One of them, furnished in the same Louis Fifteenth antiques as the salon, had quite obviously been Xavier’s grandmother’s and she rejected it immediately. Of the three others, she automatically picked the plainest with its cool-toned walls and simple furniture. It had its own private access to the gardens with a small clear pool only a few feet away and a seat next to it from which to watch the soothing movement of the water.
‘This room?’
When Mariella nodded, Hera smiled.
‘The sheikh will be pleased. This was his mother’s room.’
Xavier’s mother’s room! It was too late for her to change her mind, Mariella recognised.
‘What… what nationality was she?’ she asked Hera, immediately wishing she had not done so.
‘She was a member of the tribe… The sheikh’s father met her when he was travelling with them and fell in love with her…’
Fleur was beginning to make hungry noises, reminding Mariella that it was her niece she should be thinking about and not Xavier’s family background.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MARIELLA stared worriedly at her mobile phone. She had just tried for the fourth time since her arrival at the villa to make contact with Tanya, but her sister’s mobile was still switched onto messaging mode. She had left a message saying that she was staying at Xavier’s villa, and had asked Tanya to contact her at the villa or call her cell phone. Mariella realised to her consternation that it was days since she had actually spoken to Tanya. A little tingle of alarm began to feather down her spine. What if something had happened to her sister? What if she wasn’t well or had hurt herself. Or…
Quickly Mariella made up her mind. It took her quite some time to get the telephone number for the entertainments director of her sister’s cruise liner, but eventually she managed to get through.
‘I’m sorry, who is this speaking, please?’ The firm male voice on the other end of the line checked her when Mariella had asked for Tanya, explaining that she had been unable to make contact with her via her mobile.
‘I am Tanya’s sister,’ Mariella explained.
‘I see… Well, I have to inform you that Tanya has actually left the ship.’
‘Left the ship!’ Mariella repeated in disbelief. ‘But… where? Why…?’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t give you any more details. All I can say is that Tanya left of her own accord and without giving us any prior warning.’
From the tone of his voice Mariella could tell that he wasn’t very pleased with her sister!
Thanking him for his help, she ended the call, turning to look at Fleur, who was fast asleep in her brand-new bed.
As Hera had already warned her, Xavier had instructed a local baby equipment store to provide a full nursery’s worth of brand new things, all of which Mariella had immediately realised were far, far more expensive and exclusive than anything she or Tanya could have afforded.
Tanya! Where was her sister? Why had she left the ship? And why, oh, why wasn’t she returning her calls?
It was imperative that she knew what was happening, and, for all her faults, her impulsiveness and hedonism, Tanya genuinely loved Fleur. It was unthinkable to Mariella that she should not make contact with her to check up on her baby.
In Tanya’s shoes there was no way she would not have been on the phone every hour of every day… No way she could ever have brought herself to be parted from her baby in the first place, Mariella recognised, but then poor Tanya had had no alternative! Tanya had been determined to pay her own way.
Emotionally, she stood over Fleur looking down at her whilst she slept. Increasingly she ached inside to have a child of her own. When she had made her original vow never to put herself in a position where she could be emotionally hurt by a man, she had not foreseen this kind of complication!
Xavier frowned as he paced the floor of his study. A flood of faxes cluttered his desk, all of them giving him the same information—namely that his cousin had not been seen in any of his usual favourite haunts! Where on earth was Khalid?
Xavier was becoming increasingly suspicious that his cousin had been deliberately vague about Fleur’s true paternity. Out of a desire to protect Fleur and her mother, or out of a desire to escape his responsibilities?
Surely Khalid knew him well enough to know that, even if he couldn’t approve of or accept Fleur’s mother, he would certainly have insisted that proper financial arrangements were made for her and Fleur, and if necessary by Xavier himself? Of course he did, which was no doubt why he had now written to Xavier informing him that he was Fleur’s father.
It irked him that he had been so dramatically wrongfooted in assuming that Mariella was Fleur’s mother. The security information the prince had revealed to him had made it brutally clear just how wrong he had been about her.
Here was a young woman who had shouldered the responsibility, not just of supporting herself, but of supporting her younger half-sister as well. Not a single shred of information to indicate that Mariella had led anything other than the most morally laudable life could be found! There were no unsavoury corpses mouldering away in the dusty corners of Mariella’s life; in fact, the truth was that there were not even any dusty corners! Everyone who had had dealings with her spoke of her in the most glowing and complimentary terms.
And yet somehow he, a man who prided himself on his astuteness and his ability to read a person’s true personality, had not been able to see any of this! True, she had deliberately deceived him, but…
But he had behaved towards her in a way that, had he heard about it coming from another man, he would have had no hesitation in immediately denouncing and condemning him!
There were no excuses he could accept from himself! Not even the increasingly insubstantial one of wanting to protect Khalid.
Wasn’t it after all true that the last thing, the last person who had been in his thoughts when he had taken Mariella to bed had been his cousin? Wasn’t it also true that he had been driven, possessed… consumed by his own personal physical desire?
He could find no logical excuse or explanation for what he had done. Other than to tell himself that he had been driven by desert madness, and he felt riddled with guilt, especially for the way he had coerced her into staying with him at his villa. He would of course have to apologise formally to Mariella!
A woman who already had proved how strong her sense of duty and responsibility was. A woman with whom a man could know that the children he gave her would be loved and treasured…
He had sworn not to marry, rather than risk the hazards of a marriage that might go wrong, he reminded himself austerely.
Surely, though, it was better to offer Mariella the protection of his name in marriage rather than risk any potential damage to her reputation through gossip?
He had already provided her with sufficient protection in the form of his great-aunt as a chaperone, he reminded himself grimly. If he continued to think as he was doing right now, he might begin to suspect that he actually wanted to marry her! That he actually wanted to take her back into his bed and complete what they had already begun.
Angrily he swung round as the sudden chatter of the fax machine broke into his far too sensually charged thoughts.
‘So, here we are, then. Xavier has summoned me to be your chaperone, and I am to accompany you to the palace whilst you paint pictures for His Highness, non?’
‘Well, not exactly,’ Mariella responded wryly. It was impossible for her not to like the vivacious elderly Frenchwoman who was Xavier’s great-aunt and who had arrived half an hour earlier, complete with an enormous pile of luggage and her own formidable looking maid.
‘I am not actually working