* * *
It was a beautiful palace, and Cordelia seemed to be its only occupant, save for the small army of servants who were so discreet as to be nonexistent. She surrendered to the temptation of the hammam baths, lying naked on a long marble slab in the steamy heat while a dark-skinned woman rubbed scented oil into her skin and pummelled and kneaded her tired muscles until she felt as if her bones had been removed. She lay, wrapped in a towel, quite limp, as the steam from the water poured over hot stones wafted around her, then allowed herself to be led to the deep-green pool, gasping as the icy water enveloped her.
More oils made her skin feel softer than she had ever known it. Her hair was braided, and she was dressed in a long silk tunic in her favourite shade of blue, the hem and cuffs intricately beaded with turquoise, her only other garments a pair of organdy pantaloons pleated into the waist and held under the tunic with a belt made of gold threads, with matching slippers.
Cleansed, invigorated and looking satisfyingly like one of the illustrations from One Thousand and One Nights, Cordelia felt sufficiently restored to take herself to task. How many times in the past ten years had she wished herself here? And now here she was, and instead of thinking about Celia, she was obsessively dissecting a betrothal that wasn’t even real. What’s more, she was in danger of compromising the one thing she’d fought so hard to earn over this past decade, and that was her precious independence. She didn’t need Iain to be at her side when she met Celia. She didn’t need Iain by her side at all.
This, while true, was not at all palatable, for the thought of not having Iain in her life made her feel quite sick. She had obviously become far too accustomed to him, that was all. She had spent too much time in his company.
Though two years with Gideon had not made her feel like this.
Two years with Iain, and she would almost certainly feel the same indifference she felt for Gideon, Cordelia told herself stoically, ignoring the fact that she’d never felt for Gideon what she felt for Iain. Iain, who had kissed her last night as if—as if he did not want to stop kissing her. Iain, who had said he suspected no one could compare to Cordelia.
‘Which meant absolutely nothing more than that I am different from every other female,’ she said to herself firmly. Which was most likely true, but not necessarily a good thing. Men did not want their wives to have a past. They did not want their wives to challenge them and upbraid them and they certainly didn’t want them to be independent. Not that a wife could ever be independent. Not that she was thinking that she wanted to be Iain’s wife, even if he did want her, which he didn’t, and...
‘Devil take it, what is the point in thinking about any of this when I leave first thing tomorrow morning?’
* * *
She had been pacing the innermost courtyard of the palace, working her way round the colonnades which bordered it. At the corner of each was a fountain. Iain stood at the one diagonally opposite her. He was wearing a long dark blue tunic. It suited him, the silk caressing his lean frame, clinging to the long length of his legs. His feet were, like hers, clad in leather slippers. The colour of the tunic made his eyes seem even bluer, though that surely was not possible.
‘You look—you look as if you belong here,’ Cordelia said, unable to take her eyes off him.
‘I like it here. I’ve just spent the last half-hour being beaten up by a ferocious man wearing only a towel.’ Iain grinned. ‘I feel as though my bones have been broken and put back together. I could get used to this. Are you still worried about Celia?’
‘I don’t want to talk about Celia.’
Iain crossed the courtyard. ‘I’m not much interested in her either right now, I confess. I’m not the only one who looks as if he belongs here. You look like you should be in a harem.’
‘They don’t have harems here in A’Qadiz. Not the sort of places you imagine anyway. My sister would not tolerate it.’
‘I thought we’d agreed we weren’t going to talk about your sister?’ Iain ran his hand down her arm, shoulder to wrist. ‘Call me old-fashioned, but when I see you like this, I can understand why the men of this country used to lock their women out of sight. Have you anything on at all under this thing?’
She lifted the hem of her tunic, revealing the flimsy pantaloons, and heard his sharp intake of breath. ‘Dear God, Cordelia, I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep my mind on what I need to say when you look like that.’
She knew then that she had been fooling herself. He had come to say goodbye, and she didn’t think she could bear it, because it was suddenly, horribly and fatally apparent that the turmoil she was going through was love. It was the only thing that made sense. She had fallen in love with him.
‘What’s wrong? You look as if you’ve been shot.’
Stabbed through the heart, more like. ‘Indigestion,’ she said, though she had barely touched the food which had been served to her.
Iain was frowning. ‘Look, I know you’ve a lot on your mind. I was going to wait until you saw Celia—you see, there’s no getting away from her, it seems—but I can’t. You might be gone days. Weeks. I don’t know how long you will be gone, and I know the timing is not right, but when would the timing ever be right for such a thing and...’
He was nervous. ‘You don’t want to lie to Celia’s husband. You’re right. I shouldn’t have asked you. It doesn’t matter now anyway, you can tell him as soon as you meet him, since Celia will not be with him and...’
‘This is not about Celia or Celia’s husband,’ Iain interrupted. ‘I’m sick to the back teeth of talking of the pair of them, if you must know. Cordelia, ever since last night...’
‘I know. You need not fear, I did not take it seriously,’ she said quickly. Her voice was pitched too high. She sounded odd. No wonder Iain was looking at her strangely.
