by Penny Jordan
‘And of course those of his financial ventures which were connected to his father-in-law failed disastrously.’ Giselle hesitated. ‘Wouldn’t it be possible to use some of Natasha’s father’s wealth to help the people?’
‘That money is tainted,’ Saul reminded her. ‘I don’t want to build the future of the people on such foundations.’
Giselle nodded her head. It was typical of everything she knew about Saul that he should feel like that. He was a man of strong principles, even if those principles sometimes made his judgement a little rigid. As it would be when he judged her?
The pain that she now had to live with had her heart thudding into a flurry of anxious beats. Think about something else, she told herself. Think about the people and their problems. Think about anything other than the unhappiness that lies ahead.
Although she had now seen the poverty in which this ordinary people of the country lived, nothing had prepared Giselle for what she saw when eventually they rounded the curve of one thickly wooded mountain and dropped down into a small town—the country’s largest town after the capital city, Saul told her grimly, after he had stopped the car. They were both able to see the devastation below them, where what looked like an entire hillside had simply collapsed and fallen onto the town, covering over a third of it with earth and rocks.
‘What happened?’ Giselle asked Saul, appalled.
‘A landslide brought on by unchecked and unsafe mining, allied to heavy rainfall.’ He paused and then told her quietly, ‘The area’s only other source of income came from logging. The landslide buried the logging mill and many of those who worked in it, as well as destroying houses that were in the same area. In all, nearly a third of the population lost their lives. Many of those who survived have lost their homes and close family members. They have lost hope as well. Hope and belief—in themselves and in their country. You and I working together could give them back those things, Giselle, as we have done for other people in other crisis and disaster situations.’
Giselle swallowed hard.
‘We can head back now, if you wish,’ Saul offered.
Giselle hesitated. She knew that if she saw those people, so much in need, she would not be able to turn her back on them—and she knew that Saul knew it too.
‘No. It’s too late to turn back now,’ Giselle told him.
Giselle was no stranger to disaster areas, or to people in need, but to see so many children, some of them dressed in clothes that were almost rags, all of them looking pinched and hungry as they stared at them in silence, tore at her heart and her conscience. If she had not known that they could do something to help, their presence here would have been an affront, an insult to their plight, Giselle acknowledged. The Mayor of the town, hastily summoned once Saul had introduced himself, kept bowing low to him. His words in the local language might be alien to Giselle, but their meaning and his fear and shame at what had happened to his town and its people were painfully obvious.
Watching Saul speak to him in his own language and then raise him up from his kneeling position increased Giselle’s pity for him.
‘I have told him that what happened was not his fault, and that we are here to help, not to blame,’ Saul translated for Giselle. ‘The problem for the town has been that it is too remote for them to be able to bring in the supplies needed to rebuild, even if they could afford them. The mine paid such low wages that the people could barely subsist, even though they had promised to pay those who worked for them very well.’
‘We can bring in the materials needed to rebuild.’ Giselle told him truthfully. ‘We’ve done it often enough before. We’d need to find a safe place to build first, though. They’ll need homes and schools, a hospital—all those things and more. And they should be built somewhere out of sight of the landslip, so that the people won’t have to look out and watch whilst the mess is cleared up. They’ll know after all that their lost loved ones are under all that rubble.’
Saul listened to the passion in Giselle’s voice, his heart lifting. He had known that Giselle—his Giselle—wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge there was here. After all he had seen so often already how she reacted to the plight of the helpless, especially when those who were helpless and in need were children.
Giselle found it far more easy to behave naturally amongst children than he did himself. He was always too conscious of the angry and resentful child he himself had once been, seeing his mother give the love he had craved to the orphaned children she’d dealt with in her work, to feel totally relaxed.
Selfishly, perhaps, once he had found love with Giselle his decision never to have children had hardened—because he didn’t want ever to have to share her love with anyone else. At some stage, but hopefully not for some time yet, they would, Saul suspected, come under pressure from the old guard of the country to produce an heir. When that happened it would be an issue they would deal with together.
He turned to look at Giselle to find that she was watching a small group of children, their voices raised in obvious anxiety. Half a dozen of them had dropped to the ground and were scrambling on the dusty floor of the school hall in which they were now living as well as learning, with shabby sleeping bags rolled up to make space for them to move.
As she watched, a larger child pushed over a small child who had snatched up whatever it was that was causing all the fuss. The small child, a little girl, made a shrill sound of despair as her palm was forced open. Emotion filled Giselle as she saw what the children were fighting over—a small and dirty plastic toy.
Poor things. The little girl was crying silently, tears running down her too-pale face. Without hesitating Giselle went to her, dropping down on one knee in front of her, brushing the untidy tangle of the child’s hair back off her face. She had only intended to comfort her. The last thing she had expected was for the little girl to hurl herself into her arms and cling to her, her small hands gripping her as tightly as small claws as she burrowed against her. Giselle was almost afraid to hold her. She felt so thin, her bones so fragile.
