The Sultan's Heir

“I must talk to you. May I come in?”

“Not on your life,” she said, with slow, implacable emphasis. “Goodbye.”

His hand prevented the door’s closing. “You seem to regard your late husband’s family…”

“With deep and abiding revulsion,” she supplied. “Take your hand away, please.”

“Miss Lewis,” he said urgently, his accent reminding her with wrenching sharpness of Jamshid. “Please let me speak to you. It is very important.”

His eyes were the colour of melted bittersweet chocolate. The full mouth showed signs that the crazily passionate nature was the same, but was tempered with self-control. If Jamshid had lived, probably his mouth would have taken on the same learned discipline by this age, but the memory of the young passionate mouth was all she would ever have.

“What’s your name?”

“I am Najib al Makhtoum,” he said, with a kind of condescending air, as if he was not used to having to introduce himself.

“And who did you say sent you?”

“I have urgent family business to discuss with you.”

“What business?”

“I represent Jamshid’s estate. I am one of his executors.”

She gazed at him, recognizing a man who would get what he wanted.

“I assure you it is to your advantage,” he pressed, frowning as if her reticence made him suspicious.

“Uh-huh.” The look she gave him left him in no doubt of what she thought of her chances of hearing something to her advantage from him. “Half an hour,” Rosalind capitulated flatly, falling back. She pushed aside a child’s bright green wheeled dinosaur with her foot and held the door open.

“Half an hour to the representative of your dead husband’s family,” he remarked without expression, stepping inside.

“Which is exactly thirty minutes more than they ever gave me.”

He took that with a frowning look. “You made an attempt at contact, then?”

She looked at him, not answering. The skin on her back shivered, and she had a sudden understanding of how animals felt when confronting danger. If she were a cat, probably she would look twice her normal size now, her fur standing out in all directions.

But she didn’t suppose that that would scare him off. He looked like a man who thrived on challenge.

“Over there,” she said, closing the door and lifting a hand to direct him. She watched as he moved ahead of her into the sitting room and towards the sofas at the far end of the long, elegant room. Jamshid had been shorter, a little slimmer. His cousin’s frame was powerful, his shoulders broad, strong bones under a firm musculature.

In the bright sitting room Najib glanced around at the resolutely European decor. A beautiful sheaf of white flowers graced the centre of a square black coffee table, with half a dozen little onyx and crystal ornaments. Around it were sofas and chairs, with decorative touches that combined to give the room a soft, expensive sophistication.

Only a couple of pieces gave evidence that she had ever been married to a Parvani—an extremely beautiful silk Bagestani prayer rug in front of a cabinet and an antique miniature of the Parvan royal palace in Shahr-i Bozorg, painted on a narrow strip of ivory in a delicate inlaid frame, hanging on one wall in elegant isolation.

“Sit down, Mr. al Makhtoum,” she invited, without pretending to any social warmth. She crossed to a corner of the sofa kitty-corner to the chair she indicated to him. It was only when he set it on the black table that she noticed he was carrying a briefcase.

Rosie was barefoot, wearing soft blue cotton leggings and a long blue shirt. The briefcase suddenly made her feel vulnerable. Unconsciously she drew one bent leg under her, lightly clasped her bare ankle, her gold bracelet watch tumbling down over her wrist, and sat sideways on the sofa, facing him. Her other arm rested on the sofa back and supported her cheek as she gazed at him.

“What can your family possibly want with me after all this time?” Rosalind demanded, curious if not really caring, but a little nervous, too, as he snapped the case open.

“First,” Najib al Makhtoum began, “may I confirm a few facts? You are Rosalind Olivia Lewis, and five years ago you married Jamshid Bahrami, a citizen of Parvan who was at that time a postgraduate student at the School of Eastern and Asian Studies here in London?”

“We’ve been over that,” she said. “What else?”

“You subsequently gave birth to his child?”

She went very still, watching him.

“I am sorry to say we learned only recently about your marriage and that you were pregnant when my cousin died,” he said helpfully.

“Did you?” Rosalind said, with cool, unconcerned disbelief.

He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Was there any reason, Miss Lewis, why you did not let the family know of the marriage and your pregnancy after Jamshid’s death?”

She lowered her head and looked at him under her brows. “I might as easily ask you why Jamshid apparently told no one about me before going off to war,” she returned bitterly. “He left here promising to get his grandfather’s approval, saying that his family would send for me if war was declared, that I would go to family in the Barakat Emirates and have the baby there…. Well, I guess he never did it. If it wasn’t significant to him, why should it have been to me?”

“There is no doubt that he should—”

“In fact, though, as I am sure you know,” she went on over him, “I did write a letter to Jamshid’s grandfather, shortly after hearing that my husband had been killed.”

She was surprised by the wary look that entered his eyes, but couldn’t guess what it meant. “My grandfather died within a year after—” he began, and she interrupted,

“I’m sorry to hear it. I always imagined that one day I would tell him to his face what I thought of him.”

“Are you sure my grandfather received this letter?”

She dropped her chin, staring down at the peach-coloured fabric that covered the sofa under her thigh, and felt the old anguish stab her, heart and womb.

“Oh, yes,” she said, lifting her head again. “Oh, yes, Mr. al Makhtoum, your grandfather received it, as I think you know. I think you know that he wrote back a charming little note telling me that I was not married to Jamshid, that I was no more than an opportunistic foreign gold digger who could have no way of knowing which of my many lovers was the father of her child, that I should reflect that to receive money for sex would make me a prostitute, and that I would rot for what I was trying to put over on the grieving family of a war hero.

“It was pretty comprehensive,” she said, opening her eyes at him. “So what has Jamshid’s family now got to add to that?”

Two

It stopped him cold. Najib al Makhtoum looked away, heaved a long, slow breath, shook his head, met her eyes again.

“No,” he assured her. His voice was quiet, masking his deep exasperation. Why on earth had the old man—? But it was no use asking that question now. “No, I knew of no such letter. No one did, save my grandfather. Is that indeed what was said to you?”

“Well, it may not be word for word,” Rosalind allowed. “You would hardly expect it after five years, though at the time I felt the message had been gouged into me permanently with a dull knife. I suppose Jamshid was lying to me from beginning to end, I suppose to him a Western marriage wasn’t worth a thought, but I believed him. I loved him and I believed he loved me and I was pregnant with his child, and to learn so brutally that he hadn’t even bothered to mention me to his grandfather was—”

She broke off and told herself to calm down. Railing at Jamshid’s cousin would do nothing. And she still didn’t know why he was here.

“I am very sorry,” al Makhtoum murmured at last. “I apologize on behalf of my grandfather—of all Jamshid’s family. The rest of us knew nothing. As I said, we learned of your existence only recently. My grandfather most unfortunately kept your letter secret. It can have been known to none but himself.”

She didn’t know whether to believe him, but what did it matter? It only underlined the fact that Jamshid had been faithless.

“Well, now perhaps you understand why I am not interested in anything your family might have to say to me. In fact, I’d rather not have you sitting on my sofa. So—”