The Price of Royal Duty

by Penny Jordan

  He didn’t want to talk about Nasreen or her clothes or even the charities they were benefiting, Ash thought. He wanted to talk about them, about their child, about their future. But a newly pregnant Sophia must be protected and indulged, he decided, although he was unable to stop himself from pointing out, ‘Your idea to create scholarships in her memory was very generous, Sophia. By rights they should be in your name because Nasreen would certainly never have thought of doing anything so generous.’

  ‘I am happy to be generous on her behalf,’ Sophia assured him.

  The truth was that she wanted peace for Ash more than she wanted to do something for Nasreen, especially now that she was carrying their child. And after all, wasn’t it only natural that as that child’s mother she wanted him or her to have the full commitment of his or her father without any darkness from the past overshadowing him? What she could not and would never ask Ash for, for her own benefit, she could and would, Sophia was beginning to realise very determinedly, work towards asking for their child. That was the nature of motherhood, was it not?

  And the growing longing she was experiencing to feel emotionally closer to Ash, was that only because of her instinctive desire to secure a father’s love for her child? Why not? As a child herself she had known what it was to feel she had cause to doubt her father’s love for her and she certainly didn’t want that for her child. Wasn’t it only natural that she should be particularly anxious to ensure that her own child was loved by Ash? It was for their child that she wanted them to be close, not for herself. Ash, she felt, had been too hurt, too damaged, by what he saw as a failure within himself to ever come anywhere near risking breaking the vow he had made to keep their marriage emotion-free for its own safety. She would be a fool to allow herself to pin any dreams on that changing.

  And did she want it to change?

  The very fact that she couldn’t let herself answer her own question was a warning she needed to heed, Sophia told herself.

  The gel that had been placed on her tummy by the radiographer in charge of the expensive new scanning equipment in Nailpur’s new hospital’s maternity wing felt cold, and Sophia gave a small gasp that had Ash looking sharply at her. She had been surprised but pleased when he had insisted on coming with her for her scan, but his protective concern wasn’t for her, she reminded herself. It was for their child, his child and heir. Not for her the tenderness of a husband who reached for her hand whilst the scan was in progress, sharing the special magic of the moment with her as it united them emotionally. Instead, Ash was standing slightly to one side of her, so that it was towards him and not her that the radiographer looked when she announced a little breathlessly, ‘Highness, the maharani is carrying twins—boy twins.’

  There was no logical reason why the scent of Ash’s skin, as he leaned across her to look at the images on the screen being pointed out by the radiographer, should fill her with such an intense surge of emotional longing for the right to reach out and take hold of his hand and to have him look at her with the same mix of awe and disbelieving male pride in his gaze she could see he had for his sons. But she couldn’t deny the fact that it did. This should have been a special moment for them as parents but instead she felt as though she didn’t matter as herself, her only value in the room that was now rapidly filling up with medical personnel including the royal physician was as that of the woman who was carrying Nailpur’s precious heirs.

  It made no difference either telling herself that she not only should have expected this but that as a royal princess in a convenient marriage she should also have been prepared for it. Her heart bumped heavily into her ribs. She was delighted to be pregnant, of course she was, but she also felt very alone just at a time when surely she most needed to feel valued and … And what? Cherished? Adored? Loved?

  Her heart thumped again but no one else in the room including Ash himself seemed to notice or care. If only Ash would just look at her, just share this special time with her in some small private way, it would make all the difference, but instead he had his back to her as he talked with Dr Kumar. Could a man who could ignore his wife at such a special time give the sons he was so proud of creating right now the love that they would need, a true father’s love? The kind of love she herself had craved and been denied by her own father? Was it natural for a woman who had every reason to be on top of the world to feel so vulnerable and anxious, instead?

  Ash didn’t dare allow himself to look at Sophia. That feeling he had of wanting to reach out to her and take hold of her hand instead of having to stand by and simply watch as the radiographer prepared her for the scan had unsettled him. It ran so counter to everything he expected from himself with regard to their relationship. It spoke of feelings he had no right to have. And then if that hadn’t been enough for him to have to deal with, there was his reaction to the news that they were to have twin sons. The surge of joy he had felt was natural and allowable. A man in his position would naturally feel such joy after all, but that other feeling … that surge of protective anxiety for Sophia herself? That was because he was concerned for her as the mother of his sons, that was all.

  The medical staff were finally turning towards her, all beaming faces and delight for her, although it was to Ash that they spoke in answer to his brusque question about the risks attached to a twin pregnancy, as they reassured him that there was no cause for any concern, and that both babies were of similar, healthy weight and measurements.

