An Arabian Courtship Read online

  ‘Of course you’re nervous—that’s only natural,’ Anthea soothed. ‘Raschid’s bound to be staying for a few days, and you’ll get over that silliness. You really don’t seem to appreciate how lucky you are.’

  ‘L-lucky?’ gasped Polly.

  ‘Any normal girl would be thrilled to be in your position,’ Anthea trilled irritably. ‘At eighteen I was married and at nineteen I was a mother. Believe me, I was a lot more happy and fulfilled than you’ve ever been swotting over boring books. When you have your first baby you’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about.’

  The threat of future offspring turned Polly as white as a sheet. ‘A baby?’

  ‘You love children and he doesn’t have any. Poor Berah must have been barren,’ Anthea remarked cheerfully. ‘Raschid’s father will be very anxious to see a male grandchild born to ensure the succession. Only think of how proud you’ll feel then!’

  Her mother was on another plane altogether. Children…intimacy…Polly was feeling physically sick. The prospect of being used to create a baby boom in Dharein did not appeal to her. No wonder King Reija had decided she was suitable! She was one of five children.

  ‘He’s wonderfully self-assured for his age, so charming and quite fabulously handsome. One can tell simply by looking at him that he’s a prince. He has an air,’ Anthea divulged excitedly. ‘His manners are exquisite—I was very impressed. When one considers that he wasn’t educated over here like his brother Asif, his English is excellent. Not quite colloquial, but…’

  The rolling tide of her mother’s boundless enthusiasm was suffocating.

  ‘I’ll put your hair up—you’ll look taller.’ Hairpins were thrust in with painful thoroughness. ‘He has the most gorgeous blue eyes. Can you believe that?’ Anthea gushed. ‘I was dying to ask where he got those, but I didn’t like to.’

  What the heck did Polly care about blue eyes? Her mother had fallen in love with her future son-in-law’s status. He could do no wrong. If he’d been a frog, Anthea would have found something generous to say about him. After all, he was a prince, wasn’t he?

  ‘I’m so happy for you, so proud.’ With swimming eyes Anthea beamed down at her. ‘And it’s so romantic! Even Princess Diana was an earl’s daughter.’

  In appalled fascination Polly stared while Anthea dabbed delicately at her eyes with a lace hanky.

  ‘Polly!’ Her father’s booming call, polished on the hunting field, thundered up the stairs. ‘Where the devil are you?’

  She could practically hear the tumbril pacing out her steps to the execution block. But when she froze at the top of the stairs, only her father’s impatient face greeted her stricken scrutiny.

  ‘Come on…come on!’ He was all of a fluster, eager to get the introduction over with. That achieved, he could sit back and pretend it was a completely ordinary courtship. Clasping her hand, he spread wide the library door. He was in one of his irrepressible, jovial host moods. ‘Polly,’ he announced expansively.

  Ironically the very first thing Polly noticed about the tall, black-haired male, poised with inhuman calm by the fireplace, was his extraordinary eyes—a clear brilliant blue as glacier-cool as an arctic skyline and as piercing as arrows set ruthlessly on target.

  Ernest coughed and bowed out. He nudged her pitilessly over the threshold so that he could close the door behind her. Once she was inside the room, Polly’s legs behaved as if they were wedged in solid concrete. She awaited the charm she had been promised, the smooth breaking of the horrible silence. Unable to sustain that hard, penetrating appraisal, she fixed her attention on a vase of flowers slightly to the left of him.

  ‘You cannot be so shy.’ The accented drawl was velvet on silk and yet she picked up an edge within it. ‘Come here.’

  Tensely she edged round a couch. He didn’t move forward a helpful inch. What was more, the nearer she got, the bigger he seemed to get. He had to be well over six feet, unusually tall for one of his race.

  ‘Now take your hair down.’

  Her lashes fluttered in bemusement. ‘M-my h-hair?’

  ‘If it is your desire to become my wife, you must learn that I do not expect my instructions to be questioned,’ he drawled. ‘When I command, my wife obeys.’

