CHAPTER THREE

STUNNED by the unemotionally couched admission, Polly sank down on the other side of the desk. ‘But why me, if he didn’t believe…force?’ she queried.

‘The promise supplied the pressure. The means by which my father attained this conclusion might not be passed by the over-scrupulous.’ Raschid smiled grimly. ‘But be assured that before he even met your father, he would have made exhaustive enquiries as to your character and reputation.’

‘I was investigated?’

‘Without a doubt. You are very na;auive, Polly. You cannot suppose that my father would have risked presenting me with a bride likely to shame or scandalise the family.’ Sardonic amusement brightened his clear gaze.

In retrospect it did seem very foolish of all of them to have believed that King Reija would gaily give consent to his son’s marriage to a woman of whom he knew nothing. Raschid’s revelations put an entirely different complexion on her father’s meeting with him in London. Assured of her unblemished reputation and goodness knew what else, Raschid’s father had calmly manipulated hers at the interview. From the outset he must have known of her father’s debts. They could not have escaped detection.

Too much was bombarding Polly too quickly. The amount of Machiavellian intrigue afoot even between father and son dismayed her. But why had coercion in the form of that promise been required to push Raschid into marriage? While he might still grieve for Berah and appear virtually indifferent to her successor’s identity, he did not strike her as impractical. His position demanded that he marry and father children; that responsibility was inextricably woven into his future as a duty. Could he be so insensible to the necessity?

‘I don’t understand—you don’t really seem angry with your father,’ she said.

‘I must respect the sincerity of his intentions. He truly believes that a man without a wife cannot be content. In his view a married man is also a respectable and stable man,’ he volunteered, an inescapable harshness roughening his intonation.

‘But why didn’t you want to remarry?’ Polly pierced to the heart of the matter, weary of skating round the edges.

‘I preferred my freedom,’ he breathed dismissively. ‘Since I had spent most of my adult life married, what else?’

‘Well, if you’re so darned keen to have your freedom back, I’m not holding you!’ Polly sprang furiously upright.

‘Why this sudden alteration in attitude?’ Raschid studied her quizzically. ‘What has changed between us except a basic understanding? We stand at no different level now from that we stood at within that church.’

Anger shuddered tempestuously through her. ‘Yet somehow you’re behaving as if I trapped you into marriage!’

‘Nobody traps me, least of all a woman. I made a decision. If I had to remarry to satisfy my father’s expectations, why not you?’ he traded softly.

‘I notice too that, while your father mysteriously emerges from all this as morally above reproach when he’s been wheeling and dealing like the Godfather, I’m still being insulted!’

‘How have I insulted you?’ He vented a harsh imprecation. ‘I thought you would be quiet and inoffensive, but the second you left that church you suddenly located a tongue!’

Admittedly Polly had had difficulty in recognising herself over the past twenty-four hours, but the most even temperament would have been inflamed by Raschid. ‘Blame your father. Obviously he didn’t dig deep enough,’ she sniped, nettled by his candid admission that he had deemed her the type to melt mutely into the woodwork. ‘I find you unbelievably insensitive!’

‘And I find you like every other woman I have met in recent years—demanding.’ Exasperation laced his striking features. ‘Were you so sensitive in marrying a stranger purely for his wealth?’

Already very pale, she cringed from the cruel reminder. Pride made her voice the comeback, tilting her chin. ‘Was that how you viewed your first wife as well?’

He was very still. In the dragging quiet, her heart thudded loudly in her eardrums. The fierce chill of his appraisal forced colour up beneath her skin. ‘There can be no comparison. Berah grew up knowing that she would become my wife. Nor was she unaware of the nature of the man she was marrying. You know nothing whatsoever about me.’

Her stricken eyes fell from his. While her reference to Berah had been foolish, she had not been prepared for the charged and telling force of Raschid’s defence of her. His fingers were rigidly braced on the edge of the desk. The comparison she had dared to suggest had deeply angered him.

‘I don’t think you’re being very fair,’ she argued. ‘And I’m not demanding.’

A lean brown hand shifted abruptly. ‘Let us have no further arguments. On this subject they lead nowhere.’

‘What subject? What are we arguing about? I don’t know.’

