Royal Weddings

by Clare Connelly

  “Or perhaps to prepare you for this life?” He suggested, watching her over the rim of his mug.

  Her eyes flashed with the briefest hurt, but she disguised it quickly, a smile bright on her lips. “I doubt he would ever have believed I would go through with it. He was in awe of my stubborn streak. Only my mother could persuade me to toe the line. My father and grandfather were particularly weak when it came to my wishes.” She dropped her gaze and he had a sense that she’d shared more than she’d intended.

  “And yet you did.” He pointed out carefully.

  “Did what?”

  “Go through with it. Your grandfather and parents are dead. It was my father and your grandfather who shared the great bond, the magical friendship. You had no need to carry on with the marriage purely to fulfil their wishes.”

  “Unlike you,” she couldn’t resist replying, bitterness making her tone acidic.

  He dipped his head in assent. “You seem to hold it against me that I married you because my parents wished it. Why does it bother you so?”

  She shook her head hotly. What a fool she was! How could she admit to him that her vanity was offended? That his willingness to marry a woman he obviously did not want was almost bordering on an insult. “The idea of being forced into marriage is... foreign to me.”

  He laughed. “You’re so contradictory you’re making my head spin. You don’t agree with arranged marriages and yet you walked blithely into one. How is what you did any different to what I did?”

  “I didn’t have a choice!” She snapped, and then immediately wanted to recall the words.

  But Tariq pounced. “No one could force you to go through with a betrothal. It was a contract of intention only. There was nothing binding. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for you to simply tear it up and walk away.” He was prodding her mercilessly, aware that she was distressed but too focussed on the answers he could sense were so close to being revealed to stop his interrogation. “If arranged marriages are so repugnant a notion to you, why not simply do that? Say no? Carry on with your life as though you’d never heard of me?”

  “My life!” She shook her head sadly, all the fight deflating out of her at his logical words. “You really wish I had done that, don’t you?” She stood angrily, dusting sand from her bottom with hands that shook slightly.

  He followed suit, and when she would have walked away, he kept pace with her. At the door to their tent, he grabbed her wrist. “Stop walking away from me, damn it, Rebecca.” A muscle ticked in the side of his jaw, and she turned her face away, finding it difficult to look at him.

  “I’m sorry!” She said stonily, but inside, she was a jumble of angst. “I’m sorry I can’t be the perfect wife you need me to be. I’m sorry that I’m your wife at all, when you obviously wish I’d never agreed to marry you. I’m sorry that our parents planned this union and I didn’t refute it. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Is that what you want to hear? If I had any other option, believe me, I would not have gone through with a wedding to a man I didn’t know for all the gold in the world.” It was as though anger had surged through her body and was tearing her apart. Her usual control was blown to smitherines by the intensity of feeling.

  “All the gold in the world,” he derided slowly, “an interesting turn of phrase.”

  “For God’s sake, Tariq, get it through your thick royal skull. I would have married a pauper if I thought it would get me out of the hell I was living in.”

  He had wanted answers. He’d pushed her to the point of distress, and now she’d finally revealed something of her true reasons for marrying him, he found he got no satisfaction from the revelation. A searing rage flashed in front of his eyes. Something unpalatable was making his ears ring, and his hand clenched by his side.

  But his voice, when he spoke, was calm. “And what, pray tell, was that hell you were so desperate to escape?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rebecca sobbed lightly, and squeezed her eyes shut. She’d gone this far, she might as well finish it off.

  “My parents.” She answered limply, pulling her hand free from his grip and wrapping her arms protectively around her body.

  He frowned. “Your parents? You’re twenty four years old, Rebecca. What can your parents possibly have to do with this?”

  She opened her eyes and stared past him, looking but not seeing the pristine water glistening in the midday sun.

  “I don’t know if I could ever make you understand what they were like, Tariq. It would be hard for anyone to comprehend but you, who has always been adored and coddled... you would find it impossibly foreign.”

  He pressed his lips together. “Try me.”

  She shrugged. “They resented having me foisted on them. They never wanted children. When mum and dad died, they became very unwilling guardians to me. Had they not done so, I would have been sent to a foster family until a permanent place became available.”

  “You may have imagined they felt that way. Perhaps you misunderstood,” he suggested slowly.

  She shook her head fiercely. “They told me. On several occasions. It was no secret that I was the bane of their life.” Her expression assumed a faraway quality and Tariq knew she was reliving a painful chapter of her past. “I tried so hard to please them, but nothing I did was ever good enough. My mum – my real mum – had always been so adoring. She’d spoiled me, and I guess I had warped ideas about myself.” Her tone was self-derisive.

  “You were ten years old. Surely you were entitled to a little self-confidence?”

  She waved a hand dismissively through the sun warmed air. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? It’s a lifetime ago.”

  While his expression was unreadable, his voice held a note of steel. “It matters to me. You’re saying that they made your life so unbearable you thought marriage to a complete stranger from a foreign country was a more palatable alternative. I’m having a hard time believing it, to be honest. I would like you to explain it to me.”

