by Lynne Graham
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘GO ON,’ URGED PAULINE, Mariana Hamilton’s cousin, as Tati hovered at the foot of the hospital bed, torn by indecision. ‘Your mum’s sleeping peacefully. This is the time to go and take care of other things.’
Tati thanked the older woman warmly. In recent days, she had been very grateful for Pauline’s unflagging support and affection for her parent. Her mother’s chest infection had exacerbated, and she was still in hospital and upsettingly weak. The medical staff seemed to doubt that her mother could recover, which had made Tati afraid to abandon her vigil because she didn’t want her mother to slip away without her. Lack of sleep had drained her complexion and etched shadows below her eyes.
She had phoned her uncle to update him on her mother’s condition but his lack of interest in his sister’s state of health had been unhidden. She had explained that she would be calling to collect her possessions and had asked after Ana, relieved but a little surprised to learn that her cousin was currently back at home. If that was true, why on earth hadn’t Ana responded to her texts? Tati suppressed her disquiet, which was, after all, only one of several worries haunting her and giving her sleepless nights.
Having initially assured Saif that she would only be away a week, she had now been absent for almost three. He had suggested that he join her, had offered his assistance, had, in short, done everything a committed partner could be expected to do in such circumstances, but Tati had held him at arm’s length. After all, their marriage was only temporary, and he had no obligation towards her mother. But at heart, Tati had a far stronger and more personal reason for avoiding Saif: the pregnancy test awaiting her in her hotel bathroom. If her worst fears were proved to have a solid basis in fact, she didn’t know what she would do or even how she would face telling him.
Was sheer cowardice the reason that the test had sat unopened for a week? She was ashamed of her lack of backbone but at the same time she was dealing with the awful awareness that her mother’s life was slowly and inexorably draining away. For the moment that was sufficient to cope with.
As she settled into the limousine that Saif had insisted she utilise, she nervously fingered the emerald on the chain that hung beneath her silk shirt. It had become something of a talisman through the dark days of stress and loneliness. She missed him so much. Her breath caught in her throat as she stifled an angry sob because she was so furious with herself for failing to keep her emotions under control.
When had she begun caring about Saif, needing him, wanting him around? Those feelings had crept up on her without her noticing in Paris and, now she was deprived of him, those longings and the sense of loss inflicted by his absence had only grown stronger.
She had been in England for only a couple of days when she’d registered that her period was very late. At first, she had blamed that on stress. Eventually, she had acknowledged that the smell of certain foods made her tummy roll and that the coffee she usually enjoyed now tasted bitter. Her breasts were tender and bouts of nausea troubled her at odd times of the day. The fear that she could be pregnant had made her very anxious, but it had still taken time for her to muster the courage to buy a pregnancy test. She would do the test once she got back to the hotel, she told herself ruefully. No more putting it off!
Pulling up outside her uncle and aunt’s home, Fosters Manor, Tati was enormously conscious that she was making a swanky arrival in a limo accompanied by a carload of diligent security men. As she climbed out, she straightened the light jacket she wore teamed with neat-fitting cigarette pants, a silk top and high heels. Yes, her life and her appearance had certainly changed, she reflected ruefully, heading for the front entrance rather than the rear one that she had once used.
‘You can wait for me in the car,’ she told the men standing behind her. ‘I’ll be an hour at most.’
Not one of them moved an inch into retreat, she noted without surprise. They all became uniformly deaf when her requests contravened Saif’s instructions, which seemed to encompass keeping her in physical view at all times. Her aunt answered the doorbell wearing a sour expression.
‘It won’t take me long to pack up,’ she assured the older woman quietly.
‘It’s been done for you,’ Elizabeth Hamilton asserted, indicating the dustbin bags messily littering a corner of the dusty hall.
‘Oh, thanks,’ Tati said stiffly, forcing a fake polite smile and advancing on the collection, leafing through the pile for the only items of value in her care. ‘Mum’s jewellery box doesn’t seem to be here. It’s probably still sitting on the dressing table,’ she remarked.
