Conquering His Virgin Queen (Harlequin Presents)

by Pippa Roscoe

  There was a pause before her response—one that created the most awful ache.

  ‘No.’

  The relief he felt was like a live thing within him.

  ‘No, it’s not because of that. But we both knew that you were trying to be the best possible future ruler for Farrehed. That for you to gain the crown would have meant the ruthless pursuit of all things perfect and the utter removal of anything that would risk the throne.’

  ‘That is not a reasonable excuse, Eloise.’

  ‘For God’s sake—you would pay me millions of pounds, tell a room full of complete strangers that I’m pregnant, all the while still being a virgin, and yet you have the audacity to be outraged by our concern about what you might do? Tell me, Odir, at what point does the end no longer justify the means?’

  His answer was swift and harsh.

  ‘At no point, Eloise. At no point does the end not justify the means. Do you know what’s going on in my country? Really know? There are people in the desert tribes dying for the lack of decent medical care. Because my father withheld it in the belief that if they were weak they would not mount a counter-offensive against the throne.

  ‘There are people in my country starving, emaciated, going hungry. Fathers are selling their daughters, husbands whoring out their wives—all because of my father, because of his delusion and paranoia.

  ‘Destruction, a huge divide between poverty and incredible wealth, the outright sale of our country’s best assets and complete isolation from its closest allies. Piece by piece my father has stripped everything from this nation, and I will do whatever I have to to see them returned. Each and every one of them!’

  Eloise had seen all manner of determined men, and she knew that fire in his eyes—knew that it was not the determination of the justified, it was the determination of the desperate. It was the look of a man who would use any means necessary, never mind the cost, to get what he wanted.

  ‘So just because what you want is for someone else—something else—it justifies any action you will take?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I will not allow you to use either myself or Jarhan to meet such insane ends. It’s a sacrifice too far.’

  He wheeled round to her and closed the gap between them with two impossibly large strides.

  ‘What the hell would you know about sacrifice?’ His words were a harsh whisper, full of anger and accusation.

  ‘What would I...?’ she asked into the night, and all the words, all the hurt, all the pain and loneliness crept up her throat and got stuck there.

  Before she realised, she’d raised her hand and slapped him. The noise echoed in the silent suite.

  ‘Of all the things I’ve said to you tonight, Eloise, that is perhaps the one that least warrants such a dramatic reaction.’

  ‘Really? What do I know about sacrifice? I married you, didn’t I?’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  August 2nd, 03.00-04.00, Heron Tower

  SHE HAD STRUCK her husband. She had struck the Sheikh of Farrehed. She abhorred violence—abhorred abuse of any kind. Never in her life had she ever raised a hand in anger to anyone. Not until tonight.

  She didn’t count the pathetic punches she had peppered his chest with earlier that evening. They had been born of frustration. But what she had just done... That had been born of a fury that she had not been able to contain. The disdain, the sneer that had painted Odir’s tone when he had accused her of knowing nothing of sacrifice...it had been too much to bear.

  She rushed from the suite, falling into the corridor, and pushed through a heavy fire door, her feet slapping on concrete stairs until she came to the floor that had housed the charity gala and the balcony. She pulled herself up suddenly, sure that she would look like a deer caught in the headlights were anyone there to witness her.

  She had forgotten the guests—forgotten the party that had been in full swing when they had left it earlier that evening. Holding her breath, and hoping to high heaven that the last of the guests had gone, she listened for any sounds to let her know one way or the other.

  After the longest held breath she exhaled into the silence, finally sure that no guests had lingered.

  She felt a presence behind her and knew that it wasn’t her husband. She turned to find Malik standing in the shadows, in front of the fire door she had just emerged through.

  ‘Please, Malik. I need...’ She groped for a word that would convey even a fraction of what she needed at that moment, but she saw him nod.

  She had never known why he had helped her all that time ago, but he had. Why he had been willing to whisk the errant Princess away from his Prince she would never know. But here he was once more, allowing her what she needed.

  She left her soft thank you in the corridor behind her and pushed through the glass doorway, stepping out on to the balcony.

  It was darker than before. The twinkling lights of London had dimmed, as if they too were hiding in shame. Once again she was struck by the sight. She had been so long away from England that she could see the beauty in it as if she was merely a visitor and hadn’t been born and raised there.

  She thought of all the time she had spent being dragged along on her father’s diplomatic postings throughout the Arabic states. Countries where she and her mother had been installed and requested to perform. Her heart ached at the memory of those years. Her skin ached at the memory of all those false smiles.

  In spite of those years Farrehed had seemed like an exotic faraway place—a desert kingdom after the three years she had spent at university in England. But instead of finding freedom in her studies, like the freedom she had tentatively come to believe that she’d found in Zurich, she had felt only a sense of postponement. A last-minute reprieve before her father’s final act of dominance fell upon her.

  It was there on the balcony, her mind straddling two worlds, the past and the present, that Odir found her.

  ‘You can’t keep running.’

  It was testament to the hold of her memories that she had not noticed the presence of her husband before then.

