CHAPTER SIX

‘SMILE!’ A blunt fingertip playfully scored the tremulous curve of her lower lip.

Snaking free, Polly snatched up a fleecy towel. ‘I have to endure everything else, but I don’t have to smile!’

Raschid tugged her back with an indolently powerful hand. ‘Repeat that.’

Her teeth set together in thwarted frustration.

‘Yes, you suffer with such masochistic fervour,’ he murmured silkily. ‘I cannot wonder at your sudden silence.’

Released, she stalked back into the bedroom to straighten the bed. Listening to the beat of the shower on the tiles, she slid back beneath the sheet. The very bedding bore his scent—evocative, intimate, inescapable. Like an addict Polly breathed it in until she realised what she was doing, and then she wanted to cry. Thinking about Berah, who had reputedly wept the Volga dry, she quickly stifled the feeble urge.

Some time later Raschid inched back the sheet and flipped her over with cool hands. He extracted a lingering kiss before she could rescue her breath to object. ‘I can’t stay,’ he admitted. ‘I have a report to give to my father. I’m dining with him. I will try not to be late.’

‘Take all night,’ she suggested thinly. ‘I’m amazed that I was sandwiched into your busy itinerary.’

He laughed softly, his brilliant eyes untamed in their vitality. ‘For some things, there is always time.’

Impervious to her mutinous fury, he considerately covered her up again. Angrily she sat up, anchoring the sheet beneath her arms. ‘I think I’m entitled to a room of my own. There’s a dozen available.’

‘But then I would be put to the inconvenience of fetching you.’ Calmly he finished dressing, attaching a curved dagger, an ornate silver khanjar, to his belt. Straightening, he flipped the edges of his flowing gold-bordered black cloak back over his shoulders. The snap and crackle in the atmosphere appeared to leave him untouched.

‘I hate you for this!’ Abruptly Polly let loose her pent-up rage and frustration. ‘I’ve never hated anyone in my life, but I hate you!’ Her attack throbbed with feeling.

‘A category all to myself? I am honoured, and I do understand. It was very selfish of me not to consider your feelings and make it a brutal rape.’ Raschid flashed her a glittering glance of sheer masculine provocation and taking advantage of her thunderstruck silence, he pointed out equably, ‘You’ll be safe in the shower now,’ before he departed.

The minute he walked out of the door Polly believed he forgot her existence, just as he had contrived to forget it for the past two weeks. He treated her like a partner in a casual affair. She didn’t feel like a wife. How could she? He didn’t behave like a husband. But he had warned her how it would be in advance. He had warned her that love and sentiment would play no part in their alliance. And she had accepted those terms—mutely, unthink-ingly, her head buried in the sand.

The instant he left the room, the stimulus of anger mysteriously ebbed away. Behind it lurked a great well of unbearable loneliness. She had made a devil’s bargain. It was costing her more than her freedom. It was stealing away all peace of mind, all pride. She needed those pretences he had disdained. What she could not stand was that he should contentedly remain utterly detached from her. It was the ultimate rejection.

It was late when he returned. Polly didn’t hear him enter the lounge. He moved like a night-prowling cat. Looking up, she saw him, darkly stilled just inside the pool of light shed by the lamp to one side of her. Her pulses quickened, her breath catching in her mouth. She told herself it was fright.

‘Some unexpected guests arrived,’ he imparted. ‘It would have been impolite for me to leave sooner.’

Polly gave a shrug. Her earlier emotionalism had hardened into a cold and bitter implacability. ‘You don’t need to explain yourself to me.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I consider it simple courtesy to do so.’

It was Polly who went pink. She gathered up the letter she had been writing, intending to remove herself. Raschid moved a staying hand and sank down on the seat opposite. ‘I was most disturbed to learn that you did not leave the palace during my absence. You had only to order a car.’

‘Until recently I didn’t feel up to much.’

‘Surely you might have enjoyed a drive? You are not living in the Bastille,’ he said drily. ‘It isn’t good for you to be shut up after your illness.’