He lounged indolently back. ‘Really?’ A dubious brow quirked. ‘In the space of an hour you refer to annulment and divorce. This is not, after all, some form of attention-seeking?’ he derided. ‘You want pretences—compliments, gallantry, romance. I disdain all of those, and I won’t play charades. I employed candour with you before today. We each had our price in this marriage. Mine was peace and yours was status and money. Now that that is established, what more can there be worthy of debate?’

‘I can tell you right now,’ Polly slammed back shakily for want of any other brickbat to hurl. ‘Being a princess is not all it’s made out to be!’

‘You may tell me whatever you wish if you reward me with a still tongue and the sound of sweet silence.’

She retreated to the opposite end of the cabin. He had gone over her like an armoured tank and the track marks of the vanquished were on her back. She had reacted emotionally to a male who did not allow emotion to cloud his reasoning. Or his judgement. He thought that she should have left her family to sink in the horrors of bankruptcy rather than sell herself into marriage. He was delicate in his sensibilities—he could afford to be. Bitterly Polly appraised the outright luxury of her surroundings. Without money her family would have fallen apart. Neither of her parents would have had the resilience to pick themselves up and soldier on.

Yet for all his contempt now, Raschid had been remarkably tolerant about a wedding which could have made a hit disaster movie. In bed—she reddened hotly at the recollection—he had been teasing and warm. But both responses had been logically perfect for the occasion. You didn’t calm a hysteric with threats. You didn’t coax a frightened virgin with force. Not unless you were stupid, and Raschid, she was learning by painful and clumsy steps, was far from stupid. He was dauntingly clever and dismayingly complex.

Abstractedly she watched him. Even in violent resentment she remained disturbingly conscious of the dark vibrancy of his potent attraction. In combination with looks and wealth that blazing physical magnetism of his must have stopped many women in their tracks. Polly had always distrusted handsome men; they were normally chockful of vanity. Raschid’s distinct lack of self-awareness puzzled her. He was stunning, but she had the strangest suspicion that the only time he looked in the mirror was to shave.

Abruptly she denied her view of him by removing to a poorer vantage point. She couldn’t understand what was wrong with her. Even when the stewardess served her with a meal, her thoughts marched on. Raschid was beginning to obsess her even as his emotional detachment chilled her. Linked with that raw, overt masculinity of his, that coolness made him an intriguing paradox.

Why had he been so reluctant to remarry? There could only be one reason: a reluctance to set another woman in Berah’s place. But Polly found it hard to attribute the longevity of passionate love beyond death and sentimental scruples to that diamond-cutting intellect. What other reason could there be? Accepting that he had to remarry, he had settled for Polly. He liked looking at her; he didn’t like listening to her. Then he wouldn’t have to listen much, would he? Not with the workload and the travel itinerary he had bent over backwards to outline.

The jet landed with a nasty judder, careening along the runway, the nearest porthole displaying a blur of what looked like desert. Assuming that the airport was oddly sited somewhere out of view, Polly got up. Raschid presented her with a bundle of black cloth. Her blank appraisal roused his impatience. Retrieving it, he shook it out and dropped it over her startled head.

‘I can’t breathe!’ she protested.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Light appeared as he adjusted the set of the suffocating garment. Disorientatingly, he burst out laughing. ‘You look very strange, Polly. This aba was not cut for someone of your height.’

Yanking up the surplus fabric, she stalked after him. Just outside the doorway, as she was interestedly taking in the sight of a line-up of soldiers and the presence of a small military band, striking up the most unmelodic tune she had ever heard, her foot caught in the hem of the aba. Hearing her gasp, Raschid whirled with incredible speed. As she teetered she was abruptly snatched off her feet and pierced by blazing blue eyes. ‘You are the most extraordinarily clumsy female I have ever come across!’

‘I wasn’t planning on wearing a shroud until I went to my coffin!’ she snapped back.

His sudden pallor did not escape her. Too late did she understand the source of his wrath. But before sympathy could touch her normally generous heart, outrage took over. Dear heaven, was Berah never out of his thoughts? Here he was carting Polly home, and all she could think about was his first wife!

‘Put me down, please,’ she demanded icily.

