The Desert Bride Page 7

  White as snow and deeply shaken, Bethany made a tiny, uncertain movement with one hand and then her fingers dropped again. ‘Razul, I—’

  ‘In the name of Allah, an apology would be an even grosser offence. No doubt you are still suffering from the fantastic notion that my family harbour concubines as well! We may be primitive, backward and painfully unwesternised in our ways, but our standards of sexual behaviour are far higher than those of your own society!’

  Sinking ever deeper into a pool of stricken self-examination while being engulfed by the greatest mortification she had ever been forced to endure, Bethany could no longer meet that coldly condemning appraisal.

  ‘After the death of Hiriz, young women were sent to my father in the hope that I would choose a bride from their ranks. While they were within our household they were strictly chaperoned. They were also educated, clothed and dowered at my family’s expense...one very practical reason why those daughters were offered by their fathers. Until the spoils of oil wealth were shared, many of them found it impossible to arrange suitable marriages for their daughters. My relatives made matches for them.’

  ‘How could I have known that?’ she whispered unsteadily.

  ‘You did not want to know it,’ Razul condemned. ‘You preferred to believe the outrageous slander which appeared in newsprint. That article was a deeply offensive vilification which caused great distress to my family and to the families of the young women concerned. It was beneath our dignity to issue a denial of such salacious rubbish.’

  Her head was spinning. He accused her of not having wanted to know the truth—a charge which pierced right to the heart of her turmoil, forcing her to see herself in a light which painfully exposed her every flaw. Her throat ached. It was as if he had held up a mirror and she wanted to shrink from her own reflection. Like most of her colleagues she had been willing to believe that newspaper article...why? It had provided them with a wonderful opportunity to pontificate on the outright hypocrisy of a society which demanded that young women live as cloistered ideals of perfect purity before marriage, while at the same time permitting the highest in the land to maintain concubines.

  But Bethany had had the deepest motivation of all in choosing to accept that story as if it had been written in stone. Anything which she could use to reinforce the barriers she’d seen between herself and Razul had been welcome. It had been more grist to her mill of determined resistance, positive proof that he was every bit as alien in his way of life as it suited her to believe.

  Suddenly Bethany, who had always prided herself on her seeking, open mind, was appalled by the unreasoning prejudice that she had unquestioningly chosen to harbour...simply because it suited her to do so. How much of that instinctive bias had she acquired in her teens when her mother’s kid sister, Susan, had been going through the tortures of the damned in her ill-fated marriage to an Arab?

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Bethany muttered unevenly.

  He wasn’t married. He had never been married. He had no other women in his life. Her brain was working in short, electrifying bursts, bringing down the barriers that she had hidden behind for years. Without that protection she felt frighteningly weak and vulnerable. Already she could sense a terrifying surge of relief longing for release inside her. Razul was free...and her last realistic line of defence was being smashed and put out of her reach. That scared the hell out of her!

  ‘How did you injure yourself?’

  Her lashes fluttered in bemusement as, without warning, Razul dropped down to her level and reached for her hand. The angry scratches which Fatima had inflicted stood out in stark contrast against her pale skin.

  Her fingers quivered in his warm grasp. She looked down at him, watching the ebony crescents of his silky lashes drop near his cheek-bones, scanning the narrow blade of his nose, and her sensitive throat closed over altogether. When he wanted to be, he could be achingly gentle.

  Gulping, she threw her head back, anguished guilt sliding like a knife into her heart. Did you really think that he was going to beat you up? she thought. Well, he knows now that you thought that too, and he can take it in his stride beautifully because you have taught him to expect nothing but misjudgement from your corner. She trembled, struggling to rein back the powerful emotions shuddering through her.

  ‘Fatima did this,’ he breathed.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said chokily, not even caring how he knew that the brunette had been responsible for getting her out of the palace, or how he’d instantly divined who had inflicted those abrasions. Obviously he did know as he hadn’t asked any questions.

