Her Royal Protector (a Johari Crown Novel) (Entangled Indulgence)

by Alexandra Sellers

  “Arif, I just want to say—thank you for last night. I’m…so grateful. And I want you to know that I have no expectations. If it stops here, I do understand.”

  “What do you understand?” he asked, after a short silence.

  Why couldn’t he just take it for what it was? Aly heaved a sigh. “I’m under no illusions, Arif. I know I didn’t suddenly turn into a desirable woman last night, after a lifetime of…” She faded off.

  “No, you didn’t suddenly turn into a desirable woman last night,” he said, and in spite of herself, in spite of what she knew, her heart contracted. “What is it, Aly, that has convinced you you have no beauty? Most women overrate their looks. Why do you not even give yourself the benefit of the doubt?”

  “Because there is no doubt. Don’t worry about me, Arif. I am the younger sister of a very beautiful girl whom my father admired and was tremendously proud of. He never let me daydream, the facts were always right there before me.”

  “What facts?” he demanded doggedly.

  She turned to look at him, the better to show him her face, and gave him a matter-of-fact smile.

  “Look, Arif, you don’t have to pretend with me. I know exactly what I am. Plain but bright. My father even apologized to me for losing his grip on things before he’d managed to bring Julian up to scratch. He’d wanted to get me a husband before it all came adrift.”

  “You are not plain. You are delicate and engaging, you are a peri. Suha herself told you so. Did you not hear her?”

  “I heard her. I wasn’t sure why she was saying it.”

  “Why? Because it is true. Why do you imagine otherwise?”

  “I do have a mirror.”

  “No, you do not have a mirror.” He stopped and turned her to face him, lifted a hand and stroked her cheek. Her heart kicked and her blood rushed to his touch. “Something else you have. The false mirror your father gave you. Aly—your father is a villain, you told me. He is notorious for what he has done. He must have lied and lied to friends, family, and clients. You called him even psychopathic. Yes?”

  She didn’t want to be talking about her father, killing the magic, and she was sorry she had started this. She turned away to start walking again, and found her consolation in scanning the sand for nests. The little dog, picking up on her unhappiness, licked her foot consolingly. “Yes, that’s all true.”

  “Do you think he ever told the truth about anything?”

  She shrugged. “Probably not.”

  “Then why do you believe what he has told you about yourself?”

  The two conflicting ideas collided in her head with a jolt like lightning. Aly gasped, choked, blinked, and stopped dead. She turned and stared up at him.

  “What?” she whispered, her throat so tight she could hardly get it out.

  “Why do you believe your father’s estimate of your beauty? Why do you think that in this one area Trojan Percy was telling the truth?”

  As a child she’d been kicked once by a pony, right in the chest. And that was happening again now—a sharp, hard blow between her breasts that knocked all the breath out of her body and made her heart race like a stick on bicycle spokes.

  “Did your father love you? Was he capable of love?”

  She turned her head and her eyes fixed on the curve of green hillside in the distance, staring till it faded and disappeared, leaving her gazing into the past.

  “No,” she said slowly. “No, he never loved me. I always knew he didn’t. He would say secretly vicious things that my mother thought were ‘his kind of loving,’ but I knew it was malice. Whenever he looked at me like that, I knew. I was always amazed that no one else saw it.”

  “And yet you believed what he said about you?”

  Her mind was lying on its back like a windblown insect, legs waving in the air as it tried helplessly to find its feet again.

  “But Viola is so beautiful. She really—you know, she got everything, breasts, legs, hair and face. Even her laugh. Trojan always said how unfair it was on me. He loved taking her around, he was so proud of her. It didn’t take me long to realize that I’d never blossom like Viola. Finally he said he’d arrange cosmetic surgery for me, but the surgeon he consulted said I hadn’t stopped growing and he wouldn’t think of doing anything for a couple of years. And by that time, it was all over. And it turned out I had stopped growing after all. This was it. But it was too late then.”

