Exotic Affairs: The Mistress Bride / The Spanish Husband / The Bellini Bride

Of course, he didn’t deny it. ‘Marriage to Aisha has always loomed large on my horizon, Evie; you know that,’ he answered levelly. ‘I have never tried to hide it from you.’

‘Until last night,’ Evie said bitterly.

‘Is that why you ran away with the Marquis this morning?’ he demanded. ‘Because you heard a rumour that may or may not have been true?’

He wasn’t denying it, though. ‘I ran away because I didn’t want another ugly scene with you.’

He sighed—which was something, she supposed, and at last began to look as weary as she felt. ‘But we have to talk this through, and you know that, Evie.’

Oh, yes, she thought heavily. She knew that. But Raschid’s idea of talking was to give orders that she was supposed to obey.

‘I need time to myself, to decide what I want to do,’ she told him huskily.

‘Time is something I don’t have,’ he countered very grimly.

‘Because your father has issued you with an ultimatum?’ she asked.

His shrug was eloquent, his indifference to the question more so. ‘As I am going to marry you, the question of my marrying anyone else is therefore rendered useless.’

Given just who and what he was, Evie wasn’t so sure about that.

Turning away again, she went back to filling and plugging in the kettle. Behind her she could feel Raschid watching her, trying to calculate her mood and what she was thinking. It didn’t take much perception to see that, despite his reaffirmation about marriage, Evie was still not accepting it as the natural solution.

‘They say your father is ill again,’ she remarked, reaching into the cupboard for the caddy of his favourite mint tea without really knowing she was doing it.

‘He has to undergo some open heart surgery,’ Raschid confirmed. ‘But he is refusing to do so until I am safely married and settled in his seat of power.’

‘Which you won’t be if you marry me.’

‘I cannot lie and say that people are going to be delighted,’ Raschid sombrely acknowledged. ‘But given time they will become used to the idea. We all will,’ he added carefully.

Meaning her, Evie supposed.

The teapot was special, more a tiny silver urn that Asim had given her as a gift last year when she had got him to show her how to prepare the mint tea the way Raschid liked it.

It had been a nice thought—a caring thought. But even Asim, whom she was perhaps closer to than anyone else attached to Raschid, would stare in horror at his master actually marrying her.

‘I won’t marry you, Raschid,’ she said, spooning the pale green coarse-cut leaves into the urn. ‘It would be wrong for me and disastrous for you.’

‘Define disastrous,’ he requested.

One of those weary sighs whispered from her. ‘Your country’s stability depends upon its Muslim roots,’ she explained. ‘Marrying a Christian would weaken those roots. Which is why the cousin of a cousin has always hovered in the shadows throughout the time we’ve been together.’

He didn’t bother to argue the point, which made her want to weep. ‘Now explain why it would be wrong for you?’ he prompted instead.

Another sigh—one that was caught back before it was uttered this time, but her heart lay heavy in her breast as she stood there watching the kettle come slowly to the boil. ‘You would stifle me. The situation would stifle me. As our relationship stands at the moment I have the freedom to do more or less as I please. The restrictions placed on a Muslim wife are stifling enough, but for one who would be as disapproved of as I would be… I would suffocate,’ she predicted.

‘And the child you carry?’ he continued levelly. ‘What is supposed to happen to him while you protect yourself from a stifling marriage and save my country from instability?’

He was mocking her but angrily. He didn’t like the picture she was painting but couldn’t come up with a better one to paint over it.

‘The he may be a she,’ she smiled. ‘Which would not be so big a problem, would it?’

‘We are not barbarians, Evie,’ he said tightly. ‘We do not drown our female offspring at birth, I promise you.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ she said, pouring boiling water into the urn. ‘Tell me… what would your people think of a half English boy child who would in effect be his father’s heir if we married?’

‘He will be my heir whether or not we marry,’ Raschid informed her with a grimness that had Evie spinning round to stare at him in horror.

‘No, Raschid!’ she cried out in protest. ‘You—’

‘Watch out!’ he rasped at her.

But it was already too late. ‘Oh, damn!’ Evie gasped as pain like nothing she had ever felt in her life before forced the air to rush from her lungs.

