‘What a distasteful thing to say to me,’ Jasim breathed, his beautiful dark eyes cold as black ice as he cast aside the towel and went into the dressing room. ‘You should be ashamed of taunting me with such a tawdry accusation. I’m dining with my father this evening and I won’t see you until tomorrow.’
Elinor folded her arms and compressed her lips. She was still very angry with him for misjudging her, but at the same time she was so worked up and upset that she could as easily have burst into floods of tears as shouted at him. ‘Why should I care what you do or where you go?’ she demanded mutinously, determined not to show weakness.
‘Clearly I need to ask you to watch your manners and to avoid controversial subjects like culture with my relatives tomorrow,’ Jasim spelt out flatly. ‘Remember your behaviour reflects on both Sami and I.’
‘I’ll try not to embarrass anyone,’ Elinor breathed tightly, mortified to death by that request and reminder.
Frozen to the spot, she stood by the window, only dimly aware that he was dressing in traditional robes similar to those his father had worn. As he strode out of the dressing room she turned to look at him. The white cotton thoub he wore below the black goldtrimmed cloak was buttoned, embroidered and immaculate. With his head covered and a double black cord binding the gutrah in place, his transformation into a regal desert prince was complete.
Twenty minutes after his father’s departure, Sami was returned to Elinor’s care accompanied by a gaggle of chattering attendants and a long procession of nursery furniture and toys. He was installed in the big room across the corridor from the master bedroom. Once he had gone down for the night, wonderfully impervious to all the excitement that was centred on him, Elinor accepted the light meal Zaid had had prepared for her.
She felt absolutely wretched. Laila had set out to trip her up and had succeeded beautifully with her booby trap of a reference to Jasim’s fictional plans to take another wife. Now Jasim was affronted and convinced she had been making fun of him on the score of a delicate cultural issue. He also thought she was a shameless liar; if his father could not confirm Murad and her mother’s romance thirty years earlier, there was nobody else to perform that feat for her. Had the King forgotten his elder son’s university romance? Or did he genuinely not know about Murad’s youthful relationship with an Englishwoman?
Whatever, Jasim continued to believe that Elinor had wantonly schemed to destroy his brother’s marriage and take Yaminah’s place, only to surrender that ambition when a more accessible member of the royal family strode into her firing line. If that was what he thought of her, what sort of a relationship could she possibly have with her son’s father…?
CHAPTER EIGHT
AT SOME timeless hour before daybreak, voices wakened Elinor. She had not slept well. Her argument with Jasim had kept on replaying inside her head and she had thought of other words she might have thrown, last words, final words, more cutting words, even the ultimate putdown. Having run the gamut of those pointless replays she had finally questioned t
he sheer level of ongoing anger that was preventing her from finding peace. Now her head was heavy, her body weary and her eyes swollen. She felt awful and could hardly credit that this was her second wedding day.
Frowning, she sat up in bed, registering from the dim glow penetrating the curtains at the window that the sun had not yet fully risen. She fumbled for the light by the bed.
‘Allow me.’ It was Jasim’s voice and the unexpectedness of his appearance startled her.
‘Yes?’ Elinor prompted tightly when the lamp flooded the room with light and illuminated his tall figure by the bed. He was no longer wearing robes and he bore little resemblance to his usually immaculately groomed self. He was clad in faded jeans and a T-shirt, his black hair was tousled and he was badly in need of a shave. But it was his brilliant ebony-lashed dark eyes and the strain etched there that captured and held her attention.
He spread lean brown hands in an expressive movement that was remarkably eloquent of his mood. ‘I’m sorry for waking you but I couldn’t sleep. We parted bitterly, which is not how it should be today of all days,’ he breathed tautly. ‘I lost my temper. I was rude. I was cruel…’
‘Yes…’ Elinor could barely breathe that word of confirmation because conflicting feelings were at war inside her. He was so serious and full of guilt that she could not maintain her distance and still hate him. With all her being she wanted to reach out to him at that moment and indeed even as she spoke she stretched out a hand to him.
His lean, stunningly handsome face grave, he immediately closed his hand over hers. ‘When I have to picture you flirting with Murad, something twists inside me and I am filled with such anger I cannot hold it in,’ he admitted in a driven undertone.
As it dawned on her that it was jealousy and possessiveness he was describing her defences gave and she pulled on the hand holding hers to bring him down on the bed beside her. ‘But there wasn’t any flirting with Murad…ever,’ she stressed earnestly. ‘Your brother talked to me as if he was my father. He never said anything that couldn’t have been said in front of his wife or indeed anyone. He was kind to me but that was all.’
Beautiful dark eyes locked to hers, Jasim exhaled slowly. ‘I will try to accept that. It is not that I want to disbelieve your story about your mother…’
‘But it was that story that brought me into your family’s life in the first place,’ Elinor pointed out.
Jasim met her clear green eyes, which bore not a shadow of constraint, and resolved to settle the issue by having it investigated. He knew he should have talked to his brother about Elinor, but he had not been able to make himself take that sensible route to enlightenment and then Murad had died. For the first time, however, Jasim was wondering if he could have totally misunderstood Elinor and Murad’s relationship, which he had never had the opportunity to observe for himself.
‘Please don’t think I’m saying something I shouldn’t, but when you mentioned that Murad had had extramarital affairs, I realised why his wife travelled with him everywhere he went,’Elinor admitted uncomfortably. ‘I may be wrong, but I suspect that your brother’s wife was insecure and more likely than most to be jealous and suspicious of her husband’s behaviour around other women—’
‘You are saying that Yaminah saw something that was not there,’ Jasim remarked without expression.
‘I remember her staring at me once when she saw Murad and I laughing at something Zahrah had said. She didn’t speak any English, which was awkward. I think your brother was fond of me in a mild way because my mother had once meant a great deal to him. Perhaps that was misinterpreted, I don’t know. What I do know was that there was never any suggestion of sexual interest in his attitude to me.’
Jasim was still challenged to credit that his womanising brother could have been unreceptive to Elinor’s looks and appeal. But he was equally determined not to allow the issue to divide them. ‘I too suffer from a suspicious nature when it comes to women,’ he confessed, lifting a hand to stroke a forefinger along the alluring pout of her full pink lower lip. ‘Three years ago, I was seeing a woman called Sophia who belonged to one of your country’s titled families. I thought about marrying her. I believed she was a woman of good character and integrity and then the tabloid press exposed her for what she really was…’
‘Oh…’ Elinor said tremulously, her mind only half on the conversation as his finger slid into her mouth and she laved it with her tongue, heat blossoming between her thighs while she dizzily met his intent gaze. ‘And what was she?’
‘She’d been a real party girl, who had dabbled in drugs and had countless affairs. She had also had surgery to restore her long-lost virginity for my benefit,’ he advanced with a roughened laugh, his attention sliding against his will to the neckline of her nightgown where the shadowy cleft and the peach smooth slopes of her full, firm breasts were on tantalising display. ‘Yet that was of much less importance to me than all the lies she had told and I had swallowed. She had me fooled.’
And Elinor heard the lingering bitterness and hurt pride in that admission and recognised how afraid he was that he might fall into the same trap again. ‘But you can’t possibly believe that all women are the same,’ she whispered, her breath feathering in her throat.
‘Right now, I don’t know what I believe…or that I care, aziz.’ The hot blood settling heavily in his groin, Jasim brought his mouth down with a driven groan on hers, his tongue plundering the sweetness from between her readily parted lips with an urgency that made her heart pound like a drum within her ribcage.
Jasim jerked back from her with a look of frustration. ‘I can’t stay. It’s almost dawn and it takes hours to prepare a bride for her wedding.’