An Arabian Courtship

His cool, sensual mouth firmed. ‘In the circumstances, your timidity seems rather excessive. I value honesty above all other virtues. It would be wiser if you were to behave normally.’

Silence fell.

‘You are still very young,’ he continued. ‘Can you really have reflected upon the kind of life you will lead as my wife?’

Anybody with the brain power of a dormouse would have run a mile the moment they paused to reflect, Polly decided ferociously. Why did she have to stay put? Because, as Maggie had innocently reminded her, this had been her decision. Her lips moved tremulously into a firmer line. ‘Of course I’ve thought it over.’

‘You are probably aware that as I handle my country’s investment funds, I frequently travel abroad, but as my wife, you will remain in Dharein. You will not accompany me,’ he emphasised. ‘There you will mix only with your own sex. You will not be able to drive a car. Nor will you be allowed to leave the palace either alone or unveiled. From the hour that I take you as my bride, no other man may look upon you if that is my wish. Within our household we will even eat separately. Perhaps you have heard that certain members of my family are less strict in their observances of these traditions. I am not. I would not wish you to be in ignorance of this fact.’

Ignorance suddenly seemed like bliss. He described an existence beyond the reach of Polly’s imagination. Purdah—the segregation of the sexes that resulted in the practice of keeping women in strict seclusion. Sufficiently challenged by the thought of marrying him, all she could produce was a wooden nod.

Audibly he released his breath. ‘You cannot have been accustomed to many restrictions. I understand that your parents regularly entertain here.’

‘I don’t put in much of a presence.’ Polly was thinking of her mother’s wrath when she had hidden in a landing cupboard at the age of eleven sooner than recite poetry to family friends.

A winged jet brow ascended. ‘When I entertain, you will have no choice.’

Her forehead indented. ‘But you can’t entertain women on their own?’

His brows pleated.

‘You just said that I’d never see another man again. I wouldn’t be much use as a hostess,’ she pointed out flatly.

A disconcerting quirk briefly shifted his unsmiling mouth. ‘It is possible that I have been guilty of some exaggeration on that count,’ he conceded. ‘But you must understand my surprise that a young woman, raised in so free a society, should be willing to enter an arranged marriage. I was concerned that you might have erroneously assumed that your position as my wife would grant you an exciting and glamorous existence.’

‘I expect it to be dull.’ The impulsive admission just leapt off Polly’s tongue. She shrank from the incredulous glitter irradiating his narrowed stare. ‘I mean, not dull precisely, but—well, an Arab wife, who has servants and doesn’t get out either…well,’ she was faltering badly, ‘she can’t have very much to do with herself.’

‘An Arab wife concerns herself with the comfort of her husband,’ he intoned coldly.

He was most erratic in his arguments. ‘But you said you wouldn’t be around much.’

Even white teeth showed in an almost feral slash against his bronzed skin. ‘By that I wished to warn you that I will not dance attendance on you.’

But you expect me to dance attendance on you! she thought. He was a male chauvinist pig, an award-winning specimen. He put chauvinism in line with a capital offence. Stonily she studied the carpet. ‘Yes.’

‘Our alliance will be one of extreme practicality,’ he delivered in hard addition. ‘I am not of a romantic disposition. I tell you this…’

‘You didn’t need to. You wouldn’t be here if you were romantic,’ Polly interrupted thinly. ‘I suppose Mother said something which made you worry that I might be suffering from similar delusions. I’m not.’

For a male receiving a reassurance he had surely sought, Raschid looked unrelentingly grim. ‘This becomes clear. Then we are of one mind. I will not receive complaints of neglect when I am involved in the business concerns which take up most of my time.’

By the sound of it, if she ran into him once a week she would be doing well. She smiled. ‘No, I won’t complain.’

‘Had I sacked Dharein from border to border, it appears that I could not have found a more conformist and submissive bride,’ he declared very softly. ‘But I warn you of this now—should we prove incompatible, I will divorce you.’

That was a piece of good news Polly had not even hoped for. How could they be compatible in any field? He intimidated her. A close encounter with an alien would have been less terrifying. The unashamed threat of domestic tyranny echoed in all his stated requirements.

‘You have nothing to say to this either?’ he prompted in a husky growl. ‘You are composed and content with this future?’

‘Are you?’ Glancing up unwarily, Polly encountered a hypnotically intense stare which burned flags of pink into her fair skin. A curious tightening sensation clenched her somewhere down deep inside. It made her feel very uncomfortable.

A chilling smile slanted his well-shaped mouth. ‘Could I be impervious to the allure of such beauty as you possess?’

No doubt this was an example of the charm her mother had mentioned, and it was absolutely meaningless. When Raschid had first seen her in the doorway, neither admiration nor warmth had coloured his impassive appraisal.