She hadn’t even realised she still had hold of the hot urn! The jerky way she had spun around had sent the hot tea shooting out of the spout and over her arm.

‘Here!’ Raschid was suddenly in front of her and grabbing hold of her hand to yank her over to the sink. Ice-cold water gushed over burning hot skin, sending heart-stopping shock waves shooting through her system.

Her eyes were closed, and she was shaking so badly that even her teeth chattered. If Raschid hadn’t been holding her up with his arm clamped around her waist, she would have fallen in a trembling heap to the tiled floor.

‘Did it splash you anywhere else?’ he asked harshly.

It was all she could do to shake her head. She felt sick, she felt dizzy, the shock and the pain driving her to breathe in choked whimpers.

Raschid hissed out something nasty from between violently clenched teeth. ‘You fool,’ he muttered, ruthless in his determination to keep her arm beneath the agonising coldness of the water. ‘Did I ask for tea—did I? If you’ve damaged this beautiful skin I will throttle you!’

‘Sh-shut up,’ she breathed, in too much pain to want to listen to him taking his own distress out on her.

‘I should have seen it coming!’ he railed on regardless. ‘When you play the super-controlled ice-maiden, it usually means you’re struggling to keep yourself together for one reason or another!’

Well, she wasn’t together now, Evie thought painfully. She was literally coming apart at the seams. Her arm hurt, her body hurt and her heart hurt. ‘I w-won’t marry you,’

she choked out, his remark reminding her why she had ended up scalding herself like this.

The hand clamped around her slender wrist tightened its grip, then grimly lowered the arm into a sink now full of icy water before he let go of her. The tap was switched off, Evie wilted weakly against the unit, her body sliding away from his until she was hunched over the sink with her arm immersed up to the armpit.

Leaving her standing there weak and shaking, fighting to keep the sickness, the dizziness and now the onset of wretched tears at bay, Raschid strode angrily away. A moment later she heard him running up the stairs, and a minute after that and he was back with the first-aid box from her bathroom and a snowy white towel, both of which he angrily tossed down on the unit beside her.

Then he was gently lifting her arm out of the water and laying it on the towel. He didn’t speak as he bent over to inspect the damage, but his face was cast in stone, his eyes glittering from between lushly curling lashes, his mouth nothing but a thin tight line.

She watched his brown fingers move gently over the reddened area of her arm, watched him carefully cover it with the towel then turn to open the first-aid box.

Most of the heat had been neutralised by the water by then, although Evie still could not stop shaking. Producing a tube of antiseptic, he deftly unscrewed the cap then began lightly smearing the ointment on her arm.

‘Does that hurt?’

She shook her head in answer.

‘If it blisters we will have to call in a burns specialist. But at the moment you seem to have been lucky.’

Lucky, Evie thought. There had to be an irony in that somewhere though she didn’t feel like looking for it.

‘Raschid—please listen to me,’ she pleaded. ‘You can’t—’

He glanced up, those golden eyes so hard they silenced her utterly. ‘Don’t force me to get tough with you,’ he warned. ‘For you will not like the tactics I will employ.’

‘Was that a threat?’ she gasped.

He didn’t answer, didn’t need to while he continued to look at her like that. Raschid had a ruthless streak running through him that could, when invited, become quite cruel—though until now Evie had never been a party to that side of him.

‘The child is mine.’ He reinforced the main points of conflict here. ‘You are mine. I have not the slightest intention of giving either of you up. Which means I must make your place in my life official.’

‘And damn the consequences?’

He grimaced but nodded. ‘And damn the consequences,’ he flatly confirmed.

The phone began to ring, slicing through the tension like a knife.

‘Do you want me to answer it?’ Raschid asked quietly.

Evie shook her head, her eyes lowered while she waited for the answer machine to take over.

It was her mother again. ‘Have you seen this morning’s paper?’ Her shrill voice slashed across the room. ‘I have never been so embarrassed in all my life! If it isn’t bad enough that you disappear without a word of thanks to anyone, that wretched man only goes and does the same thing—then I have to contend with the pair of you staring out at me from the front page of the newspaper!’

