‘He died...she died...their baby died.’ The only thing that linked the rulers now was shared grief and a need to blame someone.
Like a sandcastle hit by a wave, Hannah’s snooty attitude dissolved. Despite some throat-clearing her voice was husky as she said softly, ‘I’m so sorry. But my father wouldn’t force me to marry for any amount of money.’
He looked at the woman who sat there with spoilt brat written all over her pretty face.
‘Has it occurred to you that your father, being human, might jump at the chance to get you off his hands? And if he did I don’t think there are many who would blame him.’
‘My father doesn’t think of me as a piece of property.’
He might, however, think of her as a lead weight around his neck.
‘Do you care for your father as much as he does you?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means if Quagani closes the new pipeline it won’t just be the school programme in our country that suffers. Your father has a stake in the new refinery too.’
It was the mention of a school programme that brought a worried furrow to her brow. In her job she knew what a difference education could make. ‘My father has a stake in many things.’
‘My uncle let your father in on this deal as a favour. He knew of his situation.’
She tensed and then relaxed.
‘What situation? Are you trying to tell me my father has lost all of his money again?’
Over the years her father’s reckless, impulsive approach to business had led to dramatic fluctuations in fortune, but that was in the past. After the heart attack he had actually listened to the doctors’ warnings about the danger of stress. He had promised her faithfully that the risky deals were a thing of the past.
‘Not all of it.’
Hannah met his dark, implacable stare and felt the walls of the cabin close in. Even as she was shaking her head in denial she knew deep down that he was telling her the truth.
Kamel watched, arms folded across his chest, as the comment sank in. The prospect of being the daughter of a poor man seemed to affect her more than anything he had said so far. The idea of slumming it or being forced to make her own way in the world without the cushion of Daddy’s money had driven what little colour she had out of her face.
‘He has made a number of unfortunate ventures, and if the pipeline deal fails your father faces bankruptcy.’
Hannah’s heart started to thud faster and her heart was healthy. Stress...what could be more stressful than bankruptcy? Unless it was the humiliation of telling a cathedral full of people that your daughter’s wedding was off.
She had accepted her share of responsibility for the heart attack that very few people knew about. At the time her father had sworn Hannah to secrecy, saying the markets would react badly to the news. Hannah didn’t give a damn about the markets, but she cared a lot about her father. He was not as young as he liked to think. With his medical history, having to rebuild his company from scratch—what would that do to a man with a cardiac problem?
Struggling desperately to hide her concern behind a composed mask, she turned her clear, critical stare on her prospective husband and discovered as she stared at his lean, bronzed, beautiful face that she hadn’t, as she had thought, relinquished all her childish romantic fantasies, even after her two engagements had ended so disastrously.
‘So you have made a case for me doing this,’ she admitted, trying to sound calm. ‘But why would you? Why would you marry someone you can’t stand the sight of? Are you really willing to marry a total stranger just because your uncle tells you to?’
‘I could talk about duty and service,’ he flung back, ‘but I would be wasting my breath. They are concepts that you have no grasp of. And my motivation is not the issue here. I had a choice and I made it. Now it is your turn.’
She sank onto a day bed, her head bent forward and her hands clenched in her lap. After a few moments she lifted her head. She’d made her decision, but she wasn’t ready to admit it.
‘What will happen? If we get married...after...?’ She lifted a hank of heavy hair from her eyes and caught sight of her reflection in the shiny surface of a metallic lamp on the wall beside her. There had been no mirrors in her cell and her appearance had not occupied her thoughts so it took her a few seconds before she realised the wild hair attached to a haggard face was her own. With a grimace she looked away.
‘You would have a title, so not only could you act like a little princess, you could actually be one, which has some limited value when it comes to getting a dinner table or theatre ticket.’
‘Princess...?’ Could this get any more surreal?
The ingenuous, wide-eyed act irritated Kamel. ‘Oh, don’t get too excited. In our family,’ he drawled, ‘a title is almost obligatory. It means little.’
As his had, but all that had changed the day that his cousin’s plane had gone down and he had become the Crown prince.
That was two years ago now, and there remained those conspiracy theorists who still insisted there had been a cover-up—that the royal heir and his family had been the victims of a terrorist bomb, rather than a mechanical malfunction.
There was a more sinister school of thought that had gone farther, so at a time when Kamel had been struggling with the intense grief and anger he felt for the senseless deaths—his cousin was a man he had admired and loved—Kamel had also had to deal with the fact that some believed he had orchestrated the tragedy that wiped out the heirs standing between him and the crown.
He had inherited a position he’d never wanted, and a future that, when he allowed himself to think about it, filled him with dread. He’d also inherited a reputation for bumping off anyone who got in his way.
And now he had a lovely bride—what more could a man want?
‘My official residence is inside the palace. I have an apartment in Paris, and also a place outside London, and a villa in Antibes.’ Would the lovely Charlotte still be there waiting? No, not likely. Charlotte was not the waiting kind. ‘I imagine, should we wish it, we could go a whole year without bumping into one another.’
‘So I could carry on with my life—nothing would change?’
‘You like the life you have so much?’
His voice held zero inflection but she could feel his contempt. She struggled to read the expression in his eyes, but the dark silver-flecked depths were like the mirrored surface of a lake, deep and inscrutable yet strangely hypnotic.
She pushed away a mental image of sinking into a lake, feeling the cool water embrace her, close over her head. She lowered her gaze, running her tongue across her lips to moisten them.
When she lifted her head she’d fixed a cool smile in place...though it was hard to channel cool when you knew you looked like a victim of a natural disaster. But her disaster was of her own making.
Her delicate jaw clenched at the insight that had only made her imprisonment worse. The knowledge that she was the author of her own disaster movie, that she had ignored the advice to wait until a driver was available, and then she had chosen not to stay with the vehicle as had been drilled into them.
‘I like my freedom.’ It had not escaped his notice that she had sidestepped his question.
‘At last we have something in common.’
‘So you...we...?’ This was the world’s craziest conversation. ‘Is there any chance of a drink?’ With a heavy sigh she let her head fall back, her eyes closed.
Exhausted but not relaxed, he decided. His glance moved from her lashes—fanning out across the marble-pale curve of her smooth