‘Although I should confess that I am not in accord with the meeting of East and West in marriage,’ he added smoothly. ‘I will treat you with consideration and respect, but I will not alter my way of life. The adaptation required will, necessarily, be yours alone. I can only accept your word that you feel yourself equal to this challenge.’

Out of the blue the strangest suspicion came to her, infiltrating her self-preoccupation. Could he possibly want her to refuse him? Surely he could not have come here to invite a rejection which would be an intolerable insult to one of his race and status? Polly cast aside that highly unlikely interpretation. A purist might have respected his refusal to offer empty reassurances about their future together. But all he achieved was a deepening of each and every one of Polly’s nervous terrors at the picture of herself, marooned in a strange environment, forced to follow foreign customs while at the mercy of a husband who planned to make no allowances for her.

‘I’ll do my best,’ she mumbled, hating him with every fibre of her being for redoubling her fear of the unknown. He defined an existence which chilled her to the marrow.

He studied her downbent head. ‘I can ask no more of you. One must hope that the sacrifices entailed are not more than you find the elevation worthy of. Since I have established to my own satisfaction that you fully comprehend the nature of our future relationship, there can be no necessity for a further meeting between us.’

Laser-bright eyes met her startled upward glance in cool challenge.

‘But you’ll be staying now…for a while?’ she queried.

‘Unfortunately that will not be possible. Late this evening I am leaving for New York,’ he revealed. ‘Nor will it suit my schedule to return here again before the wedding.’

Nonchalantly untouched by her dismay that he cherished no plans to stay on as her parents expected, he bent down to enclose lean fingers to her wrist and raise her firmly upright. Her knees were cottonwool supports. Dazedly she watched him clamp a heavy bracelet to her wrist.

‘Your betrothal gift,’ he explained, answering her blank stare.

Of beaten gold and studded with precious stones, it was decorated with some primitive form of hieroglyphics. Polly was put grotesquely in mind of a slave manacle. Valiantly she tried to express gratitude.

A cool hand pressed up her chin, enforcing contact with black-lashed eyes of lapis lazuli which were dauntingly enigmatic. Raschid ran the forefinger of his other hand very lightly along the smooth curve of her jawbone, silently studying her, and somehow, while he maintained that magnetic reconnaissance, she could not move. A peculiar disorientation swept her with light-headedness. He dropped his hand almost amusedly. ‘I think you will be very responsive in my bed, Polly. I also suspect that you may find your training as a librarian of small advantage to you there. But I await enlightenment with immense impatience…’

Had the door not opened, framing her parents’ anxious faces, Polly would have fled there and then. A deep crimson had banished her pallor. Raschid turned to them with a brilliant smile. ‘Your daughter is all that I was promised—a pearl beyond price,’ he murmured smoothly. ‘Truly I am blessed that I may claim so perfect a bride.’

CHAPTER TWO

THE ORGAN played Purcell as Polly came down the aisle, parchment-pale, her screened gaze avoiding the tall, exquisitely dressed male watching her with untraditional cool from the altar. Throughout the past fortnight of hectic preparations she had existed in a dream state, her brain protectively hung in an emotional vacuum. That was the only way she had coped.

Her mind shifted inexorably back to her parents’ dismay when they had realised that Raschid was not remaining with them as a house guest. She had hoped…what had she hoped for? Dismay had swiftly become acceptance. In awe of him, her parents had put up no objections. They were not even attending the second ceremony in Dharein. From the moment Polly left the church she would be on her own.

At the altar she received a wide smile from the smaller, younger man to Raschid’s right—presumably his brother Asif. Reddening, she dropped her head and the vicar’s voice droned on in her ears. Beside her lounged a primitive male, who regarded her solely as a piece of sexual merchandise he had bought off a shelf. Involuntarily she shivered. Raschid had made it brutally clear that she would have no place in his life beyond the bedroom door. Her blood had run cold under the intensely sexual slide of those assessing eyes, the appraisal of a natural-born predator.

They were on the church steps when she saw Chris. As he waved, her shuttered face came alive. It was three months since their last meeting. Raw and seething bitterness surged up inside her. It should have been Chris beside her posing for the camera…it should have been Chris inside the church. The ceremony she had just undergone was a mockery. Without hesitation she hurried down the steps towards the slim, fair-haired man smiling at her.

‘Aunt Janice said you mightn’t be able to come,’ she murmured tightly.

Chris laughed. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t have kept me from your wedding! You look stunning.’ Grasping both her hands, he looked her over and grinned. ‘What happened to your ambition to be a career woman?’

‘You tell me.’ Responding to his easy smile took all her concentration as she fought back stinging tears. She was embarrassed by her adolescently eager dash to his side, but the familiar sight of him had drawn her instantly.

