‘This conversation is getting us nowhere,’ he said at last. ‘I have been very patient, Abby, but now my patience is wearing thin. I want you back. I want you to return with me—to Xanthia.’
Abby choked. ‘You’re not serious!’
‘But I am,’ he assured her, in that calm, implacable tone. ‘You are my wife, Abby, and as such you belong in my house. I do not intend that this situation should continue any longer. I need a wife—I need you. I expect you to adhere to my wishes.’
Abby felt a rising sense of incredulity that threatened to explode in hysterical laughter. He couldn’t be serious, but he was! He actually expected her to give up the new life she had made for herself and return with him to Abarein, to the palace at Xanthia, which he shared with his father and the rest of his family.
Abby pushed forward on the seat and reached for the handle of the door. ‘I think you’re right,’ she said, momentarily surprising him by what he thought was her submission. ‘This conversation is getting us nowhere. If you’ll ask your driver to stop here, I can take a bus—’
Rachid’s utterance was not polite, and she turned startled eyes in his direction. ‘You are not getting out of this car until I have the answer I seek,’ he told her grimly, ‘and I suggest you give the matter careful consideration before creating circumstances you will find hard to redeem.’
Abby gasped. ‘You said you were not abducting me!’ she burst out tremulously. ‘And now you say—’
‘For God’s sake, you are my wife, Abby!’ he overrode her harshly. ‘How can I abduct my wife? You belong to me!’
‘I belong to no one,’ she retorted, her breathing quickening again. ‘Rachid, you have no right—’
‘I have every right. By the laws of your country and mine—’
‘Laws!’ Abby cast an anxious look through the windows of the limousine. ‘Rachid, marriage is not governed by laws! It’s governed by needs—by emotions! And most of all, by trust.’
Rachid leant towards her. ‘I trust you.’
‘But I don’t trust you!’ she averred unsteadily. ‘Rachid, can’t you see you’re wasting your time? Our—our marriage is over, as surely as if we had untied the knot ourselves.’
‘I will not accept that.’
‘You’ll have to. I’m not coming back to you, Rachid. I—I don’t love you.’
‘I love you.’
‘Do you?’ Abby’s mouth quivered. ‘I’m afraid your ideas of love and mine are sadly different.’
Rachid’s hand was suddenly hard upon her knee. ‘Listen to me, Abby. I need you—’
‘You need a woman,’ Abby corrected tautly. ‘Only a woman. Any woman—’
‘No!’
‘Yes.’ She tried to dislodge those hard fingers which were digging into the bone. ‘You only think you want me because I left you. When I was there…’
‘Yes? When you were there? Did I not treat you as the much-loved wife of my father’s eldest son?’
Abby bent her head. ‘You treated me—honorably, yes. But you know as well as I do, that—that isn’t enough.’ She shook her head. ‘Rachid, you know you must have an heir. And we both know that you’re not to blame for not producing one.’
‘Abby!’
His tone was impassioned now, and she knew she had lit some flame of remembrance inside him. It was hard for him, she knew that, but where there was no fidelity there was no trust, and she would not—she could not—share him with his mistresses.
‘Abby,’ he went on now, ‘I know my father spoke with you—’
‘You do?’ She stiffened.
‘Yes.’ He uttered a harsh oath. ‘Sweet mother of the Prophet, do you think I did not turn heaven and earth to find out why you had left without telling me?’
‘You knew why I’d left,’ she reminded him, as memories fanned the fires of her resentment. ‘Your father’s words were no news to me. You’d made the position quite clear enough.’
‘Abby, listen to me…’
‘No, you listen to me.’ She succeeded in thrusting his long fingers aside and moved as far away from him as she could. ‘When I married you, I was an innocent, I realise that now. I believed—I really believed you loved me—’
‘I did. I do!’
She shook her head. ‘I know that it was partly my fault. I know you were disappointed when we didn’t have a child—’
‘Abby!’
‘—but these things happen, even in the best of families. There was nothing I could do.’
‘I know that.’
‘You should have divorced me then,’ she went on in a low monotone. ‘You should have set us both free. At least I would have been spared the humiliation of—of—and you could have married the—the wife your father chose for you.’
‘Abby, I did not want the wife my father chose for me. I wanted you!’
‘Not enough,’ she said painfully. ‘Oh, this is hopeless, Rachid. We’re just going over all the old ground. Why couldn’t you just have accepted that our marriage was over and freed yourself? I wouldn’t have stood in your way—’
‘Abby, stop this!’
‘I won’t. I can’t. I did love you Rachid, once. But I don’t love you now. And I won’t come back to you.’
‘Abby, you’re my wife—’
‘You’d have been better making me your mistress,’ she retorted recklessly. ‘Mistresses aren’t expected to produce heirs. As it happens, I would have had to refuse that offer, but it would have saved us both a lot of heartache.’
Rachid took a deep breath. ‘Abby, I don’t care about an heir. For the love of God, listen to me! My father now knows how I feel. There will be no more of his philosophising—’
‘No, there won’t,’ Abby interrupted him shortly. ‘Because I’m not coming back, Rachid. You’ll have to drug me or knock me unconscious to get me to go with you, and somehow I don’t think the Crown Prince would like it to be known that his wife is so unwilling.’
Rachid’s eyes glittered in the dim light. ‘You will fight me?’
‘Every inch of the way.’
He hesitated a moment, and then picked up the intercom that connected to his bodyguard in front. ‘26, Dacre Mews,’ he directed shortly, giving the address of Abby’s father’s house, and then sank back against the soft leather at his side of the car, resting his head wearily against the window frame.
Abby’s silently expelled sigh of relief was tinged with unexpected compassion. So, she thought weakly, he had accepted her arguments. He was taking her home; and while she was grateful for the victory, she wondered if she had really won. She had never known Rachid give up without a battle, and reluctant emotion stirred in the embers of discontentment. Once she would not have hesitated in giving in to him. Once he had controlled her every waking breath. But no longer. And although she was glad of the freedom,