The Sheikh's Secret Babies

‘For goodness’ sake,’ Lizzie exclaimed, banding an arm round her taller sister to urge her into the drawing room with its comfortable blue sofas and sleek pale contemporary furniture.

Cesare was talking on his mobile by the window and he concluded the call, frowning with concern when he registered the tear-stained distress stamped on his sister-in-law’s face.

‘I was just about to tell you that my sisters are arriving this evening and expecting you to go out clubbing with them tomorrow night—’

Chrissie tried to force a smile because she got on like a house on fire with Cesare’s younger sisters, Sofia and Maurizia, and the three women always went out together when they visited London. ‘I might not be good company—’

Lizzie pressed her gently down onto a sofa. ‘Tell me what’s wrong—’

Chrissie groaned. ‘I can’t. I’ve been such an idiot otherwise I would’ve told you years ago. You won’t believe how stupid I’ve been and now I don’t know what to do—’

‘Starting at the beginning usually helps,’ Cesare incised.

‘The twins’ father has turned up,’ Chrissie revealed tautly. ‘And he says we need a divorce, which doesn’t make sense after what his father—’

Cesare stopped dead to skim her an incredulous glance. ‘You were married to the twins’ father?’

‘My goodness, I certainly didn’t see that coming! Married!’ Lizzie admitted in shock, sinking down on an ottoman near her sister. Chrissie felt guiltier than ever, looking back over the years to acknowledge that Lizzie had been a better mother to her than their own mother, even though Lizzie was only five years older than Chrissie.

‘Right, the beginning,’ Chrissie reminded herself in receipt of a wry appraisal from Cesare. ‘Or you won’t know what I’m talking about.’

And Chrissie tried with some difficulty to put into words how long she had known Jaul without ever getting to know him properly.

‘But you never ever mentioned him,’ Lizzie commented in a continuing tone of disbelief. ‘You knew him all the time you were at uni and yet you never told me about him!’

Chrissie reddened fiercely, quite unable to describe how much of a silent role Jaul had played in her life long before she’d ever actually got involved with him. She had seen him on campus most days, occasionally speaking to him, occasionally avoiding him if he had been more than usually keen to press his interest in her. What she had never ever contrived to be with Jaul was indifferent. When he wasn’t there, she had found herself looking for him. If a couple of days had gone by without a glimpse of him, she would be like someone starved of food and craving it and when he had reappeared she would study him with helpless intensity as if looking alone could revive her energies.

In many ways Jaul had been her most secret and private fantasy. She could never ever have explained their relationship to her sister without feeling mortified and she had been even more grateful that she had kept him quiet when, instead of getting to bring Jaul home to show him off along with her wedding ring, she had ended up coming home dumped and pregnant. Lizzie had been very hurt on Chrissie’s behalf when their father had said he didn’t want his unmarried pregnant daughter to visit, but Chrissie had felt much guiltier about upsetting and disappointing the sister she had always idolised, the big sister who had made so many sacrifices on her behalf. Having left school at sixteen to work on their father’s farm, Lizzie had never got a further education or the chance to be young and carefree for even a few years.

‘There was no need to mention Jaul. It was only during our last year at uni that we actually got involved,’ Chrissie pointed out ruefully.

‘And yet you still didn’t mention him,’ Cesare reminded her drily.

‘I honestly assumed we wouldn’t last. I thought we would be over and done again in five minutes. It was all so unexpected. I didn’t think Jaul did serious and then everything somehow changed and I changed too...that’s the only way I can describe it,’ she mumbled uncomfortably.

‘You fell in love with him,’ Lizzie interpreted.

‘Truly, madly and deeply and all that,’ Chrissie joked heavily. ‘We got married at the Marwani Embassy here and we had a civil ceremony as well.’

‘But why such secrecy?’ Cesare enquired.

‘Jaul didn’t want anyone knowing we had got married until he had had the chance to tell his father about us...which I don’t think he was in any hurry to do.’ Chrissie hesitated and then mentioned the argument that had taken place when a few weeks after the wedding Jaul had announced his intention of returning to Marwan alone without any reference to when he planned to return. ‘I felt rejected.’

‘Of course you did,’ Lizzie said warmly, squeezing Chrissie’s hand gently.

Chrissie told them about her fruitless visits to the Marwani Embassy and then the visit from Jaul’s father, King Lut, that had followed. When she then repeated what the older man had told her, Cesare became undeniably angry.

‘That was when you should’ve come to us for support and advice!’

‘I still thought Jaul would come back to me. I didn’t instantly accept everything that his father told me and I hadn’t given up hope.’

‘And then you discovered that you were pregnant,’ Lizzie guessed.

‘A couple of months had passed by then and I couldn’t excuse Jaul’s silence any longer. I realised that his father must have been telling me the truth.’

‘But evidently he wasn’t,’ Cesare cut in, already thinking ahead. ‘Does Jaul know about the twins?’

‘No. I didn’t tell him. And I told him I wouldn’t give him a divorce just to annoy him,’ Chrissie confided uncomfortably. ‘That was pretty childish of me, wasn’t it?’

‘I’ll put my lawyers on this,’ Cesare informed her, compressing his well-shaped mouth. ‘Jaul needs to be told about the twins asap. A man has the right to know his own children—’

‘Even if he deserts his wife and never gets back in touch?’ Lizzie protested emotively.