‘Hey,’ he scolded, and the underlying seriousness of his gaze deepened, ‘the bride’s not supposed to cry! Whirlwind romance or not, I hope he’s the right man for you. You deserve the best.’

Polly’s throat closed over. The truth of what lay behind her sudden marriage would have appalled him, yet pride kept her silent. What more proof did she require of his indifference to her as a woman? He would dance at her wedding with a light heart. He had never realised how she felt about him, and now he never would. ‘I wouldn’t have settled for less.’ Her over-bright smile stretched to include Asif as he approached them.

‘Sorry, I have to kidnap the bride. The photographer’s fuming,’ he explained in a clipped Oxbridge accent.

‘Oh, lord, I forgot about him!’ Polly gasped.

He steered her away, lustrous dark eyes skimming her guilty face, his appreciative grin widening. ‘Is there anything else that you forgot? Like a new husband? If you’ll forgive me for saying so, it’s not terribly tactful to go surging at ex-boyfriends with Raschid around—unless you have a death wish, of course. But I’ll grant you one point. You staggered him—a rare sight to be savoured.’

Reluctantly Polly met Raschid’s veiled gaze a moment later. ‘I’m sorry,’ she lied.

He cast her a grim glance. ‘You don’t appear to know how to behave in public,’ he drawled in an icy undertone that flicked down her spine like the gypsy’s warning. ‘But you will be taught, of that I assure you.’

In angry disbelief, still trembling from the force of her disturbed emotions, she flared, ‘Who the blazes do you…?’

His jawline clenched. ‘I will not tolerate disrespect from you!’

Gritting her teeth, Polly spun to walk away again. The long-suffering photographer had finished. Raschid’s hand closed round hers, denying escape, but she broke her fingers violently free, muttering bitterly, ‘Tell me, what do you do when you’re not bullying women half your size? Beat them? I’d sooner know now!’

The blaze of fury that silvered his gaze shook her rigid. Had they not been surrounded by people she had the certain knowledge that she would have discovered exactly what Raschid did for an encore. Guiltily conscious that hating him for not being Chris was irrational and inexcusable, she retreated hastily.

‘Lordy, what sparked that off?’ Maggie whispered.

‘An unholy temper that I never suspected he had.’ Polly stole a driven glance over her shoulder to check that she hadn’t been followed. A choking sense of trapped misery enfolded her.

She should have apologised on the drive back to the reception at Ladybright, but she didn’t. Like an over-shaken bottle of Coke, she was afraid to uncap her sealed lips lest she explode. Her nerves were jangling a dangerous discordancy. Seeing Chris, so near yet so far, had agonised her, and her self-discipline was threatening to crumble.

Over the meal she did her utmost to ignore Raschid. The tension zapped in the air like static electricity. Unable to face food, she knocked back the champagne. She didn’t even notice how much she was drinking. When everybody began circulating, Polly, who was normally retiring in company, was suddenly to be seen speaking personally to every guest present. Absently marvelling that she no longer felt like throwing herself under a bus, she laughed at another one of Chris’s medical jokes, frowning when Maggie pulled at her sleeve.

‘You have to get changed.’ Maggie hustled her determinedly out of the room. ‘What on earth are you playing at? You’re sozzled! Mother hasn’t even realised—she’s busy telling everybody what wonderful confidence a woman gains from getting married.’

Polly gripped the banister and pronounced with dignity, ‘I have never taken alcohol to ex—excesh in my life.’

‘That’s why it’s gone straight to your head. How could you be so stupid?’ wailed Maggie. ‘Even I can see that Raschid doesn’t like it. Didn’t you notice that he hasn’t touched a drop? He’s not knocking it back like his brother. This just isn’t like you!’

‘But I’m a confident married woman now.’ Polly pirouetted and nearly tripped over her train, remaining dizzily still long enough for Maggie to detach her veil. ‘I shall stand up for myself. I won’t be bullied!’

‘How about strangled?’ her sister groaned, struggling to unzip her. ‘Sometimes you are a klutz, Polly. When Raschid saw you in the church he couldn’t take his eyes off you—and no wonder, you looked ravishing! But now he looks…well, if I were you, I’d eat humble pie.’

‘Rubbish—start as you mean to go on,’ Polly overruled as if her craven evasiveness had been the first step in a deliberate offensive.

‘And as for the way Chris kept on following you about…’

‘Any reason why he shouldn’t have?’ snapped Polly, turning her head away. When would she ever see Chris again? If she had made the best of a last opportunity to be with him, who could blame her?

Maggie frowned uncomfortably. ‘He couldn’t take his eyes off you either. I’ve never seen Chris act like that with you before.’

