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He arched a brow. ‘Is that so? Strange, I’m not feeling the love,’ he drawled.
Her face went blank. ‘There isn’t any love.’
‘True, but then basing a marriage on something as transitory as love—’ again he said the word as though it left a bad taste in his mouth ‘—makes about as much sense as building a house on sand.’
Was this a man trying to put a positive spin on it or was he genuinely that cynical?
‘Have you ever been in love?’ It was a weird thing to ask a total stranger, but then this was a very weird situation.
And just as weird was the expression she glimpsed on the tall prince’s face. But even as she registered the bleakness in his eyes his heavy lids half closed. When he turned to look directly at her there was only cynicism shining in the dark depths.
‘I defer to you as an expert on that subject. Two engagements is impressive. Do you get engaged to every man you sleep with?’
‘I’m twenty-three,’ she tossed back.
He tipped his dark head. ‘My apologies,’ he intoned with smiling contempt. ‘That was a stupid question.’
Hannah didn’t give a damn if he thought she had casual sex with every man she met. What made her want to slap the look of smug superiority off his face were the double standards his attitude betrayed.
How dared a man who had probably had more notches in his bedpost than she’d had pedicures look down his nose at her?
‘And this is all about money and power. You have it and you’re prepared to do anything to keep it. You carry on calling it duty if it makes you feel any better about yourself, but I call it greed!’
Kamel struggled to contain the flash of rage he felt at the insult. ‘Only a woman who has always had access to her rich daddy’s wallet and has never had to work for anything in her life could be so scornful about money. Or maybe you’re just stupid.’
Stupid! The word throbbed like an infected wound in her brain. ‘I do work.’ If only to prove to all those people who called her stupid that people with dyslexia could do as well as anyone else if they had the help they needed.
‘I think you might find your role is no longer available.’
‘You couldn’t say or think anything about me that hasn’t been said,’ she told him in a voice that shook with all the emotion she normally cloaked behind a cold mask. ‘Thought or written. But enough about me. What’s your contribution to society? I forget,’ she drawled, adopting a dumb expression. ‘What qualifications do you need to be a future King? Oh, that’s right, an accident of birth.’ She stopped and released a long fractured sigh. ‘That’s not what I wanted to say.’
He stared at her through narrowed eyes, resisting the possibility that a woman with feelings, that a woman who could be hurt, lurked behind the icy disdain.
‘Well, what did you want to say?’
Relief rippled through her. This was not the response she had anticipated to her outburst.
‘Would this marriage be a...paper one?’
‘Will...get the tense right,’ he chided. ‘There will be official duties, occasions when we would be expected to be seen together.’ He studied her face. ‘But that isn’t what you’re talking about, is it?’
She gnawed on her lower lip and shook her head.
‘It will be expected that we produce an heir.’
Shaken by the image that popped into her head, she looked away but not before her mind had stripped him naked. The image refused to budge, as did the uncomfortable feeling low in her belly.
‘You might find it educational.’
The drawled comment made her expression freeze over; it hid her panic. ‘The offer of lessons in sex is not a big selling point!’ My God, he was really in for a disappointment.
His laugh cut over her words. ‘I wasn’t referring to your carnal education, though if you want to teach me a thing or two I have no problem.’
The riposte he had anticipated didn’t come. Instead, astonishingly, she blushed. Kamel was not often disconcerted, but he was by her response.
Hannah, who had conquered many things but not her infuriating habit of blushing, hated feeling gauche and immature. From somewhere she dredged up some cool. ‘So what were you referring to?’
‘I’m assuming that your average lover is besotted. I’m not.’
‘What, besotted or average?’ Stupid question, she thought as her eyes slid down his long, lean, powerful frame—average was not a word anyone would use when referring to this man. ‘I can’t just jump into bed with you. I don’t know you!’
‘We have time.’ He produced a thin-lipped smile. ‘A lot of it. But relax, I don’t expect our union to be consummated any time soon, if you can cope with that?’
‘With what?’
‘No sex.’
Her lashes came down in a concealing curtain. ‘I’ll manage.’
‘Because your little adventures will be over. There can be no questioning the legitimacy of the heir to the throne,’ he warned.