  ‘She threatened Zulema’s family. Zulema had the presence of mind to approach me, but by the time she was able to see me the hour was late. I was with my father. These scratches need to be attended to in case infection should set in. They should have been dealt with last night,’ Razul murmured, with a frown, releasing her fingers and straightening again.

  She couldn’t bear him to move away but she could feel the distance in him like a cold wall holding her at bay. And she didn’t blame him—she really didn’t blame him for his hostility. Green light...red stop-light. A hectic flush replaced her pallor. She remembered him saying that if he let her go she would regret it for the rest of her life. She remembered how outraged she had been when he’d told her that he was giving her a second chance.

  Some truths were very tough on your pride, she acknowledged painfully. What a coward she had been two years ago, huddling blindly behind her prejudices, refusing to listen to her own intelligence except when it told her what she wanted to hear. The reality was that it had been easier for her to refuse him. She hadn’t had the guts to cross over the barrier of her own insecurities. She had been afraid of the strength of that attraction, afraid of being hurt, and neither had been an unreasonable fear.

  After all, there was no prospect of a future with Razul. To talk of marriage was insane. Of course, he hadn’t been talking about a real marriage, she recalled—at least, not what she understood as a real marriage, though she had no doubt that he viewed this temporary contract business in quite a different light. Naturally his father, whose distrust and dislike of foreigners was well-known, didn’t want one in the family on any other basis.

  What she didn’t understand was how to handle her own emotions. Why the hell hadn’t she had an affair with him in England? She would have got this insanity out of her system then and been cured, she reflected resentfully. Within a very short space of time she would have realised that they didn’t have a single thought in common, and her infatuation would have died a natural death. There would have been no complications, no agonies, no past to come back and haunt her now with regret and bitterness.

  ‘I think we need to talk...’ Bethany muttered uncertainly.

  ‘I am always prepared to talk.’ Disconcertingly, Razul’s set mouth came very close to a smile.

  Bethany swallowed hard, still so bewildered by her own emotional conflict that she was not at all sure that she ought to be saying anything to him. ‘I have a...a suggestion to make.’

  ‘Does it relate to your departure?’ he breathed tautly.

  ‘Yes...well, obviously it would be sensible for me to go home. But that...well, that doesn’t mean that I...well, that I wouldn’t be...’ her skin burning, she stumbled helplessly over the words to verbalise her own thoughts ‘...open to the possibility of—well...er...not here in Datar, of course, but you can’t be here all the time!’

  Razul scanned her with unhidden fascination. ‘I am lost.’

  He wasn’t the only one. Bethany had got cold feet. How could she possibly suggest to him that they had an affair? That sounded so cold-blooded, not to mention brazen, but on the other hand it was a considerably more realistic proposal than the idea of marriage in any form, she reminded herself staunchly.

  ‘I am attracted to you,’ she began again in a flat tone which concealed her embarrassment, ‘and I am prepared to admit that I have not reacted in a v
ery reasonable manner as regards that...er...situation. Had we explored that situation in a relationship two years ago...and again I admit that it was my fault that we didn’t...but, had we done so, that would have been by far the most sensible solution—’

  ‘To the problem of this attraction...excuse me...this situation,’ Razul slotted in smoothly.

  Relieved that he had so easily followed her reasoning, Bethany’s gaze collided involuntarily with shimmering golden eyes and she snatched in a deep breath. ‘Therefore it naturally follows that employing marriage as a resolution of the situation would be ridiculously excessive. This is not the nineteenth century, after all, and—’

  ‘This is how I imagine you might speak in the lecture theatre,’ Razul remarked.

  A pin-dropping silence stretched.

  Flames of angry pink burnished her fair skin. She decided to ignore that ungenerous comment. ‘And we are both adults—’

  “That is indeed a matter of opinion.’

  ‘Look...will you stop interrupting me?’ Bethany hissed at him in frustration. ‘I am only trying to point out that, while I am not prepared to marry you, I am willing...well, open to the possibility of—’

  ‘Exploring the situation in my bed?’ Razul incised in a raw undertone.