‘It’s only a few steps to the car.’ Indeed it was, and after throwing the unfortunate band an unappreciative glance, he stuffed her inside the limousine like a parcel. In bewilderment she stared out at the huge grey fortress walls rising to sheer heights with no perceivable end only a few hundred yards away.

‘Where’s the airport?’ she queried.

‘That is the palace. A jet-strip was built here for convenience. The airport is on the other side of Jumani.’

‘That’s the city?’

‘I am overwhelmed by the interest you have taken in your future home.’ His scorn for her ignorance was unhidden. ‘Jumani is ten kilometres from here.’

In embarrassment Polly turned to peer out at the gigantic nothingness of the desert terrain stretching in all other directions. It went on into infinity to meet the colourless vault of the sky, a wasteland of emptiness and rolling hills of sand. The isolation was indescribably alien to visual senses trained on green fields and hedgerows.

The limousine whisked them over to the black, shimmering ribbon of road and through the gates of the palace into a vast, cobbled courtyard. Already the heat was making Polly’s clothing stick to her damp skin. Raschid’s door sprang open immediately. He stepped out to be met by a spate of Arabic from the little man bobbing and dipping rather nervously in front of him. He frowned and swept off.

When he halted as if he had forgotten something ten yards on, Polly just wanted to kick him for striding back to haul her out of her death struggle with the aba twisted round her legs. ‘That is not a very graceful fashion in which to descend from a car,’ Raschid commented drily.

He guided her through the crush emerging from the great domed porch ahead. Glimpsing dark faces and avidly inquisitive female stares, she was ironically relieved to be covered from head to toe.

‘I understand that my father wishes to receive us immediately,’ he explained flatly. ‘You will not speak—I don’t trust you to speak lest you offend. On unfamiliar ground I do not believe you are at your most intelligent.’

Burning inside like a bushfire, Polly bit down hard on her tongue. He stopped before a set of carved double doors which were thrown wide by the fearsome armed guards on either side. He strode ahead of her. At a reluctant pace, she followed, to watch him fall down gracefully on his knees and touch his forehead to the carpet. For seventy, the grey-bearded old gentleman seated on a shallow dais at the foot of the room looked admirably hale and hearty. Polly got down on the carpet just as Raschid was signalled up. The King snapped his fingers and barked something in Arabic.

Raschid audibly released his breath. ‘Get up.’

Before she could guess his intention, he had deftly whipped the aba off again. Polly felt like a piece of plundered booty, tumbled out on the carpet for examination and curiously naked under the onslaught of shrewd dark eyes. Reija passed some remark, chuckled and went on to speak at considerable length. Turning pink, Polly slowly sank down again, but not before she noticed the rush of blood to Raschid’s cheekbones. Whatever his father was saying to him was having the most extraordinarily visible effect on him. His knuckles showed white as his hand clenched by his side. A pin-dropping silence stretched long after King Reija had finished speaking.

Suddenly Raschid spat a response. Polly was shocked. A split second later a wall-shaking argument was taking place over her averted head. Father and son set into each other with a ferocity which would have transcended any language barrier. The silences, spiced by what could only be described as Reija’s inflammatory and self-satisfied smiles, grew longer. Abruptly Raschid inclined his head and backed out. Polly nervously looked up again.

A gnarled hand beckoned her closer. ‘A most unfortunate introduction to our household,’ said Reija in heavily accented English. Noting her surprise, he smiled with distinct amusement. ‘I speak your language. However, it has often been of great benefit for me to listen rather than to converse.’

Somehow Polly managed a polite smile. Her gormless father had not had a chance against that level of subtle calculation!

‘You are welcome,’ he pronounced. ‘Such pale beauty as yours can only draw my son more frequently to his home.’

It wasn’t her place to tell him that he was in for a swift disillusionment. Raschid was about as adapted to having his wings clipped as a bird of prey deprived of a kill. But it was interesting to learn that his father wanted to see him here more often than he evidently did. Reassuring too, she conceded absently. Arguments between father and son were seemingly not evidence of some deep schism in their relationship. Yet she was frustrated by her inability to understand exactly what was going on around her. What had incited Raschid to barely leashed rage and roused his father to only sardonic amusement loudly voiced?

‘A man does not drink brackish water when he may sip sweetly within his own household.’

