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In those first few months the only thing that had distracted her from the belief that Odir would arrive in Zurich and drag her back to Farrehed had been Natalia. Her university friend who, within a matter of days, had thrown Eloise’s problems into stark relief.
One day she might look back kindly on the girl who had arrived in Zurich looking over her shoulder, broken by misunderstandings and deeper hurts. But in contrast to Natalia’s situation, the Eloise that first came to Switzerland simply looked foolish and spoilt.
Taking a deep breath, Eloise pushed those thoughts aside and tried to focus on the present. What was it her husband wanted? Had he come to the decision that it was time to end their marriage? Or was there a reason that her husband’s summons coincided with her birthday tomorrow? The same day that she would finally be able to access the trust fund her grandfather had so kindly and generously secured for her. Surely just a coincidence.
And if she told herself that one hundred times more, perhaps she would start to believe it.
Eloise fingered the embossed invitation that had arrived, hand-delivered, that morning. She had opened the door with her coffee in one hand and accepted the envelope with the other. Looking back, she could hardly credit that it had been only eight hours ago. Nothing had sprung her into action like that demand from her husband to attend tonight’s charity event. Nothing. Not even Natalia’s illness, her father’s blackmail or her mother’s indifference.
It had taken her an hour to think out her options, to call the hospital and make arrangements to cover her absence. She could have stayed in Zurich. She could have run again. But if Odir had found her then he knew the name on her fake passport, and without help from Malik she couldn’t easily procure another one.
But through all these considerations was the realisation that she should make use of this unexpected summons...and finally put into motion the one thing she’d wanted for the last six months.
Eloise twisted the royal wedding ring around her finger. The weight she’d lost in recent months had made the fitting loose, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it was a sign. A sign that perhaps she was finally about to escape the noose that had been placed around her neck the moment her ambitious father had finally got what he wanted as two little words fell from her lips... ‘I do.’
A car horn crashed into the night from somewhere behind the cab. She handed the driver the last of her English money and got out, carefully picking up the long skirts of the black silk dress she had bought at the airport. The halter-neck fitted snugly around her throat, disguising the need for the expensive jewellery that would be expected from the royal princess she had supposedly been for the last eight months. The material clung to her chest like a second skin, and at her bare back she felt a blast of unusually warm air for London, which was in the throes of a summer heatwave. She had spent a fortune on it—almost more than a month’s salary. But it was worth it.
She wasn’t naïve enough to go to a State event in a dress of even half the price. And she wasn’t naïve enough to pick a fight with a prince without armour.
Not when that Prince was her husband.
* * *
As soon as Eloise stepped through the doors of the Heron Tower she was flanked by four men dressed from head to toe in black. For a moment—just a moment—she imagined the cold clasps of handcuffs closing around her wrists, and then discarded the thought as foolish. Her husband might be infuriated with her, but he would never do anything to risk the reputation of the royal family. She knew that better than most. She looked to their faces and was not surprised to see Malik, the only one of the men actually to meet her eye. No one spoke, though if it was a sign of respect, or shame, she couldn’t tell.
As they all entered the lift, the guards barring entry to any of the other guests, she allowed herself to feel a burst of hope that after tonight she might finally be free. Her stomach dropped away as the lift drew them higher and higher, giving her the most spectacular night-time view of London. Multi-coloured lights spread out before her and it was almost enough to take her breath away.
But superimposed over the dramatic vista was her pale, shimmering reflection. Her long blonde hair had not been expertly looped and pinned by stylists who knew what they were doing and charged a fortune. Instead she had done her best in the mirror at the cheap hotel she’d rented for the night. And in her mind the two extremes—the poor hotel and the incredibly rich lavish world of the Heron Tower—summed up the last two years of her life.
The poorer part was so much more valuable to her for its freedom...the richer part coming with a price she could no longer pay.
* * *
Drawing to a stop sooner than she’d expected, the lift doors opened onto a room lavishly decorated with leading members of international society—each adorned in clothes and jewellery that would rival all the gold in the Bank of England.
