The sheikh's chosen wife (22 page)

'Maybe that is why he
didn't want to leave me alone with you,' Leona smilingly replied. 'Actually, I
had already guessed it,' she then admitted, adding quietly, 'I know all about
Nadira, you see."

The name had a disturbing
effect on Sheikh Khalifa: he shifted uncomfortably, pulled himself up and
reached out to touch her cheek. 'Rahman needs my son and my son needs you.
Whatever has to happen in the future I need to know that you will always be
here supporting him when I can no longer do so.'

Strange words, fierce,
dark, compelling words that sealed her inside a coating of ice. What was he
saying? What did he mean? Was he telling her that Nadira was still Hassan's only
real option if he wanted to continue in his father's footsteps?

But before she could ask
him to elaborate, as after most brief bursts of energy, Sheikh Khalifa suddenly
lay back exhausted against the cushions and, without really thinking about it,
Leona slipped back into her old routine. She picked up the book lying face down
on the table beside him and began reading out loud to him.

But her mind was
elsewhere. Her mind was filling up with contracts and Hassan's method of
feeding her information on a need-to-know only basis. She saw him as he had
been that same morning, relaxed, at peace with both her and himself. Then
Raschid had begged a private word. When he'd eventually reappeared later it
had been as if he had changed into a different man—a tense, preoccupied and
distant man.

A man who avoided eye
contact, as if he had something to hide...

The old sheikh was
asleep. Leona put down the book.

Doubts; she hated to feel
the doubts return. It was no use, she told herself, she was going to have to
tackle Hassan about what Zafina had said to her. Once he had denied everything
she could put the whole stupid thing away, never to be dredged up again.

And if he didn't deny it?
she asked herself as she left the old sheikh's room to go in search of the
younger one. The coating of ice turned itself into a heavy cloak that weighed
down her footsteps as she walked in between pale blue walls on a cool, polished
sandstone flooring.

She didn't want to do
this, she accepted as she trod the wide winding staircase onto the landing
where pale blue walls changed to pale beige and the floor became a pale blue
marble.

She didn't want to reveal
that she could doubt his word, she thought dully as she passed between doors
made of thick cedar fitted tightly into wide Arabian archways, the very last
one of which led through to Hassan's private suite of offices.

Her head began to ache;
her throat suddenly felt strange hot and tight. She was about five yards away
when the door suddenly opened and Hassan himself stepped out. Slender white
tunic, flowing blue thobe, no covering on his raven-dark head. He saw her and
stopped, almost instantly his expression altered from the frowningly
preoccupied to... nothing.

It was like having a door
slammed in her face. Her doubts surged upwards along with her blood pressure;
she could feel her pulse throbbing in her ears. A prickly kind of heat engulfed
her whole body—and the next thing that she knew, she was lying on the pale blue
marble floor and Hassan was kneeling beside her.

'What happened?' he
rasped as her eyes fluttered open.

She couldn't answer,
didn't want to answer. She closed her eyes again. His curse wafted across her
cheeks. One of his hands came to cover her clammy forehead, the other took a
light grasp of her wrist then he was grimly sliding his arms beneath her
shoulders and knees and coming to his feet.

'Ouch,' she said as her
breasts brushed his breastbone.

Hassan froze. She didn't
notice because from absolutely nowhere she burst into tears! What was the
matter with her? she wondered wretchedly. She felt sick, she felt dizzy, she
hurt in places she had never hurt before! From another place she had never
known existed inside her, one of her clenched fists aimed an accusing blow at
his shoulder.

Expecting him to demand
what he had done to deserve it, she was thrown into further confusion when all
he did was release a strained groan from deep in his throat, then began
striding back the way from which she had come. A door opened and closed behind
them. Lifting her head from his shoulder, she recognised their old suite of
rooms.

Laying her on the bed, he
came to lean over her. 'What did my father say to you?' he demanded, i knew I
should not have left you both alone! Did he say you should not have come back,
is that it?'

Her eyes flew open,
tear-drenched and sparkling. 'Is that what he thinks?'

'Yes—no!' His sigh was
driven by demons. But what demons—? The demons of lies? 'In case you did not
notice, he does not think so clearly any more,' he said tightly.

'Sheikh Abdul was behind
the plot to abduct me; there is nothing unclear about that, as far as I can
see.'

'I knew it was a
mistake.' Hassan sighed, and sat down beside her.

He looked tired and fed
up and she wanted to hit him again. 'You bed to me again,' she accused him.

'By omission,' he agreed.
'And Abdul's involvement cannot be proved,' he added. 'Only by hearsay which is
not enough to risk a war between families.'

'And you've always got
the ready-typed contract involving Nadira if things really do get out of
hand...'

This time she saw the
freeze overtake him. This time she got the answer she had been desperately
trying to avoid. Sitting up, Leona ignored the way her head spun dizzily.
Drawing up her knees, she reached down to ease the straps of her sandals off
the backs of her heels, then tossed them to the floor.

'He told you about that
also?' Hassan asked hoarsely.

She shook her head.
'Zafina did.'

'When?'

'Does it really matter
when?' she derided. 'It exists. I saw it. You felt fit not to warn me about it.
What do you think that tells me about what is really going on around here?'

'It means nothing,' he
claimed. 'It is just a meaningless piece of paper containing words with no
power unless several people place their signatures against it.'

'But you have a copy.'

He didn't answer.

'You had it in your
possession even before you came to Spain to get me,' she stated, because she
knew it was the truth even though no one had actuaUy told her so. 'What was
it—firm back-up in case Raschid failed to bail you out of trouble? Or does it
still carry a lot of weight around with it?'

