by Lynne Graham
Saif’s brows shot up and he encountered a pleading look from Dalil, which almost made him roll his eyes. ‘The other girl will do?’ Why not go out onto the street in Tijar, their capital city, and grab the first single woman they saw? Was he expected to marry any available woman? The volatile temperament that Saif usually kept restrained was suddenly flaring with raw, angry disbelief. What kind of insanity was his father proposing now? If the bride had run off, goodbye and good riddance was Saif’s response, as he was no keener on the marriage taking place than evidently she had been. But, tragically, his father was reacting with very real wrath to what he saw as a loss of face and an insult to the throne of Alharia.
Dalil aimed a powerless glance of regret in Saif’s direction and crossed the room to speak to the Englishman. Saif twisted to attempt to reason with his father and then registered that the Emir was tottering and swaying where he stood. With a shout for assistance, he supported the frighteningly pale older man, and a guard came running with a chair.
‘I am fine... I am good,’ the Emir ground out between gritted teeth.
‘Allow me to call Dr Abaza,’ Saif urged.
‘Unnecessary!’ the Emir barked.
Dalil returned. ‘It is your wish that the ceremony proceeds?’ he prompted his ruler, while Saif thought in disgust of the mercenary young woman he was to be cursed with.
‘Why else am I here?’ the Emir demanded on a fresh burst of annoyance.
On the other side of the room Rupert Hamilton was cornering his niece. ‘The Emir simply wants his son married off.’
‘Why? What’s wrong with him?’ Tati questioned with a grimace.
‘Well, you should be happy that all that needs to be altered on the paperwork is your birthdate,’ her uncle told her, as though what he had suggested were a perfectly reasonable change. ‘You will be marrying him in Ana’s place.’
Tati stared up at the older man in disbelief. ‘I’m not willing to marry him!’ she snapped half under her breath for emphasis.
Rupert Hamilton gave her an offensive smile. ‘So you say,’ he said, clearly unconvinced.
‘I didn’t seek this development,’ Tati argued in a low, desperate undertone.
Her uncle shrugged. ‘Then think of this as a long-overdue repayment for my family’s generosity towards you and your idle, feckless mother,’ he told her thinly. ‘You owe us, Tati. You haven’t put a bite of food in your mouth since you were born that hasn’t come from this family. Now your mother’s draining our resources like a leech...all these years in that overpriced nursing home—’
‘She can’t help that!’ Tati exclaimed chokily, shaken at being confronted by his heartless resentment that her poor mother had not yet seen fit to die of the disease that had already robbed her of memory, physical health and enjoyment of life.
‘If you want her to stay on there, you will marry the Prince,’ her uncle told her callously. ‘And if you don’t marry him, she can go on welfare benefits and move to some council place where she’ll be a damn sight less comfortable!’
‘That’s a horrible threat to make,’ Tati whispered shakily. ‘You can’t still hate her that much. She’s a frail shell of the woman she once was.’
‘You made your choice. For whatever reasons, you helped Ana skip out on us...now you can pay the price!’ her uncle slammed back at her bitterly.
For a split second, Tati lingered there, frozen to the spot as she stared into space. But she knew she didn’t have a choice. The mother who had loved and appreciated her throughout her childhood deserved to be contented for what remained of her life. Dementia patients found any sort of change in their routines distressing and if Mariana Hamilton were moved to another home, she would very probably decline at an even faster rate. Tati neither liked nor respected her uncle, but she was willing to concede that perhaps he needed the dowry he was to receive from the marriage to help maintain her mother in her current home. He had called her mother a leech and apparently regarded his niece in the same light. That hurt, when she had spent the past six years industriously cleaning, cooking and fulfilling her relatives’ every request to the best of her ability in repayment for her mother’s care. Her work had begun while she was still at school and had eaten up every free hour, becoming a full-time job once she had completed sixth form.
‘I’ll do it,’ she breathed stiffly. ‘I don’t have any other option.’
