by Lynne Graham
‘So, who’s in charge of everything here at the palace?’ Chrissie asked curiously as their vehicle passed through glorious landscaped gardens before gliding to a stately halt in front of the ancient main building with its huge domed entrance porch.
‘Bandar, my principal aide, is the nominal head because he is in charge of domestic finance but my cousin, Zaliha, actively runs the royal household. Her sister is married to Bandar, who lives here on site with most of my personal staff.’
A smiling finely built brunette with sloe-dark eyes appeared in the doorway and performed a respectful dip of acknowledgement. She introduced herself as Zaliha in perfect English, tendered her good wishes and begged to hold Soraya all in the space of one breath. The welcome cool of air-conditioning engulfing her overheated skin, Chrissie walked into an amazing circular hallway with walls studded with mother of pearl. ‘Shells...seashells,’ she remarked in disconcertion. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘There’s quite a bit that isn’t quite so lovely,’ the brunette warned her ruefully.
‘Don’t give my wife the wrong impression,’ Jaul urged lightly.
‘You speak incredibly good English,’ Chrissie told her companion.
‘My father was on the embassy staff in London and I went to school there,’ Zaliha told her.
‘Oh, my word...’ Chrissie was staring into the cluttered rooms they were passing, rooms bulging at the seams with antique furniture, some of which appeared to be centuries old. ‘It’s worse than Victorian,’ she told Jaul helplessly. ‘It’s more like...medieval.’
‘And ripe for renovation,’ Zaliha told her cheerfully.
‘We will go straight to our rooms now,’ Jaul countered before the brunette could involve Chrissie in such a discussion and he curved lean fingers round Chrissie’s elbow.
‘Yes, sir.’ Zaliha bobbed another curtsy and went straight about her business.
‘I was planning to explore a little,’ Chrissie protested in a perturbed undertone as Jaul urged her round a corner and up a stone staircase.
‘Later, perhaps. Right now I have something important to discuss with you,’ he proffered with unexpected gravity. ‘This wing of the palace is entirely ours and private,’ Jaul announced as they reached the second floor.
As he opened the door into a clearly newly furnished and decorated nursery, their nanny stepped forward and grinned with pleasure at her surroundings. Two young women hurried towards them to offer their assistance with the twins.
‘You and Jane will have to beat off helpers with a stick in the palace. It has been too many years since there were royal children below this roof,’ Jaul commented, entwining Chrissie’s fingers in his to guide her further down the wide corridor. She was relieved to see that contemporary furnishings featured in the large rooms she passed. Time might have stopped dead downstairs in what she deemed to be public rooms, but in Jaul’s part of the palace time had mercifully moved on.
He swung open a door into an elegant reception room furnished in fresh shades of smoky blue and cream and stood back for her to precede him. She slid past him, taut with curiosity while the scent of him flared her nostrils, clean warm male laced with an evocative hint of the spicy cologne that was so uniquely him it made her tummy flip like a silly schoolgirl. Her cheeks burnished with colour at the reflection, Chrissie moved away from him as he doffed his jacket and loosened his tie.
‘You said we had something to discuss,’ she prompted with determined cool.
‘My advisers have asked us to consider staging a traditional Marwani wedding to allow our people to celebrate our marriage with us,’ Jaul informed her, knocking Chrissie wildly off balance with that suggestion. ‘There would be a public holiday declared. The ceremony itself would be private...as is our way...but we would release photos of the occasion—’
‘You’re asking me to marry you a-again?’ Chrissie stammered in shock.
‘Yes. I suppose that is what I’m asking.’ Lustrous dark eyes flaring gold and then veiling below black curling lashes, Jaul levelled his gaze on her.
Her frown deepened. ‘You want us to remarry even though we’ve agreed only to stay together until you feel a divorce would be acceptable to your people?’
His stunning bone structure tightened, brilliant eyes narrowing. ‘I don’t want a divorce. I haven’t wanted a divorce from the moment I learned that we had two children.’
