by Liz Fielding
‘I just...’ She made an attempt at a shrug, aware that she was blushing. Which was ridiculous.
‘I saw.’ He crossed to the table at the foot of the bed, poured some water into a glass, taking a sip as he walked around the bed examining her handy work.
Work. Concentrate on that. She cleared her throat. ‘You’ve had a couple of urgent...’
Her voice trailed away as he stretched his arm out over the bed and tilted the glass, spilling a little of the water onto the centre of the rumpled sheet.
A completely involuntary sound escaped her lips and he said, ‘For future reference, Ruby, if you’re going to fake a scene you have to pay attention to the details.’ When she didn’t answer he glanced back. ‘A couple of urgent what?’
‘Emails...’ Her mouth made all the right moves but no sound emerged and she cleared her throat again. ‘Emails. One from Michael Shadbrook about setting up a meeting on Friday in London. One from Jimmy Rose in Hong Kong. He’s been trying to call you.’
‘I’ve spoken to him,’ he said, his tone brisk and businesslike, as if he hadn’t just left a damp patch on the bed... ‘We can fly on to London from Dubai on Thursday morning. I’ll leave you to organise a time, sort out the details and let Shadbrook know. Is there anything else?’
Clearly her boring little black dress was doing the job.
‘Will you want to return here to Ras al Kawi or Umm al Basr before going to Mumbai?’ she asked.
‘Let’s see how it goes tomorrow,’ he said briskly. ‘Is that it?’
‘Yes. Have I got time to do it now?’
He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘You have fifteen minutes.’
She retreated to the sitting room, sat at a small desk and, keeping an eye on the time, swiftly organised the flight, warned the Savoy that he would be in residence at his service flat on Thursday and possibly Friday night—she would stay in her own flat—changed his booking in Dubai for a suite with two bedrooms and emailed Michael Shadbrook to let him know that Bram Ansari would be available to meet him at eleven o’clock on Friday morning.
She finished with a minute spare and she used that to go and change into those pretty suede shoes that Noor had left out for her.
* * *
The dinner was over. Bram, waiting while Ruby received a farewell hug from Violet, paused to have a word with Nigel and Lorraine Grieg, the British Ambassador and his wife, who were waiting for their car.
He turned as she re-joined him but, before he could introduce her, Lorraine said, ‘Jools? Jools Howard, Future World Champion?’ She laughed. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
Jools?
Ruby who, despite her earlier reservations, had sailed through the evening completely at ease in whatever company she found herself, lost every scrap of colour from her face.
She’d told him that she’d changed her name after some scandal but not just her family name, it seemed. Ruby was not her real first name...
‘My wife answers to Princess Rabi these days,’ he said when the silence went on for too long.
‘Princess...?’ Lorraine Grieg looked from Ruby to him and back again but this time it was Nigel who leapt diplomatically into the breach.
‘Congratulations, Bram,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘I had no idea you’d finally given up the bachelor life.’
‘It’s a recent development,’ he said. ‘There has been no public announcement.’
Nigel met his eye. He knew the situation with his father and instantly got the message. ‘I understand,’ he said, and turned to Ruby. ‘My best wishes, Princess Rabi.’
‘Thank you.’ Given a moment’s breathing space, Ruby had swiftly recovered her poise if not her colour, painted on a smile. ‘I’m sorry, Lori—’ She went through the air kiss ritual and anyone who didn’t know Ruby would have thought she was delighted at having found an old friend. It was an impressive performance but he’d seen her smile when she meant it and realised that he’d seen this smile too. It wouldn’t fool him again. ‘Seeing you was so unexpected. It quite took my breath away. How long has it been?’
‘Not since school...’ Lorraine faltered, clearly remembering something unpleasant, and turned to her husband. ‘You should have seen her on horseback, darling. Such a star. We were all convinced that she would come away from the London Olympics with a handful of gold medals. Do you still ride?’
‘No.’ Ruby’s smile slipped and, without thinking, he reached for her hand.
‘These days she’s my star.’
‘So sweet.’ Lorraine smiled indulgently. ‘Perhaps we could get together for lunch soon, Jools? Catch up on all the news?’
He didn’t need the tremor in her hand to know how little she relished the prospect and he tightened his grip. ‘We’ll be away for a week or two, but why don’t you both come out to Qa’lat al Mina’a when we return?’ he suggested as their car, flying the Union flag, pulled up alongside them. ‘I’ll give you a call, Nigel.’
They waited while they boarded, returning a wave as they were borne away down the hill and out of sight.
‘Bram—’
‘Not here,’ he said, tucking her arm under his so that she could lean on him as they headed away from the central dome of the palace and through the palace gardens.
‘Bram, I’m so sorry. I n-never imagined...’ She had hung onto her composure but now reaction was setting in. Her teeth were chattering and she was struggling to catch her breath. ‘I c-c-can’t...’
She buckled against him and, with a muttered curse, he caught her and, arm about her waist, supported her to a seat set in the privacy of a jasmine-covered arbour. She was shivering, more with shock than cold, but he took off his jacket, slipped it around her shoulders and then put his arm around her and held her close.
