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Having decimated the opposition, he seated himself to divest her smoothly of her dress. Leaving her clad in her slip, he pulled the slippery sheet over her trembling length. Already dazedly recovering from the kind of scene she had never before indulged in, Polly was gripped by remorse. Not only had she affronted him before the cabin staff, she had been unjust. Her resentment would have been more fairly aimed at her parents for cheerfully letting her enter this marriage and blithely ignoring reality.
Could she really even blame them? The pressure on her had been enormous, but she had agreed to marry Raschid. Unfortunately there was a vast gulf between weak resolution and her feelings now that she was on the spot. She swallowed chokily. ‘I don’t know what came over me…I…’
The steady beat of his gaze was unremitting. ‘There is nothing to explain. You were afraid—I should have seen that fear and made allowances for it. But I too have feelings, Polly,’ he delivered with level emphasis. ‘Financial greed may be permissible in a mistress; it is not in a wife. For that reason I have given you little cause to rejoice in the bargain.’
There was something about him in that instant, some deep and fierce emotion behind the icy dignity and hauteur. For the very first time, Polly suffered a driving need to know how he felt. Bitter? Disillusioned? His anger was gone. What she sensed now, she could not name, but it sent a sharp pang of pain winging through her.
She didn’t want to talk about the money. She couldn’t face the reawakening of the chilling distaste he had shown earlier. What would be the point of it? The money lay between them and it could not be removed. But for the money she would not be here. Raschid despised her for her willingness to marry him on that basis alone. The whys and wherefores didn’t abate his harsh judgement. And the revelation that she loved another man would scarcely improve his opinion of her. Suddenly more ashamed than ever, she whispered, ‘I didn’t mean what I said.’
An ebony brow elevated. ‘I am not a fool, but I ask you this—if that is how you feel, why did you marry me?’
She could not bring herself to play the martyr, pleading her family’s need as excuse. Absorbing her unease in the tortured silence, he sighed. Brown fingers brushed a silvery pale tendril of hair back from her warm forehead. ‘I had reason,’ he said softly. ‘To look at you gave me pleasure, and in spite of what you say to the contrary, I could put your aversion to flight so quickly that your head would spin…for when you look at me, Polly, you desire me.’
‘That’s not true!’ Her hostility sprang immediately back to the fore.
The tip of his forefinger skidded languidly along the fullness of her lower lip. His eyes had a richly amused glint now. ‘True, my little Polly,’ he contradicted.
Her mind was a blank. She was shaken by her sudden explosive physical awareness of him. His sexual impact that close was like a punch in the stomach, yet she did not retreat from it. ‘You’re not angry any more,’ she muttered.
‘Be grateful for your visual compensations. I learnt long ago that the perfection Allah denies in the copying of nature is no more easily to be found in human beings, especially in those of your sex,’ he stated quietly. ‘The inviting smile which falsely offers tenderness and understanding—that I do not require from you. You will be as you are with me. That I will respect.’
He slid fluidly upright. ‘We will forget today. I don’t believe you knew what you were doing. Had that been obvious to me, I would not have spoken so harshly.’
Reeling from that imperturbable calm and gravity, Polly was agonisingly conscious of the seismic force of the personality behind the cool front. He had not once lost control. She had behaved appallingly, but he had remained cool-headed enough to see her hysteria for what it was. While grateful for his calm, she squirmed from the lash of his superior perception.
A knock sounded on the door. ‘That will be the meal I requested. You ate very little earlier,’ he reminded her. ‘I also ordered a restorative drink for you—before we parted Asif assured me that it was an infallible cure for a hangover. Drink it and then sleep.’
Disconcerted yet again, Polly couldn’t even look at him. The stewardess entered, darting a nervous glance at Raschid, who appeared to figure in her mind as a wife beater. Guilty pink suffused Polly’s cheeks. He had treated her with a kindness few men would have employed in the circumstances. Dully she reviewed the reckless, thoughtless immaturity of her own showing throughout the day. The contrast did not lift her spirits.
She was wonderfully relaxed when she woke up. Only as she shifted and came into startling contact with a hair-roughened thigh did she realise where she was, and her eyes flew wide.
‘Good morning.’ Raschid leant up on his elbow. Reading her shock, he laughed. He looked ruffled and in need of a shave and unnervingly, undeniably gorgeous. Black hair, golden skin, blue eyes—a devastating combination. Smiling, he moved a hand lazily and tugged a strand of her hair. ‘Come back over here. Or do I have to fetch you?’
