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

‘I’m sorry,’ he sighed yet again.

But—too late, Evie thought, and pulled herself free of him.

‘Listen to me,’ he pleaded. ‘We need—What are you doing?’ he raked out in disbelief as Evie began to walk away. ‘Come back here, you exasperating creature!’ he growled after her. ‘You cannot just walk away from this!’

Just watch me! Evie thought wretchedly. ‘In the profound words of a certain arrogant swine I know,’ she tossed at him over her shoulder, ‘go to hell!’

Two people knocked on her bedroom door that night. Both tried the handle when they received no response. Both discovered that the door was locked.

One was her mother; Evie knew that because Lucinda had called out to her, the usual sharpness honed out of her voice by the thickness of the wood. The other was Raschid.

She knew that because he didn’t call out, he just stood on the other side of that door like a silent but dark presence—and used other means to make her aware that he was there and hadn’t given up on this.

Evie didn’t sleep that night; she merely dozed, shifting restlessly about the lumpy old bed that had been her mother’s idea of a punishment for a daughter who refused to toe the moral line.

So, what would the punishment be for conceiving an illegitimate baby? she wondered grimly. Total excommunication from the family?

And Raschid, she moved on to consider with the same sense of wretched derision. Did he really expect her to be grateful for his belated and very reluctant offer of marriage?

And don’t forget the ever-vigilant press, Evie reminded herself as she lay there in the darkness. They were going to make a real meal out of all of this if or when they ever found out about it. And neither excommunication nor marriage was going to stop their acid pens from writing their poison.

Maybe the other option was the better one. Maybe a quick if bloody end to this was the only way to save everyone’s embarrassment. But even as the thought popped into her head Evie dismissed it with a telling shudder. She was whole, she was healthy, and she had no excuse—moral or otherwise—to put an end to a life before it had barely started.

And this little life had been conceived with love, even if that love now lay floundering somewhere between here and the Beverleys’ private lake. She loved this baby. She loved where he came from and who he was going to be. She wanted to be there to watch him become that person. And, no matter what his father, grandmother or even his grandfather thought about it, she would make sure her child grew up feeling pride in his mixed heritage, she vowed fiercely.

By dawn she’d had enough of lying there trying to sleep when it was clear that sleep was a million miles away. Getting up, she showered in the antiquated bathroom, pulled on fresh underwear, a pair of jeans and a white tee shirt. Brushing her hair back into a simple ponytail, she then pushed her feet into lightweight slip-ons, and quietly let herself out of her room with the intention of going for a long walk before she had to face Raschid again.

There was no one about as she walked down the stairs. The hour was too early for most people after last night’s partying, so she wasn’t particularly surprised about that. But the house had been carefully locked up for the night, she realised belatedly, and the huge cast-iron bolts that were still rammed across the double front doors looked lethal, much too big for her to attempt to shift them.

Luckily a servant appeared in the hallway. He looked a trifle disconcerted when he saw Evie standing there so early. But he recovered quickly.

‘Good morning, Miss Delahaye,’ he greeted politely. ‘If you’re looking for the breakfast room, it’s this way…’

‘No—’ He was about to move off when Evie stopped him. ‘I was hoping to go outside for some fresh air before breakfast, but the bolts on that door look pretty much beyond me,’ she explained with a rueful glance at the door.

He smiled back, half relieved he wasn’t going to have to serve her yet, and came quickly towards her. Two minutes later the front door stood open, and Evie was stepping out into one of the soft, still, slightly misty mornings that were so typical of an English summer.

About to walk off to the right with the intention of making for the lake, she was stalled by the sound of a car coming up the driveway that skirted the lake on its left-hand side. A moment later the car appeared around the side of the chapel, where it stopped and the driver got out.

He saw her, and waved. It was Harry. ‘Morning, Evie,’ he called out, striding briskly towards her. ‘You’re an early bird!’

‘So are you.’ She found a tight smile from somewhere.

‘Force of habit in my business.’ He grimaced.

‘But—didn’t you stay here last night?’ Evie asked frowningly.

