Tears prickled at the back of her eyes. Strange how she had failed even to see that chilling single-minded ruthlessness in Tariq fourteen months ago when he had courted her with white roses and candlelit dinners. Yes, courted her, old-fashioned word that but very apt for those two months they had dated before Percy had wrecked everything. Of course, Tariq had thought he loved her back then and the officer-and-a-gentleman syndrome had ruled supreme. He hadn’t tried to get her into bed, although he could have done so easily. He had not mentioned love or made any false promises.
No, even then Tariq had not asked her to love him or encouraged her to love him. But, regardless of common sense, she had fallen in love and had never stopped loving him, she now acknowledged painfully. It was impossible to continue denying the strength of her own feelings for Prince Tariq Shazad ibn Zachir. However, admitting that truth only made her feel more vulnerable than ever.
Loving Tariq put her more in his power. The guy she loved despised her yet continued to desire her. Only, now that he had slaked that hunger over and over again on her wanton and willing self, he just wanted her out of his sight. Banished to the Muraaba. How low could she sink that she should long to stay with him? Didn’t she have any pride at all?
Her hands curled into tight, hurting fists. ‘Sex is a seductive force,’ he had said. Well, in her case, sex was a destructive force. With her body she had already given him eager consent to being his mistress. That was what she was…his mistress. She didn’t even have the wedding ring any more. He had kept that. Yet he must have considered her as being his wife at some stage, possibly only momentarily, she reasoned, for why else would he have referred to his need to take another wife?
Yet even after he had told her that, she had still behaved like a lovelorn, stupid fool. She cringed, unable to credit the woman she had become during the hours of darkness. As she shifted her feet she felt the weight of the sapphire anklet which had some sort of trick lock on it that refused to be undone. She skimmed a trembling hand down her leg and wrenched at it for it suddenly seemed like a badge of servitude.
‘Shiran, I want someone to speak to His Royal Highness and find out how to get this thing off me…’
The little maid departed. It was fifteen minutes before she reappeared. She got down on her knees and whispered, ‘Prince Tariq says that it is his pleasure that you should wear his gift, my lady.’
His pleasure? Faye quivered with disbelief for it seemed to her that the entire country of Jumar revolved round Prince Tariq ibn Zachir’s pleasure. So unassailable was his status with his devoted subjects that he could even parade his foreign mistress off to bed without offending anyone’s sensibilities!
‘His Royal Highness also said…’ Shiran visibly swallowed.
‘Yes, what did he say?’ Faye’s charged enquiry shook.
‘Please not to bother him with trivial enquiries when he is engaged in matters of state.’
As Faye plunged to her feet as though jet-propelled by that arrogant jibe, Rafi provided a distraction by bursting in on them like a missile shot out of a cannon, servants in hot pursuit. Throwing himself at Faye, he clutched at the skirt of her summer dress with frantic hands. ‘You can’t go away…you take me with you…you take Rafi too!’
‘What on earth…?’ Faye lifted the little boy in an effort to calm him down.
‘Prince Rafi knows you are returning to the Muraaba.’ Shiran sighed.
Rafi wrapped his arms round Faye. ‘I come too…I be good…I will be really good boy.’
‘Will Prince Rafi accompany us and the babies too?’ her maid asked her.
‘I don’t have the authority to make a decision like that—’
‘There is only Prince Tariq but he will be too busy for the children while he is with the sheikhs.’
‘Can I come…can I come?’ Rafi demanded.
Nobody else? For even little Basma and Hayat, Faye wondered in surprise. ‘Surely the twins have parents?’
Shiran gazed back at her in wide-eyed surprise. ‘No, my lady. All their family were lost.’
‘Lost?’ Faye queried.
‘People go away…they die,’ the little boy in her arms told her woodenly. ‘Bang bang…the plane fall out of the sky…all die.’
That explanation chilled the blood in Faye’s veins and she paled.
‘Terrible, terrible day…’ Shiran said chokily, eyes swimming.