'You could try trusting
me,' he answered.

'And you, my lord sheikh,
should have tried trusting me, then maybe it would not be the big problem it
is.' With that, she climbed off the bed and began walking away.

'Where are you going?' He
sighed out heavily. 'Come back here. We need to—'

The cold way she turned
to look at him stopped the words; the way she had one hand held to her forehead
and the other to her stomach paled his face. 'I am going to the bathroom to be
sick,' she informed him. 'Then I am going to crawl into that bed and go to
sleep. I would appreciate it if you were not still here when I get to do that.'

And that, Hassan
supposed, had told him. He watched the bathroom door close behind her
retreating figure.

He got up and strode over
to the window beyond which an ink dark evening obbterated everything beyond the
subtle lighting of the palace walls.

So where do we go from
here? he asked himself. When Zafina Al-Yasin had picked her weapon, she'd
picked it well. For Hassan could think of nothing more likely to shatter
Leona's belief in his sincerity than a document already drawn up and ready to
be brought into use should it become necessary. She would not now believe that
he had agreed to the drawing up of such a document merely to buy him time. Why
should she when he had refrained from telling her so openly and honestly before
she'd found out by other means?

Sighing, he turned to
leave the room. It was simpler to leave her alone for now. He could say nothing
that was going to change anything, because he had another problem looming, he
realised, One bigger and more potentially damaging than all that had tried to
damage his marriage before.

He had a contract bearing
his agreement to take a second wife. He had a wife whom he suspected might be
carrying his first child. Leona was never going to believe that the former was
not an insurance policy to protect him against the failure of the latter.

'Faysal,' he said as he
stepped into his aide's office, which guarded the entrance to his own, 'get
Rafiq for me, if you please...'

'You look pale like a
ghost,' the old sheikh remarked.

'I'm fine,' Leona assured
him.

'They tell me you fainted
the other day.'

'I still had my sea legs
on,' Leona explained. 'And how did you find out about it?' she challenged,
because as far as she knew no one but herself and Hassan had been there at the
time!

'My palace walls are
equipped with a thousand eyes.' He smiled. 'So I also know that when he is not
with me my son walks around wearing the face of a man whose father is already
dead."

'He is a busy man doing
busy, important things,' Leona said with a bite that really should have been
resisted.

'He also has a wife who
sleeps in one place while he sleeps in another.'

Getting in practice,
Leona thought nastily. 'Do you want to finish this chapter or not?' she asked.

'I would prefer you to
confide in me,' the old sheikh murmured gently. 'You used to do so all the
time, before I became too sick to be of any use to anyone...'

A blatant plucking of her
heartstrings though it was, Leona could see the concern in his eyes. On a sigh,
she laid the book aside, got up to go and sit down beside him and picked up one
of his cool, dry, skeletal hands to press a gentle kiss

'Don't fret so, old man,'
she pleaded gently. 'You know I will look after your two sons for you. I have
promised. haven't I?'

'But you are unhappy. Do
you think this does not fret me?' 'I—struggle with the reasons why I am here,'
she explained, because she wasn't going to lie. It wasn't fair to lie to him.
'You know the problems. They are not going to go away just because Hassan wants
them to.'

'My son wants you above
all things, daughter of Victor Frayne,' he said, using the Arab way of
referring to her, because by their laws a woman kept her father's name after
marriage. 'Don't make him choose to prove this to you...'

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Don't make him choose...
The next day, those words played inside Leona's head like a mantra, because she
had just begun to realise that Hassan might not be forced to choose anything.

Sickness in the morning,
sickness in the evening, a certain tenderness in her breasts and other changes
in her body that she could no longer ignore were trying to tell her something
she was not sure she wanted to know.

Pregnant. She could be
pregnant. She might be pregnant. She absolutely refused to say that she was most
definitely pregnant. How could she be sure, when her periods had never been
anything but sporadic at best? Plus it had to be too soon to tell. It had to
be. She was just wishing on rainbows— wasn't she?

A month. She had been
back in Hassan's life for a tiny month—and not even a full month! Women just
didn't know that quickly if they had conceived, did they? She didn't know. At
this precise moment she didn't know anything. Her brain was blank, her emotions
shot and she was fighting an ever-growing battle with excitement that was threatening
to turn her into a puff of smoke!

It was this morning that
had really set her suspicions soaring, when she'd climbed out of bed feeling
sick and dizzy before her feet had managed to touch the floor. Then, in the
shower, she'd seen the changes in her breasts, a new fullness, darkening
circles forming round their tips. She'd felt different too—inside, where it
was impossible to say how she felt different, only that she did.

Instinct. What did she
know about the female instinct in such situations?

Doubt. She had to doubt
her own conclusions because the specialists had given her so little hope of it
ever happening for them.

But even her skin felt
different, her hair, the strange, secret glint she kept on catching in her own
eyes whenever she looked in a mirror. She'd stopped looking in the mirror. It
was easier not to look than look and then see, then dare— dare to hope.

I want Hassan, she
thought on a sudden rocketing rise of anxiety.

I don't want Hassan! She
then changed her mind. Because if he saw her like this he would know something
really drastic was worrying her and she couldn't tell him—didn't dare tell
him, raise his hopes, until she was absolutely sure for herself.

She needed one of those
testing kits, she realised. But, if such a thing was obtainable, where could
she get one from without alerting half of Rahman? There was not a chemist's in
the country she could walk into and buy such an obvious thing without setting
the jungle drums banging from oasis to oasis and back again.