‘F-fetch me?’ she quavered.
He snaked out his hand and settled it on her slim waist, his fingers splaying to her hipbone to propel her coolly back towards him.
‘No!’ she gasped in alarm.
‘Yes.’
‘No…I’m not joking!’ she cried feverishly.
Raschid laced his other hand into the tangle of her hair and held her frightened green eyes steadily. ‘Neither am I, Polly.’ He pulled her the last few inches, sealing her into union with his long, hard length. ‘And there is nothing to fear, only much to discover,’ he promised huskily.
Her hand braced against a sleek brown shoulder, only to leap quickly away again. His dark head bent, the brilliance of his eyes somehow sentencing her to stillness. Taking his time, he brushed her lips with his, and she trembled, lying as rigid as a stone statue in his embrace. He strung a line of light, butterfly kisses over the arc of her extended throat, softly, sensuously dipping a smooth passage across the delicate tracery of her collarbone while his fingers skimmed caressingly over the sensitive skin of her back.
Polly’s limbs turned fluid without her knowledge. A strange heat blossomed in her pelvis. She quivered as his palm curved to the swell of her hip and he moved sinuously against her, teaching her the depth of his arousal and momentarily shocking her back into tension. He nuzzled at the tender expanse below her ear and her cheek curved into the pillow, her body awash with fluttering sensations which completely controlled her. With a soft laugh, he finally returned to her mouth, playfully coaxing, introducing her to the myriad textures of his firm lips and sharp teeth and the velvety roughness of his tongue, until the blood drummed in her veins with burning excitement.
Catherine wheels and shooting stars illuminated the darkness of her mind. It was everything she had ever secretly dreamt of, everything she had never expected to feel, except…except…The thought eluded her. Raschid’s hands traced the shape of her breasts with erotic mastery, moulding, stroking, inciting. A tiny moan escaped her. A searing rush of almost painful pleasure arched her body up into the heat and potency of the all-male body over hers. Then as suddenly she was freed.
Her glazed scrutiny rested on her treacherous fingers. Anchored in the springy vitality of his hair, they prevented him from further retreat. Strickenly she retrieved them.
He skated a mocking fingertip over her ripe mouth, his eyes bright pools of incredible blue, tautness etched over his flushed cheekbones. ‘I am very tempted to enjoy the delights of the bridal chamber with you now.’ Straightening with an earthy groan, he looked intently down at her. ‘However, that would not be wise. But at least you may now appreciate that you need have no fear of me tonight.’
Pushing back the sheet, he slid out of bed, not a self-conscious bone in a single line of his lean, sunbronzed body. Tonight. A blush warmed what felt like every inch of her skin. She had lain there and actually let him…at no stage had she objected. But on a level with that shockingly polished technique of his, her experience was nil. Raschid could not be compared to the teenage boys, full of selfish impatience, who had grabbed her roughly, attempting to infuse her with a matching passion, only to fail. Never once had she understood what she was supposed to feel during those embarrassing sessions.
Now, in the arms of a male who was virtually a stranger, she found out, and she was in shock. Had he been Chris she would not have been surprised. But he wasn’t Chris and he wasn’t remotely like Chris. Nor could she ever recall yearning for Chris to touch her. That accidental acknowledgement slid in and jolted her. It was true, she realised in bewilderment. Picturing herself drifting from the altar with Chris, she had then seen them in a dozen cosy settings, but never in one that centred on sexual intimacy. Something in her retreated uneasily from an image of Chris as a lover. Confused by the awareness, she buried it. Hadn’t she seen friends succumb to dangerous physical infatuations that burnt out through the lack of any more lasting fuel? Her feelings for Chris had always seemed infinitely superior. She had felt safe. She knew better, she had thought.
And Raschid taught her differently. Carelessly, easily, with the light touch and control of an expert lover, he had showed her what physical hunger was—a wanting, unreasoning ache without conscience, powerful enough to destroy every scruple. She was disgusted with herself. And dear heaven, he was like Jekyll and Hyde! Whatever she might have expected, it had not been that heart-stoppingly sensual persuasion which had effortlessly overcome her resistance. He bewildered her.
He had calmly referred to the wedding night still to come. Panic reclaimed her. What had she done in marrying him? Suddenly she was waking up to the full portent of what marrying Raschid entailed. How could she go through with it? How could she actually go to bed with a stranger? She was not some medieval maiden raised to be bartered in matrimony. Environment had not conditioned Polly to submissively accept her fate without argument.