  She heaved out a defeated sigh. “What good would it do?”

  “Talk,” he demanded, taking her elbow and steering her back to the shade of the palm tree. She leaned against the thick trunk and stared up at his intensely watchful eyes.

  He crossed his arms across his broad chest, waiting for her to speak. Finally, she opened her pale pink lips. “I think my mum and my aunt always had a strange sort of rivalry. They weren’t close, by any stretch of the imagination. When my parents were killed, Winona did what she saw as her duty. I wish now that she’d left me to be raised by anyone but her.”

  “Were they abusive? Did they hit you?” He asked through clenched teeth.

  “No, no,” she shook her head violently. “They weren’t like that. Their abuse was of an emotional nature.” She passed her palm across her eyes.

  He thought of her dancing, and her misplaced belief that she was not talented. “They’re the ones who told you you’d never become a professional dancer,” he murmured watchfully.

  She nodded. “Amongst other things, yes.”

  “For whatever reason they chose to tell you such lies, why did you believe them?”

  “I told you, Tariq, you’ll never understand. To be told every day that you’re no good, that you’re too tall, too pale, too slow, untalented, eventually, that just becomes a truth.”

  The only sign that he’d digested her words was a slight tightening around his lips. “Why not move the hell away as soon as you could?”

  Her eyes were round with truthfulness. “They said I owed them. Raising me was an expense they hadn’t planned for. Once I was out of school, we arranged for me to begin paying back some of what they’d spent on my education. After board, there wasn’t enough left to move somewhere else.”

  He thrust his hands into his pockets and concentrated on staying calm. What he wanted to do was punch something. Not a violent man, the way his wife’s family had behaved made his blood boil with some completely unfamiliar instinct.

  “I
know it sound ludicrous, but at the time, I couldn’t see that I had many choices. They’re still my family. The only family I’ve got left. I hoped, for years, that eventually they would love me.”

  “But you don’t now.”

  It was a comment, not a question, but she answered it nonetheless. “No. When I heard about the contract our parents had made all those years ago... I saw my escape route. Marrying you meant I could close the door on them completely. I don’t hate them. I just don’t want to see them again.”

  He nodded, but his eyes had assumed an odd coldness. “Marriage to me was the only way to escape.” He swallowed. “You really didn’t care about the fact I’m rich.”

  “Of course not.” She shook her head fiercely to underscore her point. “Well, not entirely. Only in so much as it makes it even more impossible for them to get to me.”

  He nodded, but there was a strange twist in his gut. Regret for believing she was a gold-digger, and something else. Something that he didn’t dare analyse. “Rebecca,” and because he couldn’t resist, he reached out and took a twist of her golden hair between his thumb and forefinger, ran his fingers down its silky length. “I always knew I would marry a woman who was chosen for me by my parents. But forcing you to stay married to me makes me just as bad as your adoptive parents.” He steeled himself to release her and step back. His face was business like.

  “What are you saying?” She asked huskily.

  He drew in a deep breath, and forced himself to ask the question he feared he already had an answer to. “I don’t want a wife who is imprisoned by life circumstances. You didn’t marry me freely. If you had any other option, you wouldn’t have done this, would you?”

  She bit down on her lip. The words she desperately wanted to say stalled at the tip of her tongue. She wouldn’t have, not before she’d met him. But now, she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. But his regret was obvious.

  “If you don’t want to be married to me, Tariq, just be a man and say it,” she denied shakily. “You don’t have to pretend that you’re worried about me.”

  He pulled himself up to standing. “Careful, Rebecca.”

  She looked back to the sparkling water, thinking of her grandfather and those fairytales, wishing she could be a princess on a magical flying carpet right now and simply disappear.

  “Answer my question. If you had another option, you would have torn up our document of betrothal, wouldn’t you?”

  She nodded bleakly. “Maybe. Probably.”

  Silence sapped between them, long and awkward, filled with unspoken questions and no answers.

  His heart was a dead weight in his chest. “I understand. You must appreciate how abhorrent it is to me to be married to a woman who was virtually railroaded into it.” He steeled himself to be strong. “ You have done an excellent job of being my wife, but I realise now it truly was a job for you. How could we ever make our marriage work with such seeds for resentment sewn from before the beginning? No, it would never work. All I can do is release you from our relationship, with my best wishes.” He turned away from her, feeling physically nauseated by the certainty that this was the only course for them.

  She wanted to grab him, and tell him to hell with that. She’d married him and she’d married for life. She’d fallen in love with her husband, and the people of Assan, and there was nowhere else on earth she wanted to be.

  “And that’s it?” She demanded fiercely, the sight of his implacable stance angering her. “You say it’s over and we end it?”

  “Don’t insult me by pretending you’re not relieved.” He responded warningly.

  “I might have felt I had few other choices, but I still married you, Tariq. I knew what I was getting myself into.”

  “How could you possibly have known that? I, with more experience and a decade on you, couldn’t have imagined what our marriage would be like. How can you say you knew what you were getting yourself into?”