She glanced around the soft-hued room, its delicate lighting clashing painfully with the sounds of clinking glasses and mind-numbing small talk.
The party, it seemed, had started without her.
With Eloise’s first step into the room those standing nearby stopped talking, and all around her a hush seemed to descend. Many bowed their heads, as if in respect, but she knew it also served to mask their gossiping mouths. And she hated it. She always had. The close attention paid to her and her family before and even more so after she had married Odir. For just a moment she wondered whether this was how her mother felt. Hiding her hurt behind practised smiles. And then she berated herself. Her husband, for all his sins, was nothing like her father.
‘Eloise?’ A familiar voice cut through the crowds.
Eloise turned to take in the face of one of the only friends she could claim from her ‘old life’, as she now thought of it.
‘Emily, it’s good to see you,’ she replied, surprised at the truth of her words, and even more surprised as Emily drew her into a warm embrace.
‘Where have you been?’ Emily whispered into her ear. ‘It’s been ages, El. The rumour mill has had you locked in the Farrehed palace tower by your domineering husband.’
For just a moment Eloise wanted to tell her friend everything. Of the joy she’d found helping others, the freedom she’d found in Zurich, the meaning she’d found in such a simple existence...
‘Mrs Santos,’ Malik said, interrupting Eloise’s thoughts and putting an end to such a foolish whim.
Of course she couldn’t say anything that would reveal her absence from Farrehed...from the Prince.
‘Malik.’ Emily nodded in warm welcome.
‘It’s a long story,’ Eloise replied quietly, with a smile to soften the brush-off. ‘What are you doing here? You’re not usually at these events.’
‘I could say the same for you,’ the brunette replied in hushed tones. ‘My father... He’s... He’s not doing so well.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. And your husband?’
‘Not here—thankfully,’ Emily replied with a rueful laugh. ‘Speaking of husbands... Yours has been like a bear with a sore head all evening.’
‘Really?’ Eloise asked, her heart pounding just at the thought of him.
Emily nodded over her shoulder.
And, as if their discussion had conjured his presence, Eloise caught sight of the man she hadn’t seen in six months. She couldn’t see his face, but the broad lines of his back were etched in her memory as if it were the only way she had ever seen her husband: from a distance and from behind.
Even today he stood a head taller than all those around him, and for one second her breath caught in her lungs. A thousand images of her handsome husband ran through her mind and over her skin. That first ever sight of him, dismounting a formidable black stallion. His impenetrable air of authority before she’d even known he was the son of a sheikh. The way that she had mocked him for his arrogance as he’d flung the horse’s reins at the stable hand and the innocent flirtation they had shared—until later that evening when they had been formally introduced.
Betraying nothing of their first meeting, Odir had eased her humiliation, charmed away her embarrassment and made it a secret shared between them, kept from their fathers. One she’d foolishly cherished.
Images crashed through her mind of the brief time they had spent together during their arranged engagement—the trips he’d made out to the borders of Farrehed, where she had been working for a charity set up to help provide medication for the desert tribes. The secret dinners they had shared...the morning they’d watched the sun rise over the sand dunes...
She thought back with shame of how she had told him her hopes and dreams...how she’d eagerly eaten up his plans for Farrehed and its people. Of how they’d come together, in spite of their fathers’ plans, to try and make the best of the arrangement. Of how she’d dared to hope that their marriage could be something more.
But it hadn’t been. She was a bought bride—a pawn used by powerful men.
Her wedding ring slipped down her finger again. She was done waiting for her prince to come along and rescue her. It was time for the Princess to rescue herself.
* * *
Odir’s cheeks ached from fake smiles, his throat hurt from obsequious small talk and his head pounded from the pressure he’d been keeping at bay all day. He rubbed away the exhaustion from his neck. He’d been through worse, he assured himself, but then wondered whether that was actually true.
At that moment, he would have given half of his country away for a whisky.