Shaken by his proposition, Chrissie sank down onto a sofa before steeling herself to say rather woodenly, ‘I don’t care about what you want. I only care about what you agreed. And you agreed that I could have a divorce if I wanted one.’
‘But our children need both of us. I grew up without a mother—she died the day I was born. Children need mothers and fathers. I want this to be a real marriage and not a pretence,’ he countered without apology.
Chrissie sprang out of her seat, revitalised by that admission. ‘So, you lied to me in London. You just said what you had to say to persuade me to return to Marwan with you but clearly you never had any intention of giving me a divorce.’
Jaul stood his ground, wide shoulders rigid, lean, powerful body tense as he watched her pace. ‘I did not lie. I merely hoped that you would eventually change your mind about wanting a divorce. Hoping is not a lie, nor is it a sin,’ he assured her drily.
A bitter little laugh erupted from Chrissie at that exercise in semantics. ‘But you’re way too good at fooling me, Jaul. You did it two years ago when I first married you and I trusted you then and we both know how that turned out. Doesn’t it occur to you that I could never want to stay with a husband I can’t trust? And that going through a second wedding ceremony would only make a mockery of my feelings of betrayal?’ she demanded emotively, struggling to rein back her agitated emotions. ‘After all, you still haven’t explained why you left me two years ago and never got in touch again...’
Jaul was frowning and he lifted an expressive hand to silence her. ‘Chrissie, listen to—’
‘No.’ Her luminous turquoise eyes were bright with challenge and she lifted her chin, daring Jaul to deny her the explanation she deserved. ‘No more evasions between us, no more unanswered questions,’ she spelt out tautly. ‘You have nothing left to lose and you can finally be honest. Two years ago in spite of all your claims of love and for ever, you broke up with me, you dumped me... It is what it is.’
‘But that isn’t what happened...’ In a gesture of growing frustration as the tension rose, Jaul raked long brown fingers through his luxuriant black hair. ‘And what is the point of discussing this so long after the event? I want a fresh start in the present—’
‘What happened back then is still very important to me,’ Chrissie stressed, determined not to back down. ‘I think you realised that our marriage was a mistake and you couldn’t face telling me that to my face—’
‘No, that wasn’t what happened,’ Jaul broke in with sudden biting harshness. ‘When I left you in Oxford I had every intention of coming back to you. My father had asked for my help and I couldn’t refuse it. A civil war had broken out in Dheya, the country on our eastern boundary, and thousands of refugees were pouring over the border. The camps were in chaos and I was needed to co-ordinate the humanitarian effort—’
‘For goodness’ sake, you didn’t even tell me that much two years ago!’ Chrissie complained, her resentment unconcealed. ‘Did you think that I was too much of an airhead to understand that that was your duty?’
‘No, I didn’t want you asking me how long I’d be away because when I flew out I really had no idea,’ Jaul admitted with wry honesty. ‘I travelled down to the border in a convoy filled with medical personnel and soldiers. A missile fired by one of the factions fighting in Dheya went astray and crossed the border into Marwan. Our convoy suffered a direct hit...’
Chrissie was so utterly shaken by that explanation that she collapsed back down onto the sofa , her legs weak and her heart suddenly thumping very hard inside her chest. ‘Are you telling me that you got...
hurt?’
‘I was the lucky one.’ Jaul grimaced. ‘I survived while everyone with me was killed. I was thrown clear of the wreckage but I suffered serious head and spinal injuries and I was in a coma for months.’
In the early days of his vanishing act, Chrissie had feared that Jaul had met with an accident, only to discount that as virtual wishful thinking when time had worn on and there had still been no word from him. Nausea now shimmied sickly through her stomach and she felt almost light-headed at the shock of what he had just told her.
‘But nobody told me anything. Nobody even contacted me. Why did nobody tell me what had happened to you?’ she asked weakly, struggling to comprehend such an inexcusable omission.
