‘Normally they hold the official Coronation for the new monarch directly after the mourning period has finished for the old; it’s meant to be a sign of hope after the darkness of grief, but, for several reasons, it was decided to wait for six months this time.’
‘What reasons?’
‘To give you time to recover from the birth. To give me time to get my business affairs in order. To give Dalmaya time to adjust to me and for me to adjust to living as a King. So if I decided to step aside and let one of my cousins take over—or if they wished to ask me to step aside—then it could be done with as little scandal as possible.’
Of course, this was as big an adjustment for him as it was for her. She forgot that sometimes. Not that he showed it in any way. ‘I didn’t know you were considering not staying on as King.’
She looked up at him but his gaze was hooded, his eyes giving nothing away. It was frustrating how hard he was to read. ‘I hadn’t intended to. I always loved being here, thanks to Grandfather, but Dalmaya isn’t my home. I’m too Western, too French. He held up his hand, turning it from palm to back as he stared at it. She followed his gaze, her own lingering on the strong, well-shaped hand, the long, elegant fingers, her pulse speeding up. ‘Of course in France I was always too dark, too Eastern. Growing up I didn’t really fit in anywhere. But I made myself as French as I could be. I restored the chateau, restored the vineyards. Made myself a success. Now I have to start again. Remake myself again.’
‘So why don’t you go back?’ She wanted to add, Why force me into this marriage? but managed to stop the words escaping. She didn’t want him to revert behind the polite screen again.
‘If it was just me then maybe. But Fayaz trusted me to do what was right for his son...’
Despite herself, despite every promise she’d made to herself not to allow herself to feel anything but mild amiability towards Idris, Saskia’s heart ached at the desolate tone in his voice.
‘So the Coronation is in two months? What does it entail?’
‘A day of ceremonies, parades, photos and feasts. I would like you to be involved in helping plan it, especially where the children are concerned. I would like them both, Jack too, to wear traditional dress. After all, he is your family and that makes him mine.’
‘Jack? Why does he have to be involved?’ Panic rose in her, inexhaustible and painful.
Idris’s brow crinkled in puzzlement. ‘I thought he would like to be included.’
‘But it’s public, right? The ceremony. He’ll be the focus of attention. People will want to know who he is and why he’s there.’ Saskia jumped to her feet and began to pace, agitation twisting inside. ‘His mother left him because she was no longer being paid to care for him, Idris. And every day for a month, two months, many weeks after that day, I prayed that she would be sorry and she would return for him. And then every day since I’ve prayed she wouldn’t. Because she just left him with me, Idris. I have no actual legal guardianship. It didn’t occur to me at first that I might need to, and then I couldn’t afford it.’ She swallowed. ‘And I was afraid that if I tried to make him mine, if the authorities realised, then they might think a one-bedroom flat and a sister who worked forty hours a week wasn’t a fit environment and take him away from me. But if his mother sees me on TV or in a magazine and realises Jack is still with me and I have money, or access to it, then she’ll be back, I know it.’
‘You love him?’
‘Of course I love him! I’ve raised him. He’s mine.’
* * *
She was a lioness, fierce in her defence of her cub, and Idris couldn’t help being a little envious of Jack, that the boy had someone who would always fight for him, always put him first.
He pulled out his phone and punched in a quick message then sat back and watched her pace. Saskia hadn’t lied when she said she was in great shape; she might have railed against her recent seclusion but her skin glowed, her hair shone and she looked fit and toned with new, enticing curves. Curves he couldn’t drag his eyes away from despite himself. ‘It’s usual for the King to take a tour of the country after the Coronation, an opportunity to meet all the different types of people who live here from the fishermen to the nomads, and for them to meet him,’ he said as if she weren’t still stalking up and down, despair flaring in her green eyes.
She halted and swivelled. ‘What?’
‘A grand tour. I know, it sounds a little medieval and obsolete when even the nomads have smartphones but it’s the custom. Only we’re going to go on our tour before the Coronation. The Council think it will help ease any fears about my dual nationality—and to be honest I barely know Dalmaya at all, only this palace and the city and the coastline where you were staying. My grandfather always vacationed there. It’s important I understand the land a little more before I am formally crowned. We leave on the first leg in a week. My aide has sent yours a list of what you’ll need. Your stylist is already working on your wardrobe and your assistant will make sure you’re fully briefed.’
‘You want me to embark on a grand tour? Are you insane?’
‘Not that I know of. I thought,’ he added silkily, ‘that you were bored. You needed a purpose. Here’s your chance. Time to practise being a Queen, Sheikha Saskia.’
‘But...but...the boys need me. The last couple of months have been a huge adjustment for Jack and Sami can’t even sit up yet. How can I just take off for weeks at a time?’
‘No taking off needed. At least not much,’ he amended. ‘Unlike my ancestors we have access to cars and planes and helicopters. We may need to be away for a night or two here and there but mostly we can fit each visit in in a day. It will mean early starts and late nights but you said yourself you’re well rested and raring to go.’
‘A few nights? Will we have our own rooms during those nights?’
