Michelle Reid Collection

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Despite her heavy mood, a smile tilted the corners of her red-painted mouth. ‘That’s because you fancy the hell out of me,’ she countered. ‘Whereas my mother doesn’t fancy me at all—especially as a daughter.’

‘Then she has no taste.’

‘Gosh,’ Evie gasped. ‘I wonder if she knows that?’

‘Would you like me to tell her?’ he kindly offered.

‘No. What I would like you to do, Sheikh Raschid,’ she sighed out wistfully, ‘is gather me up on your white charger and take me away from all of this.’

‘Right now?’ A pair of long-fingered, beautifully shaped brown hands slid around her narrow waist to turn her to face him. His eyes were still sombre despite the light banter they were exchanging. ‘Just say the word, and I will carry you off to my palace in the desert and keep you locked away there for ever.’

‘A fate worse than death,’ she pouted. ‘You have hor rible dungeons there with no windows to look out of. I know,’ she disclosed sagely. ‘Because you told me.’

‘I have beautiful rooms too,’ he declared. ‘Which overlook exquisite gardens that cost me an absolute fortune to irrigate. You may have one of those rooms,’ he offered benevolently. ‘Where I will visit you every day to ply you with priceless gifts and incomparable compliments.’

‘May I move around your desert palace freely?’ she asked.

He shook his covered head. ‘You will be my prisoner,’ he explained. ‘With guards posted at the door to make sure you don’t stray.’

‘What if I fancy one of your guards for a bit of light diversion?’

‘They would all be eunuchs,’ he came back blandly. ‘The kind of light diversion you are referring to will make them of no use to you.’

‘I don’t want to go, then,’ Evie decided. ‘I’ll be more miserable there than I am here.’

‘That’s my girl,’ Raschid softly commended, drawing her even closer to that lean, tight body hiding behind the flowing robes. ‘Counting your blessings is always the wiser course in situations like these.’

She laughed. He smiled, the smile reaching his eyes now that he had managed to banish the sadness from hers. And, dipping his head beneath the brim of her hat, he kissed her.

They were by now completely alone beneath the wedding canopy, so Evie didn’t really need to pull away quite as quickly as she did. Their mouths had barely warmed in welcome to each other before she was carefully separating them and placing some much needed distance between their clinging bodies.

‘Are you trying to seduce me in broad daylight, Sheikh?’ she demanded mock sternly in an attempt to soften her rejection of him.

But Raschid refused to play the game. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I was trying to demonstrate how deeply I care for you.’

‘What—here?’ Evie mocked that also, but this time the mockery was ever so slightly spiked. ‘In front of a Christian altar—what will your God say? Or did the tent above your head make you forget where you were for a moment?’

‘My God is the same God as your God, Evie,’ he answered very grimly.

‘Well, just in case you’re wrong, I’m off, before we get struck down by a bolt of lightning or something,’ she said, clinging to her bantering tone despite his much—much graver one. ‘I’ll see you later—’

‘Evie.’

She had already turned her back on him when he said her name like that, making her go still as the muscles around her heart gave a painful pinch.

Raschid wasn’t stupid, she knew that. Those all-seeing liquid-gold eyes of his had caught the haunted look in her own eyes before she’d turned away.

‘What?’ she prompted warily.

There was a moment’s complete silence from behind her that trickled down her rigid spine like a warning. And she closed her eyes, mouth gone dry, heart still pinching in protest at what she was struggling to keep bottled up inside her today.

‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Nothing,’ she denied.

‘The same “nothing” that has made you as elusive as a rare butterfly for the last few weeks?’ he grimly suggested.

‘You’ve been busy. I’ve been busy,’ she murmured defensively.

‘You’ve been hiding,’ he corrected. ‘And you are still hiding.’

‘I just need to get through this day with my dignity intact, that’s all,’ she sighed.

‘And you think that my kissing you here diminishes that dignity?’ He sounded cold all of a sudden—as haughty as hell. Which was a bad sign. For Raschid a bruised ego always—always made him insufferably arrogant.

