by Pippa Roscoe
Odir stepped towards her, momentarily blocked by the wind as if even the elements were working in her favour, trying to keep him from reaching her, touching her. But that desire, that need, was a weakness he couldn’t afford—had never been able to afford.
So he said words that he knew would keep her at bay. ‘Hardly the dutiful wife—running off just after my speech, habibti.’
Eloise whirled round, hair flying, skirts billowing in the wind. Odir hadn’t realised how close he had come to her and he should have. Because she shoved at him with both her hands and only the surprise of it allowed her enough force to push him back.
He felt Malik move behind him. Did he really think that his slip of a wife was enough of a threat to justify her removal? He raised his arm to ward Malik off, even as almost laughably light blows rained down on his chest.
‘In all the time I have known you I have never known you to lie,’ she hurled at him.
‘No, that was your department.’
‘Well, the world will be bitterly disappointed when instead of news of the next heir for Farrehed they’ll be receiving news of the Prince’s divorce.’
* * *
Eloise gave no heed to the fact that she was shouting. And that was something she never did.
‘Never raise your voice, never cause a scene.’
Her father’s directives were lost on her now, in the sheer fury of what had been done to her in the last ten hours.
She saw Malik shift on his feet behind Odir and it brought her back to the present immediately. Instantly she stepped away from her husband.
‘Leave us, Malik,’ her husband ordered with a familiar ruthlessness.
‘But My—’
‘Stop right there, Malik. I’ve told you. Leave.’
‘It doesn’t change a thing, you know. What you just said,’ Eloise claimed desperately. ‘I’ll still leave.’
‘I think you underestimate the sheer power of social media. Right now there are over a hundred of society’s best-placed individuals drinking to our health and that of our unborn child. The news will spread quickly, and before the sun rises over the palace walls in Farrehed there will be a celebration the like of which has never been seen by my countrymen.’
With each word he stepped closer and closer to her, pushing her back further towards the rail of the balcony, building a wall around her from which she couldn’t escape.
‘And what happens when I fail to produce this immaculately conceived child? What happens in a few months’ time when I’m not showing any signs of pregnancy? Are you going to tell another lie to cover it up? Will you expect me and your whole country to mourn the death of a lie?’
The horror of it was all too much for Eloise.
‘You’re an utter bastard, Odir.’
And that, it seemed, was what it took to push her husband over the edge.
‘You think I wanted this?’
Now it was he who was shouting—and she had never heard her husband shout. Not even that fateful night when he’d ordered her from his sight and his palace.
‘Do you think that I enjoyed telling that lie?’
‘It doesn’t really matter to me whether or not you got some perverse enjoyment out of it. I will not agree to this. It’s the twenty-first century, Odir. You can’t expect to lie, bribe and cheat me back to your side.’
‘You really think that after this you’d be able to leave and live some kind of normal life? Go back to whatever man you have holed up in Switzerland?’
‘What man? Seriously? You think I’ve been living with someone in Zurich? Tell me, Odir, is there anyone that I haven’t slept with other than yourself?’
He glared at her in the light of the moon.
‘And when this immaculately conceived child does make an appearance will you be asking for a DNA test?’
His response cut through her like a knife.
‘You will, of course, undergo medical assessment before any child of mine is conceived.’
The horror, the invasion of her privacy that he so carelessly described was sickening. So much so that she couldn’t help the bitter laugh that dropped from her lips.
‘And just how, exactly, were you planning on having this child with a woman you can barely look at, let alone touch?’
But even as the words left her lips the memory of his lips against hers earlier that evening sprang to life. Eloise relived every second of it—the way his tongue had stroked against hers, the way he had brought to life a passion she’d only imagined she was capable of. And she hated herself for that. How she hated the way her lips had clung to him as if she were dying of thirst and only he could quench it.
‘Were you hoping that you could do this, too, without being present? Will you call in the doctors to help you with the problem? You couldn’t even give me a wedding night!’
‘I didn’t have a choice! What would you have had me do? Turn my back on my country? Let it descend into war with Terhren?’
He bit back a curse that felt heavy on his tongue. For that was so close—too close—to the truth of what had nearly happened that night.
‘No, but you could have said something. You could have explained.’
‘There was no time. I couldn’t have returned to you even if I’d wanted to.’
But that wasn’t the truth was it? his mind whispered accusingly. He could have gone to her. Explained. But he’d been overcome by their shared passion. He’d nearly taken her there in the hallway, where anyone might have seen.
The desire between them had always been powerful. It had been there at their first meeting in the stables. It had been there during those stolen moments he’d found with her during their engagement. Pulsing between them.
And it had been there when his aide had come to find him the night of their wedding. The aide who had interrupted that kiss...the kiss he’d never been able to forget. Even the news that his father had invaded Terhren had only just been enough to douse the need he’d had for Eloise that night.
