The Desert Bride

‘I am disturbed that you should have witnessed so distressing a scene but, in honour, I may not discuss it with you,’ Razul delivered in a grim undertone.

Bethany turned away. She could not bear to look at him. So he had that much decency—a tiny kernel of loyalty to his wife. And he was profoundly embarrassed that she had seen that distasteful encounter...amazing. It was almost as though he expected her to pretend that these other women did not exist in his life. Concubines and a wife.

Yet she had never been able to hate him properly for his lifestyle. Just as she was a product of her world, he was a product of his. Nor was she foolish enough to imagine that Datar was the only country in the world where concubines were kept. It was not a subject referred to; it was a subject politely ignored lest people in high places be offended. And she had often wondered how many Western males could truthfully say that, given the same opportunity and society’s silent blessing, they too would not indulge in the freedom of such sexual variety.

‘Did you sleep well?’

A laugh that was no laugh at all bubbled in her throat. ‘You should know...you drugged me—’

‘You were in great pain. I could not bear to see you suffer,’ Razul imparted tautly, on the defensive. ‘A sleeping potion allowed you to rest.’

A sudden unbearable sadness swept over her. She found herself sinking down on the stone edge of a fountain, and she let her fingers trail restively in the water. ‘And how do you answer the kidnapping and imprisoning charge?’

‘You gave me no other option.’

Bethany breathed in deeply and looked at him where he stood, brushing aside the disturbing realisation that in the superbly tailored dove-grey suit which outlined his broad shoulders, narrow hips and long, lean legs he looked achingly familiar to her. On the outside touched by Western sophistication, she thought painfully, on the inside not touched at all, and not about to apologise for it either.

‘You know I won’t let you get away with a cop-out like that,’ she whispered.

‘Cop-out?’ Razul queried flatly, standing very tall and taut.

‘An evasion.’ She guessed that the women in his life let him off the hook every time he smiled, and then doubted if he even had a passing acquaintance with being pinned between a rock and a hard place by her sex. Fatima had been crawling round his feet like a whipped dog, not standing up to him like an equal.

Pain trammelled through her afresh. Was that what had attracted Razul to a woman outside his own culture...to her? Her spirit, her independence? In Datar even the male sex walked in awe of Razul al Rashidai Harun. One day he would be their king.

‘You cannot seriously intend to imprison me here—’

‘It does not have to be a prison. Give me your word that you will not attempt to escape and you may roam free.’

‘Something of a contradiction in terms.’ Unwarily she connected with smouldering golden eyes intently pinned to her and her throat closed over. Why am I talking to him so calmly instead of screaming at him? she wondered. Her own pain had risen uppermost, swallowing up the anger. Worse still, there was a treacherous part of her that greedily cherished every stolen moment in his company. The knowledge filled her with a deep, abiding shame.

‘Je te veux...’ he had said two years ago. ‘I want you.’

‘Tu es à moi,’ he had purred like a sleek jungle cat. ‘You are mine.’

Temptation—sinful, sweet, soul-destroying...

‘You are an educated man,’ Bethany muttered not quite steadily.

‘On the surface. Don’t flatter me,’ Razul said with sudden harshness. ‘I know your opinion of me. My father allowed thousands of Datari men to attend British and American universities over the last two decades. He did this only because it became clear to him that our country would become totally dependent on foreign workers if he did not encourage our young men to seek education and technological training in the West. But he would not permit me to enjoy a similar experience.

‘I am well aware that reading many books and spending a short spell at university does not make me an educated man...especially not in the eyes of a woman who has a string of letters after her name and many academic accomplishments.’

In the hot, still air the tension pulsed and throbbed, beating down on her from the electric force of his challenging gaze. He possessed one very powerful personality, one very volatile temperament which was also unashamedly emotional, but you were never in any doubt of the ferociously strong will that lay behind it all. But only now did she register the innate humility with which he viewed himself on an intellectual level, and that discovery pained her and made her want to put her hands round the throat of his obstinate old father, who had denied his own son what he freely gave to his subjects.

Her throat thickened. ‘Razul, nobody who has seen what you have managed to achieve here in Datar over the past five years could possibly think you anything other than an educated man.’

‘I make use of many advisors from all levels of our society. I will not tolerate nepotism, for placing the unfit in authority is the curse of the Arab world. I seek to liberalise our culture for the benefit of our people...but I know what you think, aziz, as I say this.’ He sent her a dark, level appraisal. ‘You think how can I talk of liberalisation and then steal a woman.’

‘I’m well aware that stealing women is an element of the tribal culture,’ Bethany informed him in a frozen voice. ‘But—’

A brilliant smile crossed his beautifully shaped mouth. ‘It is not a crime as long as the woman is treated with respect and honour,’ he smoothly inserted.

Bethany bent her fiery head, staggered to find herself on the brink of laughter. When it suited Razul, he was wondrously, deviously simplistic, and her mere admission that woman-stealing was a tradition practised for centuries in his culture delighted him in so far as he saw that as ample justification for his conduct.

