by Liz Fielding
They walked back to the apartment where Noor, working on an exquisite piece of embroidery, was waiting to help her undress.
‘There’s no need to stay, Noor. I can manage.’
Bram added something in Arabic and she bobbed a curtsey, said goodnight and left.
Ruby slipped off his jacket, placed it over the back of a chair while he crossed to a table where a kettle and a tray of tea things had been left.
‘Let me do that,’ she protested.
‘Sit,’ he said, filling the kettle from a bottle of water and switching it on. ‘Tell me what happened to you.’ He turned and glanced at her. ‘Afterwards.’
‘Nothing. I stayed with my mother’s nanny in Scotland while the lawyers dealt with the fallout.’ She shrugged. ‘She was getting frail, needed looking after more than I did, so I signed up for a business course at a local college, using her name.’
‘And your home?’
‘Sold. I could never go back there.’
‘No... And I imagine the victims’ lawyers lined up with compensation claims.’
‘There wasn’t as much as they’d hoped. The house and its contents, the cottages, the family jewellery, the London flat had all been inherited by my mother and on her death passed to me. Since I was a minor, the proceeds from the sale of the house and the rest of her estate went into a trust until I was twenty-one.’
‘As was right.’
‘My father hadn’t been tried, found guilty, but lawyers representing my interests agreed that his estate should be liquidised and the funds split between anyone who could prove that he’d stolen from them. His bank accounts, his cars, personal possessions.’ She lifted her hand to her chest to relieve what was still a physical pain. ‘The horses he’d bought for me.’
‘Your horses? That’s why you stopped riding?’
‘I’m sure the lawyers would have released money to keep me riding, Bram, but can you imagine sitting up there, taking part in competitions with everyone looking at me, knowing what had happened? Can you imagine what the newspapers would have done with that?’
‘I have a very good idea.’ His face was expressionless but she knew he was remembering what had happened to him.
‘I just wanted to disappear.’
‘Yes...’ For a moment their eyes met. After his disgrace he’d disappeared from the ski circuit, stopped playing polo, vanished from the society pages. ‘In my case the damage was self-inflicted.’
‘Why?’ The question slipped out before she could stop it.
He frowned. ‘Why?’
‘It was out of character.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘You appeared in the society magazines, lined up with other aristocrats and dignitaries at charity functions. All very staid and proper. The rest was all about your sporting triumphs. The romp in the fountain was a one-off.’
He looked away. ‘Once was enough.’ He dropped a couple of tea bags into cups and poured on the freshly boiled water. ‘You disappeared. What then?’
She continued looking at him for a moment but he concentrated on the tea, avoiding her gaze, and she knew there was a lot more to the story than that but he wanted her story, all of it, so that there would be no more surprises.
‘When I was twenty-one and had control of my inheritance I sold the family jewellery, added it to the money from the sale of the house and put it all into a fund for the women my father had robbed.’
‘I don’t imagine your lawyers were happy about that.’ He didn’t sound surprised. ‘Did they try and stop you?’
‘Yes, but I wanted an end to it, Bram. I kept the London flat because I needed somewhere to live, the family wedding ring that I wear, the pearls my mother was given on her eighteenth birthday,’ she said, touching the single strand at her neck, ‘and my great-great-great-grandmother’s engagement ring. I got a job and got on with my life.’
‘It was that easy?’
‘Actually, yes. People go through the motions, ask the standard questions, but all they really want to talk about is themselves.’ She looked up as he placed two cups of pale straw-colour liquid on the table in front of her. ‘I appear to have overestimated the living-in-England effect.’
‘It’s camomile. It will help you sleep.’
He had more confidence in the calming power of herbal tea than she had, but she thanked him.
‘There was no one close?’ he asked.
‘A relationship, you mean?’ She pushed away the bitter memory of betrayal and shook her head. If she couldn’t trust someone with her life then it wasn’t a relationship. ‘This is the first time I’ve talked to anyone about this.’
‘I thought Amanda Garland knew every detail,’ he said, joining her on the sofa.
‘She does, but not from me.’ Everything. She had to tell him everything... ‘I’d been at my first job for nearly a year when a girl I’d been at school with came to work in the same company. There was that same astonished, “Jools?” Within twenty-four hours everyone knew who I was.’ She hadn’t been sure which was worse, the faux pity or the prurient interest, but there had been worse to come.
‘Ruby...’ He sounded, looked so concerned that, without thinking, she reached out and put a reassuring hand on his arm.
‘The man I worked for said that I’d done nothing to be ashamed of, that it would be a nine-day wonder and I should just keep my head down and ignore any comments.’
‘You were that good, even then?’
‘Attention to detail,’ she said and then, remembering what had happened earlier, blushed. ‘I imagine I get that from my father.’
‘I’m guessing that didn’t happen,’ he said.
‘No. Jeff...’ She stopped. That part of the story had no relevance to what she was telling him. ‘Someone I worked with phoned in the story and the following morning I was on the front page of the paper that had run the original exposé. It must have been a slow news day because they reran the whole story, updating it with the cost of everything I was wearing, the salary I was earning, how much the London flat was worth. How I was still living a life of luxury, unlike my father’s victims.’
