A Royal Bride at the Sheikh s Command Read online

  That could have been, perhaps if only he had not judged her as he had. Now of course he saw her as a person he could not trust. They could have had so much together, worked so closely together. Natalia blinked away the pain given tears clouding her eyes and went in her bathroom.

  Tonight, as he had done every night since their return to Niroli, Kadir would emerge from his own dressing room to share their huge bed with her, but he would not touch her. Not now. Not until she told him whether or not the intimacy they had shared had resulted in a child. Natalia placed her hand to her still flat stomach. She had first suspected the truth the morning of their return flight from Hadiya, but she had had to wait until she had gained the privacy of her grandfather’s home and the services of the old family doctor who was her grandfather’s close personal friend and sworn to secrecy to confirm those suspicions. The tell-tale line in the pregnancy-testing kit the doctor had given her had confirmed what she had suspected—she had conceived Kadir’s child. The dates also confirmed that this child, this son or daughter, had not been conceived after their marriage in Hadiya, but in Venice. But how, when he had used a condom? It was hardly a question she could ask her family doctor. All she could do was assume that the condom had failed as she now remembered reading somewhere that they weren’t a hundred per cent effective.

  Perhaps because of the concern of her own thoughts she had lingered longer in her bathroom than she had intended with the result that Kadir was already in bed when she returned to the bedroom.

  Kadir slept naked, and she knew it was that knowledge that caused her heart to jerk sharply as she tried not to see the way the light from the bedside lamp played on the smooth olive tautness of his shoulders and chest as he lay propped up against the pillows reading a document, and not the fact that she was concealing from him something he had every right to know.

  Kadir watched Natalia approach the bed. She was wearing a thin silky robe that, whilst concealing the feminine curves of her body, somehow still drew mental images for him of a highly sensual and intimate nature.

  ‘I have to thank you for the role you played in the success of tonight’s reception,’ he told her as she sat down on the edge of the bed with her back to him, discreetly slipping out of the robe before getting into the bed.

  ‘I was only doing my duty,’ Natalia told him woodenly.

  Immediately his mouth thinned and he put down the papers he was holding.

  ‘I would strongly advise you against adopting the role of a martyr,’ he told her. ‘It does not suit you. You are an extremely intelligent woman well versed in world affairs, with an important role to play in the future of Niroli.’

  Natalia stared at him, astonished that he should compliment her.

  Kadir was a proud man, it wasn’t easy for him to admit that he had made any kind of error of judgement, never mind a huge misjudgement, but he was also a formidably fair and honest man. He had watched Natalia today interacting with their guests during the formal reception. He’d seen just how valuable an asset she was going to be to him and to the future of Niroli. He had been surprised and impressed today at the ease with which their separate roles had harmonised, thanks to Natalia. He had watched her speaking on a one-to-one basis to several of their male guests and at no time had her body language been anything less than confidently professional. She had not flirted, or teased; she had not used the obvious sensuality of her body or her beauty to focus their attention on her. Instead she had held them captive with her intelligence, winning their respect with that air of calmly regal distance he had watched her adopt in public. That they were charmed by her was not in doubt, that they would envy him such a wife so openly and obviously, he had always known, but that she should by her manner know exactly how to ensure that she was treated with the respect her role demanded had surprised him. Even if no one had introduced her to anyone within that room today as Niroli’s future Queen, everyone there would have guessed it from her dignified warmth. Natalia possessed that rare ability to be both genuinely herself and what others expected of her. He looked across at her as she lay next to him all too aware of the now-familiar ache that wanting her brought to his body. They were married, their future lay together, he wanted her, and he knew he could arouse her to desire for him. Maybe these were the things he should concentrate on instead of focusing on her sexual past?

  Natalia reached out to switch off her own bedside light, tensing a little when Kadir did the same.

  ‘Don’t let me stop you from reading your papers,’ she said lightly.

