The Sultan's Heir

by Alexandra Sellers

  She subsided. It was true—he didn’t know her, and how could he? She couldn’t even tell him the single, central truth of Sam’s existence.

  There were appetizing smells coming from the serving board, and to gain time Rosalind got up and helped herself to egg and sausage and sautéed potatoes. Najib followed her lead, and for the next few minutes they ate without speaking.

  What he had said sank in as she ate, and at last she looked at him. “I have to choose, don’t I?” she said, as the chilling truth came home to her. “That’s what all this has been about. There’s no way to get away from it. I have to cast my lot either with you or with Ghasib.”

  He would not play games with her. “Yes.”

  She shook her head as anger at the stupid injustice of the whole situation crept over her. “Well, you’ve told me what Ghasib’s best offer will be. You’d better tell me what yours is. I assume you’ve got one.”

  She glanced down at the fabulous diamond-and-ruby ring she was wearing, then lifted her hand to show it to him. “In fact, you might almost say I’ve already had the down payment!”

  “Do you think we did not see this as a problem?” he said, his voice grating with irritation. “What were we to do? The will was found, you have inherited. We cannot keep your inheritance from you for the sake of not looking as though we wish to bribe you!”

  She laughed angrily. “What’s your offer?”

  But she was not only, or even primarily, angry with him. He was just handy, and Rosalind had too much natural justice to blame Najib for a situation that he had not created. The original fault was Jamshid’s, for never having told her of this. And she was angry at fate, too, and at Lamis. Why hadn’t Jamshid’s cousin warned her?

  “Our first priority is to get you to a safe house.”

  She looked around. “I thought you’d already done that.”

  He shook his head firmly. “No. It would be very much better if you would agree to come to Barakat. This option is a very poor second.”

  “Why?”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Because in Barakat we have the resources of the state behind us. There you will be protected by the army if necessary.”

  “The army? What army?”

  “The Barakati armed forces. I am Cup Companion to Prince Rafi. Do you think the princes of the Barakat Emirates have no interest in the fate of a family to whom they are so intimately linked by marriage and blood?”

  She was silent. He saw panic in her eyes. But there was no help for it. Now he had told her. She had to be convinced.

  “Our focus at the moment is to prevent the discovery that Jamshid Bahrami was Prince Kamil.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “By a campaign of disinformation.”

  She felt as though she was wandering deeper and deeper into a maze until she had no hope of finding her way out.

  “Disinformation?” she repeated hoarsely.

  He paused. “There is one thing you must understand, Rosalind. If we do this, you may lose forever the opportunity to establish Samir’s claim to the throne of Bagestan. He is young now, but as the only grandson of Crown Prince Nazim, in a dozen years he would be a very popular choice to spearhead a movement to replace Ghasib. If we now create an alternative history for him, it might be difficult to throw off later.”

  “I would be very happy to create an alternative history for him, if you can convince me someone would believe it. You don’t seem inclined to believe his true history!”

  “Rosalind,” he said urgently, ignoring that, “will the day come when Samir regrets what we now do? Will he be angry that we have taken away his chance to challenge Ghasib for the throne of Bagestan?”

  Rosalind’s heart was sinking further with every word. God, what a fate! She hadn’t thought of the real possibilities before. She tried to imagine how that would cripple Sam’s life—to be sitting around wishing he were Sultan of Bagestan, conspiring, intriguing, flattered into waiting by refugee groups…

  “Since I can’t convince you that Sam actually has no right to the throne because he is not Jamshid’s son,” Rosalind said bitterly, “maybe you’ll believe instead that I would do almost anything to prevent a life like that for him. What’s your solution?”

  “Our solution, Rosie,” he said, his voice so quiet suddenly that she had to strain to hear, “is to pretend that Samir is my son.”

  Nine

  Rosalind discovered she was no longer capable of reaction. There had just been too many shocks in the past hour. Something in her finally accepted that the world was not in any way as she had imagined it. If the wall of the room parted and Sultan Hafzuddin stepped through to rain curses on her head, she thought, she would feel no surprise.