  Bethany turned scarlet. ‘If you must put it that way...but I was thinking in terms of—’

  ‘A cerebral affair?’ he gritted.

  ‘Well...’ Bethany dropped her head, tied up in knots of horrible, mealy-mouthed discomfiture. He seemed to be going out of his way to make this more difficult for her. ‘Whatever might conceivably develop...I haven’t got a crystal ball—’

  ‘Had you been blessed with one, you would have closed your mouth five minutes ago and kept it shut, but I thank you for your honesty!’ There was a whitened edge to Razul’s compressed lips now. ‘I hope you are equally grateful for mine. My terms are marriage... marriage or you will be as one dead to me! I will never voluntarily rest my eyes on you again in this lifetime!’

  Her jaw dropped. ‘You can’t be serious...’

  ‘I have never been more serious,’ Razul swore with savage bite.

  Bethany was incredulous and furious into the bargain. She had laid her pride and her self-respect on the line. She had offered him a relationship which until today she had never once considered offering to any man. That had taken a great deal of courage, and even as she had voiced her proposition she had been frantically worried that she was impulsively overreacting to her own hopelessly confused emotions. ‘Right now I could live with never seeing you again just fine!’ she told him wrathfully.

  Savage golden eyes raked over her. He spread his shapely hands wide and dropped them again with an air of cold finality. ‘Inshallah. Then I give you the freedom that you say you want. You may go. There is a helicopter out there. It will take you to the airport. There is a flight to London in two hours.’

  Devastated by the assurance, Bethany gaped at him, her every expectation violently overthrown.

  ‘You have half an hour to make your choice.’

  ‘I don’t need half an hour!’ Bethany shot back at him, her eyes pure emerald in her hotly flushed face as she squared up to him. ‘Five minutes would be too long!’

  Razul slung her a slashing glance from molten gold eyes, every line of his lean, muscular length whip-taut. ‘That is your decision, but be assured aziz...if you stay, you will be my wife by evening.’

  ‘That is as likely as me taking flight without jet engines!’ Bethany snapped in ringing disbelief. ‘You have to be out of your mind!’

  ‘We will see how out of my mind I am...this we will see.’ He made it sound like a threat written in blood. His strong, hard features rigid, he swung soundlessly on his heel and swept out.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NOTHING like choosing the magic words to speed the parting guest...‘wife by evening’? Hah! thought Bethany. Razul was certifiably insane. She knew she would be into that helicopter so fast that she’d leave a trail of little flames dancing in her wake! Release...escape... freedom, here I come! Razul had decided to force the issue, which wasn’t surprising, not when you took that mile-wide streak of mean, moody, macho conditioning and added it to all that ferocious pride. Well, she thought with murderous satisfaction, he had made a gross miscalculation. Her little Middle Eastern adventure had come to an end and very grateful she was too!

  Her attention fell on the suitcase that she hadn’t seen since her departure from the airport. She blinked, reading the message that went with its reappearance. Razul had clearly brought it with him. So, in other words, he had come prepared to face her with that choice. But first he had allowed her to make an outsize idiot of herself!

  Her teeth gritting, Bethany was fired into sudden activity. She dug out her keys and unlocked the case. She had no plans to check in at Al Kabibi airport dressed in a caftan and silk slippers! Why the heck hadn’t she noticed that suitcase sooner? For a few minutes there a tide of remorse had gripped her with temporary insanity. She had actually sunk low enough to offer herself on a plate. If only she had kept her stupid mouth shut she could have boarded that helicopter with every ounce of her dignity still intact!

  She took her time getting dressed in a pair of light cotton trousers and a voluminous white T-shirt. Then she combed her hair and finally checked her watch. Fifteen minutes had gone. She walked the length of the tent, pushed aside the ornate hangings and looked outside. The blazing rays of the sun were glinting off the silver body of the helicopter parked in the centre of the camp. Perspiration broke out on her skin. She lifted her case.

