It was a matter of honour.
Karim’s honour, and that of his father, his country. The country where he now was Crown Prince after the loss of his brother. He took that role very seriously, it seemed.
CHAPTER SIX
THE SMALL ROOM seemed to shrink even more, the darkness closing in around her as she faced up to the truth of what was happening. She was just a pawn in so many political games. She wasn’t a person, just a piece on a political chessboard. She shivered convulsively, unable to hold back the instinctive response to her thoughts.
‘Are you cold?’ Those sharp black eyes had caught her reaction, and he was moving forward hastily. ‘Shall I put some more coal on the fire—build it up?’
‘No.’ Her shake of the head was determined, almost wild, sending her hair flying around her face. ‘No, thanks.’
All she wanted was to go away and hide somewhere, go into the darkness with her thoughts. Close her eyes and try to hold on to that last image of Harry as he waved from the window when she had driven off. The last time she would ever see the baby brother she was doing this for. Surely Karim, who said that he had lost a brother too—and in a far more permanent way—would understand.
But then she looked up into those opaque eyes, all emotion wiped away—if there had ever been any there in the first place—and she knew that she was dreaming even more if she allowed herself to think that he even saw her as a person. She was that point of honour that had to be dealt with. He would do his duty, deliver her to wherever she needed to be—where he needed her to be—and then he would go on his way and forget her, never even looking back for a second.
‘I’m tired,’ she managed, avoiding the real issue that tormented her. ‘I want to go to bed—to sleep.’
He didn’t even try to hide the way he looked at his watch, checking the time, and just that single sidelong glance told its own story, reminding her of the frequent occasions on which he had done just that already tonight. Checking his phone, his computer, frustrated by the delay that kept them trapped here together. Impatient and anxious to be on his way. To get this matter of duty over and done with, the responsibility that his father had passed on to him, handed over to the people who really wanted her.
And then he could go home, satisfied that he had done his duty. Honour would be served.
‘Yes, I know it’s early,’ she snapped, flinging her own scathing glance at the grandfather clock in the corner, its large white face only barely revealed in the flickering light of the flames. ‘But I’m tired. I had a late night last night. I was talking with my friends,’ she added with even more of an edge as she saw his dark head come up, black eyes narrowing sharply as he stared at her down the long, straight beak of his nose, nostrils actually flaring as if he had caught some distasteful smell just beneath them.
Harry had been restless, overexcited by the party and then unhappy at the thought that she was going away, that his beloved Clemmie would be leaving in the morning and was unlikely to be coming back. In order to let Mary have a much needed night’s sleep, and to indulge herself with one last long night together before those dreadful final farewells, she had sat with the little boy, reading him story after story, and then finally rocking him to sleep in her arms. She had been so afraid of disturbing him that she had sat there for over an hour until she had felt that she could ease herself away and leave him sleeping. As a result she had barely had more than a couple of hours’ rest herself.
‘We could do something...’
Karim cursed himself for letting the truth about the situation with Ankhara slip. It had had exactly the result he had dreaded, set her off in a panic so that now she was restless and unsettled as a nervous cat. He doubted very much that she would be likely to sleep as she had declared, even though the shadows under her eyes did seem to speak of her need to rest. They had darkened since he had seen her first, making him wonder just what had happened in the days since he had arrived at the cottage. What had happened last night? He had waited, watched, until all the lights in the house had gone out, but all he had seen before that was some kid’s party, and, later, a group of mothers arriving to take their little ones home.
‘And what, exactly, would you propose?’ Her head was flung back, huge eyes widening even more as she faced him. ‘Play some music, perhaps. Or watch a film on DVD—oh, no, I forgot—we don’t have any electricity, do we. So that’s a no then.’
‘We could talk.’
Talk! What the hell was he thinking about even suggesting it? Talking meant her moving her lips, drawing attention to the wideness of her mouth, the soft fullness of those rose-tinted lips. Every time she spoke, or when she had opened her mouth to eat or drink, all he had been able to think of had been the way those lips would feel under his, how they would part to the pressure of his tongue. How her mouth would taste deep inside, warm and moist in an intimate caress.
It was all he could do now not to stare fixedly at that mouth, or reach out a hand to trace a finger along the bow shape of her lips.
‘Talk? No, thanks. I’ve had enough lectures on duty and honour from you and everyone else to last me a lifetime.’
He’d missed a beat, watching her lips and tongue frame those words, wanting...
‘Something else then.’ He sounded as if he’d swallowed broken glass, his throat husky and raw, so that she frowned at him when she heard it.
‘Something else?’ She rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘Precisely what? Oh—perhaps you’d like to try a board game—I know Nan has some somewhere. A little old-fashioned looking but they don’t really change, do they? Can I challenge you to a game of Ludo or perhaps you’d prefer Snakes and Ladders?’
She couldn’t make it plainer that she was being sarcastic, but he couldn’t resist taking her up on it, teasing her deliberately.
‘Why not? If that’s what’s available. And I’ve never played either of those—I have to admit to being intrigued to find out just what sort of game goes by the name of—Ludo? And what the devil is Serpents and Ladders?’
‘Snakes. It’s a board game—they both are. And you’re not going to convince me that you actually want...’
‘Oh, but I do.’
The look she turned on him as she tested the truth of his assertion was impatience, indignation and total disbelief all in one. The trouble was that it was pure provocation at the same time, the wicked gleam in her eyes, the faint curl at the corner of her mouth. He hoped to hell that these ridiculously named games would have something to hold his attention, distract him from looking at her, keeping his eyes on the board or something so that he wasn’t so tempted.
Her little hiss of irritation was so appealing that it was worth having suggested this just to hear it, and to see the spark in her eyes as she told him without words that he was going to regret this. The pert challenge of her rear pushing against the denim of her jeans as she bent over a drawer in the sideboard to pull out the box of games was much more difficult to resist and his palms itched to smooth across the taut buttocks, curving over the swell of her hips.
Hell—no! That was the way to destruction and devastation. Why did the one woman to make him this hot and hard in so long have to be the woman who was barred from him? The woman who would destroy his honour and that of his family—his country—if he tangled with her. It would be one hell of a lot easier if she wasn’t giving off signals that a blind man could read at a hundred paces. She was as drawn to him as he was to her, but they could not, they must not act on it.
Needing to hide the brutally physical effect she was having on him, he sat down hard on the settee she had just vacated and forced his attention on to the boxes she had lifted from the drawer. It wasn’t easy. The swing of her hair as she placed the boxes on the table brushed against his face in a way that was a torment to his heightened senses, and her position as she bent to open the top gave a savagely tempting glimpse of the shadowed valley of her cleavage and the creamy curves of her breasts. Only by digging his teeth hard into his lower lip, almost drawing blood, did he manage to hold back his groan of primitive response.
‘So tell me the rules...because there are rules, I presume?’
Weren’t there always rules? Rules that ran your life on regimented lines. Rules that would cause chaos if broken. The scar on his chest stung as if in response to his thoughts and he rubbed at it abstractedly. If he had needed any reminder of what happened when the rules got twisted and shattered, it was right there, underneath his shirt, etched into his skin. His life had been built on loyalty. Loyalty to his father, to his older brother the Crown Prince, to his country. Those had been the rules—until he’d bent them so that his brother could ease up on the protocol he fretted at. As a result, those rules had been blown so wide apart that new ones had to be put in their place.