  On the face of it they could have been any couple confronted with the news that where they had expected confirmation of the conception of one child they were now having the double pleasure and excitement of realising that there were going to be two, Sophia acknowledged. She tried determinedly not to allow her own feelings of vulnerability to spoil what she wanted to be a happy moment for them both, even if she had to accept that it wasn’t going to be a moment that united them as a couple, as well as parents-to-be. It was just an upsurge of pregnancy hormones that was making her feel so vulnerable and so in need of Ash’s emotional support, a clever device invented by mother nature to ensure that a pregnant woman did everything she could to keep the father of the child she was carrying as close to her as she could. After all, in prehistoric times the survival of both her and her child would have depended on the willingness and the ability of the father to keep them safe and fed. It made her feel better to be able to give herself this rational explanation for feelings that had made her feel so vulnerable. And it stopped her wanting that physical and emotional closeness to Ash that had so caught her off guard, didn’t it?

  She had her babies to think about now, not just herself. She was still learning what it meant to be Ash’s wife and to live by the rules he had imposed on their marriage, and the truth was that living by those rules didn’t come naturally or easily to someone who had always wanted to marry for love. Motherhood, on the other hand, and her feelings of maternal love and protection for the babies she was carrying, was as instinctive and as natural to her as breathing. Just like wanting to reach for Ash’s hand when she had had her scan. But that was forbidden.

  How many other things would be forbidden under the complex barriers Ash had erected against love? Would those barriers come between him and his sons? Would they, too, be denied emotional intimacy with their father? Sophia gave a small shiver despite the sunny warmth of the airy room. She must not look for problems. She must be positive and she must be strong—for the sake of their babies.

  ‘There is no doubt that your people will welcome the arrival of your sons, Highness,’ the royal physician was saying.

  Sons. Another unexpected pang gouged Sophia’s sensitive emotions. Had she been carrying daughters, how much of a solace might they have been to her as they grew up, members of her own sex with whom she might have had a special closeness that helped to alleviate the loneliness of being an unloved wife. Sons would be raised as future leaders of their people; sons would align themselves to their father. Sons would pattern themselves on that fath
er. Another chill of dread shivered over her body. That wasn’t what she wanted for her sons. She wanted them to grow up knowing what love was and valuing it.

  ‘It is a gift indeed that there should be two children, for us and for them,’ said Ash to Dr Kumar.

  Sophia was so delicately built despite her lush curves. The thought of her carrying two babies was causing Ash anxieties for which he hadn’t been prepared. Of course, it was only natural that he should be concerned for her well-being. He knew all about the loneliness suffered by a child who lost a parent, and it was equally natural therefore that there should be that core of anxiety within him for Sophia’s health and safe delivery.

  Suddenly, as pleased as he was about the conception of his sons, Ash was also aware of a need to withdraw into himself so that he could put a safe distance between himself and the dangerous intensity of the emotions that were threatening to take control of him.

  ‘I have to go,’ Ash told Sophia abruptly, still not looking directly at her. ‘I have a meeting I have to attend. Dr Kumar will arrange for you to be driven back to the palace and I shall have a word with him about having a nurse on hand there—’

  ‘No. That’s ridiculous and unnecessary.’ Sophia stopped him, whilst the medical staff discreetly disappeared, leaving them alone in the room.

  ‘I’m not sick, Ash, I’m pregnant—and healthily pregnant, too.’

  ‘You are—’

  ‘—carrying your heirs, yes, I know, and I hope that you don’t think that I would do anything that would prejudice me carrying them safely to full term.’

  Sophia’s feisty reaction warned Ash that she wasn’t going to allow him to wrap her in cotton wool.

  ‘I simply want to make sure that all three of you receive the best care possible,’ Ash defended himself.

  All three of them, when he hadn’t even cared enough about her to understand how much she had needed some small show of physical affection from him earlier on whilst she had waited to see her scan?

  She must not allow herself to become downhearted, Sophia warned herself later as she was driven back to the palace. It had been a shock for both of them to discover that she was carrying twins. Surely the knowledge that they were to become parents was bound to bring them closer? After all, it was what they both wanted.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT WAS almost exactly a month since her scan, but far from bringing them closer together those four weeks had, if anything, led to Ash putting an even greater distance between them, Sophia thought as she sat alone in her private courtyard garden in the welcome cool of the evening.

  Where the twins were concerned, Ash was scrupulous about keeping a check on their health and her own, but whenever she tried to talk to him on any kind of personal level he retreated from her and changed the subject.

  And most humiliating of all for her, as her own need and indeed craving for a loving gentle intimacy with him grew, along with her feelings of emotional insecurity, Ash had rejected her by no longer coming to her bed.

  Whilst part of her—the old feisty Sophia—longed to demand to know what had happened to the sexual chemistry he had told her existed between them, the new mother-in-waiting Sophia was far too protective of the future emotional security of the babies she was carrying to want to risk a confrontation that could destroy the increasingly fragile bonds that held them together.

  Besides, she seriously thought that Ash’s distance from her was the way things were going to be and that nothing she could say or do could change that, and that really scared her. Not for her own sake but for the sake of their sons. It was one thing for Ash to refuse to let her get close to him, but increasingly she was worrying that he might behave in exactly the same way with the twins, locking them out emotionally. Not necessarily deliberately—she knew how pleased he was about them—but because he simply couldn’t help himself?