‘I did warn you not to come,’ she reminded him.

‘And because I refuse to hide like you I am to be punished, is that it?’

Put like that, he had a right to sound offended, Evie wearily acknowledged. ‘You’re a man,’ she said dryly. ‘Bedding one of England’s most eligible females only adds to your standing, whereas I get called a cheap little slut.’

‘The woman in the awful lilac dress!’ Raschid recognised instantly. ‘The words match her sour expression.’

Despite her heavy mood, Evie couldn’t resist smiling at his caustic description of dear Great-Aunt Celia. ‘To be fair,’ she twisted around to say to him, ‘she did call you a womanising barbarian.’

A sleek, superbly drawn black eyebrow arched in enquiry. ‘And you agree with her?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she admitted. ‘But then,’ she added softly, ‘I like you barbaric.’

The darkening look in his eyes set her stomach fluttering.

‘I have to go,’ she murmured, turning away what that fluttering sensation was tempting.

‘More evasion?’

‘I’ll see you later,’ was all she replied, and walked gracefully away.

Stepping out from beneath the sultry-aired canopy was like stepping into another world. The sun was bright, the air crystal-clear, and the sights and sounds of celebration were everywhere.

The bridal party was posing for photographers in front of a perfectly placed beech tree that looked as if it had been standing there for at least a thousand years. All about them their guests stood around in small groups watching them. A small army of white-jacketed waiters wove in and out with silver trays laden with fluted champagne glasses, trying to avoid the children who were running about like swirling dervishes and letting off steam.

The band was still playing, and it seemed odd to Evie that she hadn’t heard a single note while she had been with Raschid.

But then, Raschid had that kind of effect on her. When he was there her world began and ended with him alone. Which was why this other world out here felt so very strange and alien.

Julian caught sight of her and called out, then waved his hand in an imperious command for her to come and join them. Evie nodded her head in acknowledgement but took her time making her way over there. Her brother didn’t know it, but she had no intention of appearing with them on any photograph.

So she stopped a waiter to collect a champagne glass, paused then to chat lightly to the first group of people she came to. Saw, from the corner of her eye, her brother’s attention become claimed by more pressing duties that made him forget all about her, and kept her social smile fixed firmly in place as she wandered from group to group—the only group she carefully avoided being the Arab contingent.

Someone appeared at her shoulder and tentatively touched her arm. She turned her head, the social smile still fixed firmly in place, found herself looking into the ruefully smiling face of an attractive man with brown hair, grey eyes and a shy disposition.

And instantly her expression mellowed into true tenderness. ‘Harry,’ she greeted softly. ‘How lovely to see you.’ It was purely instinctive for her to go up on tiptoe to press a kiss to his lean cheek.

From not very far away several people stood observing the exchange from completely different perspectives. Her mother observed with unmasked satisfaction, Raschid with grim speculation as he watched Evie’s face, saw that smile as the one he’d always believed was reserved exclusively for him—and discovered that it hit him rather hard to know another man warranted such tenderness.

He knew, of course, who the guy was, and what he had once been to Evie. They had been childhood friends, sweethearts in their teenage years—but never lovers, he reminded himself as he watched the Marquis of Lister place hands that most definitely coveted around Evie’s slender waist.

‘He’s still in love with her,’ a cold voice murmured beside him. ‘She broke his heart when she left him for you. Will you break her heart, Sheikh Raschid, when it’s time for you to let my daughter go?’

‘I wonder what appeals to you more, Lady Delahaye,’ Raschid smiled tightly. ‘The prospect of your daughter receiving that broken heart or my leaving her?’

‘I love Evie,’ Evie’s mother declared stiffly.

‘Really?’ he drawled. ‘Then I beg leave to inform you that it doesn’t show.’

‘She has a right to be able to stand alongside the man she loves with her head held high in pride, not to avoid his presence at all cost!’

‘And whose fault is it that she does avoid me?’ Raschid challenged. ‘Certainly not mine,’ he denied.

