‘Why was the King so worried?’
Amusement gleamed in his stunning eyes. ‘As you will learn, my father is a great pessimist. He thought that even after I married it might take years for me to father a child. He even considered the idea that I or my bride might prove incapable of that feat. It is safe to say that he looked at every negative possibility to such an extent that you and Tazeem together make a really winning package.’
She stretched her lips into a forced smile and hid the fact that once again she felt hurt and mortified. Naturally the need and ability to provide a royal son and heir was hugely important in a feudal kingdom with a hereditary line of rulership. Shahir was only being honest about the fact that as far as his father was concerned her greatest gift was her proven aptitude in the fertility stakes. Certainly it was true that she had fallen pregnant easily.
My goodness—had he told his father just how easily? Inwardly she absolutely cringed.
‘How much did you tell your father about how we met and…er…stuff?’
‘I told him the truth.’
Kirsten tensed in consternation. ‘So you told him…What did you tell him?’
His imperious black brows pleated as though he considered that a strange question. ‘That I had seduced a virgin…what else?’
‘But that information wasn’t for sharing!’ Kirsten launched at him aghast, her face hot as fire. ‘That was between us, and private.’
‘Not in this case.’ His lean strong face betrayed not a trace of regret. ‘For your sake I needed to be sure that my father put any blame he wished to bestow on my shoulders, where it belonged. And he did.’
Kirsten breathed in deep and tried to master her embarrassment.
The motorcade was already moving swiftly along the highway that led out of the city. Ahead lay the Ahmet Palace, the private home of the Dhemeni royal family since the seventh century. High fortress walls studded with towers surrounded the vast complex which was spread across a hill. That much alone the books had told her, but no further details had been given. On either side of the road stretched a rolling landscape of sand dunes that disappeared into the distance—terracotta in colour on the shaded side, glistening gold in the harsh sunlight of late afternoon.
They passed through a vast medieval gateway, but even as her curious eyes were widening to absorb the great domed entrance of the nearest building, and the red carpet awaiting their arrival, another daunting thought was occurring to her.
‘You didn’t tell your father about the theft thing, did you?’
Beneath her scrutiny, Shahir froze to carved ice. ‘I presume you are joking? My father believes you to be a woman of irreproachable good character and virtue.’
Anger and pain coalesced inside Kirsten and flared up in a spirited venting of all her pent-up emotions. Green eyes bright as the heart of a fire, she rounded on him. ‘Shahir, I’ve kept quiet about this for far too long, and I think I’ve been really stupid. I thought that as you got to know me you might start doubting my guilt without me having to plead my own case. For goodness’ sake, don’t you know anything about me yet? I did not steal that pendant—nor did I put greedy hands on that woman’s stupid brooch! Isn’t it about time that you accepted that I’m telling you the truth?’
‘Please don’t shout at me!’ Shahir grated.
‘Maybe I’m shouting because you’re as stubborn as a rock and you just make up your mind about things and won’t listen to any other version!’ she condemned heatedly. ‘But this is my reputation we’re talking about, and I’ve never stolen anything in my life.’
‘This is not the time for this, and I do not respond to the aggressive approach.’
‘Well, I’m not being humble about it!’ Kirsten informed him in a fiery interruption. ‘The rumour at Strathcraig is that Lady Pamela set me up because she saw that you were attracted to me. Unfortunately I don’t have the slightest idea why the witness lied and said she saw me put the pendant in my locker. But the point is you’re my husband. Instead of hammering on about how honourable you are, and how you would protect me with your life, you should get out there and prove that I can depend on you—clear my name!’
Shahir was livid with a dark fury as volatile as volcanic lava. How dared she question his honour? How dared she scorn his protection? And as for the theft—how could she possibly believe that he wanted to accept that she was a thief? But the case against her was watertight and left no room for doubt. Had it been otherwise he would have moved heaven and earth to clear her name.