Polly leapt with grim satisfaction into reply. ‘Nobody told me that I could order a car, and where would I have gone? Jumani?’ she enquired. ‘I don’t have any money.’

Faint colour barred his cheekbones. ‘I should have thought of these things. You have reason to complain.’

‘I wasn’t complaining, I was merely stating facts.’

‘I should have phoned you. You could have reminded me.’ He sighed. ‘As a rule I am not lacking in manners.’

Incensed by the information that he regarded a couple of phone calls to his wife as a duty courtesy, Polly stiffened. ‘It’s all right, I didn’t really notice.’

Unanticipated humour lightened his features. ‘I feel duly punished now, Polly. For a deliberate omission not to be noticed is a just reward.’

The force of that unchoreographed charisma of his nearly splintered through her cold front. She wanted to smile back. The acknowledgement unnerved her. His attraction was a hundred times more powerful because he seemed quite unaware of it. She could not help comparing him with Asif, whose charm was boyishly calculated and gilded by unhidden conceit. Raschid’s sophistication was not Asif’s. Raschid might be cultured and cynical, but he would never possess his brother’s studied air of bored languor. His vibrancy, shielded by that cool austerity, beckoned to Polly with the burning heat of a fire on a winter’s day.

‘Tomorrow I will take you into Jumani. There are furniture warehouses there.’ He surveyed the shadowy room and the cosy corner Polly had incongruously set up for her comfort with grim disfavour. ‘I have never entertained here. I have never even used this room before.’

It was so wretchedly typical of Raschid to reappear the very epitome of well-bred and reasonable behaviour. Gone was the passionate lover, who had taken her by storm and ruthlessly rejoiced in conquest. An odd little shiver, indecently reminiscent of anticipation in reverse, assailed her. Hurriedly she got up. ‘Fine. I’m going to bed now, unless you have some objections.’

He eyed her set face unreadably. ‘Go to bed if you wish. I have work to do.’

From the door she glanced back. He was motionless by the window, a solitary dark figure in splendid isolation. He didn’t need her, he didn’t need anybody. But still that view of him unawares tugged wilfully at her heartstrings. She couldn’t sleep. It was one in the morning and he was working. Even if he had slept during the flight, time zones played havoc with anybody’s system. Polly curled up in a damp heap round a pillow.

Furniture, she reflected incredulously. He talked about her refurnishing when a divide the width of the universe stretched between them. Did he think that all he had to do to keep her in contented subjection was throw a king’s ransom in jewellery at her and let her spend a fortune on a home which was not her home and never would be? Did he think that that would miraculously convert her to her lot? Could he really believe that she valued herself so low?

Around dawn she discovered that she was wrapped round Raschid instead of the pillow. There was not a lot of excuse for that in a bed six feet wide. As she began gingerly to detach herself, he turned over and anchored her to his lithe, brown body, murmuring something indistinct in Arabic and then her name. He kissed her, and her toes curled shamelessly. While she was trying to uncurl them, he darted his tongue hungrily into the moist recesses of her mouth and what her toes were doing receded in immediate importance for a very long time.

He sauntered fully dressed to the foot of the bed. Polly’s heartbeat tipped against her breastbone. ‘What time is it?’ she whispered.

‘Almost half-past six.’

‘Is that all?’ Gratefully her eyelids dropped again.

‘It’s the coolest part of the day. Later it will be too hot for you. I always go riding in the morning. You can join me. That is not a pleasure you have to do without here. Have you inspected the stables yet?’

She didn’t want to look at him. As memories touched wilfully and cruelly on her all she wanted to do was curl up and die, preferably without an audience. ‘I’m not a very good rider.’

‘That’s not important.’ But he couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.

‘Apart from that, I’m not in the mood to go riding,’ she muttered. ‘Enjoy yourself.’

‘You are not making this any easier for either of us,’ he breathed. ‘You are being childish.’

‘It’s funny how I’m always being childish when I disagree with you or obtrude as an individual,’ Polly said bitterly from the depths of the bed.