‘Good.’ Squaring his shoulders, her uncle walked over to the table and nodded at the older man. ‘Well, let’s get this over and done with.’
Barely able to credit that she was in such a position, Tati followed the older man across the room. The Prince approached the table but kept his distance, which suited her fine because she was already wondering what was amiss with him that his father could be so eager to marry him off that even a last-minute change of bride didn’t dim his enthusiasm. Maybe he was a lecher and marriage was aimed at making him appear more respectable.
Good grief, he couldn’t be expecting a real marriage, could he? Real as in sex and children? Ana had never actually discussed much relating to the marriage with Tati because in recent years Ana had spent most of her time in the family apartment in London. And when her cousin had come home to the country she’d often brought friends with her and Tati had not liked to intrude. Ana had once remarked that Tati couldn’t clean and cook and then expect to socialise with her cousin’s guests because that would be too awkward. Tati breathed in deep and slow to counter the pain of rejection that that recollection reawakened. Well, she guessed it would be quite a while before she had to cook and clean for her relatives again...if ever. And all of a sudden, her biggest apprehension assailed her, and she put out a hand and yanked at the Prince’s sleeve to grab his attention.
‘I have to be able to fly home regularly to visit my mother,’ she told him apprehensively. ‘Will that be allowed?’
I may be buying you, but I don’t want to own you or be stuck with you round the clock, Saif almost replied before he thought better of being that frank.
‘Of course,’ he confirmed flatly, his attention on his seated father, who had regained his colour and his temper now that everyone was doing what he wanted them to do. Just as quickly Saif despised himself for even having that ungenerous thought.
Yet never had Saif more resented the reality that his father’s state of health controlled him and deprived him of the options he should have had. His fierce love for his ailing parent warred against that resentment. Had he not had the fear of the Emir succumbing to a second heart attack after his first small attack some months earlier, Saif believed that he would have refused to marry a stranger. As it was, he dared not object. And what the hell was a sophisticated English socialite likely to find to do with herself in Alharia?
Why had his father selected such an unsuitable wife for him? Saif lifted his chin in wonderment at that question while the marriage celebrant droned on. He would organise tutors for his bride, Saif decided, ensure that she studied their language, culture and history. If she wanted to be his wife so badly, if she was this determined to be rich and titled, then she would have to learn to fit in and not expect others to accommodate her. If he were to be cursed with a wife he could neither like nor respect, he would not allow her to also be an embarrassment to him.
‘Sign your name,’ he urged as he scrawled his own name on the marriage contract and handed his bride the pen.
Her palm perspiring, Tati scrawled her signature in the indicated spot. ‘Is that it? I mean, when will the ceremony take place?’
‘It’s done,’ Saif told her grimly. ‘Excuse me.’
That was it? That was them married? Without even touching or indeed speaking? Tati was shaken and taken aback by his immediate departure.
‘Are you happy now that it is done?’ the Prince asked his father.
‘Very,’ the Emir confirmed with a nod of approval. ‘And I hope that so
on you will be happy as well.’
‘May I ask why you wanted this for me?’
His elderly father regarded him with a frown. ‘So that you will not be alone, my son. I am unwell. When I am gone, who will you have? I could not stand to think of you being alone.’
Saif swallowed the sudden unexpected thickness clogging his throat, stunned by that simple explanation and the strong affection it conveyed, acknowledging that he had misjudged his father’s intentions. ‘But why...an Englishwoman?’
‘I had no good fortune with the wives I married and yet they were all supposedly wonderful local matches. Like to like didn’t work for me and I sought a different experience for you. It is my hope that your lively and sociable bride will make you relax. You are a very serious young man and I thought she might help you have some fun.’
‘Fun,’ Saif almost whispered, barely crediting that such a word could have fallen from his strait-laced father’s lips.
‘And provide you with company. Like you and unlike me she is westernised and sophisticated and you should have more in common.’
