Penny Jordan Tribute Collection

She couldn’t see what was inside the box, but waited patiently as her grandfather sighed and muttered to himself, obviously sifting through its contents until he had finally found what he wanted.

‘Read this,’ he commanded her brusquely, handing her a worn airmail envelope.

‘It is your father’s letter to me, telling me of your birth.’

Hesitantly Petra took the envelope from him. She wasn’t sure she was ready to read what her father might have written. All her life she had looked up to him as a man of strong sturdy morals and infinite compassion, a man of the highest probity and honour. If she should read something that damaged that belief…

‘Read,’ her grandfather was urging her impatiently.

Taking a deep breath, Petra did so.

The letter was addressed to her grandfather with true diplomatic formality, using his titles.

‘To he who is the father of my beloved wife Mija,

I have the felicitation of informing you that I am now the proud father of the most beautiful baby daughter. I had thought when Mija came into my life that there could be no place in it to love another human being, so great and all-encompassing is my love for her, but I was wrong. I write to you now as one father to another to tell you of the most wonderful, precious gift we have received in Petra’s birth, and to tell you also that we now share common ground—we are both fathers—we have both been granted the unique privilege of being gifted with daughters.

And it is as a father that I write to you begging you to reconsider your decision regarding the exclusion of Mija from your family—for your own sake and not ours. I have made a solemn vow that I shall surround Mija with all the love she will ever need. We have each other and our beautiful daughter and our lives will be filled with love and joy. But what of you? You have turned away your own daughter and denied yourself her love and that of the grandchild she has given you.

I beg you to think of this and to put aside your pride. I know how much it would mean to Mija to have word from you, especially at this time.

Whatever your decision, I have made a vow to my daughter that I shall ensure that you, her grandfather, and the rest of the family are kept informed of her life.

The letter bore her father’s formal signature at its end, but Petra could barely focus on it as the paper trembled in her hand and her eyes stung with tears. It shamed her that she could have doubted her father for so much as a single heartbeat.

As he took the letter from her, returning it to its envelope and replacing it carefully in the box before relocking it, her grandfather said gruffly, ‘Your father was a good man, even though he was not the man I would have chosen for my Mija.’

‘My father was a wonderful, wonderful, very special man,’ Petra corrected him proudly.

Had her mother known what her father had done? If so she had never spoken of it to her, but then neither had her father! Suddenly, despite her private knowledge of her grandfather’s secret purpose in wanting her here in Zuran, she was glad that she had come!

‘He understood my feelings as a father,’ her grandfather acknowledged.

Petra had to close her eyes to conceal the intensity of the emotions that rushed over her.

‘You say that now! You claim to have loved my mother. But you never made any attempt to contact her—to…’ Petra refused to say the word ‘forgive’, because so far as she was concerned her mother was the one who had the right to extend that largesse, not her grandfather! ‘You must have known how much it would have meant to her to hear from you!’

Impossible for her to hold back her feelings—or her pain—any longer. Petra knew that her grandfather must be able to hear it in her voice just as she could herself.

‘When she left you told her that you would never permit her name to be spoken in your hearing ever again. You said that she was dead to you and to her family, and you forbade them to have anything to do with her. You let her die—’

Petra heard herself sobbing like a lost child. ‘You let her die believing that you had stopped loving her! How could you do that?’

As Petra fought for self-control she could see the pain shadowing her grandfather’s eyes, and suddenly it seemed as though he shrunk a little, and looked even older and more fragile than he had done when she had first walked into the room.

‘There is nothing I can say that will ease your pain. No words I can offer you will lighten either your burden—or my own,’ she heard him saying sombrely. ‘It is still too soon. Perhaps in time… But at my age time is no longer either a friend or an ally. I am sorry that we have not been able to make you properly welcome here in your mother’s home, Petra, but now that that old fool my doctor has ceased his unnecessary fussing I shall give instructions that a room is to be prepared for you. We have much to discuss together, you and I.’

Like his desire to see her married to the man of his choice? Petra wondered suspiciously, abruptly back on her guard; he might look frail and sorrowful now, but she couldn’t forget the cunning and deceit which history had already proved him capable of.

And once she was living here beneath his roof she would virtually be a prisoner. With no passport she had no means of leaving the country! Which meant it was imperative that she persisted with her plan to have Rashid refuse to consider her as a wife.

Even if that meant seeing Blaize again and the risk that could entail?

Unable to give herself a truly rational answer, Petra diverted her own thoughts by telling her grandfather, in a cool voice she intended would make him fully aware of her determination to retain her independence, ‘I have made arrangements for an overnight trip into the desert tomorrow, so—’

‘The desert!’ To her surprise, his eyes lit up with pleasure and approval. ‘It is good that you wish to see the land that is so much a part of your heritage. I wish that it was possible for me to go with you! But you shall tell me all about it! I shall inform your hotel that Kahrun will be collecting you to bring you here once you return.’