Her tiredness put to flight, she tossed for a while before getting up. She was being foolish. She was driving a further wedge between them. Twenty minutes later she arrived breathlessly in the domed porch, just in time to see Raschid swinging himself up into the saddle of a magnificent black thoroughbred. The stallion’s sleek lines were pure Arabian, beauty and stamina superbly matched. Feeling she was too late and fearful of a cool welcome, for in all likelihood the invitation had been spurred by politeness alone, Polly didn’t advertise her presence.

‘How very wifely!’

Startled, she spun. Asif grinned at her. ‘Marzouk and Raschid are very impressive. Aren’t you joining him?’

She flushed. ‘No.’

‘He prefers to ride alone.’ Then he groaned. ‘But now that you are here, naturally that will change.’

‘I’m not much of a rider. I don’t think I’d hamper him with my company.’ She forced a smile, glad she hadn’t rushed outside to publish her change of heart.

He swept a cavalier’s bow with an imaginary hat. ‘I wouldn’t be hampered.’ His brown eyes roamed appreciatively over her beautiful, laughing face and he sighed. ‘You’re right—I’m a hopeless flirt. I can’t help it. You are much too distracting, Polly. But there are times when distractions are welcome.’ He stared moodily out at Raschid cantering through the gates. ‘He is a very tough act to follow.’

‘Are you in competition?’

He didn’t look at her. ‘When Raschid was a boy, he trained his own falcon. For three months it went everywhere with him until it was tamed. He didn’t mind getting clawed in the process. Our father was very proud of him. In his eyes that’s the sort of behaviour that separates the men from the boys. I’ve still to make the grade, and the most hellish side of it is that you can’t dislike Raschid for it.’ He turned back to her with a rueful smile. ‘For his family, even his unworthy brother, there is no sacrifice he would not make.’ He evaded her gaze and sounded a rather strained laugh. ‘But when the competition gets too much I can always think of the jeans.’

‘The what?’

He pulled open the door, slim and elegant in his tailored riding gear. ‘It is what you call an “in” joke, Polly,’ he divulged, having recovered his natural buoyancy.

Unable to see anything humorous in Raschid choosing to relax in less formal clothing, Polly soon cast the trivial remark from her mind. Asif’s undeniable uneasiness with her for several uncomfortable seconds had concerned her more. Was he afraid that Chassa had made indiscreet confidences? He should know his wife better. Chassa was too loyal to spill the secrets of their marriage.

Returning upstairs, she wandered into Raschid’s study. It was really a library, shelved from floor to ceiling with books in several languages. She ran a thoughtful fingertip along the spines of a collection of poetry books. Berah’s? Frowning, she passed on, surveying the dull appointments of the cheerless room. Apart from the telephones and the computer it was as early medieval as the rest of the place. Only the bathrooms and the kitchen quarters had been modernised—quite the opposite of Asif and Chassa’s wing, which was full of designer furniture and pale, pearlised carpets. Then it was a challenge to picture Raschid against a similar backdrop.

Her hand trailed idly over the back of the chair by the desk. Did he ever think about the woman inside her pleasing shell? Her pride, her emotions, her needs? How were they to live together? How did you begin when the end was already within view? But she had begun. Why did she continue to deny the obvious? She was drowning in a physical infatuation that was terrifyingly intense. Of course she didn’t know herself any more. Raschid walked into a room and there wasn’t a skin cell in her body which didn’t leap to that awareness. She had fought him less than she had fought herself.

Feed a cold, starve a fever; the old saying sang in her head. Could she equate a fever with an obsession? Raschid was fast becoming one. He might infuriate her, he might confound her understanding and he might sting her pride, but at no stage did he do less than fascinate her. She was on the edge of a precipice and the ground was suddenly crumbling from beneath her feet. She didn’t want to be starved of him. She was already wondering how long they would have together before his next trip abroad. And if she fell in love with him, what then? Irritably she quelled that foolish worry. The more she looked back at the amount of time she had wasted mooning about over Chris, the more her stomach curdled. Her intelligence was now in firm control of her imagination and her emotions. She was not, she told herself thankfully, likely to be vulnerable in the same direction again.

‘You would like tea, lellah?’

