She shuddered, and he sensed her revulsion. ‘You don’t have to talk about it.’
‘You need to know. You need to know it all to understand.’ Her voice sounded hollow and empty, as if it was coming from a long, long way away. ‘He made me dance, if you could call it that. He watched me from the bed, where he lay naked, and while he— Oh, God, while he tried and tried, and it was my fault that he couldn’t—my fault that every time he failed.’
‘It’s okay,’ he soothed, stroking her jet-black hair. ‘It’s not your fault.’
She blinked up at him, her watery eyes desolate. ‘It’s not okay. Because by the end I wanted so much for him to succeed I tried to make him come. I thought that maybe then he would be happier. Maybe then he would not be so angry all the other times.’
His hand stilled in her hair, and despite the warmth from the sun a chill descended his spine. ‘What other times?’
She buried her head in his chest again, as if too ashamed to look at him. ‘There were men who were not such family men, vile men, who believed Hussein was simply being generous, who were only too happy to agree to whatever Hussein wanted for a piece of his wife. But once he had that agreement he would get angry and pretend to take offence, and have them thrown out.’
She jerked in his arms as she gulped in air.
‘The ambassador from Karakhistar was one of them. He tried to touch me, brushing his fat fingers through my hair, breathing his ugly hot breath on me, before Hussein had him ejected. He was there today, at the coronation.’ She shuddered in his arms. ‘I saw him watching me, hating me…’
Rafiq felt sick to the stomach. The enormity of the wrongs against her was inconceivable, and he hugged her closer, trying to replace the hurt, the humiliation. No wonder she’d looked so stricken when he had arrived to take his seat. And no wonder she’d been a shadow of herself when he’d first seen her outside his mother’s apartments, unsmiling, her whole body leaden with the abuse Hussein had subjected her to.
Anger simmered in his veins. Because, for all the indignity inflicted upon her, she had remained in the marriage until Hussein had died. ‘Why did you do the things you did? Why did you stay with him?’
Again came the quiet, chillingly flat voice. ‘I had a kitten he had given me as a wedding present—a perfect Persian kitten, as white as snow. The first time I tried to say no he took it from my hands. He was so angry. I thought he just wanted to get it out of my hands so he could hit me. But he didn’t hit me. He didn’t need to. One minute he was gently stroking the kitten’s fur. The next he had snapped its neck.’ She squeezed her eyes shut, her teeth savaging her lip. ‘He told me it could just as easily be someone I loved, a friend or one of my family, and I believed him. And then he gave me another kitten the next day.’ She looked up at him. ‘I tried to save it, Rafiq, I tried to protect it. Believe me, I tried.’
He curled his arms more tightly around her, feeling sick to his stomach. ‘What happened?’
‘I found it on my pillow, the day Hussein discovered one of the security guards had secretly given me driving lessons. The guard was taken to hospital, bashed senseless. Two lessons! Only two, and that innocent man suffered so much. But Hussein never gave me another kitten after that. He didn’t need to.’
Tears flooded her beautiful eyes and he held her close and rocked her, not knowing what else to do, what else to say, until she pushed herself up, swiping tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. She took a deep breath and then sighed it out.
‘And even though Hussein’s gone, that’s why you can never marry me now. Because as King you will be expected to entertain some of the same people Hussein met, whether it’s the ambassador of Karakhistar or any one of a hundred other dignitaries who saw me being offered in exchange for deals and favours. How can they be expected to meet me? For even if they refused, why would they not believe that someone, some time, would have taken advantage of Hussein’s generous offer? How could such a woman ever be Queen? People will talk. And sooner or later the story will get out. The tabloids would love it. Qusay’s Queen, no more than a harlot. The monarchy would become a joke.’
And he pulled her to him, crushing her head to his chest, pressing his lips to her hair, wanting to tell her that she was wrong, wanting to tell her that there was a way out, but finding nothing he could say, nothing he could do.
Because she was right.
The gossip rags would have a field-day.
Damn his brother! For, as much as he had a grudging respect for the strength of character that had seen him choose the woman he loved over a responsibility borne of blood, in doing so his brother had ruined Rafiq’s own chance of love.