He was beginning to look tired, but instinctively Petra sensed that his pride would not allow him to admit any weakness. Whatever else she had been lied to about, Petra could see now that so far as his health was concerned he had genuinely been ill. It was there in the greyish tinge to his skin, the vulnerability of his frail frame. An unexpected—and unwanted—emotion filled her: a sense of kinship and closeness, an awareness of the blood tie they shared that she simply had not been prepared for and which it seemed she had no weapons to fight against. He was her grandfather, the man who had given life to the mother she had loved so much, a potential bridge via which she could recapture and relive some of her most precious memories.

Swallowing against the lump in her throat, Petra got up, and as her grandfather reached out his hands to her, Petra placed hers in them.

‘Beloved child of my beloved child,’ he whispered brokenly to her, and then the door opened and Kahrun, his manservant, arrived to escort her back to the hotel.

It was only when she was finally being driven back to her hotel by Kahrun that Petra mentally questioned just why she had not challenged her grandfather with her knowledge of his plans for her. Had the emotions he had displayed been genuine and as overwhelming as they had seemed? Or had he simply been manipulating the situation and her for his own ends? Surely she wasn’t foolish enough to be influenced by her own unwilling acknowledgement of his frailty, a long-ago letter from her father, and a few emotional words?

But there was more to the situation than that! A lot more! In his presence, in the home which had once been her mother’s, Petra had abruptly been forced to recognise and acknowledge a deep subterranean pool of previously hidden emotions.

Her parents’ deaths had forced her to grow up very quickly, to become mature whilst she was still very young, and in many ways had forced her to become her own parent. Her godfather, kind though he was, was a bachelor, a man dedicated to his career, who had had no real idea of the emotional needs of a seventeen-year-old girl. Had she been a different person, Petra knew, she might quite easily have gone off the rails. Her godfather’s lifestyle meant that she had been allowed a considerable amount of unsupervised freedom, and she had been called upon to make decisions about her life and her future that should more properly have been made by someone far more adult. The result of this had been that she’d had to ‘police’ her own behaviour, and to take responsibility for herself, emotionally and morally.

Now, today, in her grandfather’s room, she had suddenly realised just what a heavy burden those responsibilities had been, and how much she had yearned to have someone of her own to carry them for her—to counsel and guide her, to protect her, to love her! How much, in fact, she had needed the family which had been denied to her! And how much a small, weak part of her still did…

That was where her real danger lay, she recognised. It lay in her wanting the approval and acceptance of her ‘family’ so much that she could fall into the trap of allowing herself to exchange her freedom and independence for them!

The weight of her own thoughts was beginning to make her head ache.

CHAPTER SIX

GRIMLY Petra blinked the slight grittiness from her eyes as she studied her reflection in her bedroom mirror. She had barely slept, and when she had she had been tormented by confusing dark-edged dreams in which she was being pursued by a white-robed persecutor, his features hidden from her. In her nightmare she had called out to Blaize to rescue her, but although she could see him he had not been paying any heed to her pleas, had instead been engrossed with the scantily clad bevy of women surrounding him.

Only once had he actually turned to look at her, and then he had shaken his head and told her cruelly, ‘Go away, little virgin. I do not want you.’

And now, even though the night was over, Petra felt as though its dark shadow still hung over her. There was hardly any time left for her to convince Rashid that she was not a suitable bride, and once again Blaize had made no attempt to get in touch with her.

Lethargically she moved away from the mirror. She had already packed an overnight bag, as instructed by the fax she had received from the tour operator, and she was dressed in what she hoped would be a suitable outfit of short-sleeved tee shirt and a pair of khaki combat-style pants with sturdy and hopefully sand-proof trainers. She had, as instructed, a long-sleeved top to cover her arms from the heat and the sand, a hat, a pair of sunglasses and a large bottle of water. But the sense of adventure and intrigue with which she had originally booked the trip had gone, leaving in its place a lacklustre feeling of emptiness.

Because she hadn’t heard from Blaize? A man she had known less than a week? A man who quite patently cynically used his sexuality to fund a lifestyle that was in direct opposition to everything that Petra herself believed in! She couldn’t possibly really be trying to tell herself that she was emotionally attracted to him? That in such a short space of time he had become so necessary to her that a mere twenty-four hours without him had left her feeling that her whole life was empty and worthless?

Now she was afraid, Petra admitted shakily, and with good reason! What she was thinking truly was cause for the horrified chills running down her spine! There was no way she could allow herself to be in love with Blaize.

Be in love? Since when had love entered the equation? she tried to mock herself.

Only two days ago she had been finding it hard to admit that she just might find him sexually attractive. Two days before that she had barely known that he existed. Yet here she was, trying to talk herself into believing she loved him! No, not trying to talk herself into it, trying to talk herself out of it, Petra corrected herself swiftly.

Her telephone rang. Quickly she picked up the receiver. It was the front desk informing her that her transport had arrived.

Picking up her overnight bag, Petra told herself sternly that a little breathing space would do her good. What a pity she was living in the modern century, though, and not a previous one where it might have been possible for a traveller attached to a camel train to pass through a country’s borders without the necessity of producing a passport…

A group of newly arrived holidaymakers were filling the foyer, and the concierge staff had no time to do anything more than point Petra in the direction of the waiting vehicle she could see outside, a logo painted on its side.