Zenobia smiled at her from the doorway. Reddening, Polly set down the gold pen she had absently lifted, studying it, questioning how it had got into her hand. ‘Yes, that would be nice,’ she said vaguely.

She kept her nose in a newspaper over breakfast. Raschid fingered through his mail and watched her in exasperation. After they had eaten, an air-conditioned limousine ferried them away from the palace at speed. They travelled along a wide thoroughfare banked by young trees being industriously watered. Taking in the size of an impressive building near completion, Polly asked what it was.

‘A second hospital. It is due to open in a few weeks.’

‘I’d love to see it.’ Her mouth compressed. ‘But I suppose that would be out of order. It wouldn’t do for anybody to hint that you had a wife animated by intelligence.’

‘I am not sure that it is intelligence that is animating you at this moment. I will see what I can arrange.’

As they topped the brow on a rolling hill, Jumani spread out before them. The glass of tall office blocks reflected the cloud formations. As they drove through the city her bad humour melted away as her attention roamed in eager darts. Modern skyscrapers vied with wedding-cake mosques and graceful minarets. Green expanses of parkland gleamed at intervals between the buildings. The pavements were busy and the inviting window displays she glimpsed as they sped past belonged to retail outlets that were many and varied.

‘How does civilisation look now that you have got over the wall?’ Raschid enquired silkily.

‘It’s lovely. Is that a shopping centre?’ she exclaimed.

His eyes gleamed. ‘Yes, Polly. Jumani has several.’

It happened slowly. He began to smile, and it was like no smile he had ever given her before. Like the sun after the rain, it was brilliant and warm.

A herd of dinosaurs could have been running amok in the city traffic—Polly would not have noticed. That smile that was neither cynical nor merely polite passed through her with the paralysing force of an electric current.

The day was an entertaining whirl. She enjoyed the tour of the warehouses and the excessive attention they received. She found herself laughing a lot, relaxing as she had never relaxed before in Raschid’s company. They had lunch in a private room in a luxury hotel in the city centre; men didn’t take their wives into public dining-rooms in Dharein. Raschid was not entirely at ease during the meal while the manager and waiters swarmed about them. Polly suspected he was breaking new ground. And deep in her tangled thoughts she was vaguely conscious that she would do almost anything to waken that charismatic smile again.

That evening they had barely finished dinner when Raschid’s secretary, Medir, made an apologetic intrusion to mention an important phone call. Restive on her own and pleasantly relaxed, Polly decided to go for a walk in the palace gardens. In the shelter of the steep walls pepper and tamarind trees shaded fragrant oleanders with heavy pink blooms that scented the night stillness. Strolling back, she was in a brown study, and she gasped in dismay when a dark shadow moved into her path.

‘Good heavens!’ Clasping a helpless hand to her palpitating heart, she stared accusingly up at Raschid. ‘Could you make a little more noise? You scared me—I thought I was alone out here.’

His mouth slanted. ‘You are far from alone. Seif and Raoul have not been more than a few steps from you since you came outside.’

Dazedly she followed the direction of his hand and registered two more shadows over by the wall. Raschid’s bodyguards.

‘I am sorry if I startled you, but then you are not very observant.’ His manner was teasing.

‘What were they doing following me?’

‘They are there for your protection.’

Before she could drily enquire if walls half-way to heaven were not protection enough, the unmistakable sound of voices raised in argument filtered down from the balcony above them. Polly recognised Asif’s voice immediately.

‘I believe we should go back inside,’ Raschid drawled.

‘All couples argue,’ she said uncomfortably.

‘Few as much as they do.’ It was grim.

Polly frowned. ‘Well, I hope you’re not blaming her. She’s very easygoing.’

‘You don’t understand the situation.’

‘Educate me, then.’ A silence that was deeply mortifying stretched in answer to her request.

‘Don’t get involved,’ Raschid murmured finally. ‘I voice that warning kindly.’

She felt snubbed, firmly slapped down for daring to imply that she might be sufficiently accepted as part of the family to be trusted with a confidence. In the darkness her cheeks burned. She liked Asif and Chassa, but she was neither the interfering type, nor in this case was her curiosity of the morbid variety. Picking up Raschid’s tension, she had impulsively tried to share whatever was worrying him.

‘Chassa does not enjoy the best of health when she is pregnant. No doubt tempers become short,’ he continued smoothly.

He was only covering up; there was more to it than that. Assuming that Asif was equally keen to have a large family, surely he was guilty of selfish neglect? As Raschid curved an arm round her to guide her back indoors, Polly went suddenly still in the charged hold of an explosive acknowledgement which demolished her composure.

Where on earth would she be if she became pregnant? Already that was a possibility. She was astonished that not a single word had ever been spoken on that subject. Was Raschid under the impression that she had taken some step to avoid the danger?

‘What is wrong?’ He glanced down at her narrowly.

‘I’ve just thought of something you haven’t thought of.’ An anger she didn’t quite comprehend raced up hot and swift inside her. ‘Although I must admit that on every other count you were ahead of yourself—with one strange exception. What happens to our strictly timed marriage of convenience and extreme practicality if I become pregnant?’ she demanded shakily. ‘Or is there a wheel within a wheel there as well? Some nefarious plan, perhaps, to gain an heir without the encumbrance of a wife? I imagine that would suit you very nicely.’

In the unkind clarity of the overhead light Raschid’s pallor was pronounced. His burnished eyes blazed dangerously bright, but his response when it came was very quiet. ‘That would not be within my power, Polly. I can give no woman a child. You stand in no danger of becoming a mother while you live with me.’

Shock sent a wave of giddiness over her. Her fingers tightened painfully on the stair rail. In that instant Raschid had turned her over and inside out. She had not been prepared; she had never even suspected. The shock stupefied her into silence.

‘I am sorry—I have embarrassed you.’ His proud bone-structure was etched hawklike beneath his golden skin, black lashes half obscuring silvered eyes that even now possessed a cruel capacity to interpret her every fleeting expression. ‘The manner of telling was unforgivable. Unfortunately you took me by surprise.’

Afterwards she didn’t recall climbing those stairs. In stricken confusion she blamed herself for blundering clumsily in where angels feared to tread. Having noted the unusual aspect of Raschid overlooking any eventuality, might she not have made that last step in deduction for herself? Or would she have? Berah had been firmly fixed in her mind as the partner unable to have children. Only now did she see that she had had no evidence on which to base that assumption. Secure in her misapprehension, she had repeatedly missed the point of all that she had learnt about his first marriage.

He stood straight and still by one of the tall lounge windows and met her uneasy gaze unflinchingly. ‘You must wonder that I should have concealed this fact at our first meeting. Had the marriage been of my seeking and had I viewed the tie as one of permanency, I would naturally have told you. Then I did not consider it a necessary explanation. But for some time I have wished to raise the matter with you. Before I went to New York,’ he quoted unemotionally. ‘But you took yourself off to bed early, and I must confess that when I returned yesterday, it was my belief that you must already be aware of the fact.’

Polly was being overtaken by a hideous premonition of what his life must have been like with a wife desperate to have a baby. ‘I wasn’t,’ she told him.

‘That was obvious. Perhaps you thought that the fault lay with Berah. No, the failing was mine, not hers,’ he asserted. ‘But I am not, after so many years, over-sensitive to this fact now. Insh’allah.’

His dark-timbred drawl was the merest shade unsteady. All the over-sensitivity that ferocious pride of his denied was written in his jewelled eyes. Could she have turned time back and remained in ignorance, Polly would have done so. A floodtide of guilty tenderness pierced her deep. In its wake a nameless emotion as fierce as the desert heat clawed pain into her. But she could not reward his hard self-discipline with an emotional response. With that thought she lifted her head and said quite naturally and without a hint of sympathy, ‘It’s not really something that concerns us.’ She paused before continuing, as continue she must, for that terrible curiosity would not leave her alone, ‘But I would appreciate knowing a little more about Berah. Of course, if you don’t want to talk about her, I’ll understand and respect that.’