CHAPTER SIX
BRAM’S JACKET WAS warm from his body, his arm was around her and Ruby’s cheek was pressed against fresh linen, the steady beat of his heart. This was the hug she’d been dreaming about, yearning for ever since her world fell apart and for a moment she soaked it up, knowing that, like so much of these few days, it would be a treasured memory. But he hadn’t signed up for this. He wanted an uncomplicated, no-strings temporary wife not a baggage-laden emotional wreck.
‘Th-thank you,’ she said, summoning every scrap of inner strength to ease away, sit up. ‘Thank you for rescuing me back there.’
‘I thought you were going to faint,’ he said, his hand still at her back.
‘I thought I was,’ she admitted. ‘But I meant when Lori said my name.’
‘So did I, but it was a great recovery. She had no idea.’
‘You knew,’ she said.
‘Our relationship has been short but intense,’ he said, ‘and I wasn’t distracted with the problem of who I was going to text the minute the car arrived.’
‘No.’ She managed some sort of smile. ‘You read her pretty well too.’
‘I’ve met her before.’ He glanced at her. ‘Jools?’
‘It’s what I was called at school. It’s short for Juliet.’
She risked a glance in his direction. His profile was lit by the soft lighting hidden amongst the branches and she couldn’t read his expression but it wasn’t that which was making her shiver. It was being forced to confront memories that she’d buried deep, locked away. Memories that she’d been hiding from for years. ‘I’m sorry, Bram.’
‘I thought we’d banned the word sorry?’
‘But I should have told you before all this...’ She made a gesture that took in the palace, the gardens, everything that had happened that day.
‘Tell me now,’ he said.
‘Yes...’ And, doing her best to ignore the cold, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she said, ‘I was born Juliet Dorothea Howard.’ There was no response but there wa
s no reason for him to remember a sordid story that had filled the headlines ten years ago. ‘My home was a small manor house that had been in my mother’s family for ever and, until I was sixteen, I had the kind of life that most people dream about.’
She let her eyes flicker in his direction. His arm was still a comforting support but, although he’d turned to look down at her, his face remained impassive, giving no clue as to what he might be thinking.
‘A week after my sixteenth birthday my father was exposed as a con man who preyed on vulnerable, older women. He wooed them, seduced them and when they were putty in his hands, ready to sign anything he put in front of them, he robbed them.’
She opened the elegant little shoulder bag that contained her phone, tapped her father’s name into the search engine, clicked on a link and handed it to him.
‘It’s all there.’
She fixed her eyes on the glowing dome of the palace as he skimmed through the newspaper story that had brought her world crashing down.
After a few minutes he handed the phone back to her. ‘You were sixteen years old, Ruby. None of this has anything to do with you.’
‘Tell that to the photographers who camped outside my school gates, the reporters who rang my mobile phone day and night, wanting a comment, an interview, anything... According to them, I was a pampered princess living a lifestyle that most people could only dream about.’
‘They hounded you?’ He didn’t sound surprised.
‘Of course they hounded me. I didn’t rob those poor women of their savings, their pension funds, their self-worth, Bram, but my little ponies were the real thing and I was having the most expensive, most privileged education that the money my father stole from them could buy.’
‘But the school protected you?’
‘They kept the gates locked, refused to comment, but they couldn’t stop the long-range lenses, keep out the photographers who climbed the walls,’ she said, wrapping her arms about herself as if she could hold in the pain. ‘Stop the girls who used their phones to send in photographs that they’d snapped during the year, of me fooling around in the pool, giggling at impromptu birthday parties, on prize-giving day with my father. I was desperate to go home, to be with my mother, but the house, the village, was besieged by the media and the head smuggled me out of school and I was in Scotland before anyone realised I’d gone.’
‘Scotland?’
‘My mother’s old nanny had retired there.’
‘You had no other family to turn to?’
She shook her head. ‘My grandmother died very young and my mother stayed at home to care for her increasingly frail father. When he died she inherited a house that had been in her family for centuries, what was left of the original estate, a couple of cottages and a London flat. She was in her mid-thirties and alone in the world, apart from a few distant ageing cousins she had only met at funerals.’
‘The perfect mark for a man who preyed on vulnerable women.’
‘The death notices, obituaries, the publication of wills are meat and drink to a con man.’ Restless, unable to sit there a moment longer, she said, ‘Can we walk?’
He stood up and, his arm still around her, they walked back through the gardens towards their apartment. The palace was built on the highest point of the city and far out in the Gulf she could see the lights of a ship heading out towards the Indian Ocean.
‘It’s so peaceful here,’ she said, pausing to watch its stately progress. ‘You could hear a star fall.’
‘They don’t make much of a splash.’
She glanced at him. Was that humour? Sarcasm? There was nothing in his voice to give her a clue and his face was all shadows.
‘Your mother was the perfect mark but, instead of robbing her, he married her,’ he prompted after a while. ‘Did he fall in love with her?’