Yet for the first time he was being presented with the possibility that there might have been a deliberate conspiracy aimed at discrediting Kirsten. That risk had not occurred to him. How likely was it, though? He had suspected that Pamela Anstruther had noticed that he had a degree of interest in Kirsten. Could the other woman have come to view Kirsten as a rival and set out to plot her downfall?
Even furious as he was, Shahir knew he would have to check out that angle. But surely it was a fanciful idea?
The passenger door beside him sprang open. He stepped out of the limo. The Court Chamberlain bowed low. Tazeem was borne out of the limousine behind with reverent hands and extended to his father with great care. Recognising the solemnity of the occasion, Shahir accepted his infant son and waited for Kirsten to emerge.
Kirsten was trembling. Words had exploded from her like uncontrolled missiles and she was in shock in the aftermath of that complete loss of temper. She had suppressed her feelings about the theft for too long because she had been afraid to reopen the subject with Shahir. Unfortunately all that hurt and resentment had broken through at a moment when her nerves were already on edge.
A slim brunette in her late twenties, with gentle dark eyes and creamy skin, moved forward. A long line of servants were bowing their heads at their approach.
Shahir murmured, ‘My sister, Jahan…’
Jahan greeted her with a warm smile. ‘You are very welcome to your new home. We are all very excited to be celebrating a wedding in the family again.’
A cluster of people eager to see Tazeem now surrounded Shahir.
‘My brother will take your son to meet His Majesty the King. You will meet our father at the wedding,’ Jahan imparted. ‘Will you come this way now?’
Still shaken up after the blistering verbal attack she had launched on Shahir, Kirsten glanced anxiously in her royal husband’s direction. For a split second he met her gaze in a head-on collision as physically disturbing as a crash. Her heartbeat jumped and her tummy muscles clenched tight with nerves. His lean, darkly handsome features were as impassive as ever, but she knew as surely as if he had spoken that cold anger still divided him from her with the efficacy of a solid sheet of ice.
At that moment she would have given just about anything to get just five minutes alone with him. Having waited too long to broach the thorny topic of her supposed dishonesty, she had gone overboard and attacked when she should have reasoned and explained. With a sinking heart she realised that in her distress she had been downright offensive. But unhappily, Jahan was urging her to follow her, and there was no way that Kirsten could have any private speech with Shahir.
‘This evening you are to have a surprise,’ Jahan announced with satisfaction as they crossed a huge echoing stone hall floored with worn marble and entered a passage that appeared to lead into a more modern part of the palace. ‘A happy surprise, I hope. Shahir has been very busy on your behalf.’
Kirsten had no idea what Shahir’s sister was talking about. Although she kept a polite smile of interest on her face she was still too upset by the argument she had had with Shahir to concentrate. ‘A surprise?’
‘To tell you about it would spoil it.’ Jahan paused outside a door. ‘Would you like to wait in here for Tazeem to be brought back to you?’
Surprised that she was being left to her own devices, Kirsten opened the door. ‘Will he be long?’
‘Half an hour at most….’
Jahan seemed to be waiti
ng for something to happen. Her brow indenting, Kirsten entered the room, and then came to a surprised halt when she saw the tall broad male standing by the window. His hair was the same unusual shade of pale blond as her own. He too looked anxious. Her throat tightened and she stared, almost afraid to credit the powerful sense of recognition she was experiencing, for his features had been familiar to her from childhood on.
‘Daniel…?’ she whispered uncertainly, for when her brother had left home he had been a painfully thin teenager and this was a man.
‘Yeah…it’s me.’ Her brother’s voice was gruff with restrained emotion.
It was the telling glimmer of moisture in his eyes that convinced her that he was real, and she raced across the room and flung herself at him with a sob of happiness and welcome.
CHAPTER NINE
IT WAS some time before either Kirsten or Daniel paused long enough between questions to draw breath. After all, brother and sister had five years of news to catch up on. But, first and foremost, Kirsten could not be persuaded to talk about her own life until Daniel had explained how Shahir had managed to trace him.