He shook his head. ‘I bunked down with some friends a couple of miles away,’ he told her. ‘But I left my jacket here last night, so I decided to collect it on my way home.’

‘You’re going home?’ Evie’s heart stopped beating for a moment, a sudden, very cowardly idea popping into her head. Harry lived only ten miles outside London.

‘I have a mare due to foal at any minute,’ he nodded. ‘It will be her first, so I want to be there just in case there are any problems.’

‘Harry—can you give me a lift home?’ she asked, suddenly very sure it was what she desperately needed to do. Get away—escape.

‘Of course,’ he agreed, frowning slightly when he noticed belatedly the bruises around her eyes and the strained pallor of her skin.

‘Can you wait while I throw my things into my bag?’ Evie was already turning eagerly back to the house. ‘Five minutes, Harry. I just need five minutes.’

But she was back down the stairs in only three, looking flushed rather than pale now and ever so slightly hunted as she came towards Harry who was waiting by the door with his recovered dinner jacket draped over one arm.

‘Is everything all right, Evie?’ he asked worriedly.

She nodded, allowing him to take her bag from her. ‘It’s all right,’ she assured him. ‘I left a note in my room for my mother, explaining where I’ve gone.’

‘And Sheikh Raschid?’

Evie didn’t answer; instead she walked out of the house again, head down, back straight, the tension apparent in her slender frame enough to snap wire cables.

She was already sitting in the front passenger seat by the time he’d stashed away her things then climbed in beside her. Wisely holding his own counsel, Harry started the engine and turned them around. Neither spoke until they had put several long miles between them and Beverley Castle.

Then, ‘Thank you,’ Evie whispered.

Harry sent her a concerned glance. He had known her for most of her life, so he recognised distress when she was suffering it. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’ he asked.

‘It’s over between Raschid and I,’ she heard herself announce, and wondered how she was able to say the words without breaking up inside.

But what was worse was that Harry was painfully unsurprised by the announcement. ‘The rumours about it were rife last night,’ he nodded. ‘Something to do with his father being ill and him having to go home and marry before he can officially take over from the old man…’

For a space of thirty long, dreadful seconds, Evie didn’t move—didn’t breathe—didn’t function on any basic level. Harry’s words simply hung there in block letters in front of her while other words uttered in the heat of the moment began to take on an entirely different shape.

Words like: ‘Do you have any conception of what those two weeks are going to mean to me? The problems they are going to cause?’

Had his father laid down an ultimatum during Raschid’s last visit home? Was that why those two weeks had been so important?

‘And what does rumour say, exactly?’ she asked carefully.

Changing gear with a flourish, he sent her a small grimace. ‘That he has a month to sort his life out before he goes home to marry some cousin of a cousin or some such person. Is it true?’ he asked curiously. ‘Is that why he’s finished it?’

Evie didn’t answer. She didn’t do anything but sit there staring directly ahead of her while new horrors settled over old horrors. Some cousin of a cousin being the new horror.

For Evie knew all about Aisha. Raschid had never been anything but honest about his cousin of a cousin who had been nothing more than a shadow in the wings of his life while she grew from child to woman enough to marry a prince.

‘Are you okay?’ Harry asked. ‘You’ve gone awfully pale…’

No, Evie thought. I’m not okay. ‘What a mess!’ Raschid had muttered. ‘What a damned mess!’

He hadn’t been joking. The whole thing was a mess! She had already been living on borrowed time with him when she’d broken her news last night.

And, what was worse, she had probably been the last one to know it!

It didn’t matter. Nothing seemed to matter any more. It was over. In every which way she looked at it, the affair was most definitely over. She only wished now that she had kept her stupid mouth shut about the baby. At least then she could have walked away from him with some semblance of dignity intact.

Now?

The whole wretched thing was just destined to get ugly. With their families, with the press, between themselves.

For she was not going to go down in history as the woman who held her Arab sheikh lover to ransom with a baby! Evie grimly promised herself. And Raschid, she was sure, was not going to go down in history as the Arab sheikh who deserted his pregnant mistress to marry elsewhere!