A muscle jerked tight at the corner of his mouth. ‘There isn’t much to tell. For an Arab woman, children are an integral part of marriage. She will measure her own importance in terms of the sons she gives her husband. Berah could not adapt to childlessness. It was not to be expected that she could do otherwise. Her sole interests revolved round home and family. Unable to have what she most desired, she was naturally unhappy.’

‘When did you find out?’

‘We had been married for two years. Berah had seen several different doctors, and then I…she did not want to tell me when the discovery was made. It was a heavy disappointment,’ he confessed curtly. ‘A marriage can have no meaning without children.’

‘These days couples actually decide not to have children,’ Polly protested lamely.

Raschid dealt her an inscrutable glance. ‘Not in an Arab society, and there is a difference, is there not, in a freely made decision? In a man such a failing…’

‘Will you stop that? Fault—failing. Will you stop talking as if it was something you could have helped?’ The involuntary censure sprang from her—she could not retain it.

‘I am sorry that my terminology should offend.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean that, for goodness’ sake!’ Very close to tears, she stumbled to a halt. She hated herself for forcing Raschid to answer her questions. For a charged minute, she even hated him for confessing a very private and personal sorrow in the heroic and stoic tradition of a sinner awaiting the casting of the first stone. But above all her conflict dominated a near-overwhelming need to be physically close to him. Denied that, she could only sit there in miserable silence.

‘My brother had to become a husband long before he wished for the responsibility. Chassa and Asif have paid high costs of their own. Asif was a very poor candidate for an early marriage, but stability only comes with future generations…’ A knock sounded on the door and Medir appeared on command, wringing his hands in his usual deprecating fashion. ‘Excuse me,’ said Raschid, and swept out, at last releasing her from that terrible rigidity of expression and bearing. Her shoulders slumped and slowly she breathed again.

He reached for her in the night when she was pursuing sleep without success. Finally he offered her the physical contact she had craved. Of their own volition her hands linked round the strong column of his throat, her fingertips delving into the feathery strands of his hair. Tonight, inexplicably, she was wild for him. The driving spur of a hunger she could never have expressed in words pulsed in her veins. Like the sea tide that beats eternally on the shore, it was powerful, irrefutable and tenacious. The same elemental force seemed to energise that stormy fusion. Afterwards Raschid kept his arms wrapped tightly round her. ‘I wasn’t gentle,’ he breathed. ‘Did I hurt you?’

As she uttered a shy negative, the tension in him gave. A deep and abiding sense of peace cradled her. She buried her face in his shoulder, loving the scent and the touch and the feel of him, but sleep was far from her. Unbidden rose an image of a little boy with black hair and bright blue eyes, and she crushed it guiltily in her imagination. Raschid had lived ten years with the knowledge of that impossibility. But wasn’t it strange that the wife who had reputedly loved him so deeply should have selfishly wallowed in her own disappointment without caring about the damage she was inflicting on him? What kind of love was it that had ensured that Raschid remained as painfully sensitive now as he must have been then? Anger stirred in her and that pain she could not comprehend kept her awake.

Conversation over breakfast was practically non-existent. Stealing a glance at the distant cast of his hard profile, she found it extraordinarily difficult to equate him with the passionate lover of the night hours. All that was light-hearted, warm and volatile in Raschid was strictly confined to the bedroom. Beyond that door he was courteous and aloof. Last night she had almost flung herself at him. Now she cringed from the memory. Perhaps it was imagination, but Raschid seemed a thousand miles further away from her this morning.

Uncertainly she cleared her throat, and he looked up. She couldn’t quite meet his eyes. On the other hand, she would not surrender to her own discomfiture in front of him. ‘What are we doing today?’ she asked brightly.

‘I’m afraid I have work to attend to. You must make your own amusement.’ He got up.

The silence crushed her like a giant stone. Her head bowed. She was humiliated by the assumption she had made and the chill of the snub she had invited.

He paused at the door. ‘Why don’t you ask Chassa to go somewhere with you? She would enjoy the diversion.’

‘When I require your advice on how to get through the day, I’ll ask for it,’ she whispered.