She was sitting up when Raschid reappeared from the shower-room, towelling his hair dry. Crimsoning at the amount of masculine flesh on view, Polly lost inches of recaptured poise and studied the bed. ‘We need to talk,’ she muttered.
‘I am here.’
Nervously she breathed in. ‘Earlier you seemed to make it pretty clear that I couldn’t be the sort of wife you want.’ She paused. ‘Maybe you’d prefer to call a halt now.’
‘A halt?’
‘An annulment.’
An unexpected laugh greeted her stilted suggestion. ‘I presume you are trying to amuse me?’
Indignantly she glanced up. He looked totally unfamiliar in flowing robes of soft cream. ‘Actually I’m being constructive,’ she told him.
‘Don’t you think your desire to be—constructive,’ he repeated the word very drily, ‘is a little late?’
Polly bit her lip. The suggestion had been born of cowardly impulse. Undoubtedly it must seem to him as if she wanted to renege on the agreement after having collected the profits. ‘But you said you wouldn’t acknowledge me,’ she protested lamely.
‘I too may say things in anger which I do not mean. I seriously doubt that you have a drink problem, and even if you had,’ his beautifully shaped mouth slanted expressively, ‘you are unlikely to find any outlet for it in Dharein.’
‘I don’t understand you!’ Frustration rose in her.
‘Our meetings to date have not encouraged either of us to behave naturally,’ he returned with infuriating composure. ‘And to talk of annulment now when we are married is really quite ridiculous.’
Defensively she stiffened. ‘That’s the only time you could talk about annulment…you don’t give a damn how I feel, do you?’
He viewed her narrowly. ‘You would like me to be honest? I came to your home with no idea of what reception awaited me there. I cherished no inclination to marry any woman.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ she cut in.
‘I believe you heard me, Polly. Nor can I accept that this news surprises you.’
Hearing was not always believing. He had not wanted to marry her. The information stung and shocked like a sudden slap on the face. A deep sense of incredulous mortification crept over her. ‘Then why did you come?’ she asked.
‘In the hope that you might withdraw as I could not.’ Raschid dealt her an unrelentingly sardonic glance, his mouth cynically set. ‘But that hope was swiftly laid to rest, wasn’t it? However I might have behaved, my proposal would have been acceptable to you and your family. But I am not one to quarrel with what cannot be altered. You are beautiful. Insh’allah. It could have been worse.’
As she listened with a slowly dropping jaw, a tide of rage unfettered by reasoning even of the meanest form was building inside her. ‘How could you marry me thinking like that? It could have been worse,’ she parroted in enraged repetition. ‘And how…dare…you get into bed with me!’
Raschid bound a gold agal round his headress. ‘There may be a certain piquancy to our mutual reservations, but they are unlikely to spill over into the marital bed. There you do not find my attentions offensive.’
‘Don’t you dare throw that at me now! I had no idea what you were thinking then!’ she rebutted stridently.
‘I have explained my feelings to you.’ The inflection was one of definite reproof, clipped and controlled. ‘Now I suggest you dress suitably for your audience with my father. We will be landing soon.’
Sudden moisture gritted her eyelids and she blinked, her anger deflated. Raschid was gone, and she was unutterably crushed by what he had coolly dropped on her. The black joke of the century was on them both. Prince Raschid ibn Saud al Azarin had not wanted to marry her either. Damn him to hell! she thought abruptly. If that was true, why were they here now? Why had he even come to Ladybright? Oh, she wanted to scream! Some outdated code of honour had made him come, had made him refrain from admitting his unwillingness. But now—when he told her it was too late—he had slung it at her with hauteur, as if Polly and her family had gone in pursuit of him with a shotgun. Now she could review his grim and guarded manner at their first encounter. She had fallen hook, line and sinker for an act. The arrogant swine had actually been trying to put her off!
Equating his arrival with unquestioning acceptance of the marriage, she had been too wrapped up in her own anxieties to appraise his attitude logically. But why had he gone through with it? Her thoughts chased in concentric circles, her temper rising afresh. He had the gall to inform her bluntly that her sole saving grace was her face and figure. Suddenly she was dismissed as an individual and reduced to the level of a sexual plaything. It could have been worse—indeed? If it crossed her mind that there was a strong hint of the biter bit in her enraged reaction, she refused to identify it.
‘The obvious solution is a divorce as soon as possible,’ she pronounced, entering the cabin, her slender curves fetchingly attired in a full-length pale green gown which accentuated her air of spun silver delicacy.