Evie looked up at Raschid, a question in her eyes, but he shook his dark head in grim answer.

‘I’m telling you, Evie,’ her mother said tightly. ‘I am so darned angry with you I could very easily disown you! Front page you stand wrapped in his arms! Centre page he stands with his father announcing his upcoming marriage to another woman!’

Raschid hissed out an acrid curse, his big frame taut as he strode across the room towards the telephone. He was about to snatch it up to demand what the hell Lucinda was talking about when her voice came again.

‘And where is the picture of Julian and Christina?’ she demanded tearfully. ‘Nowhere to be seen! Scandal—that’s all you’ve ever brought me, Evangeline! Pain, disillusionment, embarrassment and scandal! The Beverleys are upset and trying not to show it! I am upset and trying not to show it! But where are you? That’s what I would like to know! With him somewhere? Are the pair of you nicely holed up enjoying your last passionate tryst before he dumps you to marry someone else? Perhaps you would like the press to cover that shocking event too!’

The connection was severed. In the drumming silence that followed it, Evie stood cradling her towel-wrapped arm against her and wondered bleakly what her mother was going to say when she found out about the coming baby.

A loud knock suddenly sounded on the front door. Evie jumped violently, the air shivering out of her lungs as she automatically walked forward to go and answer it.

‘No,’ Raschid bit out forcefully. ‘Check who it is first.’

Diverting towards the window, Evie glanced out then gave a gasp of surprise. ‘It’s the press!’ she exclaimed, and began quickly dragging the curtains across the glass when half a dozen of them saw her and began converging on the living-room window.

Within seconds the noise was unbelievable, people knocking on the door and on the window, calling out her name and shouting out questions. White-faced, she turned towards Raschid. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked bewilderedly. ‘What was my mother talking about? Why are they here?’

‘I don’t know.’ Frowning, he was already lifting the telephone up and stabbing in a set of numbers.

Evie stood, still trembling with shock from her scalding without the added confusion that was now taking place outside her home. Raschid’s voice was tight with anger as he spoke in his own language to whoever it was he had contacted, his dark face growing darker by the second, while the thumping on the door and window grew so loud Evie could barely hear herself even think.

On a violent curse, Raschid slammed down the receiver. At the same moment a newspaper was pushed through the letterbox. It landed on the doormat with an ominous thud. Evie went to get it but Raschid was there before her.

‘Do you have anything to say about this, Miss Delahaye?’ a muffled voice shouted through the letterbox. ‘Front page. Can’t miss it!’ the voice added helpfully.

Front page. Can’t miss it.

Evie stood by Raschid’s arm and simply stared at what she was seeing. It was a photograph of herself and Raschid kissing beneath the wedding canopy at Beverley. Above it the headline read: ‘Is This Farewell?’ Below it was the sub-heading: ‘Behran Embassy announces the forthcoming marriage of Sheikh Raschid Al Kadah to neighbouring sheikh’s daughter! The marriage will unite two of the most powerful sheikhdoms and effectively put Evie Delahaye out in the cold.’

‘This has not been announced with my approval!’ Raschid insisted forcefully. ‘My father is attempting to force my hand!’

‘Oh, no,’ Evie whispered, sinking into the nearest chair when her legs went weak beneath her.

Raschid stood gripping the newspaper between white-knuckled fists while he read on, his dark face locked up like a steel trap. Neither spoke again; neither needed to. They both knew very well what this was going to mean to them.

For, no matter how much he would like to deny what his father had announced, Evie knew Raschid dared not. To deny it would be tantamount to insulting both his own father and Aisha’s family.

So this is it, Evie concluded hollowly. Her instincts had been sending her all the right signals, and this was the end for her and Raschid.

No more mouthing words that she didn’t really mean. No more pretending she wouldn’t marry him. For it was only now as she sat here accepting that she could never marry him that she realised she had been pretending to herself.

And it hit her hard, so hard she could barely function.

The telephone began ringing again. Neither of them heard it. Just as they didn’t hear the pounding on the front door and the window any more. For those few stark minutes the very walls could have come tumbling down around them and neither would have moved a muscle.

