Her instinctive intelligence was enough to make him prolong the conversation, even though he sensed he was venturing onto precarious territory. ‘About what in particular?’ he questioned.
‘Well, you’ve told me you don’t want love.’
‘I don’t.’
The rumpled white sheet barely covered the creamy swell of her breasts and her eyes suddenly seemed very bright. ‘So why would you care about breaking your wedding vows, if another woman should suddenly take your fancy?’
He was on the verge of telling her that she looked so entrancing at that moment, that he couldn’t imagine another woman holding a flame to her.
Until he remembered.
He tried not to remember, but sometimes it came out of nowhere and hit you like a vicious blow. He felt the pain course through him like a black tide and his body tensed. ‘If you had grown up with parents like mine,’ he said, a trace of savage bitterness creeping into his voice, ‘you would understand.’
There was a pause before she spoke. ‘But how can I understand if you won’t tell me, Kulal?’ she whispered. ‘And if I understood, then maybe I could help you. Maybe you’ve forgotten that I grew up in a dysfunctional foster home which wasn’t in any way loving, so I don’t think anything you can tell me would shock me.’
He could see the eagerness on her face—a desire to help, which tugged at something deep inside him, but successfully he pushed the feeling away. Did she think it was that simple? That telling her would free him from the demons which had lived in his heart for so long? From his secret torture and sense of powerlessness? He felt a new resolve creep through his veins, for he would not give her that power. He would not give it to anyone. Hadn’t he promised his brother that?
‘And besides—’ her voice had softened hopefully as she fixed him with that same wide-eyed stare ‘—we’re married now. Aren’t we supposed to share those kinds of things?’
There was a split-second pause before Kulal was galvanised into action. ‘No, we’re not,’ he grated as he pushed the sheets from his naked body. ‘I don’t want that kind of marriage. I told you that from the start. Weren’t you listening, Hannah? Or did you think you could change my mind just as soon as my ring was on your finger? Did you believe, as so many women mistakenly do, that it was just a matter of time and proximity before you could get me to backtrack on my words? In which case, I fear you may be a little premature, as well as misguided.’ His voice hardened even more. ‘In my culture, we don’t spill out our innermost thoughts and feelings, as if life was just one long therapy session!’
‘I didn’t mean to pry,’ she said, in a small voice. ‘I was just trying to...help.’
‘Well, don’t because it’s a waste of time—yours and mine. The past is none of your business, Hannah. You’d better accept that now or this isn’t going to work. I will give you my fidelity and my support for our child. And I am prepared to make this marriage work within the framework we’ve laid out.’
‘You’ve laid out, you mean.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m the King. Sorry, but that’s the way it works around here. I am not an unreasonable man and anything you require will be yours, within reason. But please don’t ever ask me that again.’
There was a silence as she studied him, like someone hoping for a sudden miraculous change of heart, and Kulal saw the exact moment when resignation entered her eyes. When she realised that he meant every word he said.
‘And that’s the end of the discussion, is it?’ she questioned flatly.
He nodded as he slid from the bed. ‘Yes. And now I think it’s time you got some sleep.’
‘But...’ She sat up and the white sheet fell to her waist, showing the luscious thrust of her breasts. ‘Where are you going?’
He saw the alarm in her eyes, but years of practice meant he was able to steel his heart against it, even though he wasn’t managing to remain quite so indifferent to the sight of her rose-pink nipples. Did she really think he was going to lie there night after night, while she fired her questions at him, shattering those sleepy moments of post-coital intimacy and ruining them? Should he tell her the reasons why he didn’t want love and why he never would?
No.
Not on their wedding night. His mouth hardened. Perhaps not ever.
‘I’m going to sleep next door. It’s better that way.’
‘Better?’
‘Once again, I will draw your attention to royal protocol,’ he said softly. ‘It is quite normal for the Sheikh and his Sheikha to sleep separately—a pattern which was set many centuries ago. We can still be intimate.’ He reached for his discarded robe. ‘But you need your rest, Hannah. And I’m going to make sure you get it.’
THERE WERE TWO different ways of dealing with a problem. Hannah knew that better than anyone. Stepping from her bath, she bent forwards a little as the servant wrapped a fluffy towel around her damp shoulders. You could either accept the problem and learn to live with it, or you could try to solve it. And hadn’t she spent her life trying to do the latter?
She watched rose petals swirling round and round as water drained away from the golden bathtub. When she and Tamsyn had been hungry as children, she’d found food, hadn’t she? And when her schooling had suffered as a result of her having to keep house, she’d tried to teach herself. Even when her lack of formal qualifications had led to what some people might have considered the non-aspirational job of chambermaid, she had worked hard and earned herself promotions. Necessity had made her one of life’s fixers and that was the way she operated.
So couldn’t she apply the same criteria to her marriage—to find a way to elevate it from its current state of stalemate? To make it into something more meaningful, despite Kulal’s determination that it should exist only on the most superficial of levels? She swallowed. Because she was finding that what she had was not enough.
Not nearly enough.
She had a husband who was physically present but emotionally distant. A man who occupied himself by day—and sometimes evenings, too—with the many demands placed on him. Oh, occasionally he made a space for her in his diary, when for a brief time she felt as if she was actually sharing his life rather than living on the periphery of it. Times when she would accompany him to a state banquet, or the opening of some new medical centre, or perhaps they would eat dinner together—but that was the exception, rather than the rule. The only time she really had Kulal to herself was in bed at night.
Patting her skin dry, she sighed, because that wasn’t quite true. Even being in bed with him was time-limited. Once they had satisfied their mutual desire several times over, he would slip away to sleep in his own room, rising at five to saddle his horse and pound the desert sands until his hard body was sheened with sweat and little tendrils of black hair clung to his face. She knew this because once, long after he’d left her bed, she’d heard a noise and, on getting up to investigate, had found him stripping off in one of the anterooms of their vast suite. He had pulled the damp shirt from his body and had been in the process of unzipping his jodhpurs when Hannah had walked in and he had frozen.
So had she. Because the sight of Kulal undressing was overwhelming enough to make her heart race erratically. Oh, she got to see his naked body at night—every night, as it happened—but at times that felt almost stage-managed and this totally unexpected half-clothed version of him was unbelievably erotic. She hadn’t meant to be provocative when her tongue had slid out to slowly moisten her lips, but the increased tension in Kulal’s muscular torso had suggested that he’d found it so.
As