Polly hadn’t noticed anything. An insane thought occurred to her. Wouldn’t it be simply hysterical if Chris had finally appreciated that she was a woman and not a sister the day she married someone else? Macabre and unlikely, she decided bitterly.

Attired in her elegant going-away outfit, she was propelled out on to the landing to throw her bouquet. She peered down at all the upturned faces and swayed, dropping the bouquet in their general direction. Negotiating the stairs rivalled coming down an escalator the wrong way. On the bottom step she lurched, and strong arms came out of nowhere and caught her.

‘Whoops!’ she giggled, clashing accidentally with sapphire eyes that emanated all the warmth of an icebox. ‘Go on the wagon,’ she mumbled as if she was making a New Year resolution, the remainder of her alcohol-induced euphoria draining away. ‘Promish.’

The hiccups started on the way to the airport. Clapping a hand to her mouth in horror, she tried to hold them in. It was about then that she began to notice the silence. By the time she was steered into the opulent cabin of the private jet, she was sending Raschid’s hard-edged profile unwittingly pleading glances. The derisive charge of the look she received nearly pushed her over the edge into tears. She fumbled for the right words of apology for her outburst on the church steps. After take-off, she voiced them hesitantly.

Raschid leant forward without warning and snapped hard fingers round her narrow wrists to yank her up to face him. ‘You are drunk!’ he raked down at her in disgust.

‘T-tiddly,’ Polly corrected unsteadily, moisture shimmering in her unhappy eyes.

His contempt unconcealed, he released her to sink back white and shaken into her seat. She mumbled another apology, shrinking from the shamed awareness that he was right. But just for a while, under the influence of Dutch courage, her fear of him had vanished. Now it was returning in full force, stronger than ever before.

‘Silence!’ he cut across her stumbling apology. ‘Was it not shame enough that I must accept a bride who sells herself for money like a vendor sells his wares in the street? But that you should dare to turn up at that church and then make an exhibition of yourself as my wife is intolerable!’

‘I’m sorry!’ she sobbed again.

‘I told you to keep quiet,’ he lashed icily down at her. ‘I may have been deceived, but it is you who will suffer for it. After the brazen behaviour I witnessed today, you will find yourself confined to the palace!’

‘I wasn’t going to get out anyway!’ Polly wept all the harder while he towered over her like a hanging judge pronouncing sentence.

‘I will not acknowledge you publicly as my wife until you learn how to conduct yourself like a lady, and I have never seen anything less ladylike than your display this afternoon!’

The harsh condemnation genuinely shattered her. Without warning all the dammed-up tensions and resentments she had been forced by family indifference to suppress exploded from her. Her head flew back. ‘I…hate…you!’ she launched. ‘Don’t you dare insult me. I did my best. I even tried to hide the fact that if it wasn’t for the money, I wouldn’t have married you if you’d been the very last man alive! And if you don’t want me either, I’m just delighted about it! Do you hear me? You’re a domineering, insensitive tyrant, and I shall get down on my knees and beg your father to deport me. No wonder he had to come to England to find you a wife…no wonder!’

During her impassioned tirade, Raschid had frozen. He could not have been more astonished by the diatribe had a chair lifted on its own steam and begun a physical assault on him.

Curled up in a tight ball, Polly squinted up at him through tear-clogged lashes. ‘No woman with an IQ above forty would want to marry you and clank about in chains for the rest of her days, trying not to show how h-happy she is when you’re thousands of miles away…’

‘I believe it is time that you were sobered up.’ He bent down, and Polly was off that seat so fast with a piercing scream that she caught him totally by surprise. Having read brutal retribution into that grim announcement of intent, she lost what control remained to her and squirmed along to the far corner of the couch, tugging off a shoe in the blind, terror-stricken belief that she required a defensive weapon.

The cabin door burst wide, the steward and stewardess rushing in. Polly was quite beyond the reach of embarrassment. Stark fear had her cowering, tears pouring down her cheeks in rivulets.

A dark bar of colour overlaid Raschid’s hard cheekbones. He spoke at length in Arabic and then quietly dismissed their audience. A hand plucked the raised shoe from her stranglehold and tossed it aside. ‘I would not offer a woman violence,’ he ground out with hauteur.

‘I’m numb, I won’t feel it,’ she mumbled incoherently.

A pair of arms firmly scooped her drooping body off the seat. ‘You will feel calmer when you have rested.’

He carried her into the sleeping compartment, settling her down with unexpected care on the built-in bed. Tugging off her stray shoe, he calmly turned her over to unzip her dress. Cooler air washed her spine. In dismay she attempted to escape his attentions, as he glowered down at her. ‘Do you really think that I could be tempted to seize you passionately into my arms at this moment? A hysterical child does not awaken desire within me.’

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.