  ‘They can wait. Right now I have far more pleasant duties I prefer to perform,’ Kadir told her smokily, catching her off guard as he reached over to her.

  Wasn’t it poor, unloved Catherine de Medici who had desperately refused to tell her husband that she was already pregnant because she longed so much to be intimate with him and to keep him in her bed and out of that of his mistress? Natalia thought guiltily as she felt her body flooding with response to the deliberate intimacy of Kadir’s actions.

  ‘Perhaps I should be grateful that fate has given me a wife so easily stirred to passion,’ he murmured.

  The trouble was that it was no longer merely physical passion he aroused in her, Natalia admitted as she shivered with pleasure beneath the sensual play of his fingertips against her naked flesh.

  ‘Natalia…’

  It shocked her to feel the warmth of his breath so close to her lips, and it shocked her even more to recognise that he was going to kiss her. The intimacy of shared kisses had not after all been something that had played a role in their relationship. The sweetness of eager, hungry kisses belonged to lovers and they were not and never could be that. And yet her lips were parting on a small exhaled breath, and then softening beneath the persuasive hard warmth of Kadir’s. How easy it was to wrap her arms around him now and to pretend that this was a new beginning for them, a chance to start again. How easy and how very foolish and yet she couldn’t stop herself from doing so as she melted into his hold as the intimacy of his kiss deepened from slow, masterful exploration to a fierce possession that had her heart thudding against her chest wall.

  ‘Natalia…My wife…’ Kadir whispered softly against her lips as he threaded his fingers through her hair and held her still beneath him.

  ‘My wife…My Queen…’ He kissed her slowly and lingeringly, making her shudder with female longing for what was to come. He kissed the corners of her mouth and then traced its outline with his tongue tip.

  ‘Your perfume is as permanently etched into my senses as the perfume of life itself. I breathe it in with every breath until I am constantly filled with the memory of you, but tonight you are not a memory, you are a reality…’ His tongue thrust against the frail barrier of her lips, deliberately taking possession of the inner sweetness that lay beyond them, stroking against her own tongue until he had seduced it into begging to reciprocate his intimacy.

  Natalia could feel her head spinning. This was like no intimacy, no kiss she had ever known before. It was unique, overwhelming, possessing her…branding her as his for all time.

  ‘There were many at the reception today who let it be known that they expected us to make haste to fill the palace nurseries and provide Niroli with a new heir, but none of them are quite so persuasive as my father,’ Kadir told her. ‘He reminded me only the other day that he may not have much time left to him…’

  Natalia went cold as she listened to Kadir and realised just why he had initiated this intimacy.

  Of course he was only making love to her because it was his duty to do so, and she was a fool if she had thought anything different. If? Why was she bothering to try to deceive herself? She had responded to him, welcomed him in her arms as a woman welcoming the man she loved. Had Zahra been right after all? Could she have seen what Natalia herself had not wanted to see?

  ‘What is it?’ Kadir was asking her. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She couldn’t bear to have him guess the truth and realise what a fool she had
been. Bearing his contempt was hard enough; she didn’t want to have to bear the burden of his pity as well.

  ‘Nothing,’ she told him lightly. ‘I am sure that King Giorgio would admire your dedication to your duty.’

  She was mocking him, Kadir realised angrily. Had she guessed that just now when he had touched and held her that the only kind of duty he had been obeying had been his duty to show her just how much he desired her? Just as other men had desired her and possessed her before him. Men whom she had loved? Did she think of one of them when he held her in his arms just as his mother had thought of her lover and not her husband, secretly longing for that lover whilst obeying the ‘rules’ imposed on her by her royal marriage? Did every prince with a kingdom to inherit share this bitterness he felt at the thought of being tolerated, endured by the woman to whom he was married because of what he was? And what was it exactly that he wanted? He was forty, not a boy—he had long ago become cynical about the reality of ‘love’.