  She let a bitter laugh escape her lips and be carried away on the wind into the night sky. She felt a thick heavy blanket about her shoulders and sank into its warmth, not having realised how cold she was.

  The sound of the outdoor heaters came from behind her as Odir’s guards lit them one by one. She hated that he was so comfortable with their presence that he was ready and willing to have such a personal conversation with them present. The kind of personal conversation they should have had before she had left for Switzerland—before he had busied himself with his country’s needs.

  Before they were married.

  She heard the sounds of the glass door sliding shut behind them and knew that they were alone.

  ‘I want to know what you mean. About sacrifice.’

  She smiled ruefully into the night air.

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘More secrets?’ he said, but this time without the sting of his previous statements.

  ‘No. I literally can’t tell you.’

  He seemed amused by this, and somewhere deep down within her a small sense of humour—ironic humour, admittedly—rose within her. It tainted in a tone that sounded strange even to her own ears.

  She shrugged. ‘There’s a non-disclosure agreement binding my access to my grandfather’s trust fund.’ She watched as her quick-minded husband absorbed this. ‘My father put it on the trust the day I agreed to marry you. If I break the agreement then everything I have worked for these last six months will be for nothing. Everything.’

  ‘I am your husband. I am your King.’

  ‘You’re above the law?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said arrogantly, as if she should have known that. ‘Here, I am. And as my wife so are you. Members of the royal household are immune from arrest in civil proceedings. Of course if you really do want that divorce then you will not be part of the royal household any more...’

  He w
as taunting her, but not with malice. If she had not known her husband so well she might have thought there was a trace of that humour she had seen glimpses of earlier—traces of the humour that she remembered from the period of their engagement.

  But still, she wondered if Odir was right. Perhaps, once again, she had simply taken her father’s words as the truth, as gospel. Perhaps her father had known that she wouldn’t question it. Had it only been a piece of paper that she had signed, she might more easily have given in. But it wasn’t. It was the promise she had made to her mother.

  ‘I don’t like to break my promises,’ she said.

  ‘But what of the promise you made to me?’

  ‘It’s not that easy, Odir.’

  She had not once spoken about her family. To anyone. But the choice not to speak now wasn’t out of habit—it was about so much more than that.

  ‘How do I know you won’t use this against me to get what you want? To keep me by your side?’

  ‘Is that not sacrifice? To give up something for someone else?’

  ‘No,’ she argued. ‘It’s not about sacrifice. It’s about giving away a piece of my soul to a man who views love as something to be feared, something to be avoided at all costs.’

  ‘Love makes you weak, Eloise. Perhaps you know something of that?’

  ‘I know that it’s a sentiment you hold about you as if it were your very last defence. But I’m not so sure that you are right about it.’

  She looked at her husband through the veil of secrets that had built up between them—some her fault, some his—and even though they disagreed she began to feel as if there was something between them. Something woven in the darkness of this night. Something that had been missing from their interaction even during their engagement.

  Odir might be slightly misguided—zealous even—in his pursuit of ensuring the success of his country, but she knew, despite her accusations, that he was an honourable man. And, despite what he thought, he did love his people, he did love his country. He loved his brother, too, or he would have turned his back on Jarhan the moment he’d thought him guilty of pursuing his wife, or the moment he’d discovered his brother’s secret.

  He was bound by love in every decision he made, in every act he did for his country. What would it be like to have that turned on her? Turned in her favour, for once?

  Without realising it, Eloise had conjured up another image of what their marriage might have been like—could be like now.

  Her mind flew ahead through the years to see a marriage that was born of truth, honesty and love. Half torn between the present and an impossible future, she felt her heart leap and plummet at the same time, seesawing within her until she felt completely lost.

  Her husband—the one in the present, not the one of her momentary fantasy—shifted in the night before her, and Eloise knew that if she didn’t take this first step—if she didn’t reach out for the future that she could see within her heart—then it would never happen. She would never have the love and the security she had spent a lifetime searching for.

  But to share her greatest secret—one that was almost a part of her, as if she had been born with it, rather than before it—was a risk. If her father found out she would never get her inheritance and be able to help Natalia and all those the medical centre helped. And if her husband turned his back on her then she would be left with nothing.

  ‘Is that not sacrifice? To give up something for someone else?’

  * * *

  Odir watched as Eloise seemed to sag under the weight of a decision made, and he felt a stirring of satisfaction settle over his body as he knew one more secret was about to dissolve between them. Knew they were taking one more step together towards an agreement, towards the press conference. Towards everything he had wanted at the beginning of this day.

  ‘I can see how many people would think that I had lived a charmed life. My ambassador father... stationed in exotic places all over the world. Living a life full of money, security. I suppose some would even consider it glamorous. The first place I remember living was Bahrain. My memories are full of sunlight and white walls. I had a British nanny who came with us when my father was next stationed in Oman.’

  Odir frowned, wondering if the controlling man he had first met had been indiscreet with one of his staff. That would account for the ridiculous legal binding he’d placed on his daughter’s trust fund. None of the countries surrounding Farrehed would put up with an ambassador so indiscreet.