But the ruler of Farrehed couldn’t be so uncouth as to drink whisky at an event where only the finest champagne was being guzzled by the gallon.
Odir had never quite understood why it required the spending of such large sums of money to raise even greater sums of money for charity. But then the law of diminishing returns was something he’d never held to.
‘And that was when she said that she couldn’t see it!’
Odir joined in the over-zealous laughter at the undeserving joke told by the French Ambassador. And then, instead of turning away and seeking the solitude he so badly wanted, Odir slipped into the kind of seasoned small talk that he could do in his sleep. Perhaps in the brief, heady days of his youth he had even done it in his sleep. But that had been before. Before his marriage, before his father’s grief-stricken deterioration had signalled the near absolute destruction of his beloved country, and before this morning.
And now, despite all this spectacle, all this civility, the future of Farrehed was hanging by a thread. And the only person who could help him hold on to it was the woman he’d let into his palace to wear his ring.
Behind him Odir felt rather than heard a lull in the conversation and the hairs lifted on his arms. She should never have been able to elicit such a reaction in him. He’d once thought the barriers around his heart strong enough to prevent such a thing. But she had. And she still did.
Eloise—his wife, his future Queen—had arrived.
Odir watched her reflection in the glass as she made her way through the throng of people between them. The closer she got, the more eagerly he ate up the defiance that shone from the angle of her shoulders, her determined footsteps. Good. He wanted the promise of the fight she was offering him. He needed it.
He let her get almost within touching distance and then he struck.
Odir wheeled round and imprisoned her within his arms, proceeding to kiss her in a way that he had allowed himself on only a few occasions during their courtship. He took full advantage of her lips, opened partially in shock, and plunged his tongue into...
Into a heaven he’d refused to let himself remember.
As his lips carved out his domination over her he cursed inwardly. The taste of her tongue was shocking in its sweetness, her soft lips taking in every sweep of his firm command. He had meant the kiss to be retribution. He had not for one minute thought that it would be his own punishment. His entire body was on fire, and he jerked back away from her before he could get burnt.
For just a second the shock that lit her features was echoed in his eyes. Only once had he ever felt this way. On their wedding night... It had been a glimpse into the madness that might consume him whole, might tempt him to turn his back on his country’s needs.
And then he remembered what had happened two months after their wedding night...the lies and the betrayal... It was enough to return his presence of mind to what had to be done.
‘Eloise, habibti, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself,’ he said, with a smile so sickly sweet he wondered that anyone could believe it. ‘Even two days apart feels like...months,’ he said, through lips that still held the taste of her.
For a moment he almost hoped that she might slip up, that the hesitation he saw in her eyes would reveal her to be the fraud she truly was, but her instant reply was flawless.
‘I’m sorry that I couldn’t be on the same flight as you, darling.’
The lie slipped seamlessly from her lips, and yet again he wondered how he’d failed to notice such great skill in her throughout the months of their engagement and their brief marriage. Never mind. He would use it to his advantage and remember not to underestimate her. After all, she had managed to coerce his most loyal personal guard into doing her bidding.
No, it would not pay to underestimate his wife.
* * *
That kiss might have stolen her breath, and taunted her with memories of their wedding night—and it certainly was not the welcome that she’d expected from her husband—but that didn’t change a thing.
Eloise pushed down the betraying grip of desire that had dusted her body and forced it away before it could take hold. If her will hadn’t been enough, then the barely concealed warning in Odir’s eyes certainly was.
She had been here before. She had played many roles in her life and played them well. The perfect daughter, the doting wife... Just for one more night she could do it.
Eloise was skilled at recognising illusions and half-truths, but she could almost believe there had been a time when there was more to her husband’s glance than cold acceptance.
The French Ambassador claimed her attention with a bow.
‘Ma chère Eloise—I can’t tell you how sorry we were not to see you at the Hanley Cup in May. Matilde and I were just saying so, weren’t we?’ he asked of his wife.