‘Making people believe he loved them was just something he did to get what he wanted, Bram.’
‘So?’
‘He fell in love with the image.’ His lack of emotion made it easier. ‘He saw a lovely old manor house with a couple of cottages and a hundred acres of grazing land bringing in a tidy income. There were ancient wax jackets hanging in the mud room, good-looking Labradors in front of a log fire and a perfect chocolate box Cotswold village. He didn’t steal my mother’s inheritance, Bram; he moved into it. He became part of the community, always ready with a generous donation for repairs to the church hall or the cricket club pavilion. Always good company in the pub with his fund of stories about adventures hunting down new oil fields for his clients.’
‘That was his cover for his absences?’
She nodded. ‘He used to bring me little souvenirs. A perfect desert rose, a fossil, an amethyst geode from somewhere in Africa. A little meteorite that he’d picked up in the Arctic.’
Precious, precious things that she had cherished, clung to through his long absences. All bought from specialist shops. All lies.
‘Did you ever doubt that he loved you?’
‘No.’ The word stuck in her throat. ‘No, I never doubted that he loved me but I was just part of his picture-perfect family. His English rose wife whose family tree made the upstart Tudors look like newcomers. His little girl on her pony at the local gymkhana. It was a fairy tale with him as the handsome stranger who’d arrived out of nowhere to woo the lonely princess.’
‘But without the happily ever after.’
‘No.’ She fought down the lump in her throat, wanting this over. ‘I was taking part in the show-jumping at the county show and the friend of a woman he’d relieved of her savings spotted him with me in the collecting ring. His hair was a different colour, he’d shaved off the beard he’d grown for the con but she saw him smile up at me...’
She faltered. He would remember what she’d said about Oliver Brent, know where the expression had come from, and she felt naked, exposed...
‘What did she do, Ruby?’
‘She went to the local police, certain he was running one of his scams. They assured her that she was mistaken. Mr Howard was a well-known and respected member of the community.’ She rushed on, wanting this over. ‘Realising that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with the police, she took her story to one of the tabloids. They ran the standard background checks and discovered that no one in the oil industry had heard of Jack Howard and there was no trace of him before he met my mother.’
‘If he’d had any idea it was going to be a permanent identity he’d have taken more care but I imagine after so many years he thought he was safe. Did they ever discover his real name?’
She shook her head. She had no idea who her father really was. He had denied everything and, despite all the publicity, no one had ever come forward to claim him as a son, brother, father...
‘They watched, waited and when he moved in on a new mark they told her what he was up to and asked her to play along. They installed hidden cameras, recorded all his phone calls and when they had it all they ran a big exposure piece before handing everything over to the police.’
‘They wanted their story before reporting restrictions were imposed.’
‘They wanted other victims to come forward. Some did but who knows how many were too embarrassed to admit to their family, friends what had happened to them?’
‘You said they were both dead, Ruby?’
She looked up at him. ‘You think I lied about that? That he’s in jail?’ She didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘My father was sent to the Crown Court for trial but cases like that take an age to prepare and he had a good lawyer. He was granted bail on the condition that he surrendered his passport, stayed at his home address and reported regularly to the local police station. When he missed his appointment they went to the house and discovered them both. The autopsy found horse tranquilliser.’
‘A suicide pact?’
‘That was the coroner’s verdict but my father was a sociopath, Bram. He had no conscience.’ Holding onto her emotions by a thread, she said, ‘It was my mother who was suffering. She’d been cut dead by friends, neighbours, people she’d known all her life.’
‘He had fooled them all. They would have been angry, embarrassed.’
‘Yes...’ The word caught in her throat.
‘I was wrong when I said he hadn’t stolen from her. He stole her life and now he’s stealing yours.’ He muttered something under his breath. ‘That’s why you asked about publicity. You didn’t want to risk being recognised.’
She shrugged. ‘At least you have the perfect excuse to divorce me.’
‘I wouldn’t use this.’
He looked almost angry at the suggestion. ‘No one would blame you,’ she said, ‘but it’s all academic now. Lori will already be texting gossipy messages to her old school chums and the story is too good not to pass on. Sooner or later it will leak.’ He wouldn’t use the story, but he wouldn’t have to. It had all worked out perfectly.
She eased away from his arm, pulled his jacket around her. ‘Thank you, Bram.’
‘For what?’
For not judging her. For understanding. ‘For listening.’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘That’s all. Just listening.’
‘You thought I would be angry?’
‘You have every right. I told you I’d changed my name because of a family scandal and you accepted that.’
‘If I’d known the whole story,’ he said, ‘I would have still gone ahead.’
She nodded. Of course he would. He’d wanted an unsuitable wife and he’d got one with capital letters.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a shock. What you need is a cup of tea.’
‘Tea?’ Despite everything, she laughed. ‘How long did you live in England, Bram?’
‘Too long, apparently,’ he said as, with a wry smile, he put his arm around her, encouraging her to lean against him.
‘No,’ she said, her head against his shoulder. ‘Just long enough.’