  His hand came up to cup her cheek and she couldn’t resist the comfort that went from his palm straight to her blood.

  “May that surgeon be forever blessed,” he said.

  …

  They doubled back along the beach, stopping for coffee in an outdoor cafe set on a small promontory over the sea.

  Arif was still trying to make sense of all he had learned. What kind of father destroys a child in such a way? She had described to him a constant sniping, a perpetual erosion of her feminine self-confidence that was as morally twisted as if the man had cut her tendons. His right hand balled into a fist whenever he thought of it. Evil enough if a child was actually plain. To destroy a daughter’s confidence in such endearing beauty…well, he would like to meet Trojan Percy one day, out in the desert where they could be alone, and teach him a father’s duty.

  Aly’s eyes were down, gazing into her cup, and he took his time examining her face. The memory of satisfying sex lurked in the corners of that rosebud mouth and across her cheeks, and he was the only man to have written that mark on her. Possessive hunger pulsed in his stomach and groin. She was a tiny woman, but last night he had buried himself deeper in her than he ever had with any woman before, and that was a mystery. With other women he was always pushing to find something that he never found. Some depth within that told him he was home. With Aly he had been there with the first stroke, and then all his seeking, his pleasure, had been going there again and again and again, in the knowledge that whenever he succumbed to the electric joy that swept him, there would be no disappointment at the end of it.

  A virgin. As far as pleasure went, she had been a virgin. He had not suspected it. He had been fairly sure that she had had only weak and selfish lovers, but that she had had none he had not once suspected.

  He had always steered clear of virgins. He might have struggled harder for control last night had he known, but whether he could have resisted the powerful compulsion…. Only when it burst over him had he understood the force of what had been building in him ever since the night he first saw her. And by then it had been overwhelming. Impossible to resist.

  Aly lifted her chin to the wind and shook back her hair, offering him her throat, and he remembered a moment when she had buried her head back into the pillow, sobbing with the pleasure he gave her. His groin kicked. She took a sip of her coffee, her eyes smiling at him over the rim of her cup. “I think it’s going to be a hot day. The breeze is hot already,” she said.

  Hot. His groin kicked again. He subdued it.

  If only he had known she was a virgin. A virgin is a special responsibility. When you knock at the door of a virgin’s womb, her heart opens to you forever. That was the old saying.

  He had no right to open Aly’s heart. He could not offer her forever.

  Wisdom and honor both told him that he must resist the soul-burning urge to bury himself in her again. But it was not so simple. Because sheer humanity reminded him that she already believed that he had made love to her out of charity. She was convinced she had nothing to offer a man. If he turned away now he might protect her from himself, but he would reinforce the damage to her feminine self that her father had inflicted.

  Stop now, or stop down the road. One or the other was inevitable.

  Never before had he felt this weight of responsibility towards a woman.

  Aly was a woman towards whom a man should have serious intentions. He could not have serious intentions towards her. He knew, better than anyone, how difficult a mixed marriage was. His mother had never been able to bridge the gap. He had sworn to h
imself that he would never ask that sacrifice of a woman. And Aly least of all.

  Overhead a helicopter pounded towards the landing pad at the resort. Arif looked up with narrowed eyes.

  “Shakira’s gift is arriving,” he said.

  Aly smiled. “What is it?”

  He hesitated. Maybe even this he had no right to do. He could not know what impact it would have if he first showed her her own beauty and afterwards abandoned her. Might she fall into an even worse self doubt?

  “Oh, please don’t make me wait,” she begged, and he found he could not look into those pleading grey eyes and say no.

  “She has sent you some clothes from her own closet,” he told her, and Aly’s eyes popped and her jaw went slack. Before she could speak, he said, “I told the Princess that I thought you two were a similar size, but she tells me that she has sent some fitted and some less fitted outfits in case I am wrong.”

  “But…but why?”

