'word until she knew exactly what it was she was dealing with here.

  'SO’ he said at last 'you are the golden icon my son was willing to forfeit his illustrious heritage for.'

  'I love your son,' Evie threw back coolly. 'Too much to expect him to do anything so drastic for me.'

  'A moot point,' the old man said. 'For he was prepared to do it with or without your blessing.' 'I'm sorry if that hurt you,' Evie murmured stiffly. But, as you and I both know, Raschid has a mind and a will of his own.'

  'Too true, too true,' he ruefully acknowledged. 'A fact that was brought home to me in the severest way possible. Call me arrogant if you wish, but I did not expect my son to defy me as he did,' he confessed. 'It came as a shock to discover he had grown strength of will that by far outstretched my own.' He paused then to study her curiously, as if he was trying to discover what it was about her that had given his son such strength of will. Evie could have told him, but she was refusing to give this man anything. Maybe he understood that. 'Still,' he shrugged. 'Who am I to complain when Raschid is proving to be the kind of man I always prayed he would become? And I am sorry for frightening you with my unfair tactics while my son taught me this salutary lesson. There,' he concluded. 'Does that clear the air between us a little?'

  'Not if you've brought me here to repeat the offer' she said.

  To her surprise he smiled. And it was like watching Raschid come
to life in this older version. That smile flipped her heart over. 'No.' Ruefully he shook his covered head. 'A lesson learned so painfully is usually an unforgettable one.'

  He went quiet for a moment, his eyes clouding over with what Evie could only interpret as remorse. 'The child is safe?' he asked suddenly. 'Your health is quite recovered?' Evie gave a stiff nod in reply to both questions. But mistrust in his sincerity kept her lips tightly shut on the return query as to his own health.

  His half smile told her he knew exactly why she was refusing to ask that question. 'If you give my son this much trouble when he does something you do not like, then I pity him,' he drawled. 'Please .. .' he then said suddenly. 'Will you come and sit?'

  Evie's instinct was to refuse. She had no wish to move one inch away from this door behind which lay relative safety. But it suddenly struck her that he wasn't standing so tall as he had been, as if the strength was slowly seeping out of him. Like his son, she realised, good manners were bred into him. Love her or hate her, he could not bring himself to sit while a lady remained standing.

  And, determined though she was not to soften her feelings towards him, neither could she keep a sick man standing when it wasn't necessary. So she moved warily across the cluttered room to the other wing-backed chair set across the fireplace from the one the Prince had been sitting in when she arrived. He waited until she sat down on the edge of it before he lowered himself carefully into the other one.

  'Thank you,' he sighed, easing himself back into the chair then wearily closing his eyes.

  An uncomfortable feeling of concern began to gnaw at her. 'Are you all right?' she felt constrained to ask. 'Would you like me to get someone?'

  'No, no.' He refused the offer. 'I can sit, I can lie, but I must not stand for long periods,' he explained. Then his eyes suddenly flicked open, homing in like two sharp golden lances on her face. 'I offer you this information because I understand that you are loath to request it,' he said with a small wry smile that made her rather disturbingly aware of just how easily he was seeing through her.