  She found that this made her stronger. Freed from her preconceptions, she could now react to events as they occurred, as they were, rather than first measuring them against what life should be. Maybe this was what they meant by the dance to the music of time.

  “And how will we do that?”

  “By proceeding as if I were the man who met and married you five years ago.”

  Her breath escaped in a rush. “Would that work? Don’t too many people know the truth?”

  “We think we can find ways around that. My background and Jamshid’s are not so different. I was studying in Paris while Jamshid was here, and I visited London frequently. I also was living under a disguise. And I returned to fight in the war.”

  “What was your name?”

  There was no discernible pause, and yet she had the feeling he hesitated. “Nadim al Azzam. We must merely keep that, and certain other details, from the media.”

  “The media,” she said calmly.

  “That is how we will convince Ghasib that the ‘leaks’ he will hear are true. The story will be confirmed publicly.”

  “What story? That you had to hide your background to survive?”

  Najib shook his head. “A much more romantic story than that. The details are still to be worked out, of course. The general outline will be that I came here, and met and married you. Then I went home to fight the war, and was seriously wounded. For a time it was believed that I was dead. You got the news that I had died, but did not learn that I was later discovered alive but critically wounded. And now, five years later, I have returned to claim you, and discover that I have a young son.”

  Rosalind looked at him in blank amazement. “It’s got more holes than a fishnet stocking! Why didn’t you let me know as soon as you recovered? Why didn’t I—”

  He held up a hand. “I told you the story is still to be fleshed out. First of course it was necessary to sound you out. Rosalind, it will not be easy to do. But I ask you to let us take this means of safeguarding Jamshid’s son’s life.”

  “By pretending to be married to you?” Rosalind could feel nervous little whirlwinds spiral out from her lower spine over all the surface of her skin. His dark eyes fixed her, and she couldn’t look away.

  “By marrying me,” he corrected her.

  “If we’re already married, why would we get married again?”

  “Because I now reveal myself under my true name, and want to marry you so that you legally can take that name.”

  “What’s the advantage to that?”

  “The first is that you and Sam will take a different name.”

  “And the second?”

  “The wedding will get extensive media coverage.”

  “How can you know a thing like that?”

  He smiled at her as if she were being very naive. “We will make sure of it.”

  She had been wrong when she thought she could dance to the music of time. Rosalind put a hand out to the salt pot and it trembled like the leaves under the hailstorm.

  “It would be only a pretence, Rosalind,” he said flatly. “Do you imagine I would try to take advantage of such an arrangement? Recollect that you are under my protection!”

  “No,” she said flatly. “No! Samir is not Jamshid�
��s son. He has no right to the throne. Why can’t we just tell Ghasib that?”

  “Ros—”

  “No! If I do that, I’m just going to dig myself in deeper and deeper until I’m buried. I do not want my son to end up as chief pretender to the throne of Barakat in twenty years! He is not Jamshid’s son! Why won’t you believe me?”

  “You have seen the portrait, Rosalind,” Najib said softly.

  She glared at him. “Your family really takes the prize. It’s all your own way, isn’t it? Your grandfather wouldn’t believe me when I said I was pregnant with Jamshid’s son, and now you won’t believe it when I say I didn’t—he wasn’t—”

  “Look at me!” he commanded, in a tone so autocratic that she obeyed involuntarily.

  “Do you give me your word as a woman of honour that Jamshid is not the father of your son?”

  “Yes!” she said.

  “Whose son is he?”

  She looked away. She hated having him think what she was now forcing him to think—that she had cheated Jamshid.

  “You cannot even tell me, Rosalind. Do you say you can bear to be revealed to the world as the woman who was unfaithful to a crown prince and thereby cheated a nation of its rightful sultan?”