Glancing at Matilde’s avaricious gaze, Eloise knew exactly what kind of speculation they had been involved in, and clearly they were greedily about to eat up the first juicy bit of gossip on Farrehed’s errant Princess.
Eloise was prepared to launch into the carefully constructed cover story of her actions over the last months when Odir cut in with an impossibly gentle chuckle. Chuckle? She didn’t think she’d ever heard such a sound from his lips in all the time she had known him.
‘You must forgive my wife. She’s been so preoccupied with her charitable works—’ the heavily laden words for her benefit alone ‘—that it feels as if I have hardly seen her once in the last six months.’
Matilde’s hungry gaze turned into one of reproach, and that only angered Eloise even more. The last words Odir had hurled at her across a room had been so full of fury they had driven her from Farrehed. He had forced her out of her country, her home, and he had the gall to blame her?
‘Odir, don’t exaggerate,’ she said playfully, putting a bit more weight than necessary behind a not-so-playful tap on his arm. ‘You know exactly where I have been.’ She turned to Matilde with the most ingratiating smile she had ever given and continued, ‘I have been overseeing a project to bring sovereign-funded, mental and medical health care to women of the tribes at the outer reaches of Farrehed.’
It was as close to the truth of what she had been helping to do in Zurich as it could be. As she well knew, the best lies were born from threads of truth. She had learnt that from her mother and father.
‘It’s no wonder you’re here, then,’ replied the smiling ambassador’s wife, and for a moment, Eloise was confused.
She had been so preoccupied with her husband’s summons she hadn’t even noticed which of Odir’s causes this event was for.
‘Eloise would never miss a charitable event that reaffirms the links between the World Health Organisation and the betterment of women in our country. But I hope that you will excuse us,’ he said, placing a reassuring hand on the ambassador’s shoulder. ‘It’s a little-known secret that it’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow, and I have a special present for her.’
Odir wrapped his strong arm around her waist like a steel clamp and started manoeuvring her from the room.
‘There’s only one birthday present I want from you, darling, and that’s a divorce.’
CHAPTER TWO (#uc52c01d3-b313-5bac-9873-44a39aec172c)
August 1st, 21.00-22.00, Heron Tower
‘KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN,’ he commanded, pulling her tighter into his side as if he feared that she would try to escape.
Perhaps it wasn’t such a silly fear, as from the moment he had put his lips to hers, brushed the inside of her mouth with his tongue, all she’d wanted to do was run.
How galling it was to realise that within seconds of his kiss all she had wanted to do was give herself over to the feelings that she’d been wrong to think had died. Everything in her had surged up, almost bringing her arms to hang on to the lapels of his tux jacket.
People parted before them like the sea, and she knew that they would still have done the same even had he not been a prince, such was the power and authority he wore around him like a protective cloak.
From halfway across the room she could see Odir’s personal guard beginning to gather around a small doorway that led off to the side of the room.
‘Where are you taking me, Odir?’
‘What? No darling for me this time?’
She tried to pull her arm free, but he only tightened his hold.
‘Stop it or you’ll make a scene. And, as bad a job as you’ve already been doing as my wife for the last six months, believe me, you don’t want to make it worse.’
His response confused her momentarily. What did he care if she wasn’t being the perfect wife? He certainly hadn’t in the two months following their wedding day, having disappeared for weeks on end, leaving her to haunt the halls of the palace alone and lost. Surely the only reason he’d called her to London this evening was because he wanted to sever all ties with her?
Eloise couldn’t imagine for one moment that it would be anything else after the last words he’d said to her in Farrehed. After what he believed her to have done.
‘I’m not the one causing the scene, Odir. You are. I’ll ask again. Where are you taking me?’
He seemed to flinch as her voice had become almost loud enough for those closest to them to hear.
‘Somewhere we can talk. That is what you want, no? To talk?’
‘What I want is a—’
He wheeled her around so that she stood in front of him, impossibly close. He leaned in with what would look to the world like the satisfied smile of a loving husband. His lips were just beneath her ear, tantalisingly close.