Then the letterbox flew up and a pair of eyes appeared in the opening. ‘Did you know about this yesterday, Miss Delahaye?’ a voice demanded. ‘Is that why you and the Sheikh were careful to avoid each other at your brother’s wedding?’

Not careful enough, was Evie’s hollow answer to that as she thought of that revealing photograph. And we didn’t avoid each other, she reminded herself as, with glassy eyes, she watched Raschid throw down the newspaper and angrily reach for one of her cream linen easy chairs. Picking it up, he rammed it against the door, effectively trapping the letterbox shut.

We danced together, her own train of thought went on uninterrupted. We made love in my room before we went to the ball together.

Raschid had been angry with her for avoiding him. He hadn’t known about this then, she was sure of it. For, whatever he was, he was not devious.

Angry again later, yes, when she told him about the baby, she acknowledged. Seeing all the problems a baby was going to cause because his father was already laying the pressure on him to marry Aisha.

But this—this was cruel. This did not take into account her own feelings. This publicly stripped her of her pride and left her heart exposed and bleeding.

Raschid just wouldn’t have done that to her.

‘I’ll go away,’ she whispered as one thought led haphazardly on to another. ‘I have relatives in Australia. I can—’

‘No!’ Raschid ground out at her furiously.

Glancing up, she saw him through a haze of tears. His wonderful skin had lost most of its colour, his eyes standing out like two golden suns locked into fierce eruption. ‘You will do nothing—nothing until I can get this sorted out! There is a way—there has to be a way!’ he raked out hoarsely.

And it was that hoarseness of voice that cut her to the quick. For Raschid, like herself, knew the emptiness of that statement.

Outside, the noise was growing. Inside someone was shouting questions at her via the answering machine. With an angry jerk, Raschid bent down and pulled the plug on the phone.

Then, on a growl, he muttered, ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ and retrieved his leather jacket to take his mobile phone out of one of the pockets. Tossing the jacket aside again, he stepped into the kitchen to peer out of the rear window, looking to see if they had been besieged at the rear of the cottage as well as the front.

No tell-tale camera lens came poking over the top of the seven-foot-high brick wall that protected the back of the property.

‘Get the car around the back of the cottage,’ he rasped tersely to whoever he was speaking to. ‘Keep the engine running and be prepared to move.’

With that he came back to Evie’s side, bent to grasp her uninjured arm and lifted her to her feet. ‘Come on,’ he urged grimly.

‘But—’

She looked dazed and shaken. Raschid shook his dark head. ‘You can’t stay here,’ he clipped out. ‘And I certainly cannot. Going by the questions they have been throwing at you, I don’t think they even know I am here—which is to our advantage. I arrived before they did, and my car was parked around the corner. With a bit of luck,’ he added as he unbolted the back door and pulled it open, ‘we can be out of here before they realise you’ve escaped.’

‘Escaped to where?’ Evie asked bleakly as he pushed her outside and followed her, pulling the door shut behind him.

‘To my apartment,’ he replied as if the question had been a serious one and not a stark response to her own bleak sense of isolation. ‘At least there I can protect you from all of this until we decide what we are going to do.’

Do? Evie let out a nervy little laugh that verged on the hysterical. They both knew what he had to do. It was her future that was hanging in the balance here.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT WAS another warm sunny day and the enclosed back yard acted like a suntrap. But Evie felt shivering cold as she let Raschid take her over to the solid wooden back gate that led out into the narrow alleyway, which ran right along the row of terraced cottages.

They paused there in the sunshine, Raschid sliding back the two bolts that secured the gate then going still with his hand on the latch while he listened for the sound of his car arriving. Evie stood beside him with her face lowered where she stared blankly at the white towel still covering her scalded arm. The skin was burning a little, but it didn’t seem to matter, not when her whole world felt as though it was slowly but surely falling in on her.

Raschid put a hand to her waist, then sent it travelling up her trembling spine until it reached her nape where his long fingers gently closed so he could use his thumb beneath her chin to lift her eyes to his.

Her heart turned over at the dark glow she could see burning in his eyes. He was so handsome, she thought tragically, so dark and smooth and so right for her somehow—how was she ever going to survive without him?

‘I love you,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Don’t let anyone or anything ever try to convince you otherwise.’