  She had grown up with a distant father whom she had felt had rejected every attempt she had made to get close to him. She couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to her precious babies. But they would have her, and Ash would be a good and protective father in many other ways. Right now, because her pregnancy was making her feel so emotionally vulnerable, she was achingly conscious of all that she was missing as a woman by not having a husband who loved her, but it was the twins who mattered most, not her. There was no sacrifice of her own personal happiness she was not prepared to make to give them the security of growing up with their parents living together. That didn’t mean that she wasn’t right to feel concerned that Ash might not be able to stop his attitude towards her from spilling over into his behaviour towards his sons.

  In the privacy of his own suite, Ash paced the floor of his office. He had taken to working late into the evening, telling himself that he needed to ensure that all his projects were up to date ahead of the birth of the twins, but he knew that the reality was he worked late because that was the only way he had of blotting out the demons that were stalking him.

  It was illogical and … and unnecessary, unwanted and unacceptable to him, this almost constant need he had to be with Sophia. And not just to be with her. He wanted. Ash stopped pacing, a dark frown slashing his forehead. He had told himself that it would be no hardship for a man of his level of self-discipline to deny himself Sophia’s bed as a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of her pregnancy—after all, as good and passionate as the sex between them had been it was only sex—but the truth was that with every night without her, his desire for her found a thousand different new ways in which to torture him. Just the memory of the scent of her skin, the sound of her breath as it accelerated with the desire he had stoked, the small mewling sounds of increasingly out-of-control pleasure she made when he aroused her, all of those just by themselves were enough to have a need coursing through him that left him feeling as though he had been burned with acid and left raw and close to crying out with the pain of his wounds.

  He had lost count of the number of times he had woken in the night thinking he could hear her breathing, conjuring up out of the darkness the sound of her voice as she whispered his name so sweetly when she pleaded with him not just for the pleasure he gave her but also for the right to return that pleasure to him. How could one single woman in the space of a handful of weeks have come to have such a powerful effect on him? He had desired women before. But never as much as he desired Sophia, and certainly never as much as he needed the sweet agony the desire gave him.

  That he should feel like this was a warning to him, Ash told himself. A warning and a test. He must surely prove to himself that he could stay away from Sophia’s bed—in the first instance for the practical reason of not wanting to endanger her pregnancy in any way, especially as she was carrying twins, but in the second instance so that by the time they were sharing a bed again the need he felt for her would be under his control, not the other way around.

  Given all that, why was he right now walking down the corridor that led to Sophia’s room?

  She knew it wasn’t the sensible thing to do. Surely she’d spent far too many hours preparing herself logically for what her life with Ash was going to be like to waste all that effort on some kind of irrational emotional outburst, or even worse, the kind of emotionally demanding behaviour that was bound to make Ash retreat even further from her?

  This wasn’t about her, Sophia reminded herself as she hurried towards her bedroom door, intent on seeking Ash out to confront him with her growing concern about how his emotional distance from her could impact on their sons if he behaved the same way towards them. She’d been on her way to bed when the emotional firestorm that was now propelling her towards her bedroom door had struck, leaving her to pull a robe on over her cobweb-fine silk nightgown.

  Ash reached out for the handle to Sophia’s bedroom door. He should not be doing this. An ice-cold river of self-loathing held him immobile whilst also trapping his emotions in its familiar numbing wasteland. Even his heartbeat seemed to have slowed in tune with the emptiness tha
t had now filled the gap left by the rush of longing that had brought him here. His hand fell back to his side just as inside the bedroom Sophia pulled open the door.

  The unexpectedness of seeing Ash there, outside her bedroom door, obviously on his way to see her—where else could he be going, after all?—flooded her with so much happiness that she immediately reached out to him, her hand on his arm as she urged him inside her room, her joy showing in the warmth in her voice as she said his name.

  Automatically Ash allowed himself to be drawn towards her. Her open delight at seeing him was confusing the ice-cold deadening river of controlled self-loathing inside him. His gaze—the one that only seconds ago under the influence of that deadening flow had, like his other senses, assured him that there was nothing about any aspect of Sophia that could break through the barriers he had so regrettably allowed to weaken in the privacy of his own treacherous thoughts—could see the sweet warmth of the curve of her lips, lips which he already knew were so soft and incredibly responsive to his kisses that just to look at them was enough to have them quivering with longing, and her body softening with desire for him just as right now his was hardening with its desire for her.

  He must not think about that. He dragged his gaze from her face and then realised his mistake as it slipped to her body, its burgeoning shape revealed to him through the flimsiness of the nightgown he could see beneath her open robe. Her breasts looked fuller, her belly rounding. His heartbeat had picked up and was now racing, thumping, in fact, with the renewed force of his longing to reach out for her and take hold of her, to discover her newly forming body with his fingertips so that he could learn its promise and rejoice in the gift it was holding.