Elizabeth’s face froze. ‘What would you want with that old thing?’
‘I want it because it’s Mum’s. I’ll go and fetch it,’ Tati said decisively, directing her companions towards the pathetic collection of bags and asking them to put them in the car.
As she started upstairs, her aunt said thinly, ‘That box contained some of Granny Milly’s pieces.’
‘Yes, and they belong to my mother,’ Tati retorted crisply. ‘They were given to her by her mother.’
‘I think you and my sister have done well enough out of this family,’ Rupert Hamilton informed her from a doorway, his big bluff form spread in an aggressive stance. ‘The jewellery should stay with us where it belongs.’
‘No,’ Tati argued, lifting her chin. ‘Any dues my mother or I owed were paid in full in Alharia.’
‘Call off your watchdogs!’ her uncle instructed with a scowl as two of her protection team followed her upstairs.
Ignoring him, Tati continued up another two flights to her small bedroom. It wasn’t quite in the attic, but it was close enough and in bygone days it had been a maid’s room. It was a relief to see her mother’s jewellery box on the dressing table but when she opened it, she found that it contained only the inexpensive costume pieces. A pearl pendant and earrings and a rather distinctive diamond swan brooch were missing. She tucked the box under her arm, wondering what to do next, reluctant to stage a showdown with her relatives that there would be no coming back from, wondering what Saif would advise because he had a cool head.
‘Well, well, well, you’re looking...different.’ Ana selected the word with a sneering curl of her lip as she leant against the landing wall. ‘Very fancy.’
‘Ana!’ Tati responded in cheerful relief at seeing her cousin again. ‘Why haven’t you called me or answered my texts? Did you change your number?’
‘Why would I call you when you stole my bridegroom?’ Ana asked with wide eyes, shattering Tati with that absurd question.
‘What happened with George?’ Tati asked gently.
Ana contorted her lovely face into a grimace. ‘He only proposed to stop me marrying someone else. He wasn’t willing to set a wedding date once I was home again.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Tati said truthfully.
‘Oh, I’m sure you’re not... How could you be?’ Ana demanded thinly, her voice a rising crescendo of complaint. ‘My departure worked out very well for you. You married a billionaire and now travel around in a flippin’ limousine with bodyguards! You robbed me of what should have been mine!’
Mindful of the presence of the protection team, Tati winced. ‘Let’s talk downstairs in private,’ she suggested.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Ana told her stridently. ‘I want you to step aside, agree to a divorce and give me back the future you stole from me!’
Tati frowned at that preposterous suggestion. Ana talked as if Saif had no will of his own and as though Tati had entered the marriage freely, which she had not. ‘It’s not that simple, Ana,’ she responded quietly.
‘It can be as simple as you’re willing to make it. I mean, the Prince would be getting a far superior bride in me. I’m a beauty, classy and educated, the perfect fit for a royal role, which you are not!’ her cousin proclaimed as she stomped down the stairs in Tati’s wake. �
�And I saw a picture of him in the papers.’
Tati faltered. ‘A picture?’
‘Yes...a photo of you with him in Paris,’ Ana told her bitterly. ‘He’s wasted on you. He’s absolutely gorgeous! I’d never have walked away had I seen him first!’
‘That’s...unfortunate,’ Tati remarked, although she was terribly tempted to laugh out loud. If George had gone ahead and kept his promise to marry her cousin, Ana would have abandoned all thought of Saif, but because George had disappointed her Ana was looking back with regret to what might have been.
‘It’s more than unfortunate, Tati!’ Ana almost spat at her in her resentment. ‘It’s wrong and unforgivable that you, a member of my own family, should have taken this opportunity from me!’
‘Ana...’ Tati’s voice was reduced to a discreet whisper. ‘I married him in your place because your father threatened to stop paying for my mother’s care home. Let’s please stick to the facts.’
It amazed Tati how calm and unintimidated she now felt in the face of her relatives’ animosity. She rather suspected that Saif’s attention and support had contributed to the stronger backbone she had developed.