Emptiness yawned inside her. When had she forgotten the rules? Their marriage was a temporary expedient. Was Raschid worried that she was in danger of forgetting the fact? He had a depth of percipience she had found uncannily acute on more than one occasion. He was highly attuned to fluctuations in behaviour and atmosphere. He watched, he waited and he deduced. An unwary word or gesture rarely escaped him.

Had it not been for what he regarded as a fatal flaw he would have dutifully remarried long ago. He would have selected someone suitable, of course. Some little twittery, submissive creature who knew her place. He wouldn’t have chosen Polly. The more she thought along those lines, the more humiliated she felt. He was tearing her self-respect to ribbons. She despised herself for responding trustingly to yesterday’s misleading warmth. She despised herself more for craving a smile—a stupid, worthless smile from a selfish brute who endowed her with invisibility the minute dawn broke.

In the afternoon new furniture was delivered. Polly was noisily shifting it about the lounge when he came towards her. Her heartbeat went haywire and she hated him for it.

‘Why aren’t the servants doing that?’

She straightened with an arctic smile. ‘Because I’m enjoying doing it myself. Sorry, did the racket disturb your concentration?’

‘As it happens, no. I wanted to speak to you.’

Polly lifted a footstool. ‘Carry on.’

His eyes flashed. ‘Put that down.’

With exaggerated care, she obeyed. Rapier-taut, he breathed. ‘I owe you an apology for this morning. I am sorry if I distressed you.’

‘Do I look distressed?’ she demanded acidly, and turned away to plonk herself down on a seat. Once again he had disconcerted her. She could feel the tears gathering.

‘I do not know how I ever thought that you were quiet,’ he told her.

‘The fox condemns the trap, not himself.’

‘William Blake,’ he identified softly. ‘How sweet I roamed from…’ As Polly studied him in astonishment, he shrugged. ‘Poetry is much loved by my race.’

She bent her head.

‘I wasn’t considerate this morning,’ Raschid went on.

‘And of course we must stick to the letter of the law, mustn’t we?’ she muttered bitterly.

‘No,’ he contradicted. ‘We have to live together, and this situation demands adjustment on both sides.’

So they had a situation now, not a marriage. She couldn’t breathe, and she sniffed. With a sigh he knelt down in front of her and gently rescued the cushion she was crushing between her hands. ‘You are upset. I shouldn’t have married someone…’

‘I’m not upset! I just don’t like anybody looking at me when I’m crying!’

A shadow of that rare smile skimmed his mouth. ‘Am I to leave while you compose yourself?’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Irritably Polly wiped at her damp eyes. ‘But I really don’t want to hear one more time about how you didn’t want to marry me. How you can say that and then…’ She faltered to a blushing halt.

‘Make love to you?’ he interposed. ‘You are very innocent, Polly.’

‘No, I’m not. I’m getting educated all the time.’

Raschid sighed, ‘I am a man like any other…’

‘Don’t worry, you’re not on a pedestal!’ she snapped tearfully.

His eyes glittered in driven frustration. ‘You are my wife, my very beautiful wife, and it is my right…’

‘To demean me by using me?’ Polly inserted jerkily.

He pressed a finger to her quivering lower lip. ‘That is crude, and what I have to say to you now is not easy, but I don’t want you to be hurt.’ He slid upright again and moved a nebulous hand. ‘You must not begin imagining that you have become—’ unusually, he hesitated, ‘attached to me.’

Fixed by that remorseless azure gaze, she was a butterfly on the end of a twisting pin. ‘I really don’t think I want to hear any more of this.’

‘It would only make you unhappy and it would only make me uncomfortable. I couldn’t respond to those feelings. I don’t have them to give. There, it is said, and you can be offended with me if you wish,’ he completed harshly.

Rage had glued her tongue to the roof of her mouth. ‘Attached to you?’ she retorted, wondering if the parasitic choice of term was accidental or subconsciously deliberate. ‘To what aspect of your truly entrancing nature could I become attached? I’m in no danger of…’

‘If it is true I am glad of it, but it is not unusual for a woman to become confused about her feelings for her first lover.’ As Raschid cut her off in throbbing mid-speech his narrowed eyes gleamed over her fiercely.