‘Cordelia, would you just hold your tongue and let me speak? This is hard enough to say without you interrupting me. In fact, I wasn’t going to say anything...’
‘Until I saw Celia.’ Goodbye is what he was trying to say, and she didn’t think she could bear it. ‘Don’t say it, Iain, because—because...’ If he didn’t say it, then she could carry on pretending. But he had had enough of the lies. He had said so just today, she remembered, so the worst thing, the very worst thing she could do would be to tell him how she felt, and if she opened her mouth again, she was afraid that the words would come tumbling out. So there was only one thing to do.
‘I’ll be leaving first thing in the morning,’ Cordelia said. ‘And even though I am not really the type of woman to be taken in by the romance of the desert and the stars, to say nothing of a royal palace and a very, very attractive man, I cannot help thinking it would be a terrible shame to let such a rare combination go to waste. Look at us, Iain. We look as if we belong here. A desert prince and his concubine. Let us pretend, just for one night, one last night, that is what we are.’
‘I won’t think of you as a concubine.’
‘A princess then.’ He was still looking at her strangely. He still seemed as if he would persist in saying what she did not want to hear. So Cordelia twined her arms around him, and pressed her body against his. ‘Just for tonight Iain, let’s not talk. Let’s just enjoy what we have,’ she whispered, and kissed him.
He surrendered to her with a low groan, kissing her back, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her tight against him. He was hard. There was something extremely sensual about the slither of silk against his erection. She deliberately rubbed herself against him.
He swore, tearing his mouth away from hers. ‘Cordelia, if you carry on like that, I’ll never remember what I came to say, let alone actually say it.’
‘Then don’t.’
She pulled him back towards her, and kissed him again. His hands slipped on the silk of her tunic. Delightful, but it was getting in the way. She grabbed his wrist
and tugged him towards the nearest of the rooms which lay cool behind the terrace. The bathing chamber. She was about to try another, softer room, when the low marble counter, similar to the one on which she had been massaged, caught her attention.
‘Take it off,’ she said, tugging at his tunic, pulling her own over her head. The soft hiss of his breath expelling told her he liked what he saw, as she stood before him naked from the waist up, draped in perfectly translucent organza from the waist down. But tonight was not about what Iain could make her feel, it was about what she could do to him. This might be their last time. It might be the only time she could make love to him and love him. She was going to make sure he remembered it.
Lifting his tunic at the hem, she helped him ease it over his head. He was completely naked underneath, had already lost his slippers. She feasted her eyes on his body, on the lean, long lines of him, feeling herself heat, tighten, at the sight of his obvious arousal. She kissed him extravagantly, curling herself around him, pressing herself into him, her mouth clinging, her hands roaming, trying to memorise every inch of him, dragging her lips away only to lead him to the marble bench.
‘What are you doing?’
She smiled at him, the smile she knew he could not resist, the smile he called smouldering. ‘When in Rome,’ she said, indicating that he should lie down. ‘Or rather, when in a harem.’
She picked up the bottle of oil from the shelf by the mirror and tipped some on to her hands before climbing up beside him, kneeling between his legs, to smooth the oil over him in one sweeping movement, from chest to belly, then back up. His skin glistened in the soft lamp light. His muscles clenched and rippled under the sliding palms of her hands. She picked up the bottle and smoothed on more oil, until he was sleek with it, and then she lay down on top of him, her breasts sliding over his chest, their skin clinging, sliding.
When he said her name, his voice was hoarse. She kissed him lingeringly, then lifted herself just a fraction, allowing her nipples to graze his chest, his belly, and his shaft.
He swore. That word he had used back in Glasgow that first day. She teased him again, kissing him first, then working her way back down from chest, to belly, to the straining length of his erection.
‘Take those things off, Cordelia. I need to be inside you.’
She shook her head, circling her fingers around him. Her hands, slick with oil, slid up with ease. Iain closed his eyes. His hands curled into tight fists. She slid her hand down to the base of his shaft, leaning over him, so that he was nestled between her breasts. ‘Open your eyes, Iain. I want you to watch.’
‘You will kill me.’
‘No.’ She kissed him again, forcing him to kiss her back slowly. ‘I won’t kill you,’ she whispered, ‘but I will make sure you never forget this.’
‘Cordelia, I don’t know what you’re planning to do, but I can assure there’s no need. This is already more than memorable, but if you don’t take those things off and let me— It will be memorable for all the wrong reasons.’
She laughed then. ‘Iain Hunter, I think you underestimate us both,’ she said, and began her assault.
This time, she did not hesitate. She remembered how he had kissed her in this most intimate of ways, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss him in the same way, her tongue flicking over his tip, her lips nuzzling down the length of him and back. She glanced down at him. His eyes were wide open, utterly focused. She wrapped her hand around his member and stroked him, then dipped her head back down to kiss the tip once more.
His chest rose and fell rapidly, but he lay rigid, holding himself clenched tight, his eyes riveted on her. She opened her lips, and took him inside her, letting her mouth do the work of her hands, letting her tongue slide over his most sensitive part as his had slid over hers. She forgot herself as she kissed him, stroked him, tenderly, lovingly and then finally, when she sensed he was about to lose control, passionately.