  “In what way has our marriage disappointed you?” She demanded, feeling a stabbing ache that wouldn’t quit in her heart.

  He brushed his hair away from his eyes. “It is pointless to discuss now. There should never have been a marriage between us. You were not free to agree under your own steam. Not really. It’s barbaric.”

  “You really wish we hadn’t married?” She began to shake with the knowledge that he didn’t want her. He didn’t want her. He was just another person who didn’t love her. Whom she had been forced upon. Apparently an unwilling accomplice to her escape plan. “Fine,” she said quietly, when he didn’t speak. “I’ll go, if that’s what you want.”

  He held open the fabric to the tent for her to precede him.

  “What I want is to have a wife who didn’t marry me as a last resort.” He muttered, crossing the room and folding up his laptop computer and the documents scattered around it.

  “I can’t change that fact, Tariq. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to be here.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I will go, if you want me to. But when I married you, I took that commitment seriously. This is your decision.”

  He closed his eyes. “You must go, Rebecca. A wife acquired under duress is a barbaric notion that I grew up despising. You must see I wouldn’t be able to live with that guilt.”

  Bitterness swelled inside of her. “As you wish,” she agreed finally, unable to look at him.

  * * *

  They drove back to the palace and arrive mid-afternoon, much to the surprise of their teams of domestics. Rebecca was sitting on the end of her bed, contemplating unpacking, when Tariq appeared.

  “I will go to Fattid,” he said without preamble. “I’ll be several days, and in that time, you can decide where you would like to go next. The jet will be at your disposal. We have homes all over the world. It is literally your oyster. Go where you will be happy, Rebecca. You are too young to be burdened by so much grief.”

  She looked up at him, her heart heavy with accusation, and unreturned love. All of the grief she felt in that moment could be squarely landed at his feet.

  “Of course, we have been trying to conceive a child. I expect you will tell me if you are pregnant.”

  She felt her skin warm at his words. She nodded slowly, her eyes glinted with determination. “Of course I would.”

  “Good.” He nodded, somewhat awkwardly.

  “Fine,” her voice cracked a little but she wouldn’t let him see how upset she was, otherwise.

  “So this is goodbye?” She stood, looking him in the eyes. Willing him to change his mind.

  “And good luck,” he exhaled. Then, with the sound of words that were dredged unwillingly from his most central core, “I want to kiss you.”

  “Then kiss me,” she invited quickly. And feel how much I love you.

  He pressed his lips against hers, gently, tenderly, and she realised it was a kiss of goodbye, a kiss he intended to be the last between them. His arms wrapped around her waist, squeezing her tight and she muffled a sob in her throat.

  “One day,” he whispered against her mouth, “you will make some man the happiest in the world.”

  She closed her eyes, willing the tears not to fall. She wanted him to be that man, but she was done forcing people to endure her presence against their will.

  “I’ll send you an invitation to the wedding,” she said with a stab at humour.

  He dropped his hands to his side and took a step back without acknowledging her comment. He simply walked away from her. Forever. Their marriage, after only two months, was at an end.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Leaving was simultaneously the easiest and the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life.

  With the knowledge that Tariq had removed himself from the palace, and their marriage, Assan looked immediately different. The way the sun shone had been altered forever by his withdrawal. How daunting the palace had seemed to her a few months ago, and now, it was home. The first home Rebecca had known
since her parents’ death.

  Farewelling the children was a wrench she would have paid money to avoid. The sight of their dear little faces, grubby but tear stained, would stay with her forever.

  Her staff were equally despairing, Monique particularly. “It is only London,” Rebecca said with a smile she didn’t feel. “You will visit!”

  Monique shook her head. “What would I do in London?”

  “Study Journalism! Get a job at a newspaper. You can do anything you want, Monique. Don’t let your status dictate your life.”

  “Easy for you to say, Your Highness.”

  Rebecca bit down on her lip, feeling ashamed of the white lie she had told. It had been easier to invent a reason to fly to London temporarily rather than announce such an early end to her hasty marriage. What would Winona and Greg say when they found out? She knew their insults would fly thick and fast.

  “Truly, Monique, come and visit me. I will speak to Tariq about it if you’d like,” she promised, knowing it was the last thing in the world she would want to do. But for Monique, who had been so helpful to her, she would.

  “That won’t be necessary, Rebecca. Now, come, your flight is scheduled to leave within the hour.”

  Rebecca nodded, eyeing the stacked suitcases in the corner. Apparently, royalty didn’t travel light. The clothes that had been packed were a poor choice for the life she would be leading. Without her marriage, she would be returning to her old job. Though not, she swore vehemently, her old life. The days of kowtowing to her parents were in the past.

  The flight to Fattid was a quick affair in a sleek black helicopter, and, once at the airport, she was taken by limousine to the Emir’s private jet.

  “Wow,” she breathed as she stepped inside. The jet, from the outside, looked like any other aeroplane. Inside, though, the standard rows of seats had been removed and it resembled a luxurious apartment. There was a large sitting area at the front of the plane, a dining table with twelve chairs, and then several bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms.