Passion

He was exasperated that he was still sensitive to the sight of Tilda and the regrettable memories she roused. It had been, however, an unsavoury incident in his life and a reminder that he had human flaws. Five years earlier, Rashad might have been seasoned on the battlefield and idolised by his countrymen as a saviour, but his great-uncle Sadiq had succeeded in keeping him a virtual prisoner in Bakhar. Rashad had lived under constant threat and surveillance. He had been twenty-five years old by the time his father had been restored to the throne and he himself had been eager to take advantage of the freedom that had been denied him.

It had been King Hazar who suggested that Rashad complete his academic studies in England. Rashad might have inherited his mother’s intellectual brilliance and his father’s shrewdness but, in those days, he had had little experience of the ways of Western females. Within days of his arrival in Oxford, he had become infatuated with an outrageously unsuitable young woman.

Tilda Crawford had been a bar-girl, a one-time exotic dancer and a deceitful gold-digging slut. But she had told Rashad poignant stories about her bullying stepfather and her family’s sufferings at his hands. She had judged her audience well, Rashad acknowledged with derision. Brought up to believe that it was his duty to help those weaker than himself, he had flipped straight into gallant rescue mode. Duped by her beauty and her lies, he had come dangerously close to asking her to marry him. What a future queen that lowborn Jezebel would have made! The acid bite of the humiliation that had been inflicted on him still had the power to sting Rashad’s ego afresh.

He squared his broad shoulders and lifted his proud dark head high. It really was time to draw a line beneath the sleazy episode and consign his regrets to the past. Only now could he see that this feat could scarcely be achieved while the wrongdoers went unpunished. Without a doubt, the requirements of truth and decency had not been served by the dignified silence he had maintained. Indeed, had he not inadvertently made it easier for Tilda Crawford to go on to defraud other wealthy men? He might well save her elderly admirer from a similar trial, he thought with bleak satisfaction. Offenders should be called to account for their sins, not permitted to continue enjoying the fruits of their dishonesty.

Rashad studied the photo of Tilda again and marvelled at how much better he felt now that he had recognised where his ultimate duty lay. Action was required, not strategic withdrawal. He contacted his chief accountant to confirm that not a single payment had yet been received on the interest-free loan he had advanced to the Crawford family. He was not surprised to have his worst expectations fulfilled. He gave the order that the matter should be pursued with diligence. Powered by a strong sense of justice, he tossed the magazine aside.

Pushing the mass of her long blond hair back behind her ear, Tilda studied her mother, Beth, in total consternation and asked for a second time, ‘How much do you owe?’

The tear-stained older woman gazed back at her daughter with wretched eyes and repeated the figure shakily. ‘I’m sorry; I’m so sorry about this. I should’ve told you months ago but I couldn’t face it. I’ve been hiding my head in the sand and hoping all the trouble would go away.’

Tilda was in serious shock at the amount of money her mother confessed to owing. It was simply huge. Surely there was some mistake or misunderstanding? She could not imagine how Beth could possibly have got into that much debt. Who would have loaned her perennially cash-strapped parent so much money? How on earth could anyone ever have believed that Beth might repay such a vast sum? She reminded herself that interest charges could be very steep and began to ask more pertinent questions in an effort to establish how and when such a debt had originated.

‘When did you take out the loan?’

Beth wiped at her reddened eyes, but did not look directly at her daughter. ‘Five years ago … but I’m not sure you could describe it as a loan.’

Tilda was astonished that her mother could have kept it a secret for so long. But she could remember very well how much of a struggle it had been back then just to put food on the table. She was simply bewildered by Beth’s uncertainty about whether or not she had taken out a loan. ‘Can I see the paperwork?’

The older woman scrambled up and went into the very depths of a cupboard from which she withdrew a plastic container. She shot her daughter a sheepish glance. ‘I’ve had to hide the letters so that you and your brothers and sisters didn’t see them and ask me what they were about.’

As a sizeable pile of letters was tipped out onto the table Tilda swallowed back a groan of disbelief. ‘How long is it since you were last able to make a payment?’

Pushing her short fair hair off her brow in a nervous gesture, Beth sent Tilda an uneasy look. ‘I’ve never made a payment—’

‘Never?’ Tilda interrupted in dismay.

‘There wasn’t the money at first and I thought that I would start making payments when things improved,’ the small blonde woman confided, shredding a tissue between her trembling hands. ‘But things never did improve enough. There was always a bill or someone needing new shoes or bus fares … or Christmas would come along and I hated disappointing the children. They would go without so much for the rest of the year.’

‘I know.’ Leafing through the heap of unopened letters, Tilda breathed out and in again very slowly and carefully. She knew she dared not show how appalled she was by what she was finding out. Her mother was a vulnerable woman, prone to panic attacks. She needed her daughter to be calm and supportive. It was, after all, over four years since Beth had last left the house to face an outside world that had become so threatening to her. Agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces, had made Beth’s home her prison. But it had not stopped the older woman from working for her living. A whizz with a sewing machine, Beth had a regular clientele for whom she tailored clothes and made soft furnishings. Unfortunately, however, she did not earn very much.