  “Because I understand your resistance to spending my money on clothes, Aly, but still I—still I want to show you your own beauty. And I think you will see it if you let yourself wear clothes that do not hide it.”

  “Oh,” said Aly, who didn’t often seem lost for words. He might have laughed, except that his heart was weeping.

  “Tonight, if the winds are with us, we can return here to Ausa Town, and I would like to take you to dine. Will you come with me this time?”

  …

  A few minutes later they made their way back to Janahine.

  “We can’t head out to Faatin Island immediately,” Arif said. “We must both get some sleep first.” And for once Aly didn’t argue. But in her cabin, she couldn’t sleep. Her father. Why did you believe him? Arif had said, and worlds had collided in her head. If nothing else, she would thank him for that insight all the rest of her life. Why had she believed her father, gone on believing him? Why had she taken his malice so to her heart, when she knew it for malice? It was a mystery.

  Not that she would now believe she’d been Viola all along. But those words, and last night’s loving, had freed her in some fundamental way. Now maybe she could begin to form her own opinion of herself and what she had to offer.

  And she would start at the source. She looked at her watch. A bit early, but now was as good a time as any.

  “Aly?” said her mother drowsily. “What’s the matter? Are you in trouble?”

  Or perhaps not quite as good a time as any. It must be barely morning in England, and her mother was never an early riser.

  “Sorry, Mother, I forgot the time difference,” she said.

  She could hear her mother peering at the bedside clock. “Yes, I see you did.”

  “But I have to call you while I’m in port, and we’ll be leaving soon.”

  “Darling, what is it that’s so urgent?” Her mother’s voice was sharp with anxiety. “You are in trouble. Oh, I always knew that trip was a mistake. Such a dangerous part of the world.”

  “The Gulf is pretty free of pirates, Mother.” Except for the brigand who had turned her life upside down. “I want to ask you about Trojan.”

  “Darling, I wish you’d call him Father.”

  “He wasn’t a father to me, though, was he? And I’d like to know why. I mean, I know I’ve never measured up to Viola in the—”

  “Aly! What an appalling thing to say. That is completely untrue. Whoever said you don’t measure up to Viola? You are two very differ—”

  “Trojan did, every day of my life. And I’d like to know why he was always so down on me. And why you let him do it. You could have intervened, and you never did. I really want to know.”

  “Intervened? In what?”

  Aly was silent.

  “Oh, darling, it’s all water under the bridge now, surely? Why are you asking me now?”

  “Because I haven’t had the strength before. Mother, I want to know. Why did he belittle me the way he did? Did he just have to have some outlet for his malice, and I was the weakest link? Or was his malice targeted at me for some reason? Because the things he said weren’t true, were they? I mean, I’ve suddenly realized I am not actually ugly.”

  “Ugly! Of course you’re not ugly. Whoever said such a thing?”

  Aly was silent again.

  “Oh dear, must we have this out on the phone? Can’t it wait till you get back?”

  Silence.

  “It’s because you’re so like your grandmother, I suppose,” her mother said reluctantly. “And the older you got, the clearer it was.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Because I’m like Grand?” Her father’s lovely, delicate mother, who had died far too young. She had often been told she was like her grandmother, mostly when she was being particularly outspoken. “Did Trojan hate Grand?”

  “Not hate, of course. But—” Her mother sighed. “Grand saw through him. She always had, right from when he was a child. However successful he got, Grand never…was never impressed. Trojan hated that. As it happens, she warned me well before she died that things would come apart one day and that I should be paying more attention. I suppose I should have listened, though how I could have changed anything—”

  She sighed again, for lost opportunity, although the truth was she had never looked further than the money. “Your father avoided people he couldn’t charm, didn’t he? But he couldn’t avoid his mother. Not if he wanted to inherit that house. She had the power, you know. So he put up with her.”

  “But what has all that got to do with me?”