The need that spoke volumes as to how quickly and how much she had come to mean to him in such a short space of time. A need that he’d promised himself he would never succumb to. Not after he had seen the consequences of such need through the grief-stricken madness that had descended over his father when he’d lost his wife. When he and Jarhan had lost their mother.
‘Okay, Odir,’ she said, in mock appeasement. ‘Fine—you didn’t have time to tell me what was going on. You didn’t have time to ask an aide to send me word as I sat there that night, waiting for you to come back, in a dress I couldn’t undo by myself. I had to cut it off with scissors, Odir! But I’ll give you that night. What of the next? And the next? And the one after that?’
‘It took three weeks, Eloise—three weeks to talk the Sheikh of Terhren down from a war that would have ruined both our countries.’
‘And which war were you preventing after those three weeks? What was it that stopped you from explaining to me what was going on then? From telling me what you were dealing with? You lied to me, Odir. Before our marriage you told me it would be a partnership. You told me we would share the royal burden together.’
And he had meant it. He had meant his promise to her then. But he had underestimated just how far his father’s destruction had spread. Abbas had used Odir’s preoccupation with Eloise, with the wedding, with building the kind of relationship he wanted—the one she now taunted him with—against him, and had laid plans that Odir had spent the last six months ruthlessly undoing.
His conscience poked at him again. She was right. He should have informed her of the extent to which Farrehed had been in trouble. He could have even taken her with him on diplomatic missions. Had he been able to trust himself—had he been able to control the desire that whipped up a storm between them every time she came near...
At the heart of it, Odir was genuinely afraid that if he’d allowed himself to dive into the desire that burned between them he would have become his father.
But h
e couldn’t admit that to his wife now. He couldn’t afford to show such weakness. Not at a time when she, unknowingly, held so much power.
* * *
‘I couldn’t have returned to you even if I’d wanted to.’
She hated how those words had made her feel. Hated it that he still had the power to hurt her with callously delivered words.
‘I did what I had to, Eloise. As I am doing now.’
‘And I am doing what I have to. There is no way I would bring a child into this...marriage. You clearly think so little of me you still believe I am a woman who slept with your own brother—’
His arm came up between them and slashed through the night air.
‘Don’t speak of it. The past is the past. It’s dead to me. It doesn’t matter. All that matters now is tomorrow and that you are by my side for it.’
‘I won’t let you shut me up—not this time. Nothing happened between me and Jarhan. Nothing.’
For the first time Odir acknowledged that something wasn’t quite ringing true. If she really wanted a divorce from him she’d admit to having an affair with Jarhan, wouldn’t she? But she was defending herself against the accusation—defending herself in a way that he’d never given her the chance to do that night. Was it possible that he’d been wrong? That he’d misinterpreted the situation?
‘You once said that we could be more than our fathers—that we didn’t have to follow the manipulative paths they once had. But you, of them all, are the worst. Because they didn’t lie about their intentions. So, no,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘No, I won’t return to your side. So you’ve told the world, Odir, that I am pregnant with your child? I don’t care. I don’t care what they say about me.’
And she realised that was the truth. She hadn’t lied to him when she’d told him she’d changed. She had found herself in Zurich and that had endowed her with a sense of self and a strength that even the Prince of Farrehed couldn’t take away.
‘You can take your lies, your money, and stick it up your...your royally wiped arse.’
‘My royally wiped...? Are you kidding me right now?’
‘No, Odir. I’m serious. Very serious. I will have that divorce. No matter what you do or say.’
* * *
Out across the river Big Ben began its peal, chiming the twelve strikes of midnight. Each tone crashed through him like an embodiment of impending doom.
Bong.
‘No, habibti. You won’t. Because you can’t.’
Bong.
Each chime prevented him from taking a breath. Each chime punctuated the air between them just as her words had.
‘Why do you need this so badly, Odir? Why can’t you let me go?’
She was always going to ask him the question, and he was always going to have to answer it.
There was an innocence, a wealth of curiosity in her words, because she knew nothing of what she was asking. But he would answer her. Just as he would answer the questions of the rabid press in eight hours’ time.
‘Because, Eloise, at seven this morning, Swiss time, my father died. I am now King of Farrehed.’
CHAPTER FIVE
August 2nd, 00.00-01.00, Heron Tower
FOR THE SECOND time in as many hours Eloise felt as if the world had turned on its axis and everything she’d thought she knew, thought she could trust in, was gone.
‘Dead? How can that be?’ she asked.
Despite her feelings for him, it seemed utterly impossible to her that Abbas, King of Farrehed, was gone. He had been so full of grit and determination. Even if that determination had often pointed in the wrong direction.
Odir’s father had seemed like an indestructible force of nature—not one who would ever leave this world. She knew that Odir and his father had had a difficult relationship. One that had been fraught with undercurrents she had barely been privy to. Odir had never discussed his father with her. Not once. Even before their marriage.