‘Exactly how did you get the loan?’ Tilda prompted in confusion. ‘Surely nobody came to the house to offer you that much money?’

Across the table Beth worried at her lower lip with her teeth and shifted uncomfortably. There was a shamefaced look on her face. ‘This is the bit I really didn’t want to tell you. In fact, it’s why I felt I had to keep it all a secret. It made me feel so guilty and I didn’t want to upset you. You see, I asked Rashad for the money and he gave it to me.’

Every scrap of colour ebbed from Tilda’s oval face. With her flawless features stretched taut over her delicate bone structure, her turquoise-blue eyes seemed brighter than ever against her pallor. ‘Rashad …’she repeated weakly, her heart sinking like a stone and shame grabbing her by the throat. ‘You actually asked him to help us out?’

‘Don’t look at me like that!’ Beth gasped strickenly, her unhappiness overflowing into tears. ‘Rashad once said that we all felt like part of his family, and that that’s how families always work in Bakhar—everyone looking out for everybody else. I was convinced he was going to marry you. I thought it was all right to accept his financial help.’

Tilda was aghast at an explanation that rang all too true from a woman as naïve as her mother was. When Rashad had visited her home he had appeared to like her large and boisterous family. In fact, it was only during those occasions that she had ever seen Rashad fully relax his guard. He had played rough-and-tumble games with her brothers, taught one of her sisters mathematical long division and read stories to the youngest. Unsurprisingly, her mother had become a huge admirer of his. Tilda had never had the heart to tell the older woman why and how she and Rashad had broken up. Pushing herself clumsily upright, Tilda walked over to the living-room window. A busy road lay beyond the front garden of the semi-detached house, but Tilda was so lost in a tide of angry, painful thoughts that she was not aware of the traffic.

While she was very loyal to her mother she was cringing at what she had just learned. She was shattered to learn a full five years after the event that her relationship with Rashad had begat a financial angle that she had known nothing about! Surely that must have had a negative effect on Rashad’s view of her? She would have died a thousand deaths of shame had she known about that money at the time.

Rashad was fabulously wealthy and very generous. Had he simply taken pity on Beth? Or had he cherished a darker motive? Had he believed that money might make Tilda less nervous of surrendering her body to him? Had he intended it as the purchase price of her virginity? Her pride writhed at that sordid suspicion. Was she being hugely unfair to him? She thought that actions sometimes spoke louder than words. She had not slept with Rashad and he had ditched her without an ounce of compassion or decency.

‘I was desperate,’ Beth admitted in a stricken undertone. ‘I knew it wasn’t right but your stepfather had got us into such a mess with the mortgage payments. I was terrified that we were going to end up homeless.’

It took enormous effort but Tilda managed to close a mental door on the potent image of Prince Rashad Hussein Al-Zafar, with whom she’d had the poor taste to fall madly in love at the age of eighteen. That reference to her mother’s ghastly second husband helped to distract her. Scott Morrison had married Beth when she was a widow with two young children. On the surface a glib and handsome charmer, he had been a terrible bully, who had systematically robbed his stepfamily of their financial security. The birth of three more children and the stress of dealing with an unfaithful and dishonest husband had led to Beth’s panic attacks and her eventual diagnosis of agoraphobia.

‘When I asked Rashad for help, he said that he would buy the house and keep it in his name so that Scott couldn’t get his hands on it …’

Tilda whirled round, depth-charged by that information out of her recollections and back into the all-too-threatening present. On every front that admission came as a shock to Tilda. ‘Are you telling me that Rashad also owns this house?’ she gasped in horror.

‘Yes. At first that made me feel that we were all safe and secure!’ the older woman suddenly sobbed.

‘Why don’t you make a cup of tea while I take a look at some of these letters?’ Tilda suggested, hoping that that routine task would help her mother to calm down. Yet her own self-discipline was being equally challenged by what she had discovered. Although she was determined not to give way to a growing sense of panic, she could not stop Rashad’s name from rhyming and purring like a derisive echo at the back of her mind.

Eager to hide the fact that she was frantic with worry, Tilda sorted the mostly unopened letters into rough piles according to date. But flashes of memory kept on attacking her from all sides: Rashad, so breathtakingly handsome she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him the first time she saw him; Rashad, the last time she had seen him, kissing another woman. Having dumped her, he had moved on with breathtaking speed. Her mind was quick to back away from that final recollection and she began reading the letters. Silence fell while she speedily absorbed their contents. Unhappily what she learned from the exercise was not good news.