  “And he couldn’t avoid his daughter, either. You’re the living image of her, more and more as you grew up, and so she was always there. You were his constant reminder that with his mother he never made it.”

  “I’m the living image of her?” Aly repeated. “But Grand was…Grand was beautiful.”

  Her mother sniffed. “Some people thought so, I suppose. I never could see it. She had a very successful debutante year, and there was all that story of the Duke of Rutland falling head over ears and courting her madly. I always wondered about the truth of that—why would any girl have turned down the Duke of Rutland? He was still wildly handsome years later when I was a girl. But it gave Grand a reputation for a beauty. I always thought her too idiosyncratic for beauty, myself, though no one could deny she had great charm. She certainly wasn’t ugly, and nor are you.”

  The memory of her grandmother rose up in her, and the delicate hand reached through time and touched her cheek again. You’ll grow up just like me, little one. I’m sorry I won’t be there to watch you.

  “Trojan hated me because I looked like Grand?” Then another penny dropped with a clang. “Is that why he was so desperate to get me cosmetic surgery?”

  She would never get to sleep now. Aly got up to pull open the little curtains and sunshine shafted into the room, lighting all the wood paneling with a golden glow.

  “Oh, don’t make so much of it, Aly. Of course he didn’t hate you. But you used to look at him with the same expression, as if…oh, I don’t know, as if you saw through him and he wasn’t worth the effort of looking. Everybody else would be swooning, and you’d ask him one of those out-of-the-mouths-of-babes questions. You know I tried to tell you about it many times, didn’t I? But we’d have a talk and then next time it would be as if I hadn’t spoken.”

  “But why—”

  “Darling, I want to leave this now. I didn’t sleep at all well last night and I don’t want to hear any more blame right now. Your father never meant anything negative with his comments, it was just his way. He loved you and if you’re honest with yourself, you know that. He still loves you, and he was far more distressed over the impact it all had on us than on himself.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Aly said.

  “There. You see? You’re doing it right now. But it’s true, Aly. He is broken-hearted over the way we’ve had to suffer.”

  “I’m glad for his sake if he is, but don’t you think it’s a little steep, Mother, coming from a man w
ho didn’t think it worthwhile to express remorse to the court?”

  But it was pointless to engage in the old argument, and a moment later they said their goodbyes. Aly disconnected and lay down again to think.

  …

  She awoke three hours later to the sound of Arif’s voice. He was on the phone at the nav station, and she heard him because her cabin door was open a crack. She lay in a happy doze, letting the warm tones of his voice wash over her in a comforting caress. She hadn’t been so happy since the age of three.

  Then she heard her father’s name. She sat up slowly. A gust of wind rattled the rigging, a sea bird cried. In the near distance a neighboring yacht’s radio wailed with music. Under it all, deep and warm, the sound of Arif’s voice.

  “The gold mining scam has no impact on the current situation. She is estranged from her father and it is unlikely even that the Kaljuks have made the connection.”

  In the pause while he listened, her heartbeat filled her head to bursting. Kaljuk gold. Her father had promoted those damned fake gold mines as the richest strike in a century, and sold it like candy. Trojan and the corrupt Kaljuk officials had romped home.

  “The Kaljuks have not approached her,” she heard. Pause. “Of course it was a matter of concern. But I have reason to be certain.”

  Horror washed over her in one terrible, hot wave. He had suspected her of what—willing collusion with the Kaljuks for money? Acts of sabotage against her turtles? Was this why he had made such passionate love to her? So that she would let her guard down and he could be sure she wasn’t in the pay of the Kaljuks?

  It was clear as day now. Do you know how beautiful you are? The humiliation was like boiling oil poured over her body. How had she fallen for it? How had she been such an idiot? Beautiful. She cringed to think how easily she had been overcome. Pillow talk, that was all Arif had wanted. To know the truth he had made her feel beautiful, taken her to bed, made such wild love to her that she might have been in a dream, made her…made a complete and total fool of her.