‘Don’t be a child, Polly.’ Raschid glanced up from the papers he was studying at his desk, awarding her reappearance the most cursory interest.
She folded her arms, wrathful at being ignored. ‘If the only thing that brought you to Ladybright was that stupid assassination attempt on your father and the crazy promise he made then, I’m not being childish.’
Blue-black lashes swept up like silk fans. ‘I cannot refrain from saying that the attempt might have ended in a death which would have been tragic for my country’s survival and stability,’ he replied abrasively. ‘But I will concede that I too consider that promise to be rather…odd. My father is not a man of ill-judged impulse.’
‘But, like him, you believe in this honour nonsense.’
‘A concept which few of your sex have the unselfishness to hold in esteem. The pursuit of the principle infrequently leads down a self-chosen path,’ he delivered crushingly. ‘Nor was I made aware of the pledge between our fathers until three weeks ago.’
Polly was astonished. ‘Only three weeks ago?’
‘There was no reason for me to be told sooner. When I married at twenty, you were still a child. Since my father could not have supposed that an Englishwoman would desire to enter a polygamous marriage—’ He paused. ‘Although having met you and your family, I would not be so sure.’
It took her a minute to unmask that base insult. She flushed to the roots of her hairline while he spoke on in the same coolly measured tone.
‘My father cannot always have believed in that promise to the degree which he presently contends. Had it been otherwise, I would have been informed of it years ago,’ he asserted. ‘But I understand his motivation and I speak of it now, for it is no secret within the palace. It has long been my father’s aim to force me into marriage again.’
CHAPTER THREE
STUNNED by the unemotionally couched admission, Polly sank down on the other side of the desk. ‘But why me, if he didn’t believe…force?’ she queried.
‘The promise supplied the pressure. The means by which my father attained this conclusion might not be passed by the over-scrupulous.’ Raschid smiled grimly. ‘But be assured that before he even met your father, he would have made exhaustive enquiries as to your character and reputation.’
‘I was investigated?’
‘Without a doubt. You are very na;auive, Polly. You cannot suppose that my father would have risked presenting me with a bride likely to shame or scandalise the family.’ Sardonic amusement brightened his clear gaze.
In retrospect it did seem very foolish of all of them to have believed that King Reija would gaily give consent to his son’s marriage to a woman of whom he knew nothing. Raschid’s revelations put an entirely different complexion on her father’s meeting with him in London. Assured of her unblemished reputation and goodness knew what else, Raschid’s father had calmly manipulated hers at the interview. From the outset he must have known of her father’s debts. They could not have escaped detection.
Too much was bombarding Polly too quickly. The amount of Machiavellian intrigue afoot even between father and son dismayed her. But why had coercion in the form of that promise been required to push Raschid into marriage? While he might still grieve for Berah and appear virtually indifferent to her successor’s identity, he did not strike her as impractical. His position demanded that he marry and father children; that responsibility was inextricably woven into his future as a duty. Could he be so insensible to the necessity?
‘I don’t understand—you don’t really seem angry with your father,’ she said.
‘I must respect the sincerity of his intentions. He truly believes that a man without a wife cannot be content. In his view a married man is also a respectable and stable man,’ he volunteered, an inescapable harshness roughening his intonation.
‘But why didn’t you want to remarry?’ Polly pierced to the heart of the matter, weary of skating round the edges.
‘I preferred my freedom,’ he breathed dismissively. ‘Since I had spent most of my adult life married, what else?’
‘Well, if you’re so darned keen to have your freedom back, I’m not holding you!’ Polly sprang furiously upright.
‘Why this sudden alteration in attitude?’ Raschid studied her quizzically. ‘What has changed between us except a basic understanding? We stand at no different level now from that we stood at within that church.’
Anger shuddered tempestuously through her. ‘Yet somehow you’re behaving as if I trapped you into marriage!’
‘Nobody traps me, least of all a woman. I made a decision. If I had to remarry to satisfy my father’s expectations, why not you?’ he traded softly.
‘I notice too that, while your father mysteriously emerges from all this as morally above reproach when he’s been wheeling and dealing like the Godfather, I’m still being insulted!’
‘How have I insulted you?’ He vented a harsh imprecation. ‘I thought you would be quiet and inoffensive, but the second you left that church you suddenly located a tongue!’
