Penny Jordan Tribute Collection

‘Do you really think I like or want this any more than you do? And as for planning it! You obviously haven’t listened properly to me, Petra. As I’ve just told you, I wasn’t the one who crawled into your bed! Nor was I the one who begged—’

With a small chagrined moan Petra forced back the shocked emotional tears that were already stinging her eyes.

‘How many more times do I have to tell you that for me not to marry you now would not just relegate you to the status of a… a plaything, it would humiliate your grandfather and his whole family?’ Rashid said bitingly. ‘Quite apart from the fact that you were alone in here with me in an intimate situation—do you really think the fact that we spent the night together last night went unnoticed? Has it really not occurred to you yet that this morning you so obviously looked…’

‘No! I won’t listen to any more,’ she protested.

Every word he said was like a knife in her heart. She could hardly take in what was happening. What he had said. She had enough to do trying to come to terms with the fact that the man she had thought of as Blaize was in actual fact someone quite different, without having to cope with this additional shock!

‘None of this need have happened if you had just been honest with me that evening down on the beach,’ she threw at him wildly. ‘If you had told me then.’

‘When you first approached me I had no idea who you were. I had just returned from a business trip to discover that the idiotic young man who looked after the windsurfers, who I had already had to warn on more than one occasion about his familiarity with the female guests, had been discovered by one of our guests in bed with his wife. Naturally I had had to sack him, and I had gone down to the beach simply to walk and think.’

‘You were putting away the windsurfers,’ Petra accused him bitterly.

Rashid gave a small shrug.

‘An automatic habit. I worked on a Californian beach as a student, and just seeing them lying untidily there…’

‘You could have told me who you were! Stopped me…’ Petra persisted. ‘You may think that you have been very clever, tricking me like this, but I won’t marry you, Rashid.’

‘You don’t have any other choice,’ he told her starkly. ‘Neither of us do! Not now! I cannot—’

‘You cannot what?’ Petra demanded, refusing to allow him to finish speaking. ‘You cannot afford to offend the Royal Family? Well… well, tough! No way am I going to marry you just to… to save your precious reputation—’

She stopped in mid-sentence as Rashid cut across her, his voice sharply cynical. ‘My reputation? Haven’t you listened to anything I have just said? It is your own you should be thinking about! Your own and that of your family. Because what I cannot do, Petra, unless I marry you, is protect you from the gossip that is now bound to occur. And not just about you! I have far too much respect for your grandfather to want to publicly humiliate him by having it known that I have not offered you marriage.’

‘Fine! Your conscience is clear, Rashid! You have offered me marriage. And I am refusing to accept!’

‘Despite the fact that you could be carrying my child?’

For a moment they looked at one another. Petra could feel herself weakening, remembering… But then she made herself face reality. He had lied to her, totally and without compunction, tricked and deceived her, and she could never overlook that, not if she wanted to retain her own self-respect, what little there was left of it!

Determinedly she told him, ‘It could also be that I am not carrying your child! I won’t marry you, Rashid,’ she reinforced.

‘Unfortunately, I am tied up with business meetings which cannot be cancelled or delayed until the day after tomorrow. But rest assured, Petra, on that day I shall be calling on your grandfather to formally request your hand in marriage.’

So intense was her sense of fury and frustration that Petra simply couldn’t speak. Giving Rashid a savagely bitter look, she headed for the door.

To her relief he allowed her to pass through it without making any attempt to stop her or to say anything else.

Calling on her grandfather to request her hand in marriage. She had never heard of anything so archaic! Well, she would soon make it plain to him that his proposal was neither wanted nor acceptable!

CHAPTER NINE

‘AUNT SORAYA,’ Petra exclaimed warmly as she saw her aunt approaching her. ‘I thought you were going out to spend the day with your friend.’

Her aunt had already told Petra with some excitement that she had been invited to visit an old schoolfriend whose daughter had just become betrothed to an extremely wealthy and highly placed prince.

To Petra’s concern her aunt immediately looked not merely flustered but also acutely distressed, with large tears filling her soft brown eyes.

