Jaul was right in the middle of the three-act drama he had hoped to avoid. Urging calm wasn’t working, listening quietly wasn’t working either. But then all that had ever worked with Chrissie when she was angry was dragging her off to bed until they were both thoroughly satisfied. That was a totally inappropriate thought, he admitted, struggling to concentrate on what mattered most: the children. But how could children he had never heard of until this day or even seen seem real to him?
‘Thanks to your father’s little “mistake”, Jaul, my children are listed as illegitimate and without a father!’ Chrissie ranted, almost running out of breath but quickly powering up for the next. ‘Now my family may not be from a culturally conservative place as sensitive as Marwan but my father didn’t speak to me for over six months once he realised that I was pregnant and unmarried because he was ashamed and embarrassed—’
If possible Jaul froze to an even greater extent.
Having been convinced by King Lut that she was not a married woman, Chrissie had not had the power to put Jaul’s name on the birth certificates as to do so he would have had to accompany her to the register of births to register their birth or have made a statutory declaration that he was the twins’ father. Chrissie had also been afraid to mention a marriage that she had already been told was illegal, fearful that in some way she might have accidentally broken the law by going through with such a ceremony. She had also been very much afraid of the risk of attracting embarrassing publicity should the royal status of her children’s father ever become public knowledge. Anonymity and silence all round had seemed the safest option after her fruitless visits to the Marwani Embassy.
‘In fact if it hadn’t been for my sister and her husband, I would’ve been in even more serious trouble than I already was. So don’t you dare ask me why you weren’t told that you were a father when you were such a very lousy husband or non-husband or whatever you were!’ Chrissie slung tempestuously.
‘Is that it?’ he enquired, dark eyes glittering bright as a starry night. ‘Are you finished hurling abuse?’
‘That was not abuse...that was what happened!’ Chrissie raved back at him, undaunted. ‘Do you know what your problem is?’
Jaul knew he was about to find out.
‘People don’t stand up to you, don’t expect you to account for the wrong you do because you’re this super rich, powerful guy who’s spoilt. I hate you. I absolutely hate you!’ Chrissie shouted at him, punctuating the assurance with the milk jug that had accompanied the sugar bowl. ‘You’re a horrible, seducing, selfish, womanising rat!’
‘I think you should go home and lie down for a while. I’ll phone you later when you’ve calmed down a little,’ Jaul murmured without any expression at all and it just made her want to scream until she was carried off and locked away as the madwoman the Marwani Embassy staff had once treated her as.
Chrissie was rigid with fury: Jaul had no idea what hell she had gone through, probably even less interest, and she very much doubted that he had absorbed what she had told him.
Pregnant, Jaul was still thinking in a daze, trying and failing to imagine Chrissie’s slender figure swollen with his children, Chrissie going through the pregnancy alone while rejected in disgrace by her father as a single parent. For the very first time he was glad she had had the money his father had given her, even relieved by the idea because she would have needed financial support. Children, he thought again, unable to imagine them, a baby boy and a baby girl, the first twins in the royal family since his grandfather and great-uncle’s birth. Dimly, he realised that he was in such deep shock that he was in an abnormal state of disorientation and detachment, completely divorced from his usual cool, rational mind.
‘Just you try lying down for a while when you have two babies of only fourteen months old to look after!’ Chrissie hurled as a last-ditch put-down, stalking out of the door. She ignored the fact that his bunch of bodyguards were pacing the hall like worried parents having heard the noise of shouting and breaking crockery. They rushed past her to check that their precious charge, the King, was unharmed. King indeed, she thought incredulously, for that Jaul had become a king had just never seemed real to Chrissie.
A servant rushed to open the front door to her, visibly eager to see her off the premises. If they mentioned her name at the Marwani Embassy they would all be able to get together and talk about what a raving nut job she was, the crazy Englishwoman who wept and shouted and begged. Well, that wasn’t her any more because she had soon got over loving Jaul. When a man ditched you as cruelly as Jaul had ditched her, there was no coming back from such an experience. Nothing had ever hurt so much... She flung a disgusted glance back at all the shining windows of that weird mansion and if she had had a brick in her hand she would have thrown that as well.
Jaul was frozen in the doorway, only marginally conscious of his large staff now grouped in the hall to study him in consternation, desperate to know what had caused such a fracas in his deeply traditional household.
And what Jaul did next would very much have stunned Chrissie.
‘Miss Whitaker is my wife...my Queen,’ he announced with quiet dignity in his own language, ignoring entirely the utter shock spreading across every face turned towards him.
* * *
Chrissie went back to her sister’s home and cried again, tears dripping down her face as Tarif looked up at her with his father’s eyes and smiled.
Lizzie hovered, understandably unsure of what to say. ‘It can’t have gone that badly,’ she insisted. ‘Did he insist there would have to be DNA tests and stuff like that to prove the twins are his?’
‘No, nothing like that. I shouted at him and threw things at him while he stood there like a stone statue,’ Chrissie recounted bitterly. ‘There was no satisfaction to be had out of it at all. I wanted to kill him.’
Lizzie had paled. ‘I’m sure relations between you will settle down eventually. Right now, Jaul’s probably in shock—’
‘What’s he got to be in shock about?’ her sibling asked thinly.
‘Discovering that he’s a father—’
‘I hate him. I’m going to go out tonight and have fun with Sofia and Maurizia,’ Chrissie swore, springing upright and dashing the tears from her eyes. ‘Jaul stole all that away from me!’
Lizzie knew that was true but she deemed it wiser to say nothing. Chrissie had had a very hard time while she was carrying the twins because it had not been an easy pregnancy and all the pastimes of youth had been lost to her. Her little sister had had to grow up too soon and face heartbreak and betrayal at a time when all women were very vulnerable but that she had done so without a single whine of self-pity and had gone on to establish a career in teaching had made Lizzie feel incredibly proud.
* * *
It would have been a challenge to know which of the parties was the most surprised when Jaul showed up at Lizzie and Cesare’s home that evening.
Lizzie hovered and hurriedly called her husband, feeling that Cesare would be politer and more diplomatic than she could be when forced to deal with the detestable man who had married her sister and let her down so badly.
‘I would like to see Chrissie...’ Jaul announced without a shade of discomfiture.
‘Unfortunately that’s not possible,’ Cesare declared smooth as butter. ‘She’s out—’
‘Out?’ Jaul repeated in apparent surprise.
‘Clubbing,’ Lizzie supplied with pleasure.
‘Then I would like to see the twins,’ Jaul advanced grimly and Lizzie enjoyed a first-hand experience of the stone-statue image Chrissie had employed.
Cesare sighed. ‘I’m