‘Very few people knew. My father put a news blackout on my condition. He was afraid that my injuries would provoke a popular backlash against Dheya and the refugees. In reality what happened to me was a horrible accident and not an uncommon event on the edge of a war zone,’ he pointed out with a sardonic twist of his lips. ‘I was still in a coma when my father came to see you in Oxford—’
‘You were hurt, you needed me...and yet your father didn’t tell me!’ Chrissie registered with rising incredulity and anger. ‘Obviously he didn’t want me to know what had happened to you but I was your wife! I had every right to be with you.’
‘Don’t forget that my father didn’t accept that we were legally married. I had only informed him of our marriage the night before my trip to the camps and he was very angry with both of us.’
‘But you were still in a coma when he came to see me,’ she reminded him, her eyes darkening with disgust when she considered that aspect. ‘Your father actually took advantage of the fact that you were unconscious. How low can a man sink?’
Lean dark, startlingly handsome features grim, his dark eyes sparking gold at that challenge, Jaul breathed curtly, ‘He was trying to protect me, but I do not and never will condone his interference.’
‘Oh, that’s good to know!’ Chrissie countered with biting sarcasm. ‘He kept your wife away from you when you needed her—very protective, I don’t think!’
Jaul was tempted to remind her that his father had offered her money to walk away from their relationship and forget she had ever known him and that after that meeting with his father she had agreed to do exactly that. But now that he knew that she had been pregnant and had given birth to his children, he saw the past in a very different light. She would very much have needed that money to survive as a single parent and he could no longer condemn the choice she had made.
‘So, you were in a coma,’ Chrissie recounted stiffly, mastering her raging rancour over his father’s behaviour with the greatest of difficulty because she knew that insulting the older man would only cloud and confuse more important issues. ‘When did you come out of it?’
‘Only after three months when they had almost given up hope. I didn’t remember you at first. I didn’t remember much of anything,’ Jaul admitted heavily. ‘I’d had a serious head injury and I was in a very confused state of mind with only fragments of memory all jumbled up inside my head. My memories returned slowly. My father told me that he had seen you and given you the money. He also reiterated his belief that our marriage was invalid and informed me that you would not be coming to visit me.’
Chrissie had turned pale as white paper because rage was storming through her in an almost uncontrollable surge. Had she known that Jaul was in hospital, nothing would have kept her from his side! But while he had lain in that hospital bed, his father had manipulated the situation and played on her ignorance of the accident to destroy a marriage he had abhorred. How could even the most loving son deem that a ‘protective’ act? King Lut’s interference had been wicked, indefensible and cruelly selfish. The effort of restraining the hot temper and hostility mounting inside her made Chrissie feel sick.
‘I hate your father for what he did to us!’ she snapped back at Jaul in a small, tight explosion of raw emotion that could not be suppressed. ‘He intentionally wrecked our marriage and yet you still can’t find the words to condemn him. There you were...needing me and he made sure that I was put out of the picture. How can you forgive that?’
Jaul swung impatiently away from her, his fierce loyalty to his late father strained by her candour. ‘I must be honest with you. At that point in my recovery I didn’t want to see you either. I did initially intend to visit you when I was stronger but by the time I was fit to see you so much time had passed that it seemed like a pointless exercise,’ he divulged, tight-mouthed with restraint.
Inwardly Chrissie reeled as though he had struck her because that admission, that very dismissive terminology, was a body blow beyond her comprehension. ‘I don’t understand how you can say that it would have been pointless. How much time passed after the accident before you were fit to travel?’ she demanded, folding her arms defensively as if she could hold in the emotions still churning inside her. His self-command, his granite-hard hold on control maddened her.
‘It took well over a year for me even to get back on my feet again.’ His lean dark features were taut and pale with the strain of being forced to recall that traumatic period of his life. ‘My spine was damaged. It took further surgery and weeks of recovery before my doctors were able to estimate whether or not I could hope to walk again.’