Taking hold of her hands in her own, Petra begged her, ‘Aunt, what is it? What’s wrong? Please tell me—has something happened to your friend or her daughter?’

Emotionally her aunt shook her head.

‘Please,’ Petra urged her. ‘Tell me what’s wrong?’

She had, she realised, become closer to her aunt than she had imagined she would, and the older woman’s air of vulnerability made her feel very protective of her.

‘Petra. I did not wish to tell you this,’ her aunt was saying unhappily. ‘The last thing I want to do is to hurt or anger you.’

Hurt or anger her?

Petra began to frown as a cold finger of icy intuition pressed warningly against her spine.

‘I was to have seen my friend and her daughter today,’ her aunt admitted, ‘But she has telephoned to say that the visit must be cancelled. It is nothing personal against you, Petra. At least not intentionally! My friend understands that you did not mean to… Well, she knows you have had a European upbringing. It is just that she has her daughter to protect, and the family of her husband-to-be are… are very traditional in their outlook…’

She was beginning to stumble slightly over her explanation in very obvious embarrassment, but Petra had already guessed what was coming.

Even so it was still a shock to have her aunt confirm her fears.

‘There has been gossip about you, Petra! I know, of course, that there will be a perfectly acceptable reason for… for… everything… but my friend has heard that you are known to have been alone with Rashid, and that you and he—’

She broke off, blinking away her tears and pressing her hand to her mouth as though she could hardly bring herself to say any more.

‘I cannot believe that Rashid would knowingly behave in such a way, that he would expose you to… that he should not behave honourably and…’

‘Offer to marry me?’ Petra suggested grimly. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, Aunt, that is exactly what he has done. Although I…’

‘He has!’ Suddenly her aunt’s face was wreathed in a relieved smile. Reaching out, she hugged Petra warmly, patently oblivious to the cynicism Petra had been intending to convey in her voice. ‘Oh, Petra I am so happy… So overjoyed for you… for you both. He will make you a wonderful husband. Your grandfather will be so very very pleased.’

‘No, Aunt, you don’t understand,’ Petra tried to protest, suddenly beginning to panic as she realised the interpretation her aunt had put on her admission. It was one thing for her to tell her aunt for the sake of her own pride and her aunt’s comfort that Rashid had offered to marry her, but she had never intended that her aunt should assume she was pleased or, more importantly, that she actually intended to accept.

However, having made her own interpretation of Petra’s words her aunt proved stubbornly hard to change!

Rashid had proposed! Of course it was impossible that Petra might have refused, and every attempt Petra made to tell her that she had done just that was greeted with amused laugher and comments about Petra’s ‘teasing’ until Petra herself fell silent in despairing exasperation.

‘I should have trusted Rashid, of course,’ her aunt was saying. ‘Although it was very thoughtless of you both to put your reputation at so much risk, Petra. Your mother would have hated knowing that people were beginning to talk about you the way they were,’ she reproved her gently.

Her mother! Petra’s heart suddenly ached. Her mother would have hated knowing that her daughter’s name was being bandied about in a scurrilous way, that was true, but she would not have condemned her for what had happened. Petra knew that as well.

‘So, you and Rashid are betrothed,’ her aunt was saying happily. ‘We are going to be so busy, Petra. Oh, my, dear,’ she said, giving Petra another hug. ‘I had not meant to tell you this, but now that you have put my mind at ease with the news of your betrothal I feel that I can. Had Rashid not offered you marriage, it would have done our family a very great deal of harm, and lowered our standing in the community to such an extent that my own husband’s business would have been badly affected—as would your cousin’s chances of making a good marriage. And as for your grandfather… I do not exaggerate, Petra, when I tell you that I think the shame might have killed him.’

Killed him!

Petra stood frozen within her aunt’s warm embrace, feeling as though she had suddenly walked into a trap which had sprung so tightly around her that she would never be able to escape. And it made no difference at all that she had unwittingly and foolishly been the one to spring that trap herself!

There was no way out for her now. For the sake of her family she had no alternative other than to marry Rashid!