The car ate up the miles while Evie sat there so sunk in the wallowing mire of her own muddy thinking that she wasn’t aware of the frequent worried glances Harry kept on sending her, or what he was seeing when he did look at her.

She didn’t look well. There were bruises around her eyes and a white ring of tension around her mouth. Her skin was too pale, and her fingers trembled where they rested on her lap.

They arrived in Chelsea where her mews cottage stood only a short walk away from the World Aid Foundation, where she worked on a purely voluntary basis, drumming up gifts of money from the wealthy.

The cottage belonged to Julian. It was one of several properties the family owned in and around London. Her mother resided in something similar in Kensington. And Julian himself used a classy apartment not far from Hyde Park.

Great to have money, Evie bleakly acknowledged. Great to able to do what you wanted when you wanted to do it without having to consider the cost.

Great to know that she could bring up her baby without having to accept a single penny from Raschid to do it, she tagged on cynically.

The car had stopped. Looking around a little dazedly, Evie realised that Harry had already got out and was striding towards the boot.

She climbed out too, the sunlight just managing to seep over the rooftops feeling warm on her icy face. Walking to the back of the car, she waited until Harry had closed the boot lid then went to take her bag from him.

‘Thanks for the lift, Harry. I…’

The bag was swung out of her reach. ‘I’m coming in with you,’ he insisted.

‘But your foal. You should…’

‘The least you can do is offer me a cup of coffee for my trouble,’ he pointed out gently.

‘Of course, I’m sorry,’ she murmured contritely, and turned to cross the pavement to her white-painted front door.

The telephone was ringing even as she stepped into the house with Harry right behind her. Evie froze where she stood, counting off the rings until the answering machine took over. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears as the machine chanted out her recorded message. A moment after that and her mother’s voice came whipping across the room towards her.

‘Evie, I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, walking out like this. God knows what the Beverleys are going to think!’ A sigh rasped like sandpaper across the room. ‘I don’t care what a mess your private life is in, this is so bad-mannered! Now I suppose I will have to make up excuses for you. It just isn’t fair, Evie! Don’t you think I spend enough time making excuses for you as it is?’

Another sigh, then came a few tense moments when nothing happened while her mother seemed to be getting a hold on her temper. ‘Look,’ she said, sounding marginally less aggressive. ‘Call me here when you get home. I need to know you arrived there safely…’

‘You didn’t tell her you came away with me?’ Harry asked when the call had finished.

Evie shook her head. ‘I just said I’d got a lift home,’ she explained, forcing her stiff legs to move towards the kitchen.

She hadn’t wanted to involve Harry’s name in all of this; it would cause too many complications when things were complicated enough. Her mother didn’t need any help to cast Harry in the role of saviour. Give Lucinda an inch and she would take a mile…

‘Are you going to call her back?’

Evie didn’t answer. Instead she picked up the kettle and took it over to the sink to fill it with fresh water. She didn’t want to talk to anyone—not even Harry—though it would be churlish under the circumstances to tell him that.

‘Evie…’

The phone started ringing again, cutting off whatever Harry had been about to say and turning Evie to stone again where she stood clutching the kettle while she waited to hear who was trying to contact her this time.

A moment after that and Raschid’s voice came, sounding hard and tight and very, very weary. ‘Pick up the phone, Evie,’ he commanded. ‘I know you are there…’

Evie didn’t move. The seconds ticked by, the silence picking at tautly stretched nerve-ends.

‘Evie!’ Impatience roughened his voice now. ‘This is foolish! You are being foolish! Pick up the phone!’

‘How does he know you are here?’ Harry asked curiously. ‘Would your mother have told him?’

Incapable of speech, Evie gave a small shake of her head. Her mother would rather die than tell Raschid anything. No, Raschid must have seen her leave, she decided.

Like herself, she presumed, he must have spent a lousy sleepless night wondering what the hell he was going to do about her, and had probably been staring out of his bedroom window when she and Harry took off together.

A disembodied sigh rushed impatiently around the room when her refusal to comply made Raschid angry. Teeth clenched, body—the very muscles that made her heart beat—all locked into a dreadful straining paralysis, Evie waited to hear what was going to come next.