  Polly was transfixed to the spot. That cool of absolute conviction carried greater weight than mere arrogance. She flinched when he moved without warning. Long fingers darted down into her hair, and in disbelief she shut her eyes. He was a lunatic, and you didn’t argue with lunatics. He was so close she could smell a trace of expensive aftershave overlying the scent of clean, husky male. In other words, he was ten times closer than she wanted him to be. Her bright hair tumbled down to her shoulders, the pins carelessly cast aside.

  ‘You are amazingly obedient.’ Abrasion roughened the low-pitched comment.

  Reluctantly, fearfully, she looked up. Some treacherously feminine part of her was seized by an almost voyeuristic fascination. He was superbly built, dramatically good-looking. Even Polly would have sneaked a second glance had she seen him somewhere on the street. High cheekbones intensified the aristocratic cast of his features. Sapphire-blue eyes were set beneath flaring dark brows, his pale golden skin stretched over a savagely handsome bone structure. Up close he was simply breathtaking. But in spite of his gravity and the sleek trappings of a sophisticated image, Polly sensed a contradictory dark and compelling animal vibrancy. He had the unstudied allure of a glossy hunting cheetah, naturally beautiful, naturally deadly. He also had a quality of utter stillness which unnerved her. Overpowered, she instinctively retreated a step, steadily tracked by fathomless blue eyes.

  His cool, sensual mouth firmed. ‘In the circumstances, your timidity seems rather excessive. I value honesty above all other virtues. It would be wiser if you were to behave normally.’

  Silence fell.

  ‘You are still very young,’ he continued. ‘Can you really have reflected upon the kind of life you will lead as my wife?’

  Anybody with the brain power of a dormouse would have run a mile the moment they paused to reflect, Polly decided ferociously. Why did she have to stay put? Because, as Maggie had innocently reminded her, this had been her decision. Her lips moved tremulously into a firmer line. ‘Of course I’ve thought it over.’

  ‘You are probably aware that as I handle my country’s investment funds, I frequently travel abroad, but as my wife, you will remain in Dharein. You will not accompany me,’ he emphasised. ‘There you will mix only with your own sex. You will not be able to drive a car. Nor will you be allowed to leave the palace either alone or unveiled. From the hour that I take you as my bride, no other man may look upon you if that is my wish. Within our household we will even eat separately. Perhaps you have heard that certain members of my family are less strict in their observances of these traditions. I am not. I would not wish you to be in ignorance of this fact.’

  Ignorance suddenly seemed like bliss. He described an existence beyond the reach of Polly’s imagination. Purdah—the segregation of the sexes that resulted in the practice of keeping women in strict seclusion. Sufficiently challenged by the thought of marrying him, all she could produce was a wooden nod.

  Audibly he released his breath. ‘You cannot have been accustomed to many restrictions. I understand that your parents regularly entertain here.’

  ‘I don’t put in much of a presence.’ Polly was thinking of her mother’s wrath when she had hidden in a landing cupboard at the age of eleven sooner than recite poetry to family friends.

  A winged jet brow ascended. ‘When I entertain, you will have no choice.’

  Her forehead indented. ‘But you can’t entertain women on their own?’

  His brows pleated.

  ‘You just said that I’d never see another man again. I wouldn’t be much use as a hostess,’ she pointed out flatly.

  A disconcerting quirk briefly shifted his unsmiling mouth. ‘It is possible that I have been guilty of some exaggeration on that count,’ he conced
ed. ‘But you must understand my surprise that a young woman, raised in so free a society, should be willing to enter an arranged marriage. I was concerned that you might have erroneously assumed that your position as my wife would grant you an exciting and glamorous existence.’

  ‘I expect it to be dull.’ The impulsive admission just leapt off Polly’s tongue. She shrank from the incredulous glitter irradiating his narrowed stare. ‘I mean, not dull precisely, but—well, an Arab wife, who has servants and doesn’t get out either…well,’ she was faltering badly, ‘she can’t have very much to do with herself.’

  ‘An Arab wife concerns herself with the comfort of her husband,’ he intoned coldly.

  He was most erratic in his arguments. ‘But you said you wouldn’t be around much.’