As his climax tore through him, he pulled her up against him, kissing her wildly, his arms like manacles, binding her body to him as he came, his heart hammering against hers, his mouth hot, hard on hers, and between them, the shuddering, pulsing of his orgasm.
Not even that first time had she felt such an elemental joy, the elation of being one being, of abandoning everything she was and surrendering it all to this new creation. She lay as sated as he, spread over him, their breaths mingling, utterly at peace.
‘Cordelia.’ With a horrible sense of doom, she lifted her head. She should have known that Iain would not be so easily put off.
‘We need to talk,’ he said.
* * *
The moment he had seen her in the courtyard he knew. He was in love. He really was in love. Still, he had not intended to tell her, determined to allow her to get this meeting with her cursed sister out of the way, unsure of whether he had even a chance of her returning his feelings, until she had done this.
But now! Surely she would not have done this most intimate act unless she loved him? And surely nothing mattered more than that he told her he loved her? Not even the blessed Lady Celia.
Studying Cordelia as she sat on a heap of cushions, resting her back against one of the corner fountains, Iain felt an unwelcome shadow of doubt creep into his thoughts. If he did not know better, he’d have said she looked quite dejected. But he did know better. Bloody Celia. Was he being selfish?
He grimaced inwardly. It was hardly selfish to tear open the wound that had never quite healed, just so Cordelia could inspect it. He felt quite ill at the thought of it, but it was the only way he could think of to show her how he felt, and the only way he could think of to persuade himself he had nothing to fear. ‘Ach!’
Cordelia looked up with the ghost of a smile. ‘Iain, whatever it is you are torturing yourself with, there is no need. I know what you’re going to say.’
He had been pacing the courtyard as if it were the deck of a ship. Now he came to sit beside her, not on the cushions but on the edge of the fountain. ‘You guessed?’
‘It wasn’t so difficult. After last night...’
‘Aye. It was then I realised, though not until today that I was sure.’
‘Then Akil made the decision for you.’
‘Akil?’ Iain frowned. ‘I remember now. The blessing of a true companion in life is indeed one of the greatest. It was well put, but I think I’d already made up my mind. The only question was the timing of it. I was going to wait until you’d seen your sister, but after tonight, I can’t.’ He held up his hand when she would have spoken. ‘No, don’t say anything, for it’s hard enough. I’ve never told anyone before, you see, what I’m going to tell you. About my mother.’
‘Your mother!’
‘Aye, you may well look surprised, but she’s the reason, you see, why it took me so long to—to...’ Iain stopped. His head was in a tangle. He didn’t want to just blurt it out. He had to explain first. ‘I’d best start at the beginning’.
* * *
‘My mother was a very beautiful woman,’ Iain said. ‘I mentioned she was from the Highlands, I think. Well, what I didn’t tell you was that she didn’t leave of her own accord. She got herself into trouble, as they say. She was pregnant.’
Cordelia stared at him. This was not at all what she had been expecting. ‘But didn’t they—in the Highlands—I am no expert, but they seemed to me very tight-knit communities. Was not the man who was responsible made to marry her?’
‘Aye. No doubt he would have, but my mother was having none of it.’
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. With a horrible feeling of déjà vu, she began to understand why. ‘She didn’t love him,’ she said.
‘No. She didn’t.’
‘I can see now why my story resonated so deeply with you,’ Cordelia said with a sinking feeling. She frowned down at her fingers, which had
found the golden belt holding up her pantaloons to play with, and had already managed to unravel one strand. ‘But she did marry him though, in the end, because you said your father...’
‘The man she married wasn’t my father. I called him that, but I knew, for she told me on several occasions, that he was not.’
‘Yet he took care of you.’
‘As best he could, when he was sober. He wasn’t a bad man, just a very disappointed one. He loved my mother, you see, to his dying day.’
‘But it was the loss of his daughter that killed him,’ Cordelia said.
Iain shook his head. ‘Jeannie was no more his flesh and blood than I was. My mother called herself a passionate woman. Our neighbours called her a floosie.’
‘Oh, hell, Iain, I am so very sorry.’ She made to get up, she wanted to sit beside him, to offer him some sort of comfort, but he warded her off.
‘I need to get this out of the way. I need you to understand.’
Indeed, she thought she did now, in a dreadful, final way, but she bit her tongue, refusing to let her selfish, heartbroken tears fall, for what good would they do Iain? ‘Go on.’
‘There’s not much more to tell. As you can imagine, it’s coloured my views on love and marriage so that they’ve always been more or less black.’
‘Considering your formative experience, I think you have done remarkably well.’
Iain shrugged. ‘I thought I’d succeeded in life despite the odds, but I’m coming to think that my upbringing was the making of me. No, don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to tell you I wouldn’t have had it any other way, but one thing I’ve learned since getting to know you, that being born with a silver spoon makes not a whit of difference.’
Harlequin Historical May 2014 - Bundle 2 of 2: Unwed and UnrepentantReturn of the Prodigal GilvryA Traitor's Touch Page 20