He stilled. Nobody at the palace thought it odd that Saskia was housed so far away from his own quarters. Fayaz and Maya had shared a suite but his grandfather had always had separate rooms from his grandmother and his father had had several wives, each with their own distinct quarters.
On the tour Saskia and he would be visiting and staying in places far more humble than the palace and in this day, this age, people would expect their French King-to-be and his English wife to sleep in the same room.
His throat tightened. He had told her that her honour was safe with him and the implication had been clear—separate rooms, separate beds. He hadn’t fully realised the implications for either of them.
The thought of housing a discreet mistress somewhere chilled him. As for Saskia, did he really expect her to opt for a life of chastity? As Queen, the standards expected of her rightly or wrongly were higher, harder, the judgements harsher. The people would turn a blind eye to any extracurricular activity Idris might choose to indulge in. Saskia would be disgraced for ever.
A sudden pain in his palms surprised him and he glanced at his hands; he hadn’t realised that his hands had curled into fists until his fingernails dug into his palms. He didn’t want her turning elsewhere, to somebody else. ‘I don’t know any of the details yet.’
‘But...’ She paused, lips compressed, as his aide bustled in, two folders in his arms. He passed them to Idris with a bow, then bowed towards Saskia before backing away. Saskia eyed the folders. ‘What’re they?’
‘Answers. To some of your questions at least.’ He put the blue folder down on the bench beside him and held out the green one. ‘Here.’
Cautiously she took it, flicking it open. ‘What’s this? I don’t understand.’
‘The palace needs to be aware of any possible problems, Saskia. They’ve been monitoring my mother from the day she eloped. They’ve probably monitored me as well, although no one will give me a straight answer about that. And now you bring a new family into the mix and it’s a complicated one. Your father left a trail of
headlines. Well, we can counter that with the fact you’ve spent the last seven years living quietly and working hard. But your mother? Jack’s mother? Jack’s existence? They’re more problematic.’
‘So you tracked them down? I could have told you where my mother was.’ She dropped the green folder contemptuously onto his knee but her eyes flickered to the blue folder and he knew she wanted—needed—to see the contents. ‘She runs a yoga retreat in New Mexico, along with her third husband. She says she has achieved inner peace. That was why she didn’t want me to come over when it all happened. Too much negative energy surrounded me apparently.’ She was going for scathing, pretending she didn’t care, but the hurt in her eyes was unmistakable.
‘She’s no worry to us at all. Your stepfather...’
‘I’ve never met him. He’s no father to me in any way.’
Idris paused. ‘Her husband,’ he amended, ‘has some wild ideas. He’s written several books about UFO sightings and aliens amongst us but seems harmless. We won’t be inviting them to the Coronation.’ He looked at Saskia to see how she would take the news but she didn’t as much as nod.
‘Of course not. She walked out of my life when I was three and never walked back in again. She doesn’t even send me a birthday card most years.’
‘This is what we compiled on Jack’s mother.’
Her composure crumpled, her hand shaking as she took the folder from him. ‘I used to wonder what kind of woman had a child for money. Until I became that woman.’
His own words echoed back at him. He knew better now. ‘The situations don’t compare. Besides, you didn’t raise Jack for money.’
‘No,’ she said hollowly. ‘You know, Rosa was with my father for four years yet I didn’t even know she existed. He bought her a house, made her an allowance but she didn’t accompany him to functions or meet his friends. What kind of person is happy in that kind of second-rate relationship? She said she didn’t mean to get pregnant but Daddy was delighted when she did. Persuaded her to have the baby, promised her he would look after her if she did. But he still didn’t marry her. Didn’t live with Jack, help raise him, not properly. Just visited. I didn’t even know I had a brother until after my father died. I think that hurt more than anything else.’
He nodded at the file. ‘Go on. Open it.’
Her hands shook as she flipped the folder open and then she hissed a long breath. He knew what she saw. The portrait. A family portrait. Rosa with her much older husband, a baby in her arms, a toddler by her side. ‘She has more children?’
‘She married well. Very well. That’s Chuck Weissberger, multimillionaire retail King. They live in Connecticut in a riverside mansion.’
‘She got her rich husband after all,’ Saskia said tonelessly, still staring at the contents of the folder.
‘She did. And he has no idea about Jack. He’s very family orientated. If he knew she had abandoned a child that marriage would be over quicker than she could beg for forgiveness. She’s not coming anywhere near Jack, Saskia. He’s safe. My lawyers are petitioning for us to legally adopt him right now. Rosa signed the papers last week. I was going to get you a horse as a wedding present but I thought you might appreciate this more.’
The folder fell out of her hands, the contents spilling onto the mosaic floor. ‘I...you...what did you say?’
‘The adoption proceedings are going through. It does mean I will legally be Jack’s father. As we are married it would have been too complicated to apply in just your name.’ From a single, child-free businessman and winemaker to a married father of two and King in one step. From simple Monsieur Delacour to Sheikh Idris Delacour Al Osman, ruler of all he surveyed. The thought wasn’t as terrifying as it had been several months ago.
‘But how? I don’t understand.’
