Petra blinked, her eyes wet with fresh tears. Instinctively she knew that her grandfather was telling the truth.
‘Are you still feeling unhappy? Do you want to come home with me now?’ he asked her. ‘I shall speak with Rashid for you, if you wish. The decision is yours, but it seems to me that it would be a pity if two such well-matched people should lose one another through a simple matter of pride, and lack of communication and trust.’
Her grandfather made it all sound so easy!
‘No… No, I do not wish you to speak to Rashid,’ she answered him.
‘I… I… can do that myself…’
The smile he was giving her made her colour self-consciously.
‘It isn’t for me to interfere, but you are my granddaughter,’
he told her gently. ‘It seems to me that you and Rashid are very well suited. You are both strong-minded, you are both proud, you share a spirit of independence; these are all good things, but sometimes such virtues can lead to a little too much self-sufficiency—claimed not because that is what a person necessarily wants but because they believe it is what they have to have in order to protect themselves. I think that both you and Rashid are perhaps afraid to admit your great love for one another because you fear the other will think you weak and in need.’
His intuitive reading of her most private and hidden feelings astonished Petra.
Part of the reason she had fought so hard to resist her love for Rashid had been because she feared its intensity. Could it be true, as her grandfather had implied, that Rashid felt exactly the same?
She was, she recognised, still trying to come to terms with the fact that she had made such an error of judgement in assuming why he had married her. But he had made no attempt to defend himself to her, had he? Out of pride? Or because he didn’t really care what she thought? And he had deceived her about who he really was!
‘Sometimes in life we are tested where we are most vulnerable. There are many ways of being strong, many reasons for being proud,’ her grandfather was continuing gently. ‘Only you can decide whether or not your love for Rashid is worth fighting for, Petra—whether it means enough to you for you to take the risk of reaching out to him, openly and honestly. Rashid has already taken that risk by marrying you. It is his way of saying how much he wants to be with you. Remember he has married you in free will and of his own choice. Perhaps it is now time for you to take your risk!’
Silently Petra absorbed his words. He had given her an insight into the workings of Rashid’s mind and heart that she had not previously contemplated, and the possibilities springing to life from that insight were giving her an entrancing, an intoxicating, an impossible to resist picture of what they could share together.
‘I have additionally been instructed to give this to you,’ her grandfather continued, changing the subject. He handed her a beautifully decorated piece of rolled parchment and a flat oblong package.
Petra frowned. ‘What is it?’
‘Open it and see,’ he said with a smile.
Hesitantly Petra did so, her glance skimming the letter written on the parchment and then studying it more slowly a second time, before she turned to the package and quickly unfastened it.
‘It’s a letter from the father of the little boy—the one at the stables,’ she told her grandfather. ‘He has written to thank me and he has…’ Her voice tailed away and she gave a small gasp as she studied the contents of the package.
‘It’s ownership papers for a… a horse… a yearling…’
‘Bred out of the Royal stables,’ her grandfather supplied for her. ‘They are very grateful to you for what you did, Petra. You saved the life of a very precious child… and at no small risk to your own.’
‘But a horse!’ Petra was overwhelmed.
‘Not just a horse,’ her grandfather corrected her with a smile. ‘But a yearling whose breeding means that he may one day earn you, his owner, the Zuran Cup!’
From the balcony of the Presidential Suite Petra could see down to the beach. Race Week and all its excitement and busyness was over. She and Rashid had said goodbye to their last guests and in the morning they were due to leave the hotel for the villa.
Rashid’s horse had come in a very respectable fourth, and Petra’s grandfather had teased him that he might soon find himself in the position of having his wife’s horse competing with his own.
There had been no opportunity for them to be on their own together since the night Rashid had made love to her at the villa, or for Petra to raise the subject she was desperately anxious to talk to him about.
According to her grandfather, Rashid loved her!
On a sudden impulse Petra left the suite and hurried towards the lift.
It was already almost dusk, the sun loungers around the pool empty, the beach deserted apart from one lone figure collecting the discarded windsurfers.
For a second his unexpected appearance checked Petra, and then she took a deep breath. She had initially intended to come down here merely to think, but perhaps fate had decided to take a hand in events.
The sand muffled her footsteps, but even so something must have alerted Rashid to her presence because he turned round to watch her in silence.
His formal clothes had been discarded and he was wearing a tee shirt and a pair of jeans.
Trying to control her nervousness, Petra walked up to him. His silence unnerved her, and she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, her face flushing as his gaze trapped the small betraying movement.
‘I… I… have a proposition I want to put to you,’ she told him, superstitiously crossing her fingers behind her back as she spoke.
How was he going to react? Was he going to walk away? Was he going to ignore her? Was he going to listen to her? Petra knew which she wanted him to do!
‘A proposition?’
Well, at least he was responding to her, even if she could hear a grim note of cynicism in his voice.
‘What kind of proposition?’
‘I have a problem and I think you could be the very person to help me,’ she said.
It was a relief that it was now fully dusk and he couldn’t see her face—although she suspected that he must be able to hear the anxiety and uncertainty in her voice. If she had felt nervous the first time she had propositioned him then she felt a hundred—no, a thousand times more so now. Then all that had been at stake had been her freedom; now it was her whole life… her love… everything!
‘I need you to help me find out if the man I love loves me. Until today I believed that he didn’t, but now it seems I might have been wrong.’
‘The man you love?’ he questioned, and there was a new note in his voice that sent Petra’s pulses racing.
‘Yes. I love him so much that I’m almost afraid to admit just how much—even to myself, never mind to him—and I thought…’
‘Yes?’
He had moved so swiftly and silently, and she had been so engrossed in her own anxiety, that his sudden proximity to her caught her off-guard.
‘I thought you might be able to show me a way to show him just how I feel…’ she said huskily.
‘Oh, you did, did you? What inducement exactly were you planning to offer me in return for my co-operation?’
There was a distinct huskiness in his voice now, and Petra allowed herself to relax just a little.
‘Oh…’