by Penny Jordan
It would take about three hours to drive to Teddy's school, and somehow she would have to find a way of eluding her driver, just in case he discovered it wasn't a man she was seeing but a little boy! Perhaps she could persuade him to wait for her in the village. It was only a mile from the school. She could easily walk. Thank goodness she had had the foresight to telephone the school and speak to Teddy's headmaster. He had readily agreed to allow her to speak to Teddy, promising that he would warn her brother to expect her visit.
She had bought him a new watch, remembering that he needed one badly, and hoping that she had made the right choice. She was just studying it when her door opened and Raoul walked in. As always, she felt acutely ill at ease in his presence, her sense of anxiety increasing as his cool gaze slid over her slender body in its pale lemon linen suit. The suit was relatively new and fitted her body snugly, drawing attention to the slender curves of her hips and her slim length of thigh.
His mouth curled when he had finished his inspection. 'Very cool and correct. What are you hoping to do? Drive him into wanting the woman you have hidden behind the barrier of your oh so correct clothes?' His eyes sharpened as he saw the watch she was holding in her hand. 'What's this?'
'A farewell present,' Claire told him tautly, shivering beneath the icy glare of fury he directed towards her.
'You are giving him presents?' His mouth tightened ominously. 'Is the gift of your body not enough?' Anger gave way to contempt. 'Abase yourself as you wish, Claire Miles, while you bear your own name, but once you carry mine…' He broke off to study her contemptuously. 'Have you no pride that you must needs buy a man's affection with gifts? What does he give you, Claire, apart from satisfying you with his body? What manner of man is he?'
His mouth twisted with contempt, impelling Claire to retaliate, to wound his pride as he had tried to wound hers. 'What's the matter, Raoul?' she demanded, her voice husky with anger. 'Has no woman ever loved you enough to buy you gifts; to sacrifice her pride? Are you always the one who has to do the buying? Is that…'
'You will not speak to me like that.' He had closed the gap between them before she could move, his fingers biting painfully into the soft flesh of her upper arm, his eyes so dark that they seemed almost black, forcing her to stare helplessly into their mesmerising gaze as he dragged her against his body. She could feel the anger emanating from him, the taut control of his body bending hers like a bow.
She had pushed him too far. She could see it in the controlled fury of his face. In the tight muscles of his body as her own jarred against the hard impact; and now the cruel line of his mouth was approaching hers, hovering, waiting to punish. Something quivered through her, burning her skin, and her lips parted invitingly, her eyes soft and luminous. She caught Raoul's muttered imprecation and then suddenly she was free, dazed and bewildered to the point of shock.
'Oh no,' he was saying tightly. 'Oh no,' he reiterated with cruel softness. 'I'm not falling for that. What did you expect,' he added tauntingly watching her white face, 'that I would be deceived by your clumsy ploy? Enough to take you into my arms perhaps and from there into my bed? How much would I have had to pay for that dubious pleasure, I wonder? However cheap the price, it would be too much. You overrate your appeal and my need. Both would have to increase considerably before I would even contemplate such a course.'
'I…' Fury tied Claire's tongue in knots. And besides, how could she explain logically that momentary and totally bewildering impulse which had had her lifting her face to his, ignoring all the warning commands of her brain?
Humiliation scorched through her. Somehow she managed to stagger out of her room and into Saud's, picking up the little boy with arms that still trembled, hugging him as though somehow the warmth of his body would dispel the frozen bitterness that seemed to have invaded her every bone and muscle.
How could she go on with this charade, knowing how deeply and intensely Raoul despised her? But how could she not do it when she thought of what was at stake? And she wasn't thinking just of the money which she needed so badly. There was also Saud, of whom she had become very fond, and who she knew was daily becoming more attached to her. If Raoul's dislike and contempt was the only price she was asked to pay for Saud's safety and Teddy's future financial security, surely it was not too great a burden to bear?
It was just after eleven when she went downstairs to the foyer to find that her car and driver were waiting for her. The fact that the car was an elegant and brand-new Rolls caught her off guard and she stared uncertainly at it for a moment before approaching it cautiously. When the front passenger door was thrust open unceremoniously she eyed it uncertainly, gasping with shock and disbelief when Raoul's voice commanded her curtly to 'Get in.'
'You!' Sheer disbelief prompted the shocked protest, but to judge from the tightening of his skin over the bones of his face, Raoul had read more than disbelief into her brief exclamation.
'Did you honestly expect I would allow you to see this man un…'
'Unguarded?' Claire supplied bitterly for him as she slid into the plush leather seat and closed the door after her. 'What's the matter? Are you afraid he might persuade me to change my mind?'