‘Three weeks ago he suffered a stroke and fell into a coma. The doctors tried everything they could,’ Odir said, blocking the painful memories of the last time he had spoken with his father and instead focusing on the words the doctor had shared with him over the phone only eighteen hours before.
He looked at his wife and suddenly wanted to reach out to her. Offer comfort at her obvious distress. And then he realised how ridiculous that was. Because surely it was he who should need comfort? He who should be in distress? But he searched his soul and all he felt was numb. A numbness that had descended long before his argument with his father three weeks before.
‘Why have we not heard about this? What are you doing in England? You should be in Farrehed.’
Her voice peppered him with the questions and accusations he had aimed at himself over and over again that day. But discussions with his brother, with his closest advisors, had all reached the same conclusion. For him to return to Farrehed and assume the throne—without contention from the tribes on the outskirts of Farrehed, from the neighbouring countries who were still trying to cash in on the secret deals his father had done—he would very much need Eloise by his side. To present a traditional, perfect royal family picture.
After all these years and everything he had done to prove himself—everything he had done in the name of bettering his country—it was still absolutely nothing, almost insignificant, without this woman on his arm.
‘I will return to Farrehed later today. With my Queen beside me.’
And finally he could see, dawning on his wife’s beautiful face, the true implications of this news. The true need he had for her to be by his side.
* * *
Even with shock after shock raining down on her, it surprised Eloise to find out just how much that hurt. That it wasn’t because of her, and it wasn’t born of any feelings for her that he wanted her back.
Even though she had suspected some ulterior need beneath Odir’s proposal, it had never been this. And it was then that Eloise realised she had been cherishing a small hope that perhaps her husband had wanted her for more than just a means to an end.
Not that she should be focusing on that. Odir had lost his father—Farrehed had lost its King. Eloise realised just as much as her husband clearly did that there was no way the country would survive without its Queen.
Even if she was only a means to an end Eloise wasn’t sure that she could turn her back on the country where she had spent two years. When she’d worked for the medical foundation she had found something that had made sense to her. She had fallen in love with the people and had loved Farrehed as much as she did her birth country.
But was that enough? Could she really sacrifice her happiness for Farrehed?
Eloise wanted to sink down onto one of the small white squares that littered the balcony, feeling the weight of just half of what Odir must be feeling, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. She had been brought up better than that. She couldn’t crumble. Not if Odir had not.
‘Obviously you need some time to process this, Eloise,’ Odir said.
‘What? More time than you have allowed yourself?’
‘Stop fighting me. Please.’
It was the first time she’d ever heard that word fall from his lips. Please. There was something so resigned about the way he said it. So...so mournful, she realised.
* * *
Odir watched his wife’s shoulders begin to shake, as if tiny tremors were working their way through her body. He couldn’t tell whether it was from the cold or the shock. Though even he recognised the unseasonable English heat—if it could be called heat—that surrounded them in the midnight air.
He slipped off his jacket and placed it over her slight frame, pulling it tight around her. Whether it was this simple act of caring for his wife, or the proximity of her to his body, he couldn’t tell, but he felt an unwelcome curl of desire unfurl just beneath his skin. It started in his hands, where they had come to rest just beneath her breasts, and spread out like a fire lighting his skin and his lungs in the s
ame moment.
But it wasn’t just desire. It was something much darker and more dangerous than that. It was anticipation. And Odir found himself wondering, not for the first time, what it would be like to lose himself completely in his wife’s body. What it would be like to plunge his tongue into deeper depths than his wife’s soft mouth. What it would be like to feel Eloise shiver beneath his touch with something other than cold.
Odir met his wife’s eyes and saw the compassion and the sympathy held there and he hated it. Hated it that his wife was looking at him in the one way that could undo him. Damn her—why wasn’t she feeling it too? The same madness that was so tempting to him...more tempting than anything he had felt since his wedding night.
And then, as if his thought had been spoken out loud, he saw the moment that she felt it too. Her eyes widened—just a fraction. Had they been in a crowded room he doubted very much that anyone else would have noticed, would have seen the subtle change that came over her features and sent a spark of satisfaction rampaging through his body. Here was something secret—just between his wife and him.
Her eyes, usually a bright shade of blue, grew dark, almost matching the night sky behind her. Her pupils widened and he saw the flicker of her pulse quicken beneath the soft indentation in her jaw. For a fanciful moment he believed that their hearts were beating in time, and cursed himself for the thought.
‘We need to leave,’ he said, shutting down the madness that—had he had more to drink—he would have blamed on alcohol.
He removed his hands away from where they rested and walked towards the glass door that separated them from the party within. Malik and one of the other guards were stationed either side of the door, and as they passed through Odir registered the soft tones of the party still in full swing with surprise. It seemed almost inconceivable that the world was continuing to turn despite the events of the last few hours.
Turning away from the muffled noise, he stalked towards the lift, and once again Eloise stepped in beside him. In the mirror, she looked dishevelled. As if it had been he rather than the wind who had run his hands through her hair, who had pushed aside her skirts.