  Eloise had picked up on his thoughts.

  ‘No, it wasn’t a taste for young British nannies that defined my father. More a taste for oil-rich countries. I’m pretty sure that it still eats at him that he was never sent to the UAE.’

  A small smile spread across her dark features, and Odir realised that Eloise was perversely happy about that.

  ‘He has the temperament for it, you see. Negotiation, confidence, a winning personality... And he’s able to exert his influence and will over others. He’s good at that. He consumes information at a rate of knots and excels at reading between the lines. A British ambassador once said you need “a quick mind, a hard head, a strong stomach, a warm smile and a cold eye” to deal in such countries. He has all that in spades.’

  ‘You don’t sound as if you admire those qualities.’

  ‘How can I when they were used against his own family? Used solely to get what he wanted and damn the consequences for anyone else.’

  Eloise had never been a selfish person, and with hindsight Odir could see the holes in his belief that she had been unfaithful, that she was motivated purely by money. And he began to think that she wasn’t talking only about herself.

  ‘And your mother?’ he asked, putting his quick thinking to the test.

  ‘Yes. It was particularly hard for her.’

  The tenor of her voice changed, began to unravel, as did the wall of secrecy around her family.

  ‘She was—is still—a beautiful woman. According to my father, they met at university, fell in love. It was a full Cinderella story, only in reverse. My mother was the youngest daughter in a crumbling old aristocratic family. And, whilst the hereditary peerage would go to her brother, my father had still married into minor British aristocracy. Not too bad for a boy from Coventry.’

  At Odir’s apparent shock, she continued.

  ‘Oh, yes—as the son of a civil servant, he made it good.’

  Her voice was cold and cynical, with no trace of pride whatsoever.

  ‘I believe my mother fell hard for him. He’s a very charming man when he wants to be.’

  ‘And when he doesn’t?’

  ‘He’s cold, ruthless, manipulative, and he will do absolutely anything it takes to get his hands on what he wants. ’

  Odir realised then that he had never really known why she had agreed to marry him. That he’d been so focused on what she could bring to him, what good he could do with her connections to the British establishment, that he had simply assumed she was in agreement.

  ‘Including selling his daughter for the connections to royalty it would bring. The deals he could make once his daughter was married to the Sheikh of Farrehed.’

  Her words matched his own thoughts so closely that he felt something horribly like shame rise within him.

  ‘You could have said no.’

  ‘Not really. My mother didn’t adapt that well to the climate of the Middle East. Oh, she enjoyed the parties, the social gatherings. But, contrary to popular opinion, they don’t happen every night. My father left her alone for long periods of time, and without friends, without that crumbling aristocratic family she had left in England, she was confined to a life of boredom and solitude.’

  Like I gave to you... The thought erupted in Odir’s mind.

  ‘But instead of finding something to do, making something of her life without him, she sought escapism. Nothing so uncouth as alcohol, but pills. Lots and lots of mother’s little helpers. Not that she was much of a mother. Not really,’
she said sadly. ‘In each placement I would be sent to English-speaking schools, often boarding rather than being a day student.

  ‘I don’t think I really noticed anything until the summer when I was about fourteen. My father was off attending the petroleum conferences, and my mother... Meal times were the worst. Watching her shuffle food that she had no stomach for around a plate. The sound of cutlery scratching against china still sends shivers through me.

  ‘I tried to find things for us to do together, but she wasn’t really in a fit state during the day. She’d spend a lot of time in her bed. At first I thought she was ill. But then, when she was high, she’d be overly bright...false and forced laughter would echo through the halls. But through that cracked, jangly exuberance would be a thread of neediness, a constant search for reassurance that...’ she shook her head in shame ‘...that I despised. That I was embarrassed by.’

  Shame and guilt warred within Eloise. She hated herself for that. For sharing emotion with her father and feeling embarrassed about her mother. Hated to think that she was anything like him.

  ‘I went back to the UK for university and plunged myself into my studies. I thought I was being a good student, but in reality I was just hiding. In Zurich, working at the medical centre, I learned of the psychological effects both before and after addiction had taken hold. I began to see why my mother had turned to pills, given her life with her husband, given my father... I began to wonder if there was something I could have done if I’d been present...if I’d been allowed to be.’

  The helplessness in her voice took hold of something deep within Odir. It echoed within a bruised heart he would have denied to any other living soul.

  Slowly things began to fall into place in Odir’s mind. Those painful dinner conversations at the palace, when her mother’s pale, drawn face and her almost constant silence had been so at odds with her daughter’s desperate attempts to take the focus from her, to fill the silence, to be the plaster over a wound so deep and infected with hatred.

  ‘When I came to Farrehed after university I confronted my father about it—about why he didn’t force her to get help. He said she was beyond help. I threatened to take her away, and that’s when he showed me the videos. He’d recorded them on his camera. Times that even I hadn’t seen her. Erratic, horrible, slurring... She was...she was like a wounded animal. Begging my father for pills, screaming at housekeepers. Raving at imaginary slights from strangers.’