  Why was he experiencing these contradictory feelings that were pulling him in two such completely opposite directions? It wasn’t necessary for him to share any kind of emotional intimacy with Natalia, and therefore it wasn’t necessary for him to be feeling what he was feeling right now. Maybe not, but he must have absolute loyalty and fidelity in his wife. He must be able to trust her moral stature, knowing the pressures their position would put on her, and he was a fool if he didn’t recognise that a woman who had so easily given herself to him on a mere whim did not have that moral stature, no matter how much he might wish to convince himself that she did. It wasn’t for his own sake he must remember this, it was for the sake of his role as Niroli’s future King. If he knew that Natalia could be not trusted, then he knew also that she must be morally policed to ensure that she did not bring disgrace on the crown and a bastard child into the royal nursery. Giving in to his desire was not policing those morals, it was indulging himself. Trying to convince himself that he might have been wrong about her was the worst kind of self-indulgence there could be for a man in his position, and he must not do it. He must not let her think that he had any weakness for her. Angrily he crushed the unwanted and unnecessary tender feelings that had come from nowhere to challenge the reality of their relationship.

  ‘I can assure you that no one will be happier to abandon that dedication than I,’ he told Natalia harshly. ‘You cannot surely think that I have any real personal desire to possess you.’

  His words cut into her like a razor and in the agony of her emotional pain Natalia didn’t think of the consequences of what she was saying when she told him recklessly, ‘Well, you may as well abandon it right now, then.’

  There was a small ominous silence and then Kadir was reaching up and switching on his bedside lamp so that he could look down at her.

  ‘And what exactly does that mean?’ he demanded.

  ‘It means that I am pregnant,’ she told him quietly. It was too late now to wish that she had been more cautious.

  Kadir started to frown. ‘That is good news, of course,’ he told her formally, ‘but isn’t it too soon for you to be sure…?’ Here thankfully was a way out of his impasse, at least for the duration of her pregnancy.

  Here was her opportunity to backtrack and lie by default by accepting the get-out he was unwittingly offering her. What difference would it make, after all? She knew that this child she was carrying was his. A baby born a matter of about two weeks short of nine months would not cause any undue comment, and there was surely no point in risking what she knew she would be risking if she told Kadir the truth.

  But how could she lie to him feeling about him the way she now knew that she did? She already knew how little he trusted her sex; she was not his mother, a young girl forced by fear and circumstances to foist her lover’s child on her husband; this baby was after all Kadir’s. She did not want the baby or their marriage to be shadowed by the burden of any kind of deceit. Who knew what the future might hold or how close to one another the years might one day bring them? It was perhaps foolish of her to have such dreams, but she did have them and she could not bear to prejudice them by building into the foundation of their future now a deliberate lie.

  As though her silence had alerted him to the truth, Kadir’s frown deepened. ‘When?’ he demanded curtly. ‘When was this baby conceived?’

  Natalia took a deep breath.

  ‘In Venice,’ she answered him. ‘I conceived in Venice.’

  To her shock he thrust back the bedclothes and got out of the bed.

  ‘Kadir!’ Natalia protested.

  Her admission coming so closely on the heels of his own private thoughts felt almost as though they had been some kind of warning omen. If so it was one that he could not afford to ignore.

  ‘That is impossible. We used protection, as you very well know.’

  ‘I know you did, but condoms aren’t always infallible,’ Natalia pointed out. ‘They do occasionally fail.’

  ‘How convenient for you, but I don’t accept your argument, not having had firsthand experience of your promiscuity. What happened, Natalia? Did you allow a lover to be over-enthusiastic and then decide that you had better ensure that you had sex with me, as well, just in case you might be carrying his child? Did you deliberately seek me out in Venice, knowing perfectly well who I was? After all, I have used my polo playing alias for many years now.’

  Natalia gave a gasp of shocked disbelief.

  ‘That’s ridiculous,’ she told him shakily. ‘I had no idea who you were and there was certainly no previous lover. I don’t—’

  ‘You don’t what? Have sex with strangers?’

