Yet the subsequently smooth transition from pregnant queen to new mother seemed to have left Ella feeling just as displaced as before. And nothing would ever change so long as she was with Hassan, she realised. Why would it, when he didn’t seem to want anything more than this?
Now she focused on his words and realised that it was worse than she’d thought. That he actively wanted her to go.
‘I’d thought I’d wait—’
‘For what, Ella?’ he interrupted bitterly. ‘For me to bond even more with Rihana so that I’ll find it unbearable when you take her away from me?’
‘You want me to go,’ she stated dully.
Hassan flinched. Was she determined to twist the knife, to make this even more painful than it already was? And could he really blame her, if that was the case, for surely he deserved everything she chose to heap upon his head?
‘I can’t see any alternative.’ His voice was harsh. ‘Surely you can’t wait to get away from a man who forced you to come here even though you wanted to stay in London. A man who doesn’t have a heart, nor any compassion. Because I now have looked at myself through your eyes, Ella, and I do not like what I see.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she whispered.
He shook his head as the memory swam into his mind, like dark, distorting smoke. ‘That portrait!’ he grated. ‘I have just been into the studio and seen the man that you have painted. A ravaged man—’
‘Hassan—’
‘Isn’t there some novel where the man agrees a trade-off with the devil for eternal youth?’ he demanded. ‘And meanwhile there’s a portrait in the attic which shows the growing darkness inside him?’
‘It’s called The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ she said automatically.
‘Well, the darkness is right there on that canvas you’ve done of me, only I haven’t even had the eternal youth in exchange,’ he said bitterly, until he realised that wasn’t quite true. Because in a way, every man who ever had a child was given the gift of eternal youth. Only he would never see the daily miracle of his daughter’s developing life. He would be resigned to meeting her on high days and holidays, their precious time eaten into by the initial adjustment of having to reacquaint themselves every time they met. He would grow older never really knowing his child, and he would have no one to blame but himself.
Ella stared at him. ‘What are you trying to say, Hassan?’
He knew that he had to tell her. Everything. Every damned thing. She had to know the terrible lengths to which he had been prepared to go—and that would be the end of their marriage, once and for all.
‘Do you want to know the real reason why I was so insistent you came out to Kashamak when I discovered you were pregnant?’ he demanded.
She remembered the way he had expressed it at the time—as concern for her morning sickness and the need for someone to look after her. But she hadn’t been naive enough to think they were the real reasons. ‘It was about control, wasn’t it? About making sure that I conducted the pregnancy in a way you approved of.’
‘Yes, it was. But deep down, it was even more manipulative than that,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought you’d have trouble adjusting, you see. That motherhood would cramp your style.’
‘Cramp my style?’ she repeated blankly.
‘That was when I was still labouring under the illusion that you were a good-time girl. A social butterfly. I thought you’d hate your life here and you’d want to be free again. And that’s what I wanted too.’
Ella saw the muscle which was working frantically at his cheek and the expression in his black eyes. But for once, they were not empty. Instead they were filled with the most terrible look of bleakness she had ever seen. Even worse than the time he’d told her about his mother.
‘You wanted me to leave?’ she guessed slowly. ‘And to leave the baby behind, with you?’
He winced, but he did not look away from her. The truth was painful but he could not deny it—and didn’t he deserve this pain? Didn’t he deserve all the recriminations she chose to hurl at his head? ‘Yes.’
‘To bring her up as your father once did, without a mother?’
‘Yes.’ He shook his head, as if he was coming out of a deep sleep. ‘It’s only been during the past few weeks that I realised I couldn’t possibly go through with it. That I couldn’t inflict on my own child what I had suffered myself. But for a while, the intention was there.’ He met the question which blazed from her eyes. ‘How you must hate me, Ella.’
For a second she thought that perhaps it would be easier if she did, because the man who stood before her was the most complex individual she’d ever met. And didn’t she suspect that the dark and complicated side of him wanted her to hate him? That it would be easier for him if she did, if she pushed him away and thus reinforced all his prejudices against women.
But Ella realised that nobody had ever been there for Hassan, not emotionally. After his mother had left, he’d never let anyone get close enough to try, and she wondered if she had the courage to do that. To risk being rejected by him all over again.
Yet what choice did she have? To live a life blighted by regret because she hadn’t had the guts to put her pride aside and reach out for a man who badly needed love. Her love—and their daughter’s love. Couldn’t she and Rihana help his damaged heart to heal?
‘I don’t hate you, Hassan,’ she said softly. ‘In fact, I love you. Even though you didn’t want me to love you. And even though you did your best to make me turn my heart against you. I have to tell you that it hasn’t worked. And that if you were to ask me to stay here, with Rihana, and to be a proper wife in every sense of the word, then I would do it in a heartbeat. But I will only do it on one condition.’
Her soft and powerful words had momentarily stilled him, but now he stirred because conditions were familiar territory to him. His eyes were wary as they looked at her. ‘Which is?’
She swallowed. ‘I need to know that you care for me in some small way. That there’s a small seed of affection in your heart which maybe we can nurture and grow. And that you will nurture it, because while I’ve grown rather fond of the sand which surrounds us, I can’t live my life in an emotional desert.’
For long, silent seconds he stared at her, recognising the courage it had taken to lay open her feelings like that. How she humbled him with her courage! His eyes began blinking rapidly and when eventually he could bring himself to speak, his voice sounded strangely hoarse to his ears—the way it had done when he’d had his tonsils removed as a boy. ‘Not a seed,’ he said brokenly.
‘Not a seed?’ she repeated in confusion.
He shook his head. ‘Not a seed, no, but an eager young plant in its first rapid flush of life. For that is the strength of my “affection” for you, Ella!’ A rush of emotion surged through his veins as he reached out and pulled her in his arms. ‘But I do not know it by such a mediocre word as affection, because for days now I have been realising that it is called something else. Something I have never known before, nor dared to acknowledge.’
‘Could you perhaps try acknowledging it now?’ she suggested gently, knowing instantly what he meant because she could see it written all over his face. But she needed badly to hear it. She had bared her heart to him and now Hassan needed to redress the balance. To be her equal in every way there was.
He