  “I didn’t cheat! I was pregnant, and I lost Jamshid’s baby! And then…and then…”

  He was looking down at his plate, as if it would be impolite to watch her struggles.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “You lost Prince Kamil’s baby, and immediately became pregnant again. Since your husband was dead, there can be no question of impropriety.” His eyes fixed her again. “You will have to provide proof.”

  A sigh exploded out of her. “What proof could I give?”

  “DNA tests, of course.”

  “What?” Rosalind cried wildly. “Jamshid is dead. Did you retain a tissue sample, for heaven’s sake?”

  “A sample from Jamshid is not necessary,” Najib said. “DNA from any member of the family will show whether your son is related to us, Rosalind. Surely you know this. I will provide the sample of the family DNA.”

  Rosalind choked and swallowed. She did know it. But she had never thought about it before in relation to Sam.

  A DNA test would not prove her case. It would show that Sam was related to Najib al Makhtoum.

  Rosalind and Najib sat close together on the sofa, his arm around her, her hands clasping his other hand. She leaned into his powerful shoulder and felt how tempting it would be to rest there forever.

  His hand had firm possession of her shoulder, the other closed on her hand with reassuring strength. Her heart was melting, and she thought that, however necessary this closeness was for Samir’s safety, it was dangerous to her own ultimate happiness.

  She was falling for Najib, and the fact that it could probably all be put down to circumstance—just a product of her own fatigue at having raised her son by herself for four long years and the fact that Najib was particularly strong and masculine, and above all there—wasn’t likely to save her. Logic never had much sway over emotion, and Rosalind didn’t think she was going to be the one to break new ground in that regard.

  Her stomach was melting because of his nearness, she was longing to kiss him, to have him turn to her and take her fully in his strong arms, and what could logic do against that?

  “Would you look at him, Rosalind?” a voice cried.

  Rosalind obediently lifted her chin and turned her eyes to meet Najib’s tender gaze. He was only half-smiling, as if the sight of her was almost too much for him to take. His dark eyes narrowed with hungry possessiveness as they swept over her upturned face, and Rosalind gulped as her heart leapt in response. He doesn’t mean it, she reminded her heart wildly, and her mouth trembled and she had to blink against tears.

  Cameras clicked and whirred, and the questions kept coming. They had all the “facts” on the press release Gazi al Hamzeh had given out, but, as Gazi had explained before it began, they were looking for sound bites and quotes.

  “How do you feel, Rosalind?”

  “Stunned. Wonderful,” she said, obediently reciting from the memorized list of handy quotes Gazi had supplied her with in case her own imagination failed. Najib had introduced Gazi as the man who ran the press relations of the Barakat Emirates, and she could believe he was an expert at his job.

  He was sitting in a chair on one side, supervising the proceedings. If she stumbled or forgot a “fact,” he was there, quietly picking her up and smoothing it over. Rosalind felt like a sheep faced by wolves, with two very large guard dogs keeping them at bay.

  She had agreed to this because she had to. It had finally dawned on her that if the rumour once got out that Sam was Prince Kamil’s son, it would never completely die. There would be no satisfactory way of proving that he was not. There would always be people who wanted to believe that Prince Nazim’s grandson had survived the catastrophe, and whether those people wanted to kill him or to put him on the throne of Bagestan, his life would be derailed.

  “I intend to spend the rest of my life making it up to her,” Najib said, in answer to another question. Rosalind closed her eyes and smiled, half wishing it were true. Gazi had concocted a story of truth and lies, so interwoven with the reality of her life she was in danger of not being able to sort the threads out herself.

  “Can we get some shots in the garden?” someone asked, and, fingers interlinked, Rosalind and Najib went out the wide glass doors and into the bright sunshine. The media people stayed on the terrace, the lovers wandered around the garden as if at random, camera lenses following greedily as they casually stopped at a pre-chosen spot in front of a wall of climbing pink roses. Gazi’s assistant had chosen the delicate pink of her floaty, romantic dress and gauzy scarf with this backdrop in mind.