‘Rosa has signed a deposition to say you had been Jack’s primary caregiver for seven years and giving up her parental rights and we have statements from Jack’s old school in London, his childminder and your neighbours. The lawyers don’t anticipate any problems. They obviously need to interview you—and me as well. We’ll all fly back to the UK in a month for the final interviews.’
It had all seemed so simple when he’d put this in motion. The first day he had spent with Jack, the day of Sami’s birth, it had been painfully apparent that mixed in with the boy’s worry about Saskia, excitement about the baby and the thrill of discovering the palace and his first riding lesson, Jack had also been harbouring deep fears that a baby of her own might alter his own special relationship with the only mother he had ever really known. For seven years it had been just the two of them—now Jack found himself in a family of four. And something in the boy had struck a chord. Idris knew what it was like to be a child and unsure of your place in the world, in your family, that fear that everything and everyone could just disappear.
If there was anything Idris excelled in it was solving problems and the solution here seemed so simple. They were already a made-up family. All they needed to do was cement Jack’s place. But now, looking at Saskia’s white face, he couldn’t help but wonder if he had overstepped. He wasn’t really Saskia’s husband, Jack wasn’t his brother and they weren’t a family. They were a glossy PR exercise.
‘I thought,’ he said carefully, ‘that this was the right thing to do.’ Legitimising Jack’s presence in her life made things easier for him, for the crown, but it was also his way of making amends for forcing her into a life she had never asked for.
Her face crumpled. ‘I... Oh, Idris, thank you.’ She threw her arms around his neck, his shirt clinging damply as her tears began to flow. All he could do was put his arms around her and hold her while she wept. Hold her and try not to notice how good she smelt, like night-flowering jasmine, how her body melded into his as if it belonged there, the silkiness of her hair on his cheek. Try not to remember that this was the closest he had physically been to another human being for longer than he cared to remember. Tried not to remember how she used to feel in his arms, how he had once made her gasp. How she had made him feel invincible, an intoxication he had fought and lost against over and over. All he had to do was hold on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TEARS WERE A PRIVATE, shameful indulgence. They had been ever since her father’s death, since the moment she left Idris’s apartment with nowhere else to turn.
But now she’d allowed that first tear to fall. Now someone else was holding her up. Now arms were around her, a strong shoulder supporting her. Now for the first time in many, many years someone else had taken part of her burden and it undid her.
Saskia shuddered as great, racking sobs forced their way out: grief for Maya and Fayaz, wistfulness for the life she had planned and would never now live, guilt at how much, how very much she loved Sami, a love she knew Maya would be grateful for and yet that somehow felt like a betrayal.
Fear for the long years ahead, Queen of a country she didn’t know. Worry at being married to a man she barely knew and yet knew all too well. And now gratitude. This man she’d thought didn’t know her at all had realised the dearest wish of all. Jack was hers, always. Rosa didn’t want him, wouldn’t take him away. And the rest of his childhood would be safe and happy and filled with security.
She was barely aware of Idris’s hand on her back, moving in slow, comforting circles, of his mouth pressed into her hair telling her softly that it was okay, that it was all going to be okay. She was barely aware of the solid strength of him, of the way she fitted right into him, of his subtle sandalwood scent. Barely aware until, with a gulp, the sobs began to subside and then, then she was all too aware. Each circular caress burning hotter and hotter, the touch of his mouth branding her, every nerve firing up at the feel of his fingers. She tensed, regretting it immediately as his hand stopped its torturous caress, as he lifted his head away from hers, stepped away. The absence of his touch a physical ache.
/> ‘Feeling better?’ His voice was low, hoarse. Had he felt it too? That connection? Or was he just being kind, desperate to grab his folders and escape his hysterical wife?
‘No.’ She wasn’t sure what she was doing—although she was aware she was probably making a terrible mistake. But she also knew that she was desperately lonely. Had been for a long, long time and here in this palace, surrounded by people, in almost unimaginable luxury, with two beautiful, healthy children, she was lonelier than she had ever been before. She knew that she felt safer than she had for a long time while in his embrace. She knew that she craved human contact. Touch. Idris’s touch.
She’d sworn she would never be vulnerable again. Not in front of Idris, not in front of any other human. Sworn she would never let him reject her again. But looking at the suppressed need in his dark eyes, she was certain that he wouldn’t reject her. Certain that he craved her touch as much as she craved his.
‘No? I’ll call your maid. Maybe a massage and a nap will help.’ He took a step away but Saskia caught his hand as he turned, her fingers sliding into his so easily it was as if they were meant to be there.
‘I don’t want a massage. Or at least,’ she amended, ‘not from my maid.’
‘You don’t...’ With primal satisfaction she noted his eyes flare as he took in her meaning. ‘What do you want, then?’
‘We’re married, Idris. We have two children. You want me to accompany you on this grand tour, stand beside you at your Coronation.’
‘Our Coronation,’ he said huskily, his eyes fixed on hers.
She moved a little closer. ‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t answer, Saskia. What do you want?’
‘I want to remember what it’s like being me. Who Saskia is. Not a mother, not a consort. I want to feel like a woman again.’ She lifted her gaze to his, emboldened by the passion smouldering in his dark gaze. ‘It’s been a long time, Idris. Help me remember.’
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