Bemusedly Polly blinked, having been briefly lost in her own thoughts. Fortunately a reply did not seem to be expected.

‘It is my hope that you will soon come to consider our country as your home.’

She gulped. ‘Yes.’

‘To facilitate this you will wish to learn Arabic.’ He nodded to himself. ‘A tutor will be found for you.’

At least he didn’t talk in riddles. She was King Reija’s gift to his son—unfortunately bestowed upon an ungrateful recipient. But that, she suspected, was most unlikely to keep the King awake at night. He looked mighty pleased with himself. The same steely obstinacy and ingrained ruthlessness that distinguished the son was reflected in the father.

‘Your father—he is well?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

‘May he live long and prosper.’ He waved a hand. ‘You may withdraw—the women are impatient to prepare you for the wedding.’

When Polly emerged Raschid searched her eyes almost fiercely. What had caused that argument? she questioned frustratedly. It had driven Raschid into his current dark, smouldering mood. For all his outer detachment, he seethed with intense emotion just beneath the surface.

‘He suggested that I learn Arabic.’ In an effort to dispel the tension she smiled.

His jawline hardened. ‘Do not make that effort for my benefit. It is not important to me,’ he asserted harshly.

All over again Polly experienced that lowering sense of rejection. This time, however, she controlled her anger. Reality had finally sunk in. She could evade it no longer. This arrogant, unfathomable male was her husband. If they were at daggers drawn now, it was her own fault; her foolish references to annulment and divorce must have taxed his patience to the limits. She had spouted hot air. Her pride had smarted under a candour that had only equalled her own.

Breathlessly she hurried to keep up with his long stride. He led her down a bewildering succession of corridors. The palace complex was vast, composed of a hotch-potch of two- and three-storey buildings, many of them fashioned round traditional inner courtyards, the various wings linked by passageways and staircases. She would need a map and a compass to get round on her own. As the thick walls echoed with their footsteps, she thought anxiously about the womenfolk awaiting her, glad that her father had been able to fill her in on the distaff side of the family.

King Reija had married three times. His first wife had died in childbirth. His second, Nurbah, was Raschid and Asif’s mother. For years she had suffered from a heart condition that had sentenced her to an invalid’s existence. Perhaps that was why her husband had chosen to marry again. His third wife, Muscar, had had a daughter, Jezra, who was now sixteen. That alliance had ended in divorce, although Jezra remained within her father’s household.

Apart from Jezra, there was Asif’s wife, Chassa. She was the mother of two baby girls, and she was only twenty-two. Polly had tried not to look aghast when her father had added that Chassa was expecting yet again, no doubt in pursuit of the baby boy without which no Arab husband could be satisfied.

Shying away from the too intimate tenor of her reflections, she glanced at Raschid and reddened. ‘What did you and your father argue about?’

‘That is not open to discussion. Suffice it to say that my father and I do not always share the same sense of humour.’ His expressive mouth tightened.

Annoyed by the curt brush-off, she said, ‘I don’t think I want to marry you again. Once was enough!’

He cast her a predatory half-smile. ‘But I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of the excitements of an Islamic wedding. To deny that to one who, not two short weeks ago, expressed her willingness to live as I live would be inconceivably cruel,’ he murmured with silken satire.

Polly trembled with indignation. Raschid mounted a marble staircase slightly ahead of her and then hung back for her to catch up. He was thinking about ‘her’ again. It was a wonder he hadn’t thrown himself into the grave with her. Polly frowned, shaken by the meanness of the thought and the quite unjustifiable annoyance from which it had sprung. Berah had died suddenly, tragically. What kind of man would he be if he did not remember?

At the head of the staircase he stilled. ‘I must leave you here. You will find my sister through that door to your left.’ His gleaming scrutiny lingered impenetrably on her. Before she could turn away he reached out a hand. ‘But first,’ he said huskily, drawing her inexorably closer and lifting a hand to lace long fingers with unnerving slowness into the tumbled fall of her hair, ‘this.’

In the shadows of the wall he captured her lips urgently. ‘Open your mouth,’ he demanded, his breath fanning her cheek, and then his tongue hungrily plundered the intimacy she had denied him.