‘And does the same rule apply to you?’ Without waiting for him to reply she gave a snort of disgust. ‘Don’t answer that. But perhaps you could answer me this...’
He turned and she dropped the hand she self-consciously had extended to him. ‘Do you know...’ he seemed to know everything else with a few exceptions ‘...did they get the vaccinations to the village in time?’
The anxiety in her blue eyes was too genuine to be feigned. Perhaps the woman did have a conscience, but not one that stopped her doing exactly what she wanted, Kamel reminded himself.
‘It is a pity you didn’t think about the village when you decided to cross a border without papers or—’
‘My Jeep broke down. I got lost.’ Hating the whining note of self-justification, she bit her lip. ‘Do you know? Could you find out?’ The report that had reached the storage facility where she had been organising local distribution had said the infection was spreading rapidly; the death toll would be horrific if it wasn’t contained.
‘I have no idea.’
She watched as he moved away, not just in the physical sense to the other end of the cabin, but in every way. He tuned her out totally, appearing to be immersed in whatever was on the laptop he scrolled through.
Studying the back of his neck, she had to crane her own to see more than the top of his dark head. Hannah envied him and wished she could forget he existed. Was this a foretaste of the rest of her life? Occupying the same space when forced to, but not interacting? She had given up on romance but the thought of such a clinical union lay like an icy fist in her stomach.
He didn’t even glance at her when the plane landed; he just left his seat, leaving her sitting there. It was the massive bodyguard who indicated she should follow Kamel down the aisle to the exit with one of his trademark tilts of the head.
She was between the two men as they disembarked. Hannah blinked in the bright sun—the blinds had been down in the cabin and for some reason she had expected it to be dark. She had lost all sense of time. She glanced down at her wrist and felt a pang when she remembered they had taken her watch. It was one of the few things she had that had been her mother’s. When she was arrested they’d taken everything she had, including her sunglasses, and she would have given a lot for dark lenses to hide behind.
Her eyes flew wide with alarm.
‘I don’t have my passport!’
At the bottom of the steps he paused and looked up at her, his cold eyes moving across her face in a zero-tolerance sweep. ‘You will not need your passport.’
‘One of the perks of being royal?’ Like the daunting armed presence and salutes, she thought, watching the suited figure who was bowing deferentially in response to what Kamel was saying.
Glad to be off his radar, she ran her tongue across her dry lips, frightened by how close to total panic she had come in that moment she’d thought that without a passport she would be denied entry. The thought of the cell she had escaped made her knees shake as she negotiated the rest of the steps and stood on terra firma.
There were three massive limos with darkened glass parked a few feet away on the concrete, waiting to whisk them away. One each? Unable to smile at her own joke in the presence of such an overt armed presence, she took a hurried step towards Kamel, who was striding across to the farthest car, only to be restrained by a heavy hand on her shoulder.
She angled a questioning look up and the massive bodyguard shook his head slowly from side to side.
She pulled herself back from another panic precipice and called after Kamel. ‘You’re leaving?’
She was literally sweating with her effort to project calm but she could still hear the sharp anxiety in her voice.
He turned his head and paused, his dark eyes sweeping her face. ‘You’ll be looked after.’
Hannah lifted her chin, ignoring the tight knot of loneliness in her chest. She hated the feeling; she hated him. She would not cry—she would not let that damned man make her cry.
Kamel ruthlessly quashed a pang of empathy, but remained conscious of her standing there looking like some sort of sacrificial virgin as he got into the car. He resented the way her accusing blue eyes followed him, making him feel like an exploitative monster. It was illogical—he’d saved her. He hadn’t expected to be hailed as a hero but he hadn’t counted on becoming the villain of the piece. It was a tough situation, but life required sacrifice and compromise—a fact that she refused to recognise.
He pressed a button and the dark tinted window slid up. She could no longer see him but he could see her.
‘What’s happening to me?’ She managed to wrench the question from her aching throat as she watched the sleek car draw away.
She had not directed the question at anyone in particular so she started when Rafiq, the man of few words, responded.
‘My instructions are to take you to Dr Raini’s home.’