‘She doesn’t look well,’ Evie’s mother stated tightly. ‘She most certainly doesn’t look happy. And that smile she is offering Harry is the first genuine smile I’ve seen from her today.’

‘I know…’ Raschid acknowledged quietly, his mind locked on something else Lady Delahaye had said that had managed to strike at the very heart of him.

Because, he realised, Evie didn’t look well. He knew she was unhappy—that much had been patently obvious to him for several weeks now.

But ill—as in sick? A chill went whipping though him.

‘Excuse me,’ he said curtly, and walked away, leaving Lucinda Delahaye to follow his long, lean, graceful approach towards her daughter with angrily resentful eyes.

Resentment that turned to grim satisfaction when she saw her son and his new bride waylay Sheikh Raschid before he could reach his target. She could see his frustration behind the smile of congratulation he had fixed on his lean dark face. And she could see Evie, so engrossed in whatever Harry was saying to her that she wasn’t aware that her lover stood not ten feet away.

Thank goodness for Julian, Evie was thinking as she pretended to listen to Harry enthuse about the innovative breeding programme he was using at his racing stud, while her real attention was fixed on Raschid, and the disturbing fact that he had been striding purposefully towards her.

She’d seen her mother speak to him, seen by both their expressions that the short meeting had not broken any ice. Whatever her mother had said to Raschid it had made him excuse himself curtly and make directly for Evie, which could only mean one thing.

Her mother was stirring trouble.

‘You should come down some time and see what we’re doing there,’ Harry was saying. ‘You won’t believe the changes since you last visited, Evie.’

Laughter suddenly exploded into the afternoon air, Julian and Raschid sounding deep and hearty, Christina’s lighter laughter like the tinkling of fairy bells, sweet and delicate and undeniably happy.

And once again Evie was glad of her wide-brimmed gauzy hat that was hiding her envious wish to be with them instead of standing here with Harry.

Harry, whom she had once thought she loved to distraction but now couldn’t even remember what that love felt like since it had been so thoroughly overwhelmed by what she felt for Raschid.

‘But your mother tells me you don’t get down to Westhaven much any more.’ Harry’s voice reached out to her from what felt like a long, long way off. ‘Is that because you didn’t fancy running into me?’

‘What?’ Dragging her attention away from the laughing trio, Evie made her eyes focus on Harry’s uncomfortably flushed face. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Harry,’ she admonished. ‘We were very good friends once. I thought we still were.’

‘I embarrassed you by asking you to marry me.’ He grimaced.

‘I was very honoured that you asked me,’ Evie replied. ‘And very sad that I had to turn you down. But it wouldn’t have worked for you and me, Harry,’ she added softly, watching the way his restless grey eyes couldn’t look directly at her. ‘We knew each other too well, were too—comfortable with each other.’

‘There were no exciting sparks flying between us, you mean.’ He laughed tensely. ‘Not the sort that fly between you and your Sheikh, anyway.’

There was no kind way to answer that, so Evie didn’t offer one. Instead she turned the conversation back to the safer ground of horses. Not long after that, the Master of Ceremonies called for them to take their places in the main marquee where the wedding banquet was to be served.

Seating four hundred guests around huge round tables was no small feat, and for the next couple of hours Evie didn’t so much as lay eyes on Raschid, her place being with family relatives and his amongst the dignitaries seated right over on the other side of the marquee.

So the day crawled on, through course after course of delicately prepared dishes and benign conversation. The speeches began, the champagne glasses being constantly refilled to mark each toast offered to the bride and groom.

By the time people began to drift away to go and get ready for the ball that evening, Evie was beginning to feel very jaded. She went to her room and indulged herself in a long soak in the antiquated cast-iron bath in the vague hope it would help remove some of the tension from her body.

It didn’t. So the knock at her bedroom door as she was just pulling a satin robe over the flesh-coloured teddy she intended to wear beneath the gold dress tonight made her heart sink in weary anticipation of yet another lecture from her mother as she called a very reluctant, ‘Come in!’

And was therefore surprised when it was Raschid who stepped into the room.