‘Sì, even then,’ Cesare murmured ruefully.

Chrissie told Cesare and Lizzie about her repeated visits to the Marwani Embassy and her continued and equally fruitless attempts to contact Jaul by phone. ‘So, you see, I did try very hard to track him down.’

‘But you still need to take a long-term view of this situation, Chrissie. Set aside the hostility. Concentrate on the children and the future and you won’t go far wrong.’

‘And you do owe Jaul one favour,’ Lizzie said ruefully, startling Chrissie, who was dabbing her face dry and grateful the tear overflow had run its course. ‘You have to go and see him and tell him about the twins before you bring in the lawyers—’

‘For goodness’ sake, I don’t even know where he’s staying!’ Chrissie parried, aghast at that suggestion. ‘In fact he might only have been passing through London.’

‘Why does Chrissie owe Jaul another meeting?’ Cesare enquired of his wife, equally in the dark on that score.

‘He at least had the decency to tell her that they were still married himself, rather than from his lawyers,’ Lizzie pointed out.’ I don’t think you owe him anything more, Chrissie, but I do think he deserves the chance to learn that he’s a father from you and nobody else and in private.’

‘I don’t want to see him...don’t even know if he’s still here in London... I’ve got nothing to wear either!’ Chrissie argued in an unashamed surge of protest, but behind it she knew she was caught because, like her older sister, she also had a sense of fair play.

Jaul had not been comfortable visiting her but, even so, he had done it because he knew it was the right thing to do. How could she be seen to do less?

* * *

Chrissie climbed out of the taxi that Lizzie had insisted she needed, pointing out that searching for a parking space while trying to identify the correct house was the last thing her sister needed in the mood she was in.

Not that finding the house where Jaul was staying had proved a problem, Chrissie acknowledged ruefully, shooting the vast monolith of a building in the most exclusive part of London a wry glance. Cesare’s staff had come up with all the required information. With the kind of high-powered connections her brother-in-law enjoyed, tracking down Jaul had not proved that big a challenge while it had also provided her with extraneous information she had not required. For instance, the huge town house had formerly been an entire crescent of smaller dwellings and it had been purchased in the nineteen thirties and turned into a single dwelling by Jaul’s grandfather to house the Marwani royal family and their numerous staff whenever they came to visit London. Apparently the family had made ridiculously few visits in the many years that had passed since then.

It had been an education for Chrissie to discover that this was one more fact she hadn’t known about the man she had loved and married. Although they had visited London together, he had never once mentioned that his family owned a house there. In much the same way he had never mentioned that he was an only child destined to become a king. His Marwani background had always been a closed book to her from which he had offered her a glimpse of very few pages. In short she knew he had grown up without a mother, had attended a military school and had trained as a soldier in Saudi Arabia. When he’d signed up to study politics at Oxford University it had been his very first visit to the UK.

It shook Chrissie now to accept that Jaul was the sole ruler of his immensely rich country in the Arabian Gulf. She finally understood the arrogance and the authority that had often set her teeth on edge. Jaul had never been in any doubt of who he was and where he was going to end up. No doubt his marriage to Chrissie had just been a brief fun stop on his upwardly mobile royal life curve and had never ever been intended to last.

‘Proceed with great caution,’ Cesare had warned Chrissie once he had established the exact identity of the man whom she had married in such secrecy two years earlier.

That recollection had made Chrissie’s skin turn clammy beneath the sleek turquoise shift dress she had borrowed from her sister’s pre-pregnancy wardrobe. Her shrewd brother-in-law had pointed out that Jaul would have diplomatic immunity, that he was firm friends with several influential members of the British government and that he would have much greater power than most foreign non-resident husbands and fathers might have if it came to a custody battle. Custody battle—the very phrase struck terror into Chrissie’s bones. Cesare assumed that Tarif—all adorable fourteen plump and energetic months of him—would now be heir to the throne of Marwan, which would make him a hugely important child on his father’s terms. As Chrissie’s fear grew in direct proportion to her anxious thoughts, her spine stiffened and her skin grew even chillier. On some craven, very basic level she didn’t want to even try to be civilised; she simply wanted to snatch her kids from Lizzie’s luxurious nursery and flee somewhere where Jaul couldn’t ever find them again.

Instead, however, Chrissie reminded herself that she was supposed to be an adult and able to handle life’s more difficult challenges. She mounted the front steps of the monstrous building with its imposing columns, portico and innumerable windows and pressed the doorbell.

Jaul was lunching in a dining room decorated in high ‘desert’ style circa nineteen thirty by his English grandmother and marvelling at her sheer lack of good taste. He didn’t want to pretend he was in the desert and sit cross-legged like a sheep herder in front of a fake fire; he wanted a table and a chair. Mercifully his personal chef and other staff had travelled with him and the service and the food were exemplary. It didn’t quite make up though for having to sleep in a bedroom decorated like a tent on a ginormous bed made of rough bamboo poles literally lashed together with ropes. Of course, he conceded wryly, the distractions of the extraordinary décor of the royal home in London served to keep his thoughts away from how Chrissie had looked in shorts with those impossibly long and perfect legs on full display.