He tipped his head in the direction of the open car door, clearly expecting her to get in. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that she wouldn’t.
Hannah felt a tiny bubble of rebellion. She’d had her independence taken away from her during the past few days, and she would not allow it to happen again. She would not become some decorative, docile wife producing stage-managed performances to enhance her husband’s standing, only to become invisible when she was not needed.
Then show a bit of backbone, Hannah.
She lifted her chin and didn’t move towards the open car door. ‘I don’t need a doctor.’
The big man, who looked thrown by her response, took his time before responding. ‘No, you misunderstand. She is not that sort of doctor. She is a professor of philosophy at the university. She will help you dress for the ceremony, and will act as your maid of honour.’
He stood by the door but Hannah stayed where she was.
‘What about my father?’
‘I believe your father is to meet you at the royal chapel.’
The mention of a chapel drew her delicate brows into a bemused frown. She recalled the rest of the article in the Sunday supplement where she had garnered most of her knowledge about Surana—as well as being a peaceful melting pot of religions, the country was known for its royal family being Christian, which made them a rarity in the region.
After the car left the airport it turned onto a wide, palm-fringed boulevard where the sun glinted off the glass on the tall modern buildings that lined it. From there they entered what was clearly an older part of the city, where the roads were narrow and the design less geometric.
The screen between the front and back seat came down.
‘We are nearly there, miss.’
Hannah nodded her thanks to Rafiq and realised they had entered what appeared to be a prosperous suburb. Almost immediately she had registered the air of affluence, and their car turned sharply through an open pair of high ornate gates and into a small cobbled courtyard hidden from the street by a high wall.
The driver spoke into his earpiece as the gates closed behind them and a suited figure appeared. The big bodyguard spoke to the man and then, with the manner of someone who habitually expected to find danger lurking behind every bush, he scanned the area before opening the door for her.
Hannah’s feet hit the cobbles when the wide wooden door of the three-storey whitewashed house was flung open.
‘Welcome. I’m Raini, Kamel’s cousin.’
The professor turned out to be an attractive woman in her mid-thirties. Tall and slim, she wore her dark hair in a short twenties bob, and her smile was warm as she held out her hands to Hannah.
‘I’d ask what sort of journey you had but I can see—’
The kindness and genuine warmth cut through all Hannah’s defences and the tears started oozing out of her eyes. Embarrassed, she took the tissue that was pushed into her hand and blew her nose. ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t normally, it’s just...I know I look like a nightmare.’
The woman gave her a hug and ushered her into the house, throwing a comment over her shoulder to the bodyguard as she closed the door very firmly behind them.
Hannah half expected the door to be knocked down; her respect for the woman went up when it wasn’t.
‘No need to apologise. If I’d been through what you have I’d be a basket case.’
‘I am.’ Hannah blinked. Inside the house was nothing like the exterior suggested: the décor was minimalist and the ground floor appeared to be totally open-plan.
‘Of course you are.’ She laid a comforting hand on Hannah’s arm. ‘This way,’ she added, and opened a door that led into a long corridor. Several of the doors lining it were open, and it appeared to be a bedroom wing.
The older woman caught Hannah’s bewildered expression. ‘I know, it’s bigger than it looks.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘I’d love to give you the guided tour and I know you must be dead on your feet but we’re on the clock, I’m afraid. Just in here.’ She pushed open a door and waited for Hannah to enter ahead of her.
It was a big square room with tiled floors. One wall had French doors and another a row of fitted wardrobes. The large low platform bed was the only piece of furniture in the room.
‘I know, bleak. I love clutter, not to mention a bit of glitz, but Steve is a minimalist with borderline OCD.’ The thought of Steve, presumably her husband, brought a fond smile to her face.
The look reminded Hannah of what she wouldn’t have, what she had refused to acknowledge she still wanted. She looked away, conscious of a pain in her chest, and sank down onto the bed. It was a long way down but she barely noticed the soft impact as she landed on the deep duvet. She lifted her hands to her face and shook her head.
‘None of this should be happening.’
