‘Nasreen had objected to all of this. She had further told me that she had no intention of conceiving a child any time soon because being pregnant would stop her from living the life she wanted to live, and that I would have to wait until she was ready.
‘I was furious with her, and told her that I would not allow her to return to Mumbai. Whilst I was engaged in a business meeting she left the palace in the sports car she insisted on keeping here because she said that driving it was the only freedom she could have outside of the city. By the time I was alerted to the fact that she had gone, intending to return to Mumbai, it was too late to stop her. And too late to save her.’
Instinctively Sophia reached out towards him in a gesture of sympathy and compassion. How could the touch of such a cool, healing hand on his own burn him with such intense pain? It was his guilt that was responsible for that pain, Ash told himself, that and the knowledge that he did not deserve Sophia’s compassion, because he did not deserve anything other than to endure the burden of his terrible guilt. That was the payment he had to make for his arrogance and his pride.
She wasn’t hurt by Ash’s immediate avoidance of her touch, Sophia assured herself. What she was doing now was simply fulfilling part of her role as his consort. She may not love him as she had done as a teenager, but that did not mean that she could not feel for him, and be touched by this unexpected vulnerability he was showing her.
The promise of the comfort of Sophia’s touch had been withdrawn from him. He deserved that loss, Ash berated himself inwardly. He deserved to suffer. He deserved to be punished for setting himself against Nasreen and not finding a way for them to make their marriage work, just because his pride had not been able to tolerate finding any success in their marriage once he had realised he could not love her. He had said too much to Sophia, expressed things he had always sworn to keep to himself, and yet even now, somehow, he could not stop allowing the words he knew damaged him from being said. It was as though he was being driven by a compulsion that wouldn’t let him go, a need to reveal to Sophia the very worst of himself in the aftermath of a shared intimacy that had taken him to a place he had never imagined he might find. Because he needed to punish himself for that experience? Because he needed to hear the words out loud to remind himself of exactly what he had done? Ash didn’t know. He only knew that he needed to reveal the true horror of what had happened, and that he was culpable.
The deep breath he took tasted acidic in his lungs. Unable to look at Sophia he continued, ‘Nasreen must have had the top of the convertible down, because when they found her they discovered that she had been strangled by the scarf of her sari—the sari I insisted she had to wear—as it caught in the wheels of the car.’
Tears burned the backs of Sophia’s eyes. Poor Nasreen and poor Ash, too. What a dreadful, dreadful tragedy. No wonder it had marked Ash so strongly. But Sophia still felt that he was being too hard on himself. That, of course, was typical of the man he was and typical, too, in its way of the younger Ash she remembered, the Ash who believed in doing the right thing and in being honourable, the Ash who had had his idealistic dreams.
‘I may not have been able to behave as a man of honour in my duty to love Nasreen,’ he continued bleakly, ‘but I can and will fulfil my duty to bear my guilt for her death.’
Sophia’s heart ached for him. His revelations had shocked her, but more shocking, and far more dangerous, was her awareness of how keenly her own emotions had been touched by his pain.
The danger of that feeling was brought home to her within seconds when Ash told her grimly, ‘It was because of my failure to find within myself the love I should have had for Nasreen that this marriage, our marriage, and indeed any second marriage I might have made, is based on practicalities. Emotions are dangerous when they take control of our lives.’
Sophia could agree with that. She knew even now just how dangerous her emotions had been to her when she had loved him so passionately as a girl.
‘There is something else I must say. Tonight has again proved to us both, I hope, that we are sexually compatible. That will help to strengthen our marriage. I have also to say how much I appreciate the commitment you are making to my people in your role as maharani. You have an instinctive way with the women and the children. I have watched how they respond to you. It is through you I believe that I will be able to put into effect my plans to improve the education of the poorest amongst the people. I am grateful to you for that, Sophia.’
How truly he was humbling himself, Sophia recognised as she savoured the sweetness of his unexpected praise.
‘I am enjoying what I am doing.’ It was the truth and she was happy to say so. ‘I want to feel that I am making a contribution to the children’s future and that I have a useful role to play here in Nailpur, Ash, aside, of course, from that of giving you an heir. Perhaps there is more Santina in me than I ever thought. I don’t know. But I do know that my royal role here as your consort is one that I value. The education of the next generation is vitally important and everything I can do to help with that I want to do. I dare say there are plenty of other royal princesses who could have fulfilled the role as well, if not better, than me but—’
‘No.’ Ash stopped her, cutting across her immediately. ‘No. I cannot think of anyone who would make a better maharani than you, Sophia, or who would make a better and more loving mother to our children.’
It was the truth, Ash recognised.
‘And there is no one who will make them a more honourable father.’ Sophia returned the compliment.
An honourable father, she reflected later, after Ash had left her, but would he be a loving one? Her own father was honourable, but children needed love. There was no doubt that Ash had been badly affected by his marriage to Nasreen, and she could understand why. Remembering the idealistic young man he had been it was easy for her to see how dreadful it would have been for him to be forced to admit that he could not love the bride he had so confidently believed he would love because it was his duty, his destiny, almost, to do so. To have those ideals smashed by his own emotional inability to give Nasreen love would have destroyed the deepest of his core beliefs about himself. She knew how that felt in her own way. She had suffered a terrible loss of sense of self when she had understood the meaning of the gossip about her mother’s relationship with the English architect she had admired so much.
But Ash had praised her as his maharani. He had shown her a desire that she could now accept belonged to their relationship. She had responded to that desire; she had welcomed it. These were the foundations on which she must now build her new life, and those foundations would no longer be overshadowed or undermined by her own previous false beliefs about his relationship with Nasreen. There had been a cleansing of that wound, and this was an opportunity for a fresh start between them. Just as long as she remembered and respected the fact that that relationship would be without love.
But that was what she, too, wanted. She didn’t want to love Ash all over again and she wasn’t going to do so.
CHAPTER NINE
THE sound of Sophia’s laughter, warm and spirited, but soft with underlying tenderness, filled the private courtyard she had made her own, and had Ash hurrying towards her, eager to bring her up to date with the results of the soil tests he had just received with a view to enhancing the variety of crops the land could grow. The breaking down of his self-imposed barriers when it came to talking openly to Sophia about his first marriage had brought profound changes to his life, changes which all had their roots in his relationship with Sophia. Maturity had brought a confidence to the natural warmth of her nature, and the courtyard garden had become an oasis to which others seemed naturally drawn when it was occupied by his wife, as they brought her their concerns and their hopes.
As he himself did?
It was only natural that as a husband he should turn to his wife to discuss those issues that affected them both so closely, especially when they were also responsible for the welfare of his people. There was no law that said such discussions had to be held in the solemnity of a grand council chamber rather than discussed in the relaxed atmosphere