‘I am on my way to you,’ he grimly informed her. ‘Make sure you get rid of that fool who is there with you, or I will not be responsible for what may happen to him!’

‘What the…?’ Harry burst out in disbelief.

Snap, the line went dead. Evie jumped, almost dropping the kettle.

‘How did he know I was here?’ Harry gasped. ‘Does the man have special powers or something?’

‘Or something,’ Evie tightly replied. And from being frozen the muscles around her heart were now accelerating wildly as anger began to take her over. Putting down the kettle, she walked out of the open-plan kitchen and across the sitting room to glance out of the window.

There were several cars parked in the mews, but only one had somebody sitting inside it.

‘He must have seen us leave Beverley together,’ she told Harry as he came to stand beside her. Then she nodded her head towards the occupied car. ‘There is the object of his special powers,’ she dryly concluded.

‘You mean—he’s having you watched?’ Harry was beginning to look hunted. ‘But why should he bother to do that? The man is marrying another woman!’

But this one is having his baby, Evie added grimly to herself as she winced at Harry’s thoughtless reminder.

‘Look,’ she said, turning towards him, ‘I’m very grateful to you for bringing me home. But I think you should leave before he gets here.’

‘I’m not leaving you alone with him!’ he declared, coming over all macho and protective. ‘The man sounded damned dangerous,’ he added. ‘For all I know, he may have plans to spirit you away to his harem, or something.’

Evie allowed herself a wry smile at that scenario—though the real joke of it was that Raschid might well be planning to do just that. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t understand him any more. After two years of believing that she knew him inside out and back to front, she was now discovering that he had hidden depths she had never allowed for.

The main one being his determination to hang on to something that he hadn’t even wanted.

The baby—the baby. Not Evie or what they felt for each other, but a baby that he deemed as his possession. And it wasn’t in Raschid’s nature to let go of something he believed belonged to him.

So, maybe the harem theory wasn’t so far-fetched. Maybe he could see her hidden away there with only his eunuchs for company while his new wife lived in complete ignorance of her new husband’s intimate prisoner.

Or maybe not so ignorant, Evie then amended, remembering his sister Ranya’s meek obedience to the men in her life.

A different world, a different culture, a different view of life.

She shuddered.

‘He’s started the car engine,’ Harry said.

Evie turned to see tell-tale blink of an amber indicator—and felt a tiny quiver of alarm go slinking through her blood. It could only mean that Raschid was mere seconds away.

‘Harry—!’ she pleaded urgently. ‘Get out of here before Raschid arrives. Please…’

‘But—’

‘But nothing,’ Evie interrupted, already moving to open the front door. ‘He won’t hurt me, but I can’t say what he may do to you.’

She was nervous, she was anxious. Harry didn’t like the look of either. And her slender fingers had that open front door in a death grip.

A black Mercedes drove slowly by them.

‘Take the lady’s advice,’ a deep voice dropped smoothly into the tension. ‘She knows what she is talking about…’

They both jumped, both turned, both stared at the man who was now filling the doorway.

CHAPTER SIX

DRESSED entirely in black—black jeans, black tee shirt, soft black leather jacket—he looked mean and he looked dangerous. Evie stared at him and felt her mouth go dry, felt her skin begin to prickle, and felt that terrible sizzle of sexual attraction rush through her blood as it always did when she looked at him.

‘Raschid—’ she began warningly.

He ignored her. His attention was fixed upon poor Harry who was beginning to look a little hot around his shirt collar.

‘Evie needed a lift,’ Harry explained, trying to sound belligerent but only managing to sound defensive.

‘And we thank you for your time and effort,’ Raschid responded politely. ‘But I believe you have a rather valuable mare in need of your personal attention. So we will understand your desire to rush off…’

As a dismissal it just about said it all, but what struck Evie harder was the fact that Raschid knew all about Harry’s pregnant mare.

Maybe he did possess the second sight, she thought a little breathlessly, her eyes locked with unwilling fascination on those narrowed golden eyes of his.

‘Now, just a minute…’ Harry decided to dig his heels in.