  Natalia could feel her face starting to burn. There was no way she could defend herself from that charge.

  ‘Nothing you can say to me will convince me that the child you are carrying is mine,’ Kadir told her coldly. He had picked up her scent bottle and was holding it in the palm of his hand; almost absently Natalia watched it start to glow with growing brilliance. Kadir could make the glass shine with his purity of heart and his goodness? There must surely be some mistake.

  ‘I will not allow you to foist this child off on me,’ he repeated savagely, replacing the bottle on her dressing table before turning away from her.

  Kadir could hardly bear to look at Natalia. So much indeed for those feelings, those hopes he had begun to allow himself to acknowledge he was experiencing, those cautious, vulnerable tendrils of the beginnings of a need within himself to forget the past and allow himself to believe that here on Niroli he could put aside the ghosts of his childhood and build a true future with Natalia and the children she would give him.

  His own bitterness tasted sour on his tongue where so recently it had known the sweetness of Natalia’s kiss. What sweetness? he challenged himself savagely. That so-called sweetness had masked acid-sharp poison. Did she really think he had become so vulnerable to her that she could openly foist another man’s bastard on him without him challenging her? And running behind the violence of his justifiably angry thoughts was the pride-scouring knowledge that a part of him actually wished that she had not answered his question truthfully and that instead she had…that she had lied to him? Allowed him to believe that the child she carried was his?

  Natalia waited until Kadir had left her to shut himself in his dressing room before daring to give way to her tears.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SHE was not going to let them see how she felt, not now not ever, Natalia thought to herself as she watched the way Zahra clung to Kadir’s arm as she laughed up flirtatiously at him.

  Did anyone believe for one single minute that the other woman had really come to Niroli because she was interested in using some of the fortune left to her by her elderly late husband to finance a hotel and spa complex at a desert oasis some miles from the capital city of Hadiya, and thus wanted to know more about the success of Niroli’s own resort? Or could they see right through what was so obviously a blatant plan on Kadir’s part to bring his m
istress to Niroli, even if publicly Zahra appeared to have arrived here under her own steam and on her own whim. To stay here permanently? Was it really only three months ago that the thought of her as-then-unmet husband having a mistress had been one she had accepted with calm equanimity? Natalia was forced to ask herself. How naïve she had been, and how very foolish.

  King Giorgio was beckoning her over to join him. Forcing herself to smile as serenely as she could, Natalia made her way across the salon, dropping the king a deep formal curtsey before taking the seat he had waved her into.

  ‘It is good that Kadir intends to maintain good relations with Hadiya. As two nations we have much to offer one another and much to learn from one another.’

  ‘Prince Kadir is bound to feel a strong sense of allegiance towards the country of his birth, Your Highness,’ Natalia responded calmly.

  ‘That is indeed so, but Kadir’s home is here now, our customs his customs. I understand you met Zahra Rafiq on your honeymoon visit to Hadiya—is that so?’

  ‘Yes,’ Natalia agreed woodenly.

  To her astonishment the king reached for her hand and squeezed it gently. ‘You are a good girl, Natalia, and I can see in your eyes and hear in your voice the pride you feel. That is only natural and right, of course, however—’ the king paused ‘—over the course of my lifetime I have perhaps made more than my fair share of mistakes, errors of judgement that my pride would not allow me to admit at the time, but which I now bear on my conscience even though it is not my habit to admit as much to others. Kadir is a very proud man. How could he not be when he is my son? As Niroli’s future King he will be all the things that I want him to be for Niroli, but even at my time of life, Natalia, there are surprises and unexpected discoveries. I had not thought, for instance, that I should love him so immediately and so very dearly. It is as though he has been a part of my heart from the beginning. It is through that love I bear him that I say to you now that I do not want him to suffer the unhappiness my own pride has sometimes caused me to suffer. I have seen the look in your eyes when you look at him when you think no one else is watching and I have seen too the way Kadir looks at you.’