Her cousin gave her a stubborn, stony appraisal and went on downstairs ahead of her. Tati reached the hall with relief, eager to be gone. The box tucked below her arm, however, slid out of her precarious hold and fell on the rug. In that instant as she stooped down to retrieve it, the emerald round her neck swung out from beneath her shirt into view and glittered in the light.
‘Good grief!’ Ana exclaimed, reaching forward and almost strangling Tati in her eagerness as she yanked her closer to get a better look at the jewel. ‘Is that real? A real emerald that size? And there’re diamonds all around it!’
Tati’s fingers closed over the chain to stop it biting into her neck. ‘That’s enough, Ana...’
One of her bodyguards stepped forward. ‘Let the Princess go before you hurt her,’ he told Ana curtly.
Disconcerted, Ana dropped the emerald and took a step back. ‘I feel like hurting her!’ she snapped back in a sudden burst of spite.
‘You don’t mean that,’ Tati said gently, but she was taken aback when her cousin slanted her a look of open resentment.
Sadly, she knew and understood Ana well enough to comprehend her feelings. Ana envied what she saw as Tati’s good fortune and believed that Tati had moved up in the world at her expense. She took no heed of the reality that Tati had not wanted to marry Saif in her cousin’s place. She chose to forget that she had not been willing to marry Saif sight unseen and had opted to turn her back on the marriage. All she saw now was how handsome Saif was, and the designer garments and the valuable, opulent emerald that Tati wore that had ignited Ana’s avaricious streak. Ana felt cheated even though she had chosen to walk away.
Unexpected and unwelcome tears stung Tati’s eyes as she climbed back into the limousine to be driven back to the hotel. She had always been very fond of her cousin and until now she had had a much warmer relationship with Ana than she had ever had with her uncle and aunt. Rupert Hamilton and his wife had looked at their niece as though they hated her too and she couldn’t understand why.
Did she remind her uncle so strongly of her mother? What had she ever done to them to deserve such treatment? Hadn’t she done them a favour by marrying Saif when their daughter ran away? Hadn’t that been what they wanted her to do? And now that her mother was so ill, couldn’t her brother have some compassion and forgive and forget the petty resentments he had cherished throughout his life?
As for her mother’s missing jewellery, what was she planning to do about that? It had to be returned. Those were family keepsakes she valued. She would have to phone her uncle and speak to him once tempers had hopefully settled.
Entering the luxury suite that had been put at her disposal, thanks to Saif, who saw no reason why his wife should sleep in one single room when she could have a giant lounge and two bedrooms all to herself, she went into the bathroom to freshen up and the first thing she saw was that wretched pregnancy test. Gritting her teeth, she picked it up, wondering why she was hesitating when she had to find out one way or another. After all, she might be worrying about nothing!
Ten minutes later she sat staring at the result, her tummy flipping at the confirmation she had received. She had told Saif she was on the pill and, whether she liked it or not, that had been a lie when she had accidentally left her contraceptive supply behind in England. After the test she had planned to acquire a fresh prescription with which to return to Alharia, but that precaution would be wasted when she had already conceived.
For an instant her despondency lifted and a sense of wonder filled her while she allowed herself to imagine a little boy or girl, who would be a mix of her genes and the genes of the man she loved. And she did love him, she thought ruefully. There was little point telling herself that it was an infatuation that would soon dissipate when she had fallen head over heels for Saif in Paris. Sizzling chemistry had first knocked her off her safe, sensible perch and scrambled her wits, but the connection had turned into a much deeper attachment on her side. They had shared a magical few weeks, and all her common sense had melted away in the face of Saif’s charismatic appeal. But there would be nothing magical about his reaction to the latest development, she reflected unhappily. Saif had warned her that a pregnancy would be an undesirable consequence, a complication. She shivered at the memory as she changed to return to the hospital.
And how would he feel about having a child with a woman who wasn’t a permanent part of his life? With his own history of maternal abandonment, might it not make his reaction even more emotive?