Evie flicked her gaze in his direction and almost groaned when she saw the sudden stubborn jut of his chin. Harry might be a shy and self-effacing kind of person, but, like Raschid, he had been born to cherish his own high station.

‘You can’t just—’

‘No, Harry.’ It was Evie who stopped him, Evie who knew that if it came to a hands-on battle Harry would lose out on all counts, and that included his pride. Without thinking what she was doing, she stepped up to him and touched his cheek with gentle fingertips to gain his attention then sent him a sad, apologetic smile. ‘You’ve done enough,’ she told him softly.

‘But he—’

This time Evie stopped the words by placing her lips against his. It startled him enough to render him silent. Behind her she could feel Raschid’s anger reaching out towards her like tentacles that wanted to rip her apart for daring to kiss another man in front of him like this. She ignored the sensation. Ignored the man.

‘I am very grateful for what you’ve done, but it really is best that you leave now. Please, Harry.’ She pleaded with him when she saw the stubbornness still setting his jaw.

Indecision began to cloud his grey eyes. ‘You will be okay?’ he asked, ignoring the way Raschid stiffened at the question.

Evie smiled reassuringly and nodded. ‘I’ll call you,’ she promised as an added incentive. ‘Later on today.’

Another few moments of high-tension silence, then Harry reluctantly gave in. His hands came up to cup Evie’s shoulders, his head lowering so he could place a brief kiss against her mouth, then he was letting her go and with a cold nod of his head in Raschid’s direction he stepped out of the cottage and walked off towards his car.

Evie’s sense of relief was very short-lived. She glanced at Raschid who was looking back at her with narrowed eyes that were not pleasant. Alarm went tingling down her backbone.

‘Very touching,’ he drawled, holding her defiant gaze captive as he stepped into the cottage and closed the door behind him. ‘Little scenes like that force me to wonder if I asked all the wrong questions last night.’

‘I don’t recall you asking any questions,’ Evie replied with tight derision.

‘No?’ As threatening as hell, he took a step towards her, mouth thin, eyes as hard as pebbles. ‘Then allow me to ask this one,’ he requested. ‘Is the baby mine?’

It took several moments for the question to sink in, and even when it did Evie continued to stand there staring at him in stunned disbelief. Then they came—the anger, the sense of personal offence; they swam up from the very depths of her loins to course like fire through her blood.

‘How dare you?’ she breathed in shimmering fury.

‘Answer the question,’ he demanded thinly.

His eyes were glittering, his bared teeth gleaming white between the taut stretch of his lips. Evie stared into those threatening gold eyes, and saw the word traitor blazing from them.

‘It’s not yours,’ she said, turned her back on him and walked away, leaving him standing there with his arrogant guns most satisfyingly spiked for once.

The cottage wasn’t big, just one long room really, split into two by a breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. The living-room window looked out on the cobbled street at the front of the cottage, the rear window on a tiny walled garden. It was nothing more than an old-fashioned back yard, alive at the moment with summer blooms planted by herself in hanging baskets and an array of terracotta tubs.

It was to that rear window that Evie went, leaning her slender hips against the built-in unit and folding her arms across her front while she stared out at the flower-filled little garden with absolutely no pleasure whatsoever.

The reason why she was feeling no pleasure in what was on show outside was that she was feeling no pleasure in anything right now.

‘Liar.’ Raschid’s smooth voice dripped with a dry lazy confidence.

Evie grimaced, not in the least bit surprised that it had taken him mere seconds to work that one out. Turning round, she found him standing in the opening between the kitchen and living room.

His jacket had gone, his casual stance as he leaned a broad shoulder against the wall beside him a masterpiece in long, fluid, muscular lines. Nothing about him was left wanting. Not the cut of his silky dark hair or the colour of his beautiful skin or even the casual clothes that covered a body built to god-like proportions.

He was Man personified—to Evie at least. And the real point here was that he knew it. Which was why he could call her a liar so confidently.

‘Rumour has it,’ she continued, ‘that marriage to the cousin of a cousin looms large upon your horizon.’

That made his eyes narrow slightly, fixed his attention on her cool expression that was challenging him to dare deny the charge.