Saif was now ready to groan out loud. His father believed that he was westernised and sophisticated because he had spent five years abroad studying business and working while the Emir had only spent a matter of months out of Alharia and had never gone travelling again. Saif, however, had spent more time working to gain the necessary experience than in clubs or bars.
* * *
Tati went through the hours that followed in a daze. Men and women were segregated in the celebrations, but Daliya was very keen to assure her that that was the habit only in the Emir’s household and that no such segregation was practised by the Prince or anyone else in Alharia. ‘The Emir is as old as my great-grandfather,’ Daliya told her in a polite excuse for what she clearly saw as an embarrassing practice.
In the all-women gathering where she was very much the centre of attention, Tati watched her aunt, Elizabeth Hamilton, partake of drinks and snacks and ignore her niece. Tati’s rarely stirred temper began to spark at that point. She had learned the hard way to be hugely tolerant of other people’s rude behaviour, but being studiously ignored by her aunt when her marrying Prince Saif had won her relatives a large amount of money left a bitter taste in her mouth.
She thought of all the humble pie she had eaten at Elizabeth’s hands over the years and simmered in silence, too accustomed to restraint to surrender to the anger building inside her, the resentment that, once again, she was the fall guy even though she had not enjoyed even one day of the expensive lifestyle her aunt, uncle and cousin took for granted with their designer clothes and glamorous social lives. She and her mother had always scraped along, living cheap, never living well and never ever enjoying the choices and outings that the better off took for granted.
‘It’s time for you to leave,’ Daliya whispered quietly. ‘You have scarcely eaten, Your Highness.’
Your Highness, Tati thought in disbelief as she was escorted from the room and down all the endless corridors and up the staircases and across the halls to a totally different giant bedroom, where the maid who had unpacked her luggage in the room she was sharing with Ana already awaited her. Daliya and the maid together assisted her in removing the tunics and petticoats until at last she was down to the final layer, the sort of lingerie layer, she called it, and she finally felt as though she could breathe freely again.
‘Where am I going now?’ she enquired of Daliya.
‘To Paris,’ the brunette informed her with a beaming, envious smile. ‘On your honeymoon trip.’
Oh, joy, Tati reflected, the angry resentment stirring afresh as she rustled through her slender wardrobe to extract clothing of her own in which to travel and tugged out a pair of leggings and a loose top, neither of which, she could see, satisfied Daliya, who, after asking permission with an anxious look, resorted to fumbling through Tati’s case herself in search of something fancier.
‘I don’t have many clothes,’ Tati muttered, mortified for the first time ever by that admission. Of course, she had a dress she had packed in case she got the chance to go to the wedding reception, she recalled wryly, but that slinky, glittery gown, which had originally belonged to Ana, wouldn’t be remotely suitable for travelling.
‘It is fine, Your Highness. It is more sensible to travel in comfortable garments,’ Daliya assured her kindly.
Just as Tati was about to change, a knock sounded briefly on the door and it opened without further ado, framing Prince Saif—all flashing green eyes and what Tati inwardly labelled ‘temperament and volatile with it’—who stalked into the room. He instantly dominated his surroundings and her pair of companions muttered breathless apologies for their presence and immediately took themselves off.
My husband, Tati conceded in shock. The stranger I have married...
‘Now here we are at last with no more barriers between us,’ Prince Saif pointed out curtly.
All his bride wore was a silk shift. She had a waist, a tiny one, and curves, distinctly sexy curves, Saif noted unwillingly, for he was determined to see no saving grace in the wife who had been forced on him, although he could not help admiring that long wheaten-blond hair that rippled down her spine like a sheet of rumpled satin. Nor could a thin silk slip hide the firm thrust of pouting breasts and prominent nipples or the luscious shape of her highly feminine bottom. Involuntarily Saif hardened and he clenched his teeth against the throb of arousal, a natural response for a man whose sex life was, by virtue of necessity, non-existent in Alharia. Only when Saif travelled could he indulge his sensual appetites and that amount of restraint did not come naturally to a young, healthy man, he allowed wryly.