Admittedly Polly had had difficulty in recognising herself over the past twenty-four hours, but the most even temperament would have been inflamed by Raschid. ‘Blame your father. Obviously he didn’t dig deep enough,’ she sniped, nettled by his candid admission that he had deemed her the type to melt mutely into the woodwork. ‘I find you unbelievably insensitive!’
‘And I find you like every other woman I have met in recent years—demanding.’ Exasperation laced his striking features. ‘Were you so sensitive in marrying a stranger purely for his wealth?’
Already very pale, she cringed from the cruel reminder. Pride made her voice the comeback, tilting her chin. ‘Was that how you viewed your first wife as well?’
He was very still. In the dragging quiet, her heart thudded loudly in her eardrums. The fierce chill of his appraisal forced colour up beneath her skin. ‘There can be no comparison. Berah grew up knowing that she would become my wife. Nor was she unaware of the nature of the man she was marrying. You know nothing whatsoever about me.’
Her stricken eyes fell from his. While her reference to Berah had been foolish, she had not been prepared for the charged and telling force of Raschid’s defence of her. His fingers were rigidly braced on the edge of the desk. The comparison she had dared to suggest had deeply angered him.
‘I don’t think you’re being very fair,’ she argued. ‘And I’m not demanding.’
A lean brown hand shifted abruptly. ‘Let us have no further arguments. On this subject they lead nowhere.’
‘What subject? What are we arguing about? I don’t know.’
He lounged indolently back. ‘Really?’ A dubious brow quirked. ‘In the space of an hour you refer to annulment and divorce. This is not, after all, some form of attention-seeking?’ he derided. ‘You want pretences—compliments, gallantry, romance. I disdain all of those, and I won’t play charades. I employed candour with you before today. We each had our price in this marriage. Mine was peace and yours was status and money. Now that that is established, what more can there be worthy of debate?’
‘I can tell you right now,’ Polly slammed back shakily for want of any other brickbat to hurl. ‘Being a princess is not all it’s made out to be!’
‘You may tell me whatever you wish if you reward me with a still tongue and the sound of sweet silence.’
She retreated to the opposite end of the cabin. He had gone over her like an armoured tank and the track marks of the vanquished were on her back. She had reacted emotionally to a male who did not allow emotion to cloud his reasoning. Or his judgement. He thought that she should have left her family to sink in the horrors of bankruptcy rather than sell herself into marriage. He was delicate in his sensibilities—he could afford to be. Bitterly Polly appraised the outright luxury of her surroundings. Without money her family would have fallen apart. Neither of her parents would have had the resilience to pick themselves up and soldier on.
Yet for all his contempt now, Raschid had been remarkably tolerant about a wedding which could have made a hit disaster movie. In bed—she reddened hotly at the recollection—he had been teasing and warm. But both responses had been logically perfect for the occasion. You didn’t calm a hysteric with threats. You didn’t coax a frightened virgin with force. Not unless you were stupid, and Raschid, she was learning by painful and clumsy steps, was far from stupid. He was dauntingly clever and dismayingly complex.
Abstractedly she watched him. Even in violent resentment she remained disturbingly conscious of the dark vibrancy of his potent attraction. In combination with looks and wealth that blazing physical magnetism of his must have stopped many women in their tracks. Polly had always distrusted handsome men; they were normally chockful of vanity. Raschid’s distinct lack of self-awareness puzzled her. He was stunning, but she had the strangest suspicion that the only time he looked in the mirror was to shave.
Abruptly she denied her view of him by removing to a poorer vantage point. She couldn’t understand what was wrong with her. Even when the stewardess served her with a meal, her thoughts marched on. Raschid was beginning to obsess her even as his emotional detachment chilled her. Linked with that raw, overt masculinity of his, that coolness made him an intriguing paradox.
Why had he been so reluctant to remarry? There could only be one reason: a reluctance to set another woman in Berah’s place. But Polly found it hard to attribute the longevity of passionate love beyond death and sentimental scruples to that diamond-cutting intellect. What other reason could there be? Accepting that he had to remarry, he had settled for Polly. He liked looking at her; he didn’t like listening to her. Then he wouldn’t have to listen much, would he? Not with the workload and the travel itinerary he had bent over backwards to outline.
The jet landed with a nasty judder, careening along the runway, the nearest porthole displaying a blur of what looked like desert. Assuming that the airport was oddly sited somewhere out of view, Polly got up. Raschid presented her with a bundle of black cloth. Her blank appraisal roused his impatience. Retrieving it, he shook it out and dropped it over her startled head.
