Cinderella and the Sheikh

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‘I know.’ And she did. It wasn’t something that kept her awake at night, but she did know she’d allowed herself to drift for too long.

And she knew Amrah could be the answer. The first real attempt she’d made to cut the umbilical cord that tied her to the castle.

‘Well, then, be nice to Sheikh Rashid and I’ll have you on a plane within twenty-four hours of getting the paperwork through.’

‘Be nice to Sheikh Rashid.’ That was easier said than done. There was no getting near the man. Polly moved back to conceal herself behind an extravagant white floral display of alstromeria, lisianthus and roses so she could watch him more easily. Or, more accurately, so she could watch him without anyone noticing that was what she was doing.

Sheikh Rashid sat facing out across the ballroom. As he’d done all evening. His long legs stretched out in front of him, a look of faint boredom on his face. Silent. Arrogant. And rude, if she was honest.

From the very first moment he’d arrived he’d been permanently surrounded by women who looked as if they’d stepped out of a Bond movie, but they could have been invisible for all the attention he paid them. Perhaps he was so used to it he didn’t notice they were there?

But it was rude all the same. And, speaking as someone who’d often been all but invisible, she didn’t like it.

Of course, they should have moved away rather than continue to try to attract his attention. That would have been classier, but they didn’t. Of course they didn’t. They hovered about, smiling and laughing. Hoping he might notice them.

All of which made Minty’s cunning plan just that little bit more difficult to bring to fulfilment and left Polly stuck behind a large floral arrangement completely uncertain what to do next.

Polly bit her lip. Minty would have powered her way across the ballroom and flicked aside all competition like flies off a trifle, but she wasn’t Minty.

And he wasn’t the kind of man she’d ever be comfortable approaching. Contact lenses in, she was able to confirm her initial assessment of His Highness Prince Rashid bin Khalid bin Abdullah Al Baha as sex on legs. Or would be, if you liked that kind of thing. Which she didn’t.

He was all too much. Too tall. Too handsome. Too…powerful. He looked like the kind of man who could crack a nut with his bare hands and wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to people if he had to. And, from all she’d read, he came from a long line of men who’d had to. Centuries of tribal disputes, years of colonial occupation and violent coups had shaped Amrah into the country it was. They’d shaped the men who ruled it, too.

It was strange to think her great-great-grandmother had been an active participant in all that history. Or a small slice of it at least.

‘Something wrong?’

Polly turned to look down at her mother. ‘No. Why?’

‘You’re frowning. I wondered if the ice sculpture was melting or the fireworks had got damp,’ she said, bringing her wheelchair into line. ‘It’s not often I see you frowning.’

‘Nothing like that. As far as I know.’ Polly smiled and set her glass of untouched champagne down on the window sill behind her. ‘But I ought to stop standing about and check.’

‘Polly—’

She stopped.

‘I just wanted to say you’ve done a beautiful job tonight. Again.’ Her mother reached out and lightly touched her hand. ‘I know Anthony doesn’t appreciate the work that goes into something like this, but I do.’

‘I know.’ Polly spontaneously bent down and placed a kiss on her mother’s cheek. ‘Have you got everything you need? Can I get you a drink?’

The dowager duchess laughed. ‘I’m fine. Any more champagne and I’ll be arrested for being drunk in charge of a wheelchair. You do what you need to do, darling.’

‘Get someone to come and find me if you want to go to bed,’ she said, taking in her mother’s tired face. ‘There’s no need for you—’

‘Stop fussing. I’ll be fine.’ Then, her attention snagged, ‘Who’s that man? I don’t recognise him.’

Polly followed the direction of her mother’s eyes.

‘With the Duke of Aylesbury? Front table, beneath the Mad Duchess oil painting?’

‘That’s—’ She stopped as Rashid’s eyes met hers. The sensation was akin to how she imagined it would feel if you stuck a wet finger into an electrical socket. He was quite, quite still…and, heaven help her, he was definitely watching her.

What was more he’d probably seen her watching him. Polly straightened her spine and summoned up her ‘perfect hostess’ smile, resisting the temptation to check that her hair was still firmly pinned in its chignon. Then, abruptly, he leant forward and spoke to the Duke of Aylesbury sitting immediately to his left.

She forced her chin that little bit higher as Sheikh Rashid’s blue eyes locked with hers once more. It had to be pure imagination that made her stomach clench in…

God only knew what. The word that had sprung into her mind had been fear. Except that didn’t make any sense.

‘He looks so angry.’

‘That’s His Highness Prince Rashid bin Khalid bin Abdullah Al Baha.’ His formal title came easily from her lips, absolutely no trace of the uneasiness she felt appearing in her voice. She dragged her eyes away. ‘Why do you think he’s angry?’