To begin with, Rashad, or more probably his representatives in the matter, had engaged a London legal firm while ensuring that Beth received advice from another solicitor. The purchase price of the house had been fair. A further substantial amount of money had been advanced to settle several outstanding debts. Wincing as she totted up figures in her head, Tilda became more and more tense. If anything, her mother had underestimated the size of her debt. A contract that allowed for every eventuality had been signed. Her mother had been given a whole year to get her affairs in order before she was asked whether she wished to take out a mortgage to buy the house back or instead opt to pay rent as a tenant. Tilda came on a copy of the tenancy agreement that her mother had signed.

‘What made you decide to sign a tenancy agreement?’ Tilda queried dry-mouthed.

‘The solicitor came to see me here and I had to make a choice about what I was going to do.’

‘But you haven’t paid any rent, have you?’ her daughter prompted, having already seen a worrying missive that referred to rent arrears.

‘No. I couldn’t afford to.’ Beth eyed the younger woman fearfully.

‘Not even one payment?’ Tilda thought that there should have been enough income to at least pay the rent but, as quickly, blamed herself for not having taken more of an interest in the family finances.

‘No, not one.’ Beth would not meet her daughter’s troubled gaze, and Tilda wondered uneasily if there was something that she wasn’t being told.

‘Mum … are there any other problems?’ Tilda pressed.

Beth gave her a frightened look and shook her head. ‘Now that you’ve seen the letters, what do you think?’

Shelving the ESP that was giving her the suspicion there was something else amiss, Tilda knew she could not say what she thought about the letters. Her mother was a loving and caring parent, adored by every one of her five children. She was also extremely kind and hardworking, but when it came to dealing with money or problem husbands Beth was pretty much useless. By ignoring the letters, the older woman had acted as her own worst enemy. More recent missives had taken on the cold, clipped edge of threat. They were facing eviction from their home. Tilda felt as if spooky fingers were tightening round her lungs, for the challenge of delivering such terrifying news to her mother was at that moment beyond her. Beth was too frightened even to walk down the drive to the front gate, so how could she possibly cope with the awful upheaval and disgrace of being literally cast out on the street? And if she could not cope, how would it affect Tilda’s four younger siblings?

‘Tilda …’ Beth surveyed her daughter with a heavy heart ‘… I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you about this months ago, but I felt so guilty about having married Scott. Everything that’s gone wrong for us since then is my fault.’

‘You can’t blame yourself for marrying him. He didn’t show his true colours until after the wedding and now he’s out of our lives, so let’s not go back there,’ Tilda urged in a deliberately upbeat tone. ‘Stop worrying about this. I’ll look into it and see what I can sort out.’

The buzz of the doorbell sounded extraordinarily loudly in the strained silence.

Dismay tightening her features as she checked her watch, Beth flew upright. ‘That’ll be a customer. I’d better splash my face with some cold water!’

‘Go ahead. I’ll answer the door.’ Tilda was grateful for that timely interruption, for she did not want to be tempted into soothing her mother by offering empty assurances that everything would come all right. Even in the grip of shock as Tilda still was, she could see little prospect of a happy ending to her family’s predicament. After all, only repayment of the debt could settle it and they were all as poor as church mice.

Frustration hurtled through Tilda, who felt as if her brain was suffering from a stress overload. Why, oh, why, had she given up a steady job to pursue an academic qualification for three years? But the decision had made sense at the time, offering as it did the prospect of a career with eventual excellent earning potential. Unfortunately it meant that now she had no savings and had a large student loan to pay back. Even though she was currently working full time again in a position with good prospects, she was a junior member of staff and her salary was not generous.

Tilda found her former employer, Evan Jerrold, on the doorstep. Once again Evan had his arms wrapped round a fat roll of curtain fabric. The sight would have provoked a smile from Tilda on a normal day, because in old-fashioned parlance—and he was an old-fashioned man—Evan was sweet on her mother. After a chance meeting with Beth one day when he had given Tilda a lift into work, the older man had gradually become a regular visitor. For months now he had been dreaming up new furnishing projects that gave him ample opportunity to ask Beth to advise him on colour, fabric and style.

Tilda showed Evan through to her mother’s workroom at the back of the house. The kindly older man had originally encouraged Tilda to give up her office job and go to university. An academic, who had inherited a thriving family firm, Evan had ensured that Tilda always had a job there during her college vacations. Tilda went into the kitchen to gather up the letters and take them upstairs. She was thinking sadly that Evan, the survivor of a bitter and costly divorce battle, would run a mile once he heard about her mother’s financial embarrassments. But, in all probability, nothing more than friendship would have developed between Beth and Evan, anyway, Tilda told herself in exasperation. Since when had she believed in fairy tales?

Her own workaholic father, whom she barely remembered, had been knocked down and killed by a drunk driver when she was five years old. Her mother’s subsequent second marriage had been a disaster. Bullied and cowed by Scott, Beth had been in no fit state to protect her children. In Tilda’s last year at school, her stepfather had made her work at night in a sleazy club run by one of his cronies.