‘I will see you later, habibti,’ Zarif murmured tautly, a flush lining his hard cheekbones.
Ella slid off the table like an electrified eel and hauled open the door. Her mother beamed at her from the hall. ‘The beautician’s here and you haven’t had breakfast yet,’ she fussed. ‘Will Zarif be staying?’
‘No...’ From behind her, Zarif took over the conversation with effortless ease and not the smallest hint of discomfiture.
* * *
Zarif watched his bride exchanging greetings with the children of some of the guests. She was good with little ones, he recognised, watching her animated face and her sparkling eyes as she laughed and chatted, displaying the first warmth she had shown since he saw her at the church. She was so naturally beautiful in her simple elegant gown he had found it a challenge to look away. She had played the bridal role with a shuttered look in her gaze though, polite and smiling but with all true feeling edited out of the show. His wife. The designation still felt like a shock—almost as much of a shock as it had been to his uncle Halim when he phoned him three weeks earlier to break the news.
‘Of course, it is past time for you to take a wife,’ Halim has declared valiantly, holding back on the word, ‘again’, diplomatic and generous to the end. ‘And British like your grandmother? She will be a popular choice with those who wish us to look West rather than East as we move into the future. I shall look forward to meeting her.’
And for an instant Zarif had felt a piercing shame that he was about to foist such a sham on the old man, who had watched his only child, Azel, become Zarif’s first wife, queen and mother before the heart-rending car crash took both her life and that of their son. Devastated, Halim had taken refuge in his academic books, finally requesting permission to leave palace politics and return to his professorship at the university where lectures and students had, at least, distracted him from his grief.
Times without number, Zarif had crushed the futile wish that he too could find such an outlet to escape his memories because the only change in his daily life had been a constant shadow of indescribable loss. Even so, Zarif was well aware that his remarriage, his doing what had to be done and before Halim died, would be a comfort to the older man. After all, Halim had raised his nephew to believe that the stability of Vashir came first and last, before personal feelings, before everything else. And now, for the first time in his life, Zarif was suddenly shockingly conscious that he was guilty of betraying his duty because he had allowed his desire to possess Ella Gilchrist to suppress every other consideration.
Across the room, a little girl was examining Ella’s shiny new platinum wedding band and complaining mournfully that it didn’t sparkle and Ella was explaining the difference between wedding and engagement rings, a clarification that ran out of steam when she was asked why she didn’t have an engagement ring.
Rising to her feet with a rather stilted laugh, Ella abandoned the challenge, her attention roaming to Zarif, tall, dark and extraordinarily handsome in a tailored morning suit teamed with a grey striped silk cravat, where he was chatting to her parents. He was so damned smooth and polished in his every move that she wanted to scream. Nobody would ever have guessed that the wedding was a charade that cast a respectable veil over the most basic transaction possible between a man and a woman. Inside herself she shrank, thinking there could be little difference between her and any other woman who sold her body for money, for wasn’t that exactly what she was doing?
And worst of all, with a male who felt absolutely nothing for her, she reflected wretchedly, for while Zarif’s outer façade of cool might have convinced their small select band of guests that he was a joyful bridegroom, it had not fooled Ella. That rare flashing smile of his had not been in evidence once. She just knew he was thinking about Azel because she could feel the distance and reserve in him, see the haunting darkness in his eyes. The one and only time he had discussed his first wife with her had been the day he proposed marriage to Ella three years earlier and his words then were still branded into her soul like unhealed wounds.
He had referred to Azel as irreplaceable while assuring Ella that he was not asking her to supplant his first wife in her role as that would, apparently, have been an impossible task.
And when she had asked Zarif if he loved her in surely the most poignant question a young woman in love could ask?
‘I will always hold Azel in my heart. I cannot pretend otherwise.’
And yet after that little speech, the living proof that some men wouldn’t understand or recognise emotion unless it was tipped over their heads like boiling oil, Zarif had been stunned when Ella turned his proposal down. Even madly in love and at only twenty-one years of age, Ella had foreseen what a disaster it would have been for her to have even tried to follow in Azel’s perfect footsteps. Zarif, whether he had known it or not, hadn’t been ready or able to put another woman in Azel’s place. Ella, heartbroken, had backed off from such an impossible and thankless challenge.
Accordingly, there Zarif was now mere hours after marrying Ella, no doubt looking back with regret to his first wedding day when he had had the joy of wedding a woman he loved with all his heart and his soul. The very thought hurt, just as it had hurt like an acid burn all those years ago when Ella had been forced to accept that, although she adored Zarif and longed for him with every cell in her body, he would have sacrificed her in a moment if, by some miracle, he could have brought Azel back to life.
He wouldn’t have wanted Azel purely for sex, Ella acknowledged unhappily. He had loved and respected Azel and Ella was challenged to understand what she herself had done to rouse such hostility in Zarif that would incur such a devastating revenge. Three years ago, she had said no and her excuses had gone down like a brick on glass but even though she had been in an agony of pain at his virtual rejection of her she had certainly not intended to cause offence.
Of course, rejection had to have been something entirely new to Zarif, she acknowledged ruefully. All women noticed his stunning dark good looks, automatically turning to take a second glance when he was nearby. Those brief weeks she had dated him it had been like going out with a movie star, for everywhere they went women had watched, giggled flirtatiously and tried to catch his eye. He had seemed sublimely unconscious of the effect he had on her sex. He seemed not to have an ounce of vanity but how reliable a character witness was she?
After all, it would never have occurred to Ella three years ago that Zarif would sink to the level of literally paying her to share his bed. As soon as she thought that, Ella frowned, reminding herself that she had agreed to his terms for the sake of the parents she loved. Her choice, then, and even if she couldn’t quite manage to be grateful that he had given her that choice, she knew it would be unjust to blame Zarif for how she felt now that she had accepted the role of mistress within marriage from him. Unhappily, the ‘sex and nothing but sex’ label made her feel worthless and degraded.
There could be no denying that Zarif had changed and much more than she could ever have expected. The man she remembered had been so upright and so straight in every way and it was ironic that only now when she no longer loved him was she learning that he had a much darker, more complex side to his character and that could only make her fear for her future.
* * *
Ella stared wide-eyed at the opulence of the private jet with its cream leather sofas and luxurious fittings, not to mention the four uniformed cabin staff bowing and scraping respectfully in their presence. She finally sat down, nerves bubbling in her tummy at the knowledge that once the craft was airborne she was leaving home and everything familiar behind. Who knew when she might return?
Already it felt as if the day, which had begun with such drama, was turning into the longest day in existence. They were flying to Vashir and tomorrow would undergo a second wedding ceremony in the presence of Zarif’s ailing uncle Halim and the local VIPs. Just then it felt as if she were facing