Rauf frowned. ‘Alone…what are you talking about?’
‘If you’re not ready to admit that you are already married, yo
u can hardly be seen to take Lily into your home. I understood that you had agreed to that extraordinary arrangement on the phone last night—’
‘Rauf…’ From across the room, his great-grandmother was already stretching out a gnarled hand in greeting.
Go home alone without his wife? Were they all out of their minds to ask such an outrageous thing of him? That wasn’t a pound of flesh, that was an entire body they were demanding!
‘Until we celebrate your wedding, Lily can stay here with us as if we are her family too. That way there will be no gossip,’ the old lady told him happily.
Faint colour accentuated the tough slant of Rauf’s high cheekbones and his hands clenched. He encountered his mother’s pleading look of appeal and he compressed his lips on a surge of such anger at the idea of being separated from Lily that for an instant he could not trust himself to speak.
‘You can visit Lily all the time,’ his grandmother, Manolya, suggested in her usual anxious, placating fashion.
‘But Rauf cannot be alone with her…otherwise people will say she is fast and we are too free,’ Nelispah warned.
‘Lily is already my wife,’ Rauf said drily.
‘You will have her all your life…but this is the time of betrothal, courting and bridal visits.’ Nelispah spoke as though the entire process were on a calendar written in stone and ignored his reference to the civil ceremony. ‘You will not want it said that you valued your bride so little that you would not follow custom or convention.’
Rauf breathed in very deep. ‘What was customary over seventy years ago is—’
‘The forty days and the forty nights,’ his great-grandmother slotted in, making him turn pale. ‘But we do not live in a village and, although I think it is sad that weddings must now be rushed affairs with less honour, I know a week must suffice.’
Even relieved of the threat of the forty days and nights, Rauf swallowed hard. A week. A week; seven days without Lily. He was aghast. But he looked down into the old lady’s trusting, hopeful dark eyes and he knew that he had brought the situation on himself and that he could not, must not, hurt her any more than he already had with a blunt refusal. He jerked his proud dark head in grim acknowledgement and agreement. Ninety-nine per cent of the anguished tension holding the rest of his relatives rigid vanished at that point.
‘I must explain this to Lily…in private,’ Rauf murmured flatly.
‘Leave the door open…’ Nelispah urged after frowning over that request.
Lily had absorbed the byplay of that curious little scene without the remotest understanding of what was happening. Rauf’s mother had kept on talking to her while watching Rauf with a wary air of pronounced strain. But now everyone but Rauf seemed happy and relaxed. His lean, strong features were brooding and taut.
Extending a lean hand to Lily in silent invitation, he led her into the room next door. ‘What’s wrong?’ Lily hissed in an urgent whisper.
Rauf growled something raw in Turkish under his breath and strode over to the tall windows, wide shoulders emanating wrathful tension. ‘I’ve been stitched up by a ninety-two-year-old punishment professional!’
‘Sorry?’
Rauf expelled his breath. ‘Last night, I heard you talking to Brett on the phone—’
‘You…did?’ Lily exclaimed, trying to recall what she had said, belatedly grasping yet another unfortunate factor that might well have contributed to the angry distrust with which Rauf had reacted to the discovery that her name was on that bank account set up by the other man.
‘While I was thinking about that…the matriarchs phoned me and I may…I really don’t remember…have given Nelispah the impression that I was willing to go through with another more traditional wedding to soothe the feelings I had offended,’ Rauf advanced. ‘She is refusing to acknowledge the civil ceremony, which means that she expects us to behave as if we are still single.’
Lily frowned in bewilderment.
‘Which entails you remaining here under this roof without me until we are married for a second time,’ Rauf extended grittily.
‘Oh…oh!’ Lily gasped. ‘But that’s ten days away—’
‘A week—’
‘No, your mother was quite clear about the date.’
‘Nelispah is behaving as though our marriage in the civil ceremony was an elopement…ayip…something shameful!’ Rauf ground out.
‘I don’t think so. She’s very accepting of me and I’d hate to cause her pain.’