Watching her, the other woman gave a sympathetic grimace. ‘I know this isn’t how you envisioned your wedding day,’ she said gently, ‘but really it’s not the wedding that counts. Everything that could go wrong did at mine. It’s the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with that matters. How did you and Kamel meet?’
Hannah lifted her head. ‘Sorry?’
The other woman misinterpreted her blank look. ‘Don’t worry, it’s a story for another day, I’m just so glad he’s found someone. All that playboy stuff, it was so not like him, but he isn’t as bad as those awful tabloids painted him, you know.’
‘I never read the tabloids,’ Hannah responded honestly.
The other woman patted her hand and Hannah, who was more confused by these tantalising snippets of information than she had been before, realised two things: that his cousin thought the marriage was for real, and that she would be married to a man who, even his very fond cousin had to admit, had a horrific reputation.
‘I prayed he’d recover from Amira one day, but when you lose someone that way...’ She gave an expressive shrug. ‘I ask myself sometimes, could I have been as noble if I knew that Steve had fallen for someone?’
For a moment a frustrated Hannah thought the flow of confidences had ended, but then Raini’s voice dropped to a confidential whisper.
‘Amira told me that Kamel said she’d make a beautiful queen, and that all he wanted was for her to be happy. He and Hakim were like brothers—talk about triangles.’
Hannah gave a non-committal grunt, struggling to put the people and places mentioned in context, and then she remembered what he had said: ‘She found him...preferable.’ This love that Hannah was meant to be replacing was the woman who had married Kamel’s cousin, only to lose her life in the plane crash that had moved Kamel up the line of succession. He had acted as though he didn’t care but if his cousin had it right...? She shook her head, struggling to see the man who had showed her zero empathy caring for anyone. It was almost as strange an idea as him being rejected. Whether he wore a crown or not, Kamel was not the sort of man women ran away from.
‘She would have, too.’
Hannah wrenched her wandering thoughts back to the present and shook her head, mumbling, ‘Sorry?’
‘She would have made a beautiful queen. But she never got the chance...’ Raini breathed a deep sigh. ‘So sad.’ Then, visibly pulling herself together, she produced a warm smile. ‘But this is not a day for tears. You will make a beautiful queen, and you’re marrying a man in a million.’
Hannah knew she was meant to respond. ‘I would still be in the jail cell if it hadn’t been for him.’
The other woman looked mistily emotional as she nodded. ‘He’s the man you need in an emergency. When Steve was kidnapped...’ She gave her head a tiny shake and pulled open the wardrobe door. ‘Like I said, Kamel is a guy in a million but patience is not one of his virtues, and my instructions are to have you on the road in thirty minutes.
‘Take your pick of the dresses, Hannah.’ She indicated a row of white gowns. ‘They delivered a few.’
Hannah blinked at the understatement, and Raini continued to deliver the information at the same shotgun speed.
‘Your father wasn’t sure of your size so I got them to send them all in three sizes, but...’ Her bright eyes moved in an assessing sweep up and down Hannah. ‘You’re an eight?’
Hannah nodded.
‘Shower that way.’ Her efficient mother hen nodded at a door. ‘You’ll find toiletries and make-up by the mirror—anything you want just yell. I’ll just go and get changed into something much less comfortable.’
The shower was bliss. All the gowns were beautiful but she selected the simplest: a column with the hem and high neck heavily encrusted with beads and crystals. It fitted like a silken glove. Smooth and butter-soft, in dramatic contrast to the emotional rawness of her emotions. She took a deep breath and pulled the shattered threads of her protective composure tight about her shoulders, refusing to acknowledge the fear in her belly.
When Raini returned, looking elegant in a tailored silk trouser suit, Hannah was struggling with her hair. Freshly washed, it was evading her efforts to secure it in an elegant chignon.
‘You look beautiful,’ the older woman said, standing back to view her. ‘I thought you might like this.’
Hannah’s eyes travelled from the mist of emotional tears in the other woman’s eyes to the lace veil she held out and her armour of cool detachment crumbled.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, hating the fact she couldn’t tell this woman who was so genuine the truth—that this marriage was all an awful sham.
‘It was my grandmother’s. I wore it when I was married. I thought you might like it.’