‘I haven’t yet met your husband, but we’ve talked on the phone. Shahir hired investigators to go and ask questions of just about everybody who ever knew me. That helped to build up a profile of me, and one of my schoolteachers mentioned that at one stage I’d been hoping to go to university to do marine biology—’
‘Until Dad said you had to work on the farm,’ Kirsten recalled heavily.
‘Maybe he was right about me just wanting to be a lazy student,’ Daniel teased. ‘I’m studying for a doctorate now. The detective agency found me by checking out the universities. I’ve been working abroad on a research project, so they only caught up with me the day before yesterday, and this is as soon as I could get here.’
Slowly Kristin shook her head, fighting back tears. ‘I just can’t quite believe you are here.’
He compressed his mouth ruefully. ‘I should have come home to see that you were OK a long time ago.’
‘Dad wouldn’t have let you into the house.’
‘He wouldn’t even let me speak to you on the phone, so I gave up ringing.’
‘I didn’t know you’d phoned,’ Kirsten muttered with a painful sense of loss. ‘I wish I had.’
‘I heard about Mum’s death a year after it happened through an old school mate,’ he confided heavily. ‘I just couldn’t handle the fact that I would never see her again because I hadn’t been man enough to confront Dad. I felt so guilty.’
‘No…you mustn’t feel that way. Mum missed you, but she wanted you to have a life of your own. If you had got into a real fight with Dad it would have destroyed her.’
Daniel nodded, too choked up by grief for his late mother to respond.
It was at that point that a knock on the door heralded Tazeem’s return. Now enjoying the well-sprung comfort of a magnificent pram wheeled by an English nanny accompanied by two nurses, Tazeem was fast asleep and amusingly unconcerned by the amount of attention he was receiving.
Talk of the promise of the future took over from the hurts and disappointments that Kirsten and Daniel had shared in the past, and Daniel cradled his nephew and grinned. ‘I’m actually holding a future king…’
Refreshing mint tea and tiny sweet cakes were brought in and served, and an hour later Kirsten shared an evening meal with her brother in the luxurious suite of rooms allotted for her use. Squeak was waiting there to greet her, and enjoyed a most enthusiastic reunion with his former playmate, Daniel. The little dog would not settle with them, though. He kept on going to the door, sitting down there and sighing heavily.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ her brother asked.
‘He’s nuts about Shahir,’ Kirsten confided with a rueful grin. ‘He must know he’s around somewhere.’
After the meal, Daniel went off to meet Shahir and join the male wedding party while Kirsten was taken to meet a whole array of Shahir’s female relatives. There was one more sister, an array of great-aunts, aunts, and innumerable cousins—and that was not counting those who were related only by marriage to her husband. Tazeem was hugely admired, and Kirsten listened without success for any spoken reference to a woman with the name of Faria.
As she clambered into her comfortable bed at the end of that busy day, her mind was spinning with a myriad of colourful impressions. But all she could actually think about was Shahir, and the reality that there were still hours and hours to be got through before she could see him again. She wondered anxiously if he was still furious with her.
The next day began for her at what felt like the crack of dawn. A delicious breakfast was brought to her in bed, but she had not even finished eating before Jahan came to collect her and escort her to another, older part of the palace.
‘The bride receives every possible beauty procedure,’ Jahan explained earnestly. ‘We want you to relax and enjoy the preparations. It should be a lot of fun.’
The Ahmet Palace was an ancient building like a huge labyrinth. From the outside it resembled a desert fortress, but within the high stone walls it was a complex composed of airy pavilions and tranquil courtyards punctuated with delicate minarets and beautiful gardens. Buildings were linked by stone staircases and roofed walkways.
A little nervous of what might be part and parcel of the bridal preparations, Kirsten watched Tazeem being taken off to the nursery. Maids came to help her undress, and she was so shy at removing her clothes in front of them that they giggled and put up a screen to preserve her modesty. Wrapped in a capacious towel and accompanied by Jahan, she emerged from behind its cover. They entered a great domed and tiled steam room.