A tired-looking older woman approached them, gesticulating and saying something that Giselle couldn’t understand.
‘Saul?’ Giselle called to her husband for help.
He came over immediately, speaking to the woman and then telling Giselle, ‘She is apologising to you because of the child. She has lost both her parents, and whilst her brother has been taken in by another family because he will soon be old enough to work, and he is a boy, they did not want her.’
‘How old is she?’ Giselle asked Saul.
He spoke again to the other woman. ‘She is six years old.’
Six years old. The same age she had been when she had lost her mother.
Gently disengaging from the child, she told Saul, ‘We have to do something for them—and soon, Saul.’
‘I’ve already ordered some temporary accommodation. It should be flown in to the airport within the week. Then we’ll have to get it helicoptered out here. Luckily it’s summer, not winter, but I want to make sure they have proper accommodation before the winter sets in. We’ll work together on organising everything, Giselle. I’ll need you to design new homes, a new school, and that hospital you mentioned. Luckily we’ve got the expertise and the experience to handle something like this.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘But this will be the first time we’ve reconstructed an entire town.’
‘It’s a challenge,’ Saul agreed. ‘But I know it’s one we can meet—together.’
Giselle nodded her head.
Together. Surely one of the sweetest words in the English language—even if right now it felt bittersweet to her.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS DARK BY THE time they returned to the city and the palace. The light from the electric flambeaux set into the palace walls bathed the ancient stone in a golden glow that warmed it but also cast deep, dark shadows of hidden places and dangers.
Light and dark, truth and deceit, love and the loss
of that love.
Giselle almost missed her footing as they climbed the steps to the palace, Saul slightly behind her as he paused to speak with the major-domo. Instantly he was there, his hand on her arm to steady her, and the look he gave her was one of protective caring love.
She had to tell him. It couldn’t wait any longer.
In the familiar privacy of their own quarters she stood facing the gently lit courtyard.
The apartments had their own kitchen, into which Saul had disappeared, returning with two cups of coffee which he put down on the coffee table in front of the matt black leather sofa.
‘I want to get started on the reconstruction plans as soon as possible,’ he told her, coming towards her. He frowned when Giselle stepped back from him. ‘What is it?’
‘There’s something I have to tell you. Something important we need to…to discuss.’
‘What?’
Giselle took a deep breath. ‘Now that you’re stepping into Aldo’s shoes you’re going to need an heir. It will be expected of you that you hand rulership of the country on to a child of your own blood.’
‘Well, yes, I dare say it will be,’ Saul agreed carelessly, as though it wasn’t something he had given any thought to. Before she could tell him that she could not be the mother of that heir, he continued, ‘But not yet. You and I have good sound reasons for not wanting to have a child, and those reasons still stand. Right now the country needs so much done to help its people that the reality is that you and I will not have the kind of time to give that we both agree a child needs. Of course we will be based here and not travelling the world as much as we have done, but our time will still be committed to the work that needs to be done. An heir is still a child, and a child needs its parents’ love and attention. We both know that better than most, Giselle.’
With every word Saul spoke the tight band around her heart loosened a little more. She was being granted a reprieve. Fate was allowing her some precious extra time with Saul. Several years of time, according to what Saul was saying to her, and Giselle had no reason to suspect that he was not being honest.
Saul looked at Giselle. She looked tired and anxious, so he immediately went to her, refusing to allow her to step back from him this time as he put his hands on her shoulders. Their bodies were apart, but still close enough for him to smell her scent and remember how it felt to bury his face against her skin and breathe in the scent of her, as if he were taking part of her into himself, renewing the pitcher inside that he needed to keep filled to the brim with closeness to her.
The intensity of their relationship and what they felt for one another had shocked him initially. Whilst it wasn’t quite true to say that he had been afraid of his own passionate reaction to Giselle when he had first realised he was falling for her, he could certainly admit that he had initially been floored by it—even shocked by it. Wanting to be so completely close to another person hadn’t been the kind of thing he had expected from or for himself. Emotional entanglements of any kind simply hadn’t been ‘him’. His childhood, and what he had perceived as his mother’s rejection of him in favour of the orphaned children she helped in her capacity as aid director for a major charity, had made him wary of allowing anyone close to him, and determined never to allow anyone to breach his emotional defences.
And then there had been Giselle. Every bit as defensive as he was himself, and prickly with pride too. She had initially irritated him, then she had intrigued him, and finally she had fascinated him, compelled him to want to know all there was to know about her. The way they had chosen to live their life might seem odd to others, but it suited them, met their shared need for one another.
It had been Giselle who had helped him find a way back to his childhood, to deal with the demons that waited in his memory of it. The first time he had watched her interacting with some orphans they had accidentally come across whilst checking out the site of one of his hotel and spa complexes he had been angry and jealous of the attention she was giving them, seeing in her behaviour a reflection of the way his mother had treated him. But then she had told him that the babies reminded her of her own baby brother, and when she had cried in his arms for the loss of that brother, letting him see the full extent of the pain she carried with her because of that loss, his need to comfort her had overruled his other feelings.