It was as if the ground fell away from beneath her feet. Her hands clutched at his shoulders for support. She had no control over the surge of hunger that sent a scorching flame to the very centre of her body. It controlled her. Raschid controlled her. In instinctive repulsion, Polly jerked her head back, devastated by the immediacy of her response to him.

‘You are quite right.’ His eyes were veiled, his mouth taut. ‘I forgot myself. This is not the place.’

‘I don’t think anywhere’s the place. If this is a marriage of convenience, why do we…?’ She swallowed, apprehensively measuring the midnight blue flare of his gaze. ‘You know what I’m saying.’

A winged brow elevated. ‘I don’t need to justify myself, Polly. Remember that tonight. Patience is not one of my virtues. You chose this,’ he drawled with ruthless emphasis.

She whirled away from him through the door he had indicated. Finding herself under the questioning appraisal of a tall, rather plump girl with a strong resemblance to Asif, she blushed.

‘You must be Jezra.’ Polly summoned up a self-conscious smile.

Jezra pointedly ignored her extended hand. Her rounded face was sullenly stiff, her brown eyes cold. ‘I will take you to your maids. Zenobia speaks English, Gada none. But I doubt if you’ll be here long enough to improve anyone’s vocabulary!’

‘I sincerely hope you’re right.’ As soon as the words left her, Polly regretted them, but she was mentally and physically exhausted. Jezra’s hostility, following so fast on Raschid’s coldly implacable insistence that she share his bed, was the last straw. ‘Look,’ she added hurriedly, ‘I’m rather tired. Can we begin again?’

Mottled pink had highlighted Jezra’s complexion. ‘Raschid didn’t even want to marry you!’ she spat.

‘Jezra, please—’ Polly began heavily, but the tirade was unstoppable.

‘Why should he have? His mistress in Paris, she is twice as beautiful as you—tall and blonde. I hear the men turn in the street to watch her go past. No matter what our father believes, you will not supplant her!’ Suddenly the teenager fell silent, her eyes appalled.

Polly had lost every scrap of natural colour.

‘It was a lie, a wicked untruth,’ Jezra muttered frantically. ‘You mustn’t repeat it to Raschid.’

The rich blend of colours in the carpet blurred under Polly’s strained gaze. ‘I’ve no intention of repeating it to anyone.’

The intense silence throbbed. Jezra cleared her throat. ‘I must ask you to forgive me for the rudeness of my welcome.’

She was very pale now, obviously frightened. Polly might have felt sorry for her had she not felt sorrier for herself. ‘It’s forgotten,’ she said flatly.

The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle slid into place, the unknown factor which had evaded her. At last she had a more practical explanation for Raschid’s aversion to remarriage. Small wonder that he was content as he was and his puritanical father had put on the pressure to return his son to a more respectable path. Bile soured Polly’s throat. King Reija had supplied Raschid with a blonde on the home front, as if blondes were interchangeable—and maybe they were on Raschid’s terms. He did not intend to deny himself the self-indulgence of making love to his bride. Jezra’s revelation rocked Polly to her foundations.

The teenager showed her through to an elegantly furnished bedroom. A pair of smiling young girls moved forward. A spill of gorgeous fabric lay across the divan bed. Her wedding outfit? Polly looked bitterly away.

She was a pawn on a chessboard here in Dharein. To think that she had actually felt ashamed of her inability to enter this marriage with dignity and acceptance: Her misgivings now had concrete proof. Raschid planned to use her as a front for some sordid affair. It was a dirty, devious, dishonourable piece of skulduggery. Chris would never have done this to any woman. Chris was honest and decent.

Locked in her despondency, she quietly let Zenobia help her undress. She slipped gratefully into the cool of a cotton wrap and was guided through to the connecting bathroom before she realised what was intended. Gada was sprinkling aromatic perfume into the water already awaiting her.

‘I really don’t need a bath,’ she said stiffly.

‘It will be most refreshing, I promise you.’ Zenobia’s tiny hands sketched an almost pleading gesture. ‘We must wait upon you, lellah. Have we displeased you?’