  Even white teeth showed in an almost feral slash against his bronzed skin. ‘By that I wished to warn you that I will not dance attendance on you.’

  But you expect me to dance attendance on you! she thought. He was a male chauvinist pig, an award-winning specimen. He put chauvinism in line with a capital offence. Stonily she studied the carpet. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Our alliance will be one of extreme practicality,’ he delivered in hard addition. ‘I am not of a romantic disposition. I tell you this…’

  ‘You didn’t need to. You wouldn’t be here if you were romantic,’ Polly interrupted thinly. ‘I suppose Mother said something which made you worry that I might be suffering from similar delusions. I’m not.’

  For a male receiving a reassurance he had surely sought, Raschid looked unrelentingly grim. ‘This becomes clear. Then we are of one mind. I will not receive complaints of neglect when I am involved in the business concerns which take up most of my time.’

  By the sound of it, if she ran into him once a week she would be doing well. She smiled. ‘No, I won’t complain.’

  ‘Had I sacked Dharein from border to border, it appears that I could not have found a more conformist and submissive bride,’ he declared very softly. ‘But I warn you of this now—should we prove incompatible, I will divorce you.’

  That was a piece of good news Polly had not even hoped for. How could they be compatible in any field? He intimidated her. A close encounter with an alien would have been less terrifying. The unashamed threat of domestic tyranny echoed in all his stated requirements.

  ‘You have nothing to say to this either?’ he prompted in a husky growl. ‘You are composed and content with this future?’

  ‘Are you?’ Glancing up unwarily, Polly encountered a hypnotically intense stare which burned flags of pink into her fair skin. A curious tightening sensation clenched her somewhere down deep inside. It made her feel very uncomfortable.

  A chilling smile slanted his well-shaped mouth. ‘Could I be impervious to the allure of such beauty as you possess?’

  No doubt this was an example of the charm her mother had mentioned, and it was absolutely meaningless. When Raschid had first seen her in the doorway, neither admiration nor warmth had coloured his impassive appraisal.

  ‘Although I should confess that I am not in accord with the meeting of East and West in marriage,’ he added smoothly. ‘I will treat you with consideration and respect, but I will not alter my way of life. The adaptation required will, necessarily, be yours alone. I can only accept your word that you feel yourself equal to this challenge.’

  Out of the blue the strangest suspicion came to her, infiltrating her self-preoccupation. Could he possibly want her to refuse him? Surely he could not have come here to invite a rejection which would be an intolerable insult to one of his race and status? Polly cast aside that highly unlikely interpretation. A purist might have respected his refusal to offer empty reassurances about their future together. But all he achieved was a deepening of each and every one of Polly’s nervous terrors at the picture of herself, marooned in a strange environment, forced to follow foreign customs while at the mercy of a husband who planned to make no allowances for her.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ she mumbled, hating him with every fibre of her being for redoubling her fear of the unknown. He defined an existence which chilled her to the marrow.

  He studied her downbent head. ‘I can ask no more of you. One must hope that the sacrifices entailed are not more than you find the elevation worthy of. Since I have established to my own satisfaction that you fully comprehend the nature of our future relationship, there can be no necessity for a further meeting between us.’

  Laser-bright eyes met her startled upward glance in cool challenge.

  ‘But you’ll be staying now…for a while?’ she queried.

  ‘Unfortunately that will not be possible. Late this evening I am leaving for New York,’ he revealed. ‘Nor will it suit my schedule to return here again before the wedding.’

  Nonchalantly untouched by her dismay that he cherished no plans to stay on as her parents expected, he bent down to enclose lean fingers to her wrist and raise her firmly upright. Her knees were cottonwool supports. Dazedly she watched him clamp a heavy bracelet to her wrist.

  ‘Your betrothal gift,’ he explained, answering her blank stare.

  Of beaten gold and studded with precious stones, it was decorated with some primitive form of hieroglyphics. Polly was put grotesquely in mind of a slave manacle. Valiantly she tried to express gratitude.