Any reasonably attractive woman would turn him on at present, he assured himself, but, at the same time, Tatiana was his wife and that made quite a difference, he registered, wondering why that aspect had not occurred to him from the first. Yes, he could definitely do with a wife in that department. And what was more, the substitute was infinitely more to his taste than the original bride put forward. Unlike her cousin, Tati wasn’t artificially enhanced to pout like a pufferfish on social media. Her lips had a naturally full pink pucker. She had a handful of freckles scattered across the bridge of her undeniably snub nose, but her face was still remarkably pretty, shaped like a heart with big blue eyes the colour of pansies.
Tati gazed back at him, heart starting to hammer inside her chest, breathing suddenly a challenge. ‘Why are you staring at me?’ she asked tightly.
‘Why do you think? How many gold diggers do you think I meet and marry in the space of the same day?’ Saif enquired with a lethal chill in his dark drawl, his shrewd green eyes glittering with sheer antipathy. ‘And I am disgusted to find myself married to a woman willing to sell herself for money!’
Utterly unprepared for that attack coming out of nowhere at her, Tati whirled away from him, stabbed to the heart by his scorn. Of course, she hadn’t thought beyond meeting her uncle’s demands to ensure her mother’s needs were met. Ridiculous as it was, she had rushed in where angels feared in too much of a hurry to consider what she was actually doing in marrying Prince Saif of Alharia for the wealth that would protect Mariana Hamilton’s continuing care. But even as her shoulders drooped, they as quickly shot up again, roused by the fiercest anger she had ever felt.
‘How dare you try to stand in judgement over me?’ Tati launched back at him angrily. ‘I did not sell myself for money and I am not a gold digger.’
Grudgingly amused by the way she straightened herself and stretched, as if she could magically gain a few inches of more imposing height just by trying, Saif regarded her coldly. ‘From where I’m standing—’
‘Yes, standing with your mighty dose of sexist prejudice on show!’ Tati condemned wrathfully. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about because you don’t know anything about me.’
‘As you know nothing about me. You marr
ied me for cold, hard cash...or was it the title?’
‘Why the heck would I want to be a princess? I wasn’t one of those little girls who dressed up as one as a kid! And for that matter, if you’re so darned fastidious and critical, why did you agree to marry a total stranger?’
‘That is my private business,’ Saif parried with a regal reserve that was infuriatingly intimidating.
A furious flush lit Tati’s cheeks at that refusal to explain his motivation. ‘Well, then, my reasons are my private business too!’ she snapped back at him. ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you and I’m not going to even try. I’m quite happy for you to think of me as a gold digger, but I’m not selling myself or my body for cash! Be assured that there will be two blue moons in the sky and pigs flying before I get into a bed with you!’
Saif was outraged. He had never been exposed to such insolence before and her attitude came as a shock. Somehow, he had expected her to be ashamed when he confronted her, not defiant. ‘If the marriage is not consummated, it is not a marriage and will be annulled,’ he pointed out for no good reason other than the pride that would not allow her to believe that when it came to sex she could have any form of control over him.
‘Is that some kind of a threat?’ Tati yelled at him, barely recognising herself in the grip of the anger roaring through her slight body. She had simply been pushed around too much for one day. She was fed up with being forced to do what she didn’t want to do, first by Ana refusing to face her own parents and then being bullied and threatened by her uncle. Now it seemed that the Prince, her husband, was trying to do the same thing. And she wasn’t having it! In fact, she was absolutely done with people ordering her around and never saying thank you, taking her loyalty and gratitude for granted, acting as though they were the better person while they blackmailed and intimidated her!
Saif stilled, a very tall dark man who towered over her like a building. ‘It is not. I do not threaten women. I simply voiced facts.’