In point of fact at a time when his whole world seemed to have fallen apart and he was confined to a hospital bed unable to move and requiring help for every little thing, Jaul had felt quite ridiculously unsurprised by the announcement that his new bride had run out on him as well. In truth he had been seriously depressed back then and traumatised by survivor’s guilt because military friends and bodyguards he had known since childhood had died instantaneously in the same accident.
In addition to his deeply troubled state of mind and his belief that his father had bought Chrissie’s loyalty off, he had been painfully aware that he and Chrissie had parted on very bad terms in Oxford. She’d been angry with him for leaving her behind. In so many ways back then Chrissie had been an idealistic dreamer and, while he had loved those traits so very different from his own, he had also seen them as a potential weakness should life ever become tough. What could be tougher for a youthful bride than a husband suddenly sentenced to a wheelchair? Ultimately, his conviction that their marriage was invalid as his father had asserted had played the biggest role in his lack of action. After all, if Chrissie wasn’t even his wife what possible claim could he have on her?
‘But surely by that stage you must’ve had access to a phone and to visitors and you could have contacted me yourself?’ Chrissie pressed accusingly.
Jaul’s broad shoulders went rigid, his jawline squaring at an aggressive slant. ‘I was in a wheelchair...what would I have said to you? I will be frank—I did not want to approach you as a disabled man. You had accepted a five-million-pound settlement from my father and I assumed that money was all you had ever really wanted from me.’
Chrissie was outraged that Jaul had believed that she had taken his father’s money and run. Without a doubt he had found that easier than confronting her with his disability and the risk that he might not regain the use of his legs. Jaul, the original action man and macho to the core, was very physical in his tastes. Deprived of his freedom of movement, forced to accept such bodily weakness and restriction, how must he have felt? But Chrissie suppressed that more empathetic thought and tried to concentrate purely on facts. Jaul, she realised with a sinking heart, had put his wretched pride first when he’d chosen not to approach her in a wheelchair and that truth hurt her more than anything else.
‘But I didn’t actually accept the money,’ she whispered almost absently, so deep was her sense of rejection that he had found it impossible to reach out to her even when he was injured.
‘You did.’
‘No, I didn’t. Your father left a bank draft for a ludicrous five million pounds on the table but I never cashed it.’
‘But you said you had
plenty of money when I first saw you again and naturally I assumed—’
‘Only I wasn’t referring to your father’s bank draft,’ Chrissie cut in ruefully. ‘Cesare bought the Greek island which my sister and I had inherited from our mother. My share of the purchase price was very generous. I bought my apartment with some of it and put the rest into trust until my twenty-fifth birthday next year. That’s what I meant about having plenty of money. I didn’t touch a penny of your father’s cash. I left that bank draft lying on the table.’
Jaul was transfixed by that claim. His keen gaze lowered, ebony brows drawing together in a frown. Five million pounds had impressed even him as an enormous sum to offer as a bribe to a young woman from an impoverished background. People lied, cheated and killed for far less money than Chrissie had been given. That was the main reason why he had never questioned his father’s story but now he was determined to check out her story for himself. Could it be true that she had not claimed that money?
‘When did my father’s visit take place?’ Jaul asked abruptly.
‘About two months after you left and he was in a rage when I met him. You once told me he spoke English but he didn’t use any within my hearing. His companion had to translate everything he said.’
‘He had someone with him...aside of his bodyguards?’ Jaul shot the question at her in frowning surprise. ‘Describe him.’
‘Small, sixtyish, goatee beard and spectacles.’
Jaul fell very still as soon as he realised that there was a living witness to his father’s meeting with his wife. ‘My father’s adviser, Yusuf,’ he identified without hesitation, reflecting that Yusuf would be receiving a visit from him in the near future. Chrissie’s allegations demanded and deserved closer scrutiny. If she hadn’t taken the money, what had happened to it and why hadn’t he been told? Keeping him unaware of the fact that his wife hadn’t used the bank draft had ensured that he would misjudge her. It wasn’t a thought that Jaul wanted to have but he knew that his father must’ve been informed that that bank draft had not been cashed.