‘My word…’ she sighed, examining her surroundings with wide eyes full of curiosity. ‘How old is this place?’
‘It was once part of the old harem,’ Jahan informed her.
‘It’s like something out of a film,’ Kirsten carolled. ‘Jahan…if I wanted to speak to Shahir how would I go about it?’
‘You could speak to him on the phone.’
Kirsten nodded at that obvious answer, and wished she had come up with the idea for herself the night before. Working out what she would say, however, was a bigger challenge. How could she ever thank Shahir sufficiently for going to so much trouble to reunite her with her brother? She had not asked him to do that. It had not even crossed her mind that it might be within his power to do that. Yet, without any prompting from her, Shahir had recognised how much it would mean to her to have her brother back in her life.
She sat in the hot, steamy atmosphere mulling over his perception and generosity until a film of perspiration shone on her skin. Two sturdy middle-aged women appeared, divested her of her towel and with great seriousness proceeded to cover her from neck to toe in a substance that resembled green mud.
‘It is marvellous for the skin,’ Jahan assured her.
Imagining what Shahir would think if he saw her looking like a swamp monster, Kirsten finally started to relax and giggle. When the mud was scrubbed off, she felt as if her whole body was tingling with cleanliness. In yet another room her hair was anointed with a herbal preparation, and the palace beautician arrived with her assistant to administer a facial, shape her eyebrows and carry out a remarkable number of other procedures—all of which were new to Kirsten’s experience.
A buffet lunch was served in a big reception room furnished with plenty of opulent sofas, and one by one the other women she had met the evening before began to filter in. Someone put on some music and the gathering began to turn into a light-hearted party.
‘You must lie down and have a nap now. The bride has a very long day to get through.’ Jahan showed her into a bedroom overlooking a quiet courtyard.
Kirsten was glad of the privacy, for she had finally decided what she should say to Shahir. She used the mobile phone he had given her to send him a text that was just one word long.
Sorry.
The phone was brought to Shahir while he
was having a massage. He read the text and his charismatic smile put to flight his usual gravity. He didn’t text. He might know how to read them, but he didn’t do texts. He dismissed the masseur and rang his wife.
‘Kirsten…?’
‘I was upset, but I shouldn’t have shouted.’
‘Your anger had conviction. I will do as you ask. I will have discreet enquiries made concerning the allegations that were made against you.’ Voicing the decision which he had reached in the early hours of the morning, Shahir stretched his long, powerful limbs and shifted into a more comfortable position on the couch. ‘If I have misjudged you, you are entitled to feel angry. As my wife, it is your right to expect my support.’
Overjoyed that he was finally willing to consider that she might have been framed for the theft at Strathcraig, Kirsten felt a great weight slide off her shoulders. Even so, she could not help saying, ‘But I want you to believe in me, Shahir…not just make enquiries because it’s your duty to do that like you do everything else.’
Shahir suppressed a groan, for he did not know how to tell her that his whole life was governed by duty—first to the crown of Dhemen and secondly to his family. ‘This is our wedding day,’ he reminded her. ‘I am not thinking of my duty at this moment.’
Kirsten closed her eyes and listened dreamily to the rich dark timbre of his voice. ‘What are you thinking of?’
‘Lying with you tonight,’ he admitted with husky intimacy.
Disconcerted though she was by that candid response, she felt a twist of heat curl low in her pelvis. ‘I’m surprised,’ she could not resist admitting. ‘After all, you’re the man who hasn’t even kissed me since before Tazeem was born.’
Shahir was startled by that complaint. ‘I was showing you respect!’
‘Do you still feel that guilty about what we did that day at the castle?’ Kirsten whispered ruefully, marvelling at how much easier it was to say things on the phone that she would not have dared to say to him face to face.
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