Hannah backed away, feeling even more wretched that she was playing the loving bride for this woman. ‘I couldn’t—it looks so delicate.’
‘I insist. Besides, it will go perfectly with this.’ She presented what Hannah had assumed was a clutch bag, but turned out to be a large rectangular wooden box.
‘What beautiful work.’ Hannah ran a finger along the intricate engraving work that covered the rosewood lid.
‘Not nearly as beautiful as this.’ With a magician’s flourish Raini flicked the lid open. Her eyes were not on the contents, but on Hannah’s face. She gave a smile as Hannah’s jaw dropped.
‘No, you’re really kind, but I really couldn’t wear that. It’s far too precious. This is lovely,’ she said, draping the lace veil over her head, ‘but really, no.’ She stepped back, waving her hands in a fluttering gesture of refusal.
‘It’s not mine...I wish.’ Raini laughed, removing the tiara from its silken bed. The diamonds in the delicately wrought gold circlet glittered as she held it up. ‘Kamel had it couriered over. He wants you to wear it. Let me...’ Her face a mask of serious concentration, she placed the tiara carefully on top of the lace. ‘Dieu,’ she breathed reverently. ‘You look like something out of a book of fairy tales. You really are a princess.’
Hannah lifted her hands to remove it. ‘I haven’t put my hair up yet.’
‘If I were you I’d leave it loose. It’s very beautiful.’
Hannah shrugged. Her hairstyle was the least of her worries.
CHAPTER FIVE
HANNAH’S FIRST GLIMPSE of her future home drew a pained gasp from her lips.
‘I know.’ Raini was all amused sympathy. ‘I’d like to tell you it’s not as awe-inspiring as it looks, but actually,’ she admitted, directing her critical stare at the multitude of minarets, ‘it is. Even Hollywood couldn’t build a set like this. The family, as you’ll learn, has never been into less is more. When I lived here—’
‘You lived here?’ How did anyone ever relax in a setting this ostentatiously grand?
Raini gave a warm chuckle. ‘Oh, my parents occupied a small attic,’ she joked. ‘Until Dad got posted. He’s a diplomat,’ she explained. ‘By the time I was eighteen I’d lived in a dozen cities.’ They drove under a gilded archway into a courtyard the size of a football pitch, filled with fountains. ‘But nothing ever came close to this.’
Hannah believed her.
Rafiq escorted them into the building through a small antechamber that had seemed large until they stepped through the next door and entered a massive hall. The wall sconces in there were all lit, creating swirling patterns on the mosaic floor.
The awful sense of impending doom that lay like a cold stone in Hannah’s chest became heavier as they followed the tall, gowned figure down a maze of marble-floored empty corridors. By the time she saw a familiar figure, she was struggling to breathe past the oppressive weight.
‘Dad!’
‘Hello, Hannah! You look very beautiful, child.’
Hannah struggled to hide her shock at her father’s appearance. She had never seen him look so pale and haggard. Not even when he’d lain in a hospital bed attached to bleeping machines had he looked this frail. He seemed to have aged ten years since she last saw him.
Any lingering mental image of her walking into his arms and asking him to make everything right vanished as the tears began to slide down his cheeks. She had never seen her ebullient parent cry except on the anniversary of her mother’s death—her birthday. On that day he always vanished to be alone with his grief, and the sight of tears now was as painful to her as a knife thrust.
Intentionally or not, it always felt as if she was the cause of his tears. If she hadn’t been born the woman he loved would not have died and now this was her fault. About that much Kamel was right.
She had been doing a job that she was ill qualified to do and she’d messed up. But the consequences had not been just hers. Other people had suffered. She lifted her chin. Well, that was going to stop. She’d made the mistake and she’d take the nasty-tasting medicine, though in this instance it came in the shape of the dark and impossibly handsome and arrogant Prince of Surana.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’ her father cried. ‘They have the death penalty in Quagani, Hannah. It was the only way we could get you out. They wanted to make an example of you, and without the King’s personal intervention they would have. Kamel is a good man.’
It seemed to be a universally held opinion. Hannah didn’t believe it. Nonetheless, it was clear that he had not just freed her, he had saved her life.