Polly had leapt up in her fury. ‘Oh, don’t give me an open-ended invitation like that to ventilate my exact feelings, Raschid. It might prove seriously damaging to your ego!’

‘Sexual pleasure is not restricted to those in love, Polly,’ he bit out.

‘All the way to Dharein with its strict moral code to find a husband preaching promiscuity!’ she derided.

Dark colour had sprung up over his cheekbones. ‘It was my intent to say that within a marriage where there is respect and understanding there is no shame in enjoying physical intimacy,’ he returned icily.

Her chin went up, although she was shaking. ‘I was taught that emotions were the distinction that lifted us up out of the animal kingdom. I’m surprised that you’re not suggesting that I take a lover so that I can field-test your convictions for myself!’

Eyes an incredulous blaze of shimmering blue clashed with hers. ‘The penalty for adultery in Dharein is still death.’ It was a primal and savage snarl to match an anger strong enough to drain the outraged colour from her cheeks. ‘But were I ever to have cause to suspect your fidelity that penalty would seem a happy exit from this life.’

The violent aggression she had incited arrested her vocal cords and her heartbeat. He released his breath in a hiss and stared at her. ‘It seems that I have yet to learn appreciation of your jokes,’ he enunciated through clenched teeth, the menacing cast of his hard features easing only slowly. ‘But that was a provocation which would rouse any man to anger.’

Her knees were disgracefully wobbly. ‘Excuse me,’ she mumbled, and fled before her queasy stomach could disgrace her.

Fortunately a few gulps of fresh air out on the balcony beyond their bedroom settled her back to normality. When a hand touched her shoulder, however, she nearly leapt in the air in fright.

A firm hand steadied her. ‘I believe you should abandon this tendency to refer to other men as if you are still free to think of them.’

His eyes still had a banked-down glitter. Backed up against the balcony wall, Polly was absently relieved to have a wholly clean conscience in that direction. ‘Was it true what you said?’ she asked.

He shifted one of his exquisitely expressive hands. ‘Divorce is easy for both sexes in our society. The rights of women and children are well protected by the law. They were enshrined there centuries ago. There is little excuse for those…’

‘But it does happen?’

‘It has been some years since such a case has been presented, but the law still stands.’

‘Well, I think…’

‘I would point out that while our penal code is harsh, infringements are fewer than those in more liberal countries. Nor do our women walk in fear of sexual assault. Polly, let us discuss something on which we are less likely to argue. I don’t want to argue with you.’ Staring down at her vibrantly beautiful and intransigent face, he gently pushed a straying strand of hair back from her cheekbone, employing the familiarity that was almost second nature to him now.

She spun bitterly and violently away from that confident hand. ‘I’d like to be on my own. I’m sure you have work to do.’

His jawline clenched. ‘I came to ask you if you would like a tour of that hospital. I have arranged it.’

An anguished bitterness consumed her. Was this one of those adjustments he had mentioned? The necessity of sacrificing the occasional hour to her entertainment outside the bedroom door? Of humouring her with the pretence that he respected her as an intelligent, thinking human being? She saw herself yesterday, utterly riveted by the spellbinding charge of his full attention. She saw herself last night, slavishly eager in his arms. And she recoiled from both degrading images. This was a fever which required starvation at every possible opportunity.

Raschid had spelt out brutal facts. She ought to thank him for the short sharp shock treatment. If this agony of pain she was enduring, if this dreadful urge to claw, scratch and bite she was experiencing was the death throes of some embryonic love, she wanted no part of it, and she would have no part of such colourful fancies. There and then she made that pact with herself. The stubborn determination which was the backbone of her character underlined the decision.

In her conviction that she loved Chris, she had wished unhappiness on herself. Raschid was just as unobtainable. Did she have a masochistic streak that rejoiced in suffering? Well, if she had, on this occasion it was not about to find even a tiny outlet.

‘I don’t really think that that would be my style.’ She produced a bright smile. ‘But I hope that won’t cause offence.’

‘And I hope that you know what you’re doing,’ he intoned coldly.