‘I just did,’ her mother said slowly, and then smiled. ‘For a moment. He has a very uncompromising face.’

That was one way of putting it. It seemed to Polly he had an uncompromising everything.

Her mother released the brake on her wheelchair, apparently having lost interest. ‘I hope Anthony isn’t intending to do business with him. I don’t think that would be a good idea at all.’

On that slightly obscure observation the dowager duchess moved away, her gloved hands moving lightly on the wheels of her chair. Polly watched her for the shortest of moments and then, deliberately not looking back at the Amrahi prince, walked towards the Long Gallery.

Or tried to. Every step she felt as though his eyes were boring into her back. All of a sudden it became difficult to walk in a straight line. She felt conscious of how her arms swung in relation to her legs. Wondered what would be the best thing to do with her hands. She hadn’t felt so self-conscious since she’d left puberty.

Polly slipped out into the Long Gallery and pulled the door shut behind her with a satisfying click. She rubbed a hand over the goose bumps on her forearm. What was the matter with her? Surely if she’d learnt one thing in the last six years it was not to let these people get to her. They could look down their long patrician noses any which way they wanted. It didn’t touch her. Couldn’t, if she didn’t let it.

But…

Still the words she needed to put a frame around what she was feeling eluded her. There was something. Something she couldn’t quite catch at.

Call it feminine intuition, but she was certain the mind behind those blue eyes wasn’t thinking about anything as pleasant as her state-school education and her mother’s temerity to marry ‘out of her class’.

Polly frowned. The way he’d looked at her had felt personal. He’d looked at her as though she were…

Damn it! What was the word?

He’d looked at her as if she were the…enemy. That was it. As though it were only the finest of veneers layered over his anger.

Polly shook her head. She was being ridiculous. The dark hair, olive skin, blue-eyed combination had really done something peculiar to her common sense. She didn’t know him. Didn’t even know very much about him and he’d have to know even less about her.

At best she’d be a name on their application for permission to film in Amrah. Maybe he just wasn’t keen on a film crew coming to his country? But that hardly made sense because he could say ‘no’ and Minty would have to move on to another project. It was hardly something he needed to lose any sleep over.

But she might. Polly walked the length of the Long Gallery and through into the library with the wonderful smell of leather, polish and really old books. If Sheikh Rashid did veto the project, what would she do then? It was past time she left this place and it wasn’t as though she had alternatives leaping out at her.

‘Everything all right, Miss Polly?’

Polly spun round and smiled up at her stepbrother’s elderly butler who’d come through the Summer Sitting Room. ‘Fine. I’m just on my way to check everything’s ready for the fireworks.’

‘You’ll find the two gentlemen from “Creative Show” in the staff room,’ the butler said, the merest flicker in his eyes communicating how annoying he’d found them.

Polly smiled and gathered up the folds of her peacock-blue dress. ‘We’re nearly done. And the rain seems to be holding off all right so I think we’ll revert to midnight. Let’s get this over as soon as possible and send these people home.’

‘Very good, Miss Polly.’

Miss Polly. She liked that. Henry Phillips had managed to find the perfect solution as to what to call someone who was almost one of the family but not quite.

No, not quite. She would always be the housekeeper’s daughter even if her mother had married the fourteenth duke. And Henry Phillips would always remember he’d taken her into the kitchens and made her hot milk and sugar during her father’s wake. It was a bond between them that would never be broken even if she was almost ‘a member of the family’.

‘Henry…?’ She stopped him as a new thought occurred to her. ‘What do you know about Sheikh Rashid Al Baha? He’s not been to Shelton before tonight, has he?’

‘No,’ the butler answered with one of his rare smiles, ‘but I fancy he’s the money who bought Golden Mile all the same.’

‘By himself?’

‘Indeed.’

‘He must be worth billions!’

‘A little more than that,’ the butler said with another thin smile. ‘I doubt it was pocket change, but nothing that need worry him, I gather.’

‘So why didn’t he come here?’ she asked with a frown.

‘I imagine all the negotiations were carried out through his agent. His Grace and the anonymous buyer of Golden Mile both wished the transaction to be private.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason.’ Almost no reason. It had suddenly occurred to her that the look in Rashid Al Baha’s cold blue eyes might have had something to do with Anthony after all. Her stepbrother made enemies easier than anyone she knew.

‘And they met tonight?’

Henry nodded.

‘What happened? Did they argue?’

‘That would be very unusual for someone from his culture, I believe. They spoke and it was extremely cordial. But—’ the elderly man searched for the correct word ‘—it was…shall we say, cold.’

Why? An Amrahi prince with the reputation and disposable income of this one would normally have Anthony exerting himself to charm. And even she had to own he was good at that when he saw a reason to be.

But ‘cold’was exactly the word to describe the way Rashid Al Baha had looked at her earlier. Cold, angry and speculative.