Through Giselle he had learned to see and believe that when they helped orphaned children in need they were also helping the small, lonely ghosts of their own childhood.
‘When we give to them, we give to the children we once were. When we heal their hurts we heal our own,’ Giselle had told him, and he knew that it was true. However, her questions about ultimately passing on his role as ruler to a child of his own blood, combined with the look on her face earlier in the day when she had held the orphaned girl, made him ask semi-brusquely, ‘Are you trying to tell me that you’ve changed your mind and you want a child now?’
‘No. I’m not. I don’t want that,’ Giselle denied immediately. ‘All I want is you, Saul.’
‘Good,’ he told her, his voice rough and uneven with emotion. ‘Ultimately, yes, I suppose we shall have to think about an heir. But not yet, Giselle. I’m not ready to share you with anyone else. I saw how you looked at that little girl. When the time comes you will be a devoted mother, and no doubt I shall be ridiculously jealous of my own child, but I don’t want us to have that child yet. I don’t want anything or anyone to come between us.’
‘Neither do I,’ Giselle told him, closing her eyes against grateful guilty tears.
She wasn’t aware of lifting her face up to his until he kissed her, and then kissed her again, his kiss taking from her the poison of her earlier despair and pain. In his arms she was safe and protected. Nothing could reach her or hurt her there. In Saul’s arms was her home, her place of safety. Safety from the outside world, maybe, but there was no safety from the desire they aroused in one another, and nor did she want there to be, Giselle admitted fiercely as Saul pulled her closer, his arousal obvious.
They undressed one another slowly, in between kisses that grew longer and more intimate. Saul’s tongue was curling round her own and then stroking against it, that stroke becoming a thrust that moved within the eager sweetness of her mouth like the demand of a drum whose beat accelerated, turning the ache low down within her body into a grinding need.
Now, as Giselle pressed her hips into Saul, gyrating her body against him, rubbing herself against him, seeking the feel of his hard readiness pressing into her as urgently as the eager juices of her desire for him melted into the heat of her aroused flesh, all she wanted was him.
‘Wet…’ Saul whispered unnecessarily into her mouth, when his hand stroked up the inside of her thigh and then slid beneath the lacy edge of her briefs. His fingers parted the swollen protectors of her sex, caressing the smooth slickness that lay within them.
Her breasts felt like hard tight cups of flesh, filled with agonised nerve-endings full of sensual longing, all of which ended in the engorged sensitivity of her nipples. Her need was such that she almost wanted to tear the clothes from her own body, so that she could blatantly reveal to him their need for his touch. Inside her head she was already imagining him stroking her willing flesh, tugging erotically on the tightness of her nipples, first with his fingers and then with his mouth. A soft moan of longing bubbled in her throat, and then turned into a sob of agonised delight as Saul slid his fingers along her wetness to circle the hard ache of her clitoris and then slide inside her.
‘No!’ Giselle denied, but it was too late. Her orgasm had begun gripping her, flooding her with immediate pleasure, its immediacy telling her what Saul already knew. This would be one of those times when his capacity to arouse her and hers to respond to that arousal would take them both from peak to peak of pleasure, until the heights they reached were so rarefied that being there together felt like standing outside of time and reality, belonging to a world that was beyond mere human.
Soul
mates Saul often said they were, and at times like this Giselle truly believed that he was right.
In the lull of her orgasm they undressed one another slowly and with great sensual appreciation, each and every familiar place of pleasure was revealed to loving eyes, lips and fingers.
Saul’s erection, its flesh smooth and taut with the desire that flooded it, incited Giselle’s soft explorative touch, and her heart started to beat faster with anticipatory pleasure as she took control of their lovemaking, knowing that she held Saul in her power. She smoothed her fingers over his hot flesh whilst he lay on his back on their bed, his chest rising and falling with the fierce beat of his heart as he fought for self-control. A small bead of semen escaped that control, causing Giselle to smile knowingly at him and then bend her head to lick it delicately from him before stroking his hardness with her tongue.
Saul groaned and pleaded with her. ‘Stop doing that…unless…’
‘Unless what?’ Giselle teased him.
‘Unless you want this,’ Saul told her, taking hold of her and pulling her up towards him.
Triumphantly Giselle straddled him. ‘You are my prisoner, my sex slave.’ She bent towards him to whisper words against his mouth. ‘You can’t speak or move until I say that you can. You can only watch.’
Kneeling up, she lowered herself slowly onto his erection, initially simply letting the rosy-red head bury itself in her wetness, and then moving her body so that she rubbed that wetness over and over his erection.
She could see the muscles in Saul’s throat cording as he struggled not to move or make a sound, but the pulsing eagerness of his arousal got the better of him, and he groaned out loud, causing Giselle to tut and shake her head. ‘Now I’ll have to punish you,’ she told him, before leaning forward and flicking her tongue against the small hard points of his nipples.