  A cool hand pressed up her chin, enforcing contact with black-lashed eyes of lapis lazuli which were dauntingly enigmatic. Raschid ran the forefinger of his other hand very lightly along the smooth curve of her jawbone, silently studying her, and somehow, while he maintained that magnetic reconnaissance, she could not move. A peculiar disorientation swept her with light-headedness. He dropped his hand almost amusedly. ‘I think you will be very responsive in my bed, Polly. I also suspect that you may find your training as a librarian of small advantage to you there. But I await enlightenment with immense impatience…’

  Had the door not opened, framing her parents’ anxious faces, Polly would have fled there and then. A deep crimson had banished her pallor. Raschid turned to them with a brilliant smile. ‘Your daughter is all that I was promised—a pearl beyond price,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘Truly I am blessed that I may claim so perfect a bride.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE ORGAN played Purcell as Polly came down the aisle, parchment-pale, her screened gaze avoiding the tall, exquisitely dressed male watching her with untraditional cool from the altar. Throughout the past fortnight of hectic preparations she had existed in a dream state, her brain protectively hung in an emotional vacuum. That was the only way she had coped.

  Her mind shifted inexorably back to her parents’ dismay when they had realised that Raschid was not remaining with them as a house guest. She had hoped…what had she hoped for? Dismay had swiftly become acceptance. In awe of him, her parents had put up no objections. They were not even attending the second ceremony in Dharein. From the moment Polly left the church she would be on her own.

  At the altar she received a wide smile from the smaller, younger man to Raschid’s right—presumably his brother Asif. Reddening, she dropped her head and the vicar’s voice droned on in her ears. Beside her lounged a primitive male, who regarded her solely as a piece of sexual merchandise he had bought off a shelf. Involuntarily she shivered. Raschid had made it brutally clear that she would have no place in his life beyond the bedroom door. Her blood had run cold under the intensely sexual slide of those assessing eyes, the appraisal of a natural-born predator.

  They were on the church steps when she saw Chris. As he waved, her shuttered face came alive. It was three months since their last meeting. Raw and seething bitterness surged up inside her. It should have been Chris beside her posing for the camera…it should have been Chris inside the church. The ceremony she had just undergone was a mockery. Without hesitation she hurried down the steps towards the slim, fair-haired man smiling at her.

  ‘Aunt Janice said you mightn’t be able to come,’ she murmured tightly.

  Chris
laughed. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t have kept me from your wedding! You look stunning.’ Grasping both her hands, he looked her over and grinned. ‘What happened to your ambition to be a career woman?’

  ‘You tell me.’ Responding to his easy smile took all her concentration as she fought back stinging tears. She was embarrassed by her adolescently eager dash to his side, but the familiar sight of him had drawn her instantly.

  ‘Hey,’ he scolded, and the underlying seriousness of his gaze deepened, ‘the bride’s not supposed to cry! Whirlwind romance or not, I hope he’s the right man for you. You deserve the best.’

  Polly’s throat closed over. The truth of what lay behind her sudden marriage would have appalled him, yet pride kept her silent. What more proof did she require of his indifference to her as a woman? He would dance at her wedding with a light heart. He had never realised how she felt about him, and now he never would. ‘I wouldn’t have settled for less.’ Her over-bright smile stretched to include Asif as he approached them.

  ‘Sorry, I have to kidnap the bride. The photographer’s fuming,’ he explained in a clipped Oxbridge accent.

  ‘Oh, lord, I forgot about him!’ Polly gasped.

  He steered her away, lustrous dark eyes skimming her guilty face, his appreciative grin widening. ‘Is there anything else that you forgot? Like a new husband? If you’ll forgive me for saying so, it’s not terribly tactful to go surging at ex-boyfriends with Raschid around—unless you have a death wish, of course. But I’ll grant you one point. You staggered him—a rare sight to be savoured.’

  Reluctantly Polly met Raschid’s veiled gaze a moment later. ‘I’m sorry,’ she lied.

  He cast her a grim glance. ‘You don’t appear to know how to behave in public,’ he drawled in an icy undertone that flicked down her spine like the gypsy’s warning. ‘But you will be taught, of that I assure you.’

  In angry disbelief, still trembling from the force of her disturbed emotions, she flared, ‘Who the blazes do you…?’