CHAPTER TWO

RASHID watched the Hon Emily Coolidge finger the large diamond nestled against her rather bony chest and felt a familiar wave of boredom wash over him. This was his mother’s country, the country in which he’d received much of his education, but he felt very little affinity with it. Or with the people who lived in it.

It felt empty. Soulless. Emily had to know he’d never choose her, or anyone like her, as the mother of his children. It made her behaviour inexplicable.

The brunette’s finger moved again across the cool plains of the diamond droplet. There’d been a time, not so long ago, when that unspoken offer would have been appealing. In fact, he wouldn’t have stopped to think about it. He’d merely have lost himself in mindless pleasure, content that Western women seemed to view these things differently.

‘Will you be in London next week?’

Rashid twisted the champagne glass between thumb and forefinger, concentrating on the play of light on the liquid in his glass. He really hadn’t thought much about who the mother of his children would be. It was always something for the future. Something far distant.

But now things were changing. He felt a mortality that had never touched him before. There had to be something inbuilt that made a man long to pass on his genes. To feel that he would go on…

Was that it? Was that what this gnawing dissatisfaction with his life was about? A wanting to set his place in history? To find meaning?

‘I’m returning to town after this evening.’ Again the brunette moved her hand suggestively across her low décolletage. ‘Wouldn’t it be fabulous if we could spend some time together before you fly back to Amrah?’

‘No.’ And then he cursed himself for what had been a staggering lack of good manners. His shoulders moved in an apologetic shrug. ‘My father…’

Rashid let the sentence hang unfinished. The doctors, he knew, would do everything they could, but neither he, nor any man, could hope to foresee what the next few months would bring.

Emily leant forward and touched his hand, outwardly concerned.

Rashid studied her face. She didn’t care. There was no genuine emotion in her painted eyes.

And he couldn’t be bothered.

The truth of that slid into his brain like a dagger through silk. He wanted to shake these people off, move away, find space to breathe. And yet he had the responsibility of a guest towards his host’s friends. A responsibility he was shirking.

It was a relief when a loud crack ripped across the general murmur of conversation. He looked out towards the formal gardens stretching down to the ornamental lake and at the white firework cascading down like some overblown pompom.

‘Oh, my God, how lovely.’ Emily unwound her overly long body and stood, hand raised to shield her eyes as though that would somehow make it easier to see what was happening out in the landscaped gardens. ‘Fireworks! Oh, Rashid, how beautiful.’ She turned her long neck so she could look directly at him.

Another sharp crack, followed by a hiss and sizzle, and he caught sight of a particularly spectacular cascade of golden shards.

‘I love fireworks!’

Vaguely, very vaguely, he was aware of the movement around the table. Chairs scraped back and then Nick’s hand touching his arm. ‘Coming to see?’

Rashid shook his head. He looked up and met his friend’s understanding blue eyes. Nick knew why he was here and would be tolerant if his behaviour wasn’t quite as it should be.

Rashid’s head jerked upwards as he felt the spurt of anger flicker deep inside him. Under any other circumstances he wouldn’t be here. Given half a choice he’d be back in Amrah, ready to spend precious time with his father if he was sent for. And he’d have been watching his brother’s back, holding off the factions that were all too eager to turn recent events to their advantage.

His friend smiled and deftly manoeuvred the rest of the party outside. Rashid pulled a weary hand across his face and then let his eyes wander along the panelled walls. So different from home, but no less beautiful. Shelton Castle was a place of wealth. A little shabby, but in the English style of conserving all that was old regardless of fashion.

He’d come hoping to understand—and he didn’t. The fifteenth Duke of Missenden was feckless and without honour. He fully deserved the destiny he had created for himself, Rashid thought, and if he’d scared him by coming here, so much the better.

Rashid was distracted by a flash of peacock-blue dipping in and out of the black-dinner-suited men clustered by the doors to the terrace. He sat back in his chair and watched Miss Pollyanna Anderson weave her way through the tightly packed throng watching the fireworks.

She was his one uncertainty. Where did she fit into all this? Last night he’d finally accepted Nick’s statement that the dowager duchess and her daughter were not accepted by the late duke’s children and therefore unlikely to be complicit in anything underhand.

But Pollyanna was too confident. She’d worked the room tonight with the assurance of someone who knew she belonged.

It had been Pollyanna who’d orchestrated the staff so they were largely inconspicuous. Pollyanna who’d managed the minor fracas earlier. He couldn’t see her as someone passive. She appeared strong and capable.

So, given all that, was he prepared to accept Pollyanna Anderson’s sudden desire to come to Amrah was a mere coincidence? His strong mouth twisted. And if it were not a coincidence, what he wanted to know was what she hoped to gain. And by what means did she intend to gain it?