Treacherously Mariella found herself thinking about how a child might feel growing up in a household with so many caring adults, with aunts, uncles and cousins to play with…
‘Ella, I’m so thrilled that you’re here,’ Tanya was telling her. ‘I’ve really missed you! You’re in the same room you had before. Xavier has given us our own suite of rooms whilst we’re living here. Khalid says there’s no way that he would agree to us living like they used to with separate men and women’s quarters, which is just as well because there’s no way I would agree to it either!
‘I couldn’t do what Xavier does and go into the desert with the tribe.’ Tanya gave a small shudder. ‘The very thought appalls me. All that sand… and heat! And as for the camels! Ugh!’ She pulled a distasteful face. ‘Luckily Khalid feels exactly the same way! He can’t understand why Xavier lets his life be dominated by a few promises his grandfather made, and neither can I. If Khalid was head of the family things would be very different…’
‘Then perhaps it’s as well that he isn’t,’ Mariella responded protectively, before she could stop herself.
She could see the way Tanya was looking at her, and she felt obliged to explain, ‘Xavier is the guardian of some irreplaceable traditions, Tanya, and if he abandoned that responsibility a way of life that could never be resurrected could be totally lost…’
‘A way of life? Spending weeks living in the desert, and having to do it every year! No, I can’t think of anything worse. It might be traditional, but I still wouldn’t do it! Well, there’s no way it could ever be my way of life, anyway. I mean, can you imagine any woman wanting to live like that? Could you?’
Mariella didn’t even have to pause to think about it.
‘Not permanently, no, but in order to preserve something so important, and to support the man I loved, to be with him and share a very, very important part of his life, yes, I could and would.’ Mariella hesitated, recognising that there was little point in trying to explain to her sister how much such a return to traditions, to the simplicity of such a lifestyle could do to rejuvenate a person in a very special and intensely personal, almost spiritual sense, to bring them back in touch with certain important realities of life. Tanya simply wouldn’t understand.
‘Yes?’ Tanya stared at her. ‘You’re mad,’ she told her, shaking her head. ‘Just like Xavier. In fact… Tante Cecille is quite right. You and Xavier are two of a kind.’
Before Mariella could demand an explanation from Tanya of just how and when their similarities had been discussed, they were in the salon.
‘Mariella, how lovely to see you again,’ Madame Flavel exclaimed affectionately. Automatically as she embraced her Mariella held in her stomach, just as she had done when she and Tanya had hugged earlier. An automatic reflex, but one that wasn’t going to conceal her growing bump for very much longer, Mariella acknowledged ruefully.
Half an hour later, holding Fleur whilst her niece beamed happily up at her, Mariella began to feel a little bit more relaxed. Xavier, after all, would be as keen to avoid spending time with her as she was with him—albeit for very different reasons! She might even not actually see him at all!
Totally involved in making delicious eye contact with Fleur, Mariella was oblivious to what was going on in the rest of the room until she heard Madame Flavel exclaiming happily, ‘Ah, there you are, Xavier.’
Xavier! Automatically Mariella spun round, holding tightly onto Fleur more for her own protection than for the baby’s, she recognised dizzily as she felt her whole body begin to tremble.
The sensation, the need slicing white-hot through her threw her into shocked panic. She couldn’t be feeling like this. Should not be feeling like this. Should not be feeling this all-absorbing need to feed hungrily on the sight of every familiar feature, every slight nuance of expression, too greedy for them to savour them with luxurious slowness, aching for them; aching for him so intensely that the pain was sharply physical.
As the girl she had been before, she had fantasised naively about that wanting and about him, imagining, exploring in the privacy of her thoughts the potential of her secret yearnings for Xavier—she had never guessed where those feelings could lead.
But as she was now sharply aware she was not that girl any more. She was now a woman, a woman looking at the man who had been her lover, knowing just how his flesh lay against his bones, how it felt, how it tasted… how he touched and loved. And as that woman she was overwhelmed by the sheer force of her need to go to him, to be with him, to be part of him. Her knowledge of him, instead of slaking her desire, was actually increasing it, tormenting her with intensely intimate memories. She was no longer seeing him as a powerful distant figure, but as a man… her man!
But that wasn’t possible. What did that mean about her feelings for Xavier?
‘Xavier, I was just telling Ella how alike you and she are,’ she heard Tanya commenting.
‘Alike?’
Mariella could feel his gaze burning into her as he focused on her.
‘In your attitudes to things,’ Tanya explained. ‘Ella, you really ought to have children of your own,’ Tanya added ruefully. ‘You are a natural mother.’
‘I totally agree with you, Tanya.’ Madame Flavel nodded.
Mariella could feel her face and then her whole body burning as they all turned to look at her, but it was Xavier’s grim scrutiny that affected her the most as his glance skimmed her body, resting on the baby she was holding in her arms. The unbearable poignancy of knowing that in six months’ time she would be holding his child as she was holding Fleur right now made her eyes burn with dangerous tears. What on earth was wrong with her? She was behaving as though… reacting as though… as though she were a woman in love. Totally, hopelessly, helplessly in love. But she wasn’t! She wasn’t going to let herself be!
Bleakly Xavier watched as Mariella cuddled Fleur. He had told himself that the discovery that she did not return his feelings would be enough to destroy them. And it should have been! But right now, if they had been alone…
The sickening feeling that had accompanied her unwanted thoughts was refusing to go away, and Mariella began to panic. She had suffered some morning sickness in the early weeks of her pregnancy, but these last few weeks she had felt much better. This nausea, though, wasn’t anything to do with what was happening inside her body. No, this nausea was caused by her emotions! And what emotions! They surged powerfully inside her, inducing fear and panic, making her want to turn and run.
Automatically she had turned away from Xavier, unable to trust herself to continue facing him. Tanya had run to greet her husband who had just arrived.
‘Ella,’ Khalid greeted her warmly. ‘We are so pleased that you are here, and I warn you that now that you are we shall not allow you to go easily. Tanya is already making plans to persuade you to move permanently to Zuran. Has she told you?’
Move permanently to Zuran! The shock of his disclosure made Mariella sway visibly, her face paling.
Xavier frowned as he saw her reaction. She looked as though she was about to pass out!
‘Khalid, get some water,’ Xavier demanded sharply, going immediately to Mariella’s side and taking Fleur from her.
Just the feel of his hand touching her bare arm made her shudder with longing, and it seemed to Mariella as though the baby in her womb ached with the same longing that she did, for his touch and for his love.
She was vaguely conscious of being steered towards a chair and instructed to sit down, and then of a glass of water being handed to her.
‘There’s nothing wrong. I’m perfectly all right,’ she protested frantically. The last thing she needed right now was to arouse any kind of suspicions about her health!
‘Ella,