  You will never see him again.

  She could handle that...of course she could; hadn’t she got by for twenty-seven years without ever depending on a man?

  Never is a long time.

  Her teeth clenched. She thrust a furious hand through her tumbling hair. Damn him...damn him to hell and back! She was stronger than this. She was going to do the sensible thing no matter how blasted hard it was to do it!

  All her life she had been prudent, practical and realistic. No nonsense, no silly romantic fantasies... well, only one, she conceded with boiling resentment. Him. Picking up her books on the library steps, smiling that soul-destroyingly charismatic smile, he had somehow stolen a part of her that she had never got back. Since then...always this nagging sense of loss, separateness, aloneness. She had hated him for having that power over her, and now she hated him ten times more as she wrestled with a hunger as frighteningly irrational as the unfamiliar sense of complete impotence now freezing her in her tracks.

  Never is a long time...

  What is the difference between an affair and a temporary marriage? an insidious little voice whispered. Stricken by the treacherous thought that had come at her out of nowhere, Bethany pressed unsteady hands to her hot face. She quelled that sly voice. Every fibre of her being revolted against being forced into a position that she had not freely and rationally chosen.

  But where was her free choice when her only other option was never to see him again? And Razul would keep to that promise. Razul had the kind of dark, driven temperament which could make a sacred shrine out of self-denial. Overwhelmed by the emotional storm battling inside her, Bethany sank dizzily down on the edge of her suitcase. If thoughts had had the power to kill, Razul would have been dead. She was in mental torment. ‘Never’ stood like a giant wall between her and the freedom she cherished...

  The rotor blades of the helicopter started up with a noisy, clattering whirl, and the tent walls rippled. Bethany, who made a virtue out of never crying, shocked herself by bursting into floods of furious tears. She despised herself; she hated him. In the space of forty-eight hours he had torn her inside out. He had cornered her and sprung a trap that she hadn’t recognised until it was too late. Dear heaven, she would never forgive him for pushing her to the wall like this and forcing surrender on her!

  ‘What is wrong, sitt?’

  ‘Everything!’ Bethany sobbed passiona
tely before she focused on the speaker.

  ‘Prince Razul was very angry. He was most disturbed for your safety. But on such a day his anger will melt away.’

  Bethany’s distraught gaze rested on Zulema’s sympathetic face as the girl reached shyly for her left hand and clucked anxiously over the scratches. A sob still rattled in her throat as Zulema gently pressed her hand into a bowl of warm water from which the sharp odour of some form of antiseptic wafted. It stung like mad.

  ‘I understand that your family was threatened by Fatima,’ Bethany managed tautly.

  ‘But I need no longer fear this threat.’ Zulema smiled. ‘Now my family live in Prince Razul’s protection. He will give my father new employment.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ Bethany drew in a shaky breath, drained by her crying jag.

  ‘I am glad our Prince does not marry the Princess Fatima,’ Zulema revealed in a rush of covert confidence. ‘It is what the King wished but those who know her well did not wish it.’

  So Fatima had had the official stamp of royal approval. Razul had not mentioned that fact. No wonder the brunette had been so bitterly hostile to Bethany’s arrival.

  ‘What you saw in the courtyard...do not pity her.’ The younger woman looked surprisingly cynical. ‘She made a big scene to try and shame the Prince into sending you away. It is wrong for a woman to embarrass a man like that. If her father hears of it she will be sent away! He would be disgraced.’

  Zulema affixed a plaster to the scratches and then stood up and clapped her tiny hands. Instantly her usual two helpers appeared, laden with various articles. There was a burst of voluble chatter from outside the tent. Wrought-iron holders were set up and incense sticks lit, their heavy perfume filling the hot, still air. An aluminium bathtub was marched past her and settled behind the screen at the other end of the tent. Buckets of lightly steaming water arrived one by one.