‘I don’t suppose they mentioned that you had given up most of your inheritance to repay them?’
‘The Trustees complained to the PCC and they placed a small statement to that effect on page thirteen of the paper about two months later.’ She held her finger and thumb a few centimetres apart to indicate the size of their retraction.
He let slip a word—clearly he had no love for the press—and then said, ‘You were a victim too.’
‘Not in the eyes of most people. I owned a valuable piece of real estate, had a decent job, good clothes... It was school all over again. I was a prisoner in my own flat, with the press camped out on the pavement, my phone ringing non-stop with hacks wanting my “story”, photographs of me on horseback to demonstrate my privileged lifestyle all over the Net.’
‘As if once in a lifetime wasn’t enough.’
‘Maybe if my father had been tried, gone to jail, but there was no closure...’ She shook her head. ‘I managed to slip out, took the train to the coast, walked along the pier—’
‘No!’ He took her hand from his arm and held it tightly, as if he would save her all over again.
‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘No,’ she repeated, wanting to reassure him. ‘But for the first time I understood why my mother had chosen that way out. Her life, as she knew it, was finished and at that moment so had mine.’
‘You shouldn’t have been on your own.’
‘I wasn’t. A fisherman saw me looking into the depths and brought me a cup of tea from his flask. He didn’t say anything, just stayed with me until I was ready to leave, then walked back along the pier with me and when he’d seen me safely back to solid ground went back to his rod.’
‘Where did
you go?’
‘To Amanda. Her agency had placed me in my first job and she called me, left a message to get in touch. She found me somewhere to stay, helped me find a new home, coaxed me into a new look, a new identity and then found me a temp job in a one-man office.’
‘That would be the very helpful stockbroker whose secretary was on maternity leave?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled, remembering how kind he’d been. Obviously he’d seen the papers, knew who she was, but he’d never said a word. ‘I’ve worked for her agency ever since.’
‘So where did Ruby Dance come from?’ he asked.
‘My great-great-great-grandmother,’ she said, spreading her hand so that the half-hoop of rubies glowed with hidden fire in the soft light. ‘She was a chorus girl back in the days when foolish young men drank champagne from their slippers.’ She looked up, smiled at what was a happy memory. ‘The foolish young man who married her was my great-great-great-grandfather.’
‘And this is the ring he gave her, the one that you kept,’ he said, taking her hand.
‘She was wearing this ring in a portrait that hung in the gallery at home.’
‘Do you look like her?’
‘She was fair, but my mother said that I have her eyes.’
‘Then I understand why your many times great-grandfather was prepared to defy convention and make her his wife.’
‘I...’ She swallowed, conscious that he was still holding her hand. ‘You said you wanted an unsuitable wife, Bram, and you’ve got the real deal,’ she said. ‘No one will blame you for wanting to be rid of a woman who kept her past a secret. If Sheikh Fayad knew I’d kept this from you he’d tear up the marriage contract right now without a second’s thought.’
‘That is not going to happen. I still need a wife, Ruby. I still need you.’
She sat back, the niggle that had been poking around at the back of her brain all evening finally coming to the fore.
‘Are you sure about that?’
Bram instinctively tightened his grasp on Ruby’s hand, sensing that she was about to slip away, disappear from his life as not once, but twice she’d disappeared from her own.
‘It’s a bit late to suggest another candidate.’
‘Is it?’ Her expression was grave, thoughtful. ‘This is a foot in the mouth question, Bram, but I won’t be doing my job as your PA if I don’t ask it.’
His PA...
At some point during this extraordinary day he had stopped thinking of her as his personal assistant, stopped thinking about this as a business transaction and he tried to pin the moment down.
Had it been when Fayad, negotiating her dowry, had tackled the question of settlements for the children they would have? When, having placed a ring on her finger with the vow that they would be joined for ever, he’d touched his lips to hers and felt her lips tremble beneath his own?
Or was it that moment when he’d seen the blood drain from her face and, without a moment’s thought, had said, ‘My wife...’?
Her words brought him back to reality with a jolt but Ruby had never lost sight of reality. Having spilled out the nightmare that she’d lived through—that had changed her life for ever—she was still focused on the reason why she was there.
‘Ask your question, Ruby,’ he said and, unwilling to relinquish the intimacy that had grown between them, he added, ‘Afterwards, if you need any help removing your foot from your mouth, I will do my best to help.’
She flushed. ‘This is serious, Bram.’
Of course it was. She was always serious. Still punishing herself for something that was not her fault.
When, he wondered, was the last time she’d had any cap-over-the-windmill, let-your-hair-down fun? What would it be like to see her laugh out loud, let herself go without a care for what anyone else thought, without being afraid of being judged for enjoying herself?
When, for that matter, had he?
‘I’m sorry, Ruby. Say what’s on your mind.’
‘Right...’ She took a rather shaky breath. ‘Are you absolutely one hundred per cent certain that Bibi has her heart set on a career in medicine?’