* * *
That evening, her mother passed away without ever regaining consciousness. Tati had fully believed that she was prepared, but when it happened shock flooded her. As she left the hospital again, Pauline gave her a consoling hug before heading for the exit that lay closest to her home. When Tati turned away again in search of the limousine, she saw Saif striding towards her across the car park. Her steps quickened. Her gut reaction was to run to him. She had never been more grateful in her life to see anyone. She was at her lowest ebb and Saif had arrived. Without even thinking about it, she flung herself at him.
‘You should’ve let me join you sooner,’ Saif scolded, holding her fast, so strong, so reliable, so reassuring.
A stifled sob rattling in her throat, she allowed him to tuck her into the car drawing up. ‘I didn’t ask you to come and yet here you are.’
‘I’ve been keeping in touch with the hospital, following the situation. I’m so sorry, Tatiana,’ he breathed, his deep dark drawl hoarse with sympathy. ‘I would have flown over last week, but you were insistent on doing this alone.’
‘I’ve always done stuff like this alone...apart from Pauline, and she only moved here after her husband died, and began visiting Mum a couple of years ago,’ she muttered shakily. ‘I’m so tired, you wouldn’t believe how tired I am.’
‘It’s anxiety and exhaustion. And you have been skipping meals, which won’t have helped,’ Saif remarked with disapproval.
‘Sometimes I haven’t been hungry... How do you know that?’ And then comprehension set in. ‘The protection team...my goodness, they’re like a little flock of spies, aren’t they?’
‘It is their job to look after your well-being in my absence. I also believe you visited your aunt and uncle today and that there was an unpleasant scene,’ Saif breathed in a driven undertone. ‘I did ask you to stay away from them.’
‘Later, Saif,’ she sighed, her face buried in a broad shoulder as he kept his arm round her and she drank in the warm familiar scent of him. ‘We can talk about it later.’
Afterwards, Tati barely remembered returning to the hotel. She did recall having a meal set in front of her and Saif encouraging her to eat. She had the vaguest recollection of her determination to have a bath and although
she recalled getting into the warm scented water, she did not recall getting out of it again. She wakened alone in the bed and, in reliving the day’s sad events, suddenly felt a fierce need for Saif’s presence. She slid out of bed and padded out to the lounge where he was working on his laptop while watching the business news.
‘Sorry, I just collapsed, didn’t I?’ She sighed. ‘Now I have arrangements to make.’
‘Those arrangements are being dealt with by my staff. The care home manager permitted me access to your mother’s wishes with regard to her interment. I believe she wrote her instructions before she even entered the home,’ Saif told her, striving not to stare at her in the fine cotton top and shorts he had put her in after he had lifted her fast asleep out of the bath.
Days of watching her mother’s slow decline had marked her, bringing a new fragility to her delicately boned face and shadowing her eyes but in no way detracting from her luminous beauty. He shifted where he stood, uncomfortably aroused. He had pretty much stayed in that condition since he’d found her asleep in the bath and, in the circumstances of her grief, he was anything but proud of his susceptibility.
The weeks without her had been long and empty. For the first time, small foolish things had annoyed him: stodgy courtiers, petty squabbles, long boring meetings. Usually he took such issues in his stride as part and parcel of his life as his father’s representative, but recently his temper had taken on a hair-trigger sensitivity and he had had to watch his tongue. His father’s adviser, Dalil Khouri, had infuriated Saif by drawing the Emir’s attention to a photograph in the newspapers of that stupid kiss in Paris, using it as ammunition in his eagerness to show Tatiana to be an unsuitable wife, who lacked the formality and restraint Dalil believed a royal wife should have. Of course, Dalil had only been trying to do Saif a favour by encouraging his father’s disapproval in the belief that it would enable Saif to request a divorce sooner. It had been unexpectedly funny, however, when the Emir startled them all by chuckling and telling his son that he had hoped he would have fun in Paris and, by the looks of it, he had.