‘But naturally the marriage must take place within a short space of time,’ Razul remarked softly. ‘It is expected.’

Her head flew back, shimmering green eyes fixing on him in unconcealed shock.

The silence stretched, taut as a rubber band, between them.

With a muffled expletive in Arabic Razul took a long stride forward and then stilled, sheer incredulity sufficient to match her own flashing across his staggeringly handsome features. ‘In the name of Allah, aziz...surely you could not think I would insult you with anything less than an offer of marriage? Last night... was this why you panicked?’ he demanded starkly, and reached for her hands to tug her relentlessly upright. ‘I brought you here to become my wife!’

His second wife. In a storm of outrage Bethany looked at him in absolute disbelief, and then she tore her hands violently free and fled.

CHAPTER THREE

PASSING beneath the nearest archway, Bethany found herself in an elaborate reception room. Fighting for self-control, she closed her eyes. ‘Prince Razul take only one wife. Always he say that...only the one.’ Zulema’s explanation for Fatima’s distress returned to her now. Seemingly Razul was now prepared to break that promise to his wife, and in a society where he was all-powerful what could the wretched woman possibly do? Presumably she could live with her husband’s other female diversions but felt both betrayed and threatened by the prospect of another woman acquiring the same status as herself.

Marriage...woman-stealing was all above board as long as you offered holy matrimony to satisfy the conventions. A strangled laugh, empty of amusement, escaped her. Little wonder she had been treated like royalty at the airport, little wonder she was being waited on hand and foot. Everybody but her had expected marriage to follow her arrival!

A polygamous marriage. The teachings of the Koran taught that a Muslim was entitled to up to four wives at any one time. In a lifetime he could get through many more than that number, if he so desired, by the judicious use of divorce. The ex-wives, of course, had to be liberally provided for. One of the reasons why polygamy was becoming less prevalent in the Arab world was the sheer expense of maintaining multiple families. But Razul was fabulously rich.

Oddly enough it had never occurred to her two years ago that Razul might already be a married man. The tabloid hadn’t picked up on that...but then maybe he had not been married then. She raised trembling hands to her stiff, cold face.

‘Why are you distressed?’ It was a ferocious demand, raw with a frustrated lack of comprehension. ‘Perhaps you are ashamed to have misjudged me so badly,’ Razul suggested with savage bite. ‘This is not Bluebeard’s castle. I am not some filthy rapist who would force his unwanted attentions upon an unprotected woman! Do you seriously believe that my father would have agreed to me bringing an Englishwoman here had I not intended to marry her? Do you think us savages?’

Bethany wanted to howl with hysterical laughter and slap him hard to express her emotions at one and the same time. ‘The Princess Fatima?’ she whispered chokily.

‘Fatima must learn to adjust. This is not my problem,’ Razul dismissed, slashing the air with an angry and imperious hand. ‘I do nothing to be ashamed of. I have waited two long years for you and she is well aware of this...’

Bethany gazed at him in horror. ‘Your compassion is overwhelming,’ she muttered sickly.

‘Compassion is not infinite...no more is tolerance. Why do you treat me to this response?’ Razul launched at her. ‘It makes no sense!’

‘Last night...’ Bethany was struggling to think straight while dimly wondering what he could possibly find incomprehensible about her response. Dear heaven, did he fondly imagine that a marriage proposal two years ago would have been sufficient to change her attitude towards him? Did he think. that she would have fallen gratefully at his feet in welcome? And when he now offered what he no doubt saw as the ultimate of honours, did he think that that would magically overcome her resistance?

‘What last night?’ Razul appealed with driven emotion.

‘You kept on saying that when I went back to my world... You weren’t thinking of marriage then!’ she reminded him.

Razul set his incredibly eloquent mouth into a grim line. ‘I was making it clear that were you to be unhappy I would set you free. I would give you a divorce, but only after you had given our marriage a fair and reasonable trial.’

Inside herself, beyond her angry disbelief, she hurt. She turned her head away. She would never have married Razul in any circumstances. Even if he hadn’t had Fatima and those other women, she reflected painfully, she still would have said no. Marriage was not for her and would never be for her. She had seen far too much of the misery of marriage while she had been growing up, and, beyond that again, the even greater misery of a cross-cultural union.

Even so, she was shattered by the idea that Razul would want to marry her. Two years ago he had wanted an affair...and she wouldn’t have been his first affair on campus—no, far from it! She might not have met Razul until his second term but she had heard about him...oh, boy, had she heard! His fame had gone before him.

Razul had flung himself with immense enthusiasm into a world where women were willing to share his bed without the smallest commitment on his part. Blessed by gorgeous good looks, charming broken English intermingled with fluent French, enormous wealth and the certainty that he would one day become a king, Razul had hit the female student body much like a winning lottery ticket blowing in the wind, hopefully to be captured by the most determined of his many admirers. A kind of communal hysteria had reigned in his radius, she recalled painfully.