  A gardener’s ladder stood nearby, with basket and gloves and tools casually set down as though the gardener had merely stopped working for his tea. In apparently spontaneous inspiration, Najib picked up a small pair of garden clippers and reached up to cut a rose. Then he stepped close to her, just as they had rehearsed, and offered it to her. Rosalind smiled, took the rose, gently sniffed it, then lifted her face as Najib, his arm around her waist, bent and brushed her lips with his.

  Melting fire burned out from the touch, and she felt his arm tighten involuntarily, as if he was going to pull her tight and kiss her more thoroughly. “Rosie,” he whispered against her ear, and a spiral of delicious warmth curled down her neck and flooded her body.

  “Beautiful! Great!” They heard the cries from the media, and Najib’s hold tensed and then relaxed. Rosalind reminded herself that all this was acting on his part. He might be sexually attracted to her, she told herself ruthlessly, but the possessiveness, the caring, the deeper emotion, all that was fake.

  At last someone asked, “Where’s the boy? Can we see him now?” and, as agreed, Rosalind went and found Samir. She had been adamant that Sam would not speak to the media at all, would be asked no questions.

  “I am not having anyone asking him about his daddy,” she had insisted to Gazi. “Things are bad enough without Sam actually believing the story that his father has come back.”

  But she had agreed to a brief photographic session, partly because Gazi convinced her that the physical resemblance between Najib and Sam would be convincing. As she returned to the garden, carrying an excited Sam, who instantly sensed that he was the centre of attention, she was already regretting it.

  That wasn’t all he sensed, apparently. As she crossed the garden, her heels began to sink into the grass, making the going difficult, and Najib, in automatic response, moved towards her and lifted Sam out of her arms.

  Sam and Najib had met again yesterday, and with a child’s instinctive hunger for the masculine figure that was missing from his life, he had climbed up on Naj’s lap and stayed, not talking, just satisfied to be there.

  So now he went into Naj’s arms with alacrity, wrapping his tiny arms around the man’s neck and clinging
tight. It was a display no amount of stage managing could have achieved, and the photographers were quick to appreciate it.

  As the cameras clicked and whirred, the reporters maintained a dutiful silence. So everyone heard the childish piping tones as Sam, with acute longing in his tone, asked the dark man who held him so securely, “Are you my father now?”

  And everybody heard Najib answer, “Yes.”

  “Oh God, I wish you hadn’t!” Rosalind sighed.

  He raised an eyebrow. “What would you have advised, Rosalind? Should I have repudiated your son in the full glare of publicity? Then all we have done and are doing would be completely worthless.”

  They were alone in the room amid the debris of the press conference. Gazi was out counting all the journalists safely off the premises, and Sam’s friends had taken him to play down by the pond. Sir John had long ago retreated to his private study. The children’s laughing voices carried across the lawn, but laughing was the last thing Rosalind felt like doing.

  “I just wish we hadn’t fooled Sam, too.”

  “If you are just, Rosalind, you will recall that I advised you to tell Sam something to cover just such an eventuality. Children are quick to pick up on moods. But you insisted it would be possible to keep him in ignorance.”

  “I know,” she said, desperate with self-blame. “I should have— What’s he going to feel when we have to tell him you’re not his father after all?”

  Dimly she was realizing that on that day, she wasn’t going to be the happiest of mortals, either. Oh, if only she had never let Najib in the door that day!

  “It is possible to overcome emotional hurt, Rosalind. Physical hurt may be another matter. We have chosen the lesser of evils. It is all that is available to us. There is no perfect solution. One day you will be able to explain to Samir what motivated me today, and he will understand.”

  She wasn’t taking it in; she was in the grip of feelings she couldn’t control. “We lied to him! Lies to children are…”

  He reached out, as he had once before when completely exasperated with her, and clamped his hands on her. Her shoulders fitted neatly into the hollow of his palms, as if it was a connection planned before time, and she caught her breath.