‘Prince Tariq does not cry…Prince Rafi does not cry,’ Rafi chimed in, but his strained little face was dripping tears.
Her arms tightening round the child, Faye hugged him to her, her own eyes stinging. She would never have opened the subject of the whereabouts of Basma and Hayat’s parents had she been aware that they were dead. ‘Well, if no one minds you and I and the twins can all go back to the palace together,’ she heard herself promising.
Rafi said that he would have to fetch his toys and took off at speed.
‘Tell me about the plane crash,’ Faye urged Shiran.
Rafi’s mother, his cousin and his wife, who had been the parents of the twins, and even the twins’ grandparents had all died in the same tragedy. On a flight between Jumar city and Kabeer on the Gulf coast, the plane had developed engine trouble and had attempted a crash landing which had failed. Basma and Hayat’s father had entrusted his daughters to Tariq’s care in his will. The poor man could never have dreamt that he might die so young and leave Tariq responsible for two babies still only months old.
In one appalling day, Tariq had lost a good number of his closest relatives. I do not believe in unnecessary flights being made merely to save time. Small wonder, Faye conceded sickly, sinking deep into shock.
It took four Toyota Landcruisers to transport so large a party back to the Muraaba and, during that lurching and often torturously slow drive over the desert sands, Faye had plenty of time to think over what she had learnt. She now fully understood why Tariq had spent an entire year in mourning and she felt terrible that she had not known for the tragedy must have been widely reported. However, she rarely watched television and the only newspaper she read at home was a local one which did not cover international events. Tariq, she finally grasped, had the responsibility of raising three orphaned children.
The entrance hall of the Muraaba was full of silent kneeling servants.
‘Why are they doing that?’ Faye whispered to Shiran in dismay. ‘Who are they waiting for?’
‘They are showing respect, my lady,’ Shiran explained. ‘Wave your hand and they will go about their duties again.’
Faye did so and passed on by. With Rafi tagging along, she was shown upstairs to a magnificent suite of rooms that rejoiced in balconies that overlooked the beautiful gardens. Signs of Tariq’s occupancy were everywhere. Polo trophies, family photographs, the portrait of a gorgeous blonde woman with stunning dark eyes. His mother, Shiran told her with positive reverence. In another age, Tariq’s late mother might have been a supermodel and no longer did Faye marvel at the surrendering of the hundred concubines.
Lunch was served to her in an imposing dining room but the presence of Rafi, Basma and Hayat made it a lively occasion. She spent the rest of the day with the children, relieved by their inability to sense the painful conflict of her warring emotions. For no sooner was she separated from Tariq than she felt empty, abandoned and miserable. She got very angry with herself and with the feelings she could not control. That evening when she had tucked the twins into their cots she read Rafi a story, but only after overcoming his temper tantrum at her refusal to allow him to share her bed.
By eleven, Faye was in bed reading the historical romance she had brought out to Jumar with her but hadn’t got around to opening. It was a good book. Having lifted her head briefly at the noise of a helicopter landing on the palace heli-pad, she had returned her attention to her novel when the bedroom door opened.
Her head shot up. Tariq lounged in the doorway with a wolfish grin. ‘I thought I would surprise you.’
Dry-mouthed, Faye s
tared at him. Clad in a crisp white short-sleeved shirt, open at his brown throat, and smoothly tailored cream chinos, he looked sensational. All sleek and sexy and sophisticated.
‘Success…’ Tariq murmured, indolently shouldering shut the door and strolling across the room. ‘You look good in my bed.’
‘I thought you had other responsibilities…’ she said breathlessly.
‘I will fly back to the talks at dawn.’
‘I don’t think you know what you want.’
‘It is simple…I want you.’
Her violet-blue eyes dilated at the flashburn effect of his glittering golden gaze and the husky, intimate timbre of his dark, deep drawl. Beneath the fine cotton of her strappy nightdress, she was mortified to feel the languorous swell of her breasts and the tightening of her nipples as they pushed against the cloth.