And he did love her. Evie only had to look into those rich golden eyes to know it was true love that burned from them.

‘But love isn’t enough, is it?’ she said, her mouth quivering on the true wretchedness of that comment.

Bending his head, he caught her quivering mouth, tasted it—soothed it with his own firmer lips. ‘I will find a way through this,’ he gruffly vowed. ‘You are mine. I am yours. Nothing can change that.’

Evie wished with all her aching heart that she could believe that—but she couldn’t. ‘Duty can,’ she replied.

Raschid didn’t answer but his expression clouded—and she couldn’t even swallow against the thickness that was suddenly clogging her throat.

The car drew up beyond the gate then. Lifting the latch, Raschid stepped out to check the alleyway before he opened the rear door of a silver Mercedes then quickly urged Evie inside.

‘Right—go!’ he commanded the driver as he got in beside her.

It was the sheer urgency in his voice that made Evie turn to look through the car’s rear window. A man with half a dozen cameras hanging around his neck had just appeared at the other end of the alleyway. He was desperately trying to bring one of those cameras up to his face as they took off across the cobbles at speed.

‘It’s all right,’ Raschid soothed, seeing Evie’s anxious expression. ‘He is on foot. By the time he has collected his own form of transport we will be gone.’

‘But he now knows you’re with me,’ she pointed out heavily. Which made for just another bit of delicious scandal for them to feed upon.

‘I will always be with you,’ he replied with a flat-voiced sincerity that only helped to heighten her anxiety.

For how could he make a pronouncement like that knowing it was only going to cause more distress for all of them?

‘Raschid—’

‘No.’ His hand came out, reaching across the small gap separating them to close warmly around one of her own tightly clenched hands. ‘We will not discuss this now,’ he ordained. ‘You are too upset and I am too confused by what my father has done for either of us to discuss anything constructively.’

‘But—’

‘But,’ he intruded, turning dark eyes on her that issued one very dire warning, ‘you are carrying my child, Evie, which is one fact we are not in any confusion about. And that child will have my name no matter how many problems we have to surmount to reach that goal.’

A vow from the soul that filled her breast with warm honeyed love for this man who valued her so dearly.

But it didn’t stop her mind from gnawing away at the problems they were about to face as the car reached the end of the alleyway and shot out on to the main street, heading towards the river.

The sound of Raschid’s mobile phone bursting into life brought her sharply to attention. His hand left hers, and for the next few minutes he talked at length in his own language. His voice sounded hard, the answers he was receiving to any questions he shot out doing nothing to ease his temper.

‘They’re all over the place,’ he muttered when he eventually sat back again. ‘Besieging my apartment block as well as your cottage! I could really have done without all of this!’

He could? Evie’s head was beginning to swim with it all. ‘You got me out of my house so fast, I haven’t even got my purse,’ she said, adding to his problems. ‘And we didn’t lock the doors behind us.’

‘Your cottage will have been secured within minutes of us leaving,’ Raschid assured her. ‘And you can survive without your purse, surely?’

He was terse to the point of being cutting, and Evie turned her face sideways and pretended he wasn’t there. She wasn’t hurt or offended by his tone; in fact she sympathised with it. The whole situation had exploded into something way beyond what either of them could control, and that was what was so hard to swallow.

Being out of control.

‘How is your arm?’

Evie glanced down at it, rather confused to see it was still wrapped in the white towel. ‘It still burns a little,’ she replied.

But then, so did her eyes; they felt sore and gritty through lack of sleep and a dire need to sob her heart out. Perhaps he knew it, because, on a heavy sigh, Raschid slid across the gap separating them so he could pull her against him.

‘Asim will take care of your arm as soon as we reach my apartment,’ he murmured. ‘All we need to do first is get past the press waiting for us there, and that should be easy enough when they cannot follow us underground, into the car park.’

‘Then what?’ she asked. ‘Do we hide away like fugitives in your apartment instead of my cottage?’ There didn’t seem to be much difference between the two locations to Evie.

‘At least I can protect you there,’ he countered. ‘Because,’ he then added very grimly, ‘this is only the beginning of it all, not the end of it.’