It was easier to submit than to argue. When Raschid lay ahead of her, all else had to pale into insignificance. Her hair was washed five times, left with the texture of oiled silk. Stepping from the bath, she was wrapped in velvety towels. While she lay face down on a divan being gently massaged with rose-scented oil by Zenobia, her heavy eyelids drooped. She slept, awakening with a timeless sense of dislocation. Gada was expertly employing a fine brush to paint delicate henna swirls on her hands and feet. Polly tried politely to object, but ran aground on Zenobia’s anxious explanation that this procedure was the custom for the bride.

A chattering cluster of women awaited them back in the bedroom. Jezra stood sulkily off to one side. It was ritual, Polly realised grimly, all of it, from the minute she had got into the bath—hours of age-old ritual to ready the bride for her lord and master. Three elderly women were squatting in the corner chanting what sounded like a funeral dirge. Uneasily averting her eyes, Polly stood while her audience communicated in dumb show.

‘Do any of them speak English?’ she asked.

‘These are Bedouin, lellah. They are the women of Queen Nurbah’s tribe,’ Zenobia explained. ‘Very few of them come into the town, but it is tradition that they dress Prince Raschid’s bride. They are honoured to be accepted by you as attendants.’

In any other situation Polly would have found the friendly atmosphere contagious, but the strangeness of it all made it another endurance test. She had no idea what they did to her face; there was no mirror in view. She was assisted into the sumptuous silver and blue kaftan. A swathe of crimson silk covered her hair turban fashion and a headdress of beaten silver coins was attached low over her forehead. Only then was she allowed to approach a mirror. A shimmering bejewelled odalisque met her dazed scrutiny. Polly Barrington had vanished.

She was escorted downstairs to Queen Nurbah’s apartments, the women following but remaining outside. Raschid’s mother was reclining on a daybed, her lined features bearing witness to her poor health.

‘I am sorry that I cannot rise to greet you.’ Warmth in her creased eyes, she held out a beringed hand for Polly to kiss. ‘My doctor insists that I am excluded from the festivities. I am very disappointed. Jezra, the girdle is on the bed. You must perform this service for me.’

Kneeling, Jezra linked a silver belt round Polly’s hips and fastened the teardrop sapphire clasp. The women outside stretched out reverent fingers to touch the girdle. At Polly’s enquiring glance, Jezra averted her head. ‘It is a symbol of fertility,’ she explained, surprisingly embarrassed.

Zenobia attached the veil to Polly’s face and the procession passed on. In a chamber dimly lit against the darkness now beyond the windows, Raschid awaited her, a tall, still figure, magnificent in dark blue silk robes. His sapphire eyes began at the top of her head and roamed intently down over her. He didn’t smile. Whether or not he found it amusing that she should be presented to him as a glittering Arab bridal doll was unrevealed by the impassivity of his bronzed features.

The ceremony was short, witnessed by King Reija and several other solemn-faced men. Hot with mortification, Polly stumbled over every Arabic phrase she had to repeat. Her hand was bound in a length of green cloth attached to Raschid’s wrist and released again. She was then hustled back to the door, suddenly alarmingly conscious of Raschid’s gleaming gaze following her. Loathing stabbed rawly into her. Consideration and respect didn’t cover a mistress.

In a large reception room full of women, a slim, graceful girl with almond-shaped eyes moved to greet her. ‘I am Chassa.’ She leant forward to kiss Polly’s cheek. ‘I hope we shall be friends. Don’t worry about names, but you must meet everyone.’

After a giddy surge of introductions, an array of colourful dishes were brought to her and the celebrations got under way. Voices, clattering dishes and music reverberated painfully against the headache Polly was developing. She could not get a morsel of food past her sore throat. Chassa sat beside her. She had attended an English boarding school and, optimistically in search of a common acquaintance, she named almost every girl she had met there. Polly struggled to ward off the nagging tiredness which made her feel as if Chassa was talking to her through a glass wall.

At some stage of the endless evening Zenobia touched her shoulder to indicate that she must now leave. Chassa gave her a teasing smile. Polly’s spirits sank to her toes. Her stomach turned over sickly. She was borne off by a bunch of bustling matrons on a long trek through shadowy passageways and up a wide staircase to be thrust into an enormous room, dominated by an equally enormous and ornately carved four-poster bed. A wave of giddiness passed over her as the door slammed loudly on the ladies’ exuberant departure.