He frowned. ‘Bibi?’ That was the last thing he’d expected.
‘How do you know that she has a place at Cambridge?’ she pressed and this time it was her hand tightening around his. ‘What I’m asking—’ her eyes were velvet-soft, full of concern ‘—could it be that your brother invented her plea for help in order to get you to back off? Stay away.’
He’d been so sure that she was going to ask him to let her go so that she could slip out of sight, return to the hidden life she’d been leading until now. But she was still thinking of others. Thinking of him.
He was beginning to understand why a man like Jude Radcliffe had spoken so highly of her. She was not just clever, impressively cool—he couldn’t think of another person who would have dared suggest such a thing to him—but totally selfless.
‘So that he can hang onto the throne? Is that what you’re suggesting?’
She nodded, almost as pale as when a chance encounter had exposed her true identity, and he lifted his free hand to her cheek. ‘Have a care, Ruby Dance,’ he warned. ‘If you continue to demonstrate such acuity, such care for my well-being, I may not be able to let you go in the autumn.’
The heat of her blush seemed to flow through his hand, flood into his body and, without warning, the only thing on his mind was the kiss they’d shared, because she had been there with him in that lost moment and the memory of it was driving all his blood in one direction.
‘Are you saying that I’m right?’ she asked.
‘No. But thank you for being brave enough to ask the question.’
‘I think the word you’re looking for is foolhardy.’
‘I have the word perfectly,’ he assured her and, fighting the urge to draw her close, sit quietly with her head against his shoulder, her dark curls soft against his cheek, he let his hand drop, stood up, turned away so that she should not see his arousal. She deserved better than that of him. ‘It’s been a long day and we have an early start tomorrow.’ And before she could even think the question...
‘I’ll sleep in my dressing room.’
‘Goodnight, Bram.’
‘Goodnight, Ruby. Sleep well.’
He didn’t move until he heard the bedroom door click quietly shut and then dragged a shaky hand over his face, waiting for the longing to subside. It was nothing. A reaction to the emotional minefield he was treading.
No man could spend so much time up close and personal with those eyes, that mouth, and fail to be affected.
Once tomorrow was over and they could get back to work everything would fall back into place. He turned away from the closed door and, needing a distraction, picked up his phone, checked for emails.
There were a dozen or so and he flicked down through them until, without warning, he was looking at the photograph that Violet had sent of the moment he’d kissed Ruby. Living the moment again—feeling the silkiness of her cheek beneath his fingers, the softness of her lips, hearing the smallest of sighs as what should have been the merest touch had become something deeper. Want, need, desire lighting a match in the darkness...
Violet had said, ‘This one is just for you...’ and she was right. It was not a photograph to put in a silver frame on top of the piano. It was a photograph that a man would keep close, look at when he was far from home and then he’d call to hear the voice of the woman he loved.
He tossed the phone aside. Dammit, he’d spent too long in his own company, been too long without a woman.
If they’d been at the fort he would have gone for a swim, slept in the stables on the pallet that Khal used when one of the horses was sick.
The welcome had been warm here in his cousin’s palace but there was ine
scapable protocol, formality, the familiar suffocating confinement that had driven him to escape his father’s palace when he was a boy, seeking the freedom of the souk. The freedom that he’d found flying headlong down the most treacherous ski-runs in the mountains of Europe and America.
None of that had changed but he would not lie to himself; if, at that moment, he’d been with Ruby, her arms around him, escape would have been the furthest thing from his mind.
He retrieved the phone and tapped the name ‘Juliet Howard’ into the search engine, searched ‘images’ and there she was, sixteen years old, astride some seriously impressive horseflesh, laughing for the camera as she held aloft a trophy, her eyes alight with the joy of triumph.
There were other photographs that had appeared in an article on promising young riders. Her dark hair, longer then, loose about her shoulders and her face, still with the softness of youth, brimming with optimism as she stood beside the horse that everyone believed would take her to a gold medal. And then he was looking at her five years older, leaving her office hand in hand with a man who she was looking up at with the glowing smile of a woman in love.
Jeff...
The name had slipped out. She’d quickly changed it to ‘someone I worked with’ but this was the man who’d phoned in the story. Set her up.
The man who was quoted as ‘shocked’, had no idea who she was and felt ‘utterly betrayed’ by her deceit. The man who had destroyed her life for the second time.
* * *
When Ruby slowly woke to a soft pink dawn she did not need to get out of bed and check Bram’s dressing room to know that she was alone in the apartment. When he was near the air seemed to vibrate with the power he generated; her skin was sensitive to his presence.
She slipped on a silk wrap and checked the sitting room, expecting to see Noor. The room was empty but a table had been set up and on a snowy cloth was a jug of orange juice, a pot of steaming coffee and, under covers, an array of delicious breakfast treats. Fresh figs, olives, tomatoes, yogurt, soft goat’s cheese, preserves. She had just lifted the lid on a dish containing warm unleavened bread when she sensed Bram’s presence and looked up.