The look on Raoul's face as he turned towards her shocked her with its biting contempt. 'Hardly,' he drawled, his eyes pitiless as they raked over her pale face and slender body. 'A man who accepts expensive gifts from a woman, who allows her to do all the running and chasing, isn't going to be fool enough to place her virtue and his honour above money.'
'Meaning, of course, that you would never stoop to allow your women to do so,' Claire threw at him angrily, torn between humiliation and searing fury. How dare he judge her so contemptuously and on so little evidence! A man who could do that must surely hold the whole female sex in contempt.
Her mouth tightened. It was just as well she had discovered this side of him from the start. That way she was hardly likely to be dazzled by his handsome face and masculine body. She checked, tensing, her fingers on her seat-belt as the full import of her train of thought sank home. Of course she hadn't been in danger of falling for Raoul; he might be the epitome of every girl's idyllic romantic daydreams, but she wasn't stupid enough to believe those daydreams could be translated into real life.
'My "women" as you term them, are content to be what Allah ordained them to be.' Raoul's cold, soft voice broke into her thoughts, sending icy shivers rippling over her skin.
'Meaning that they know their place and are kept in it,' she taunted back. 'Bought and paid for, so that they are easy to discard when you are bored with them, is that it? Or is it they who grow tired of pandering to your vulnerable ego, Raoul? It takes a very special sort of man to accept a woman as his equal in life, capable of thinking and functioning for herself; a man who can appreciate what a woman must give up when she…'
'Gives herself to her lover? In the East we have a saying that man and woman are food and drink, each enhancing the other. In my country a woman is not ashamed to be a woman. She is content in her own role and does not seek to usurp that of the male.'
They had joined the main stream of traffic and Raoul broke off to ask Claire for directions. She told him where they were heading and kept silent as he manoeuvred the large car through the ceaseless flow of traffic. He drove well, neither uncertainly nor aggressively, and his consideration for other drivers and pedestrians was something that surprised her. He had been so arrogant and contemptuous where she was concerned that she had expected him to betray the same traits towards others.
It wasn't until they had left the London traffic behind them and were heading out in the direction of Teddy's school that Raoul picked up the threads of their earlier conversation. 'As my supposed "wife" a certain standard of behaviour will be expected of you,' he began without preamble, and without taking his eyes off the road, 'and now is as good a time as any to speak of this. In the East…'
'A woman is a man's possession?' Claire interrupted furiously. 'But you are forgetting t
hat you have been forced to "marry" me by your uncle. We will lead completely separate lives, or so you told me. Feeling the way you do, I'm surprised you aren't already married. To some dutiful, biddable Muslim girl brought up to think of her father and then her husband as her master.'
Dead silence filled the car, and a quick glance into Raoul's face showed Claire a look of such brooding bitterness that her heart quailed a little. It was too late now to regret her lack of tact, and she was surprised when, instead of changing the subject, Raoul said curtly, 'There was to have been such a marriage, but it required that I should change my religion.'
'And you would not? But why? You obviously consider yourself more Eastern than Western. You were brought up there.'
'Sometimes a man needs to be accepted for himself alone,' was all Raoul would say, but it gave Claire something to think about as the powerful Rolls gobbled up the miles.
His comment pointed to a far greater sensitivity than she could ever have imagined he would possess; a need to be accepted that gnawed at her thoughts as she tried to fit together the complicated pieces of the puzzle that went to make up the man seated at her side. The Sheikh had warned her that Raoul found his dual inheritance a difficult one and for the first time she began to appreciate what the older man had meant. To the casual onlooker, Raoul was completely of the East, but that was merely the outward covering; what about the man inside the tawny skin, the man whose father had so contemptuously rejected his mother—so much so that she had returned to her own people, taking her child with her?
It was only as they neared Teddy's school that Claire ceased tussling with the problem, turning her thoughts instead to Teddy and how she was going to stop Raoul and her brother from meeting.
She and Teddy were very close, a result of their parents' death, and Teddy was intelligent enough to suspect the truth if she did not take great care to hide it from him. She had no wish for her brother to grow up under the burden of knowing she had sacrificed her pride and self-respect so that she could pay his school fees, and so she had already decided to tell Teddy that she loved Raoul. There would be time enough later to worry about explaining to him why she had returned to England, her supposed marriage over, but that was something she wasn't going to think about right now. Her first problem was to get rid of Raoul.
In the end it was surprisingly easy to arrange her 'escape'. Raoul insisted that they stop for lunch five miles outside the village, at a hotel Claire remembered being taken to with her parents. It was a large country house set in its own grounds, and ordinarily she would thoroughly have enjoyed the treat of eating there, but on the pretext of wanting to tidy herself up she slipped away to telephone for a taxi, nervously dreading Raoul's appearance with every second that passed as she waited for it to arrive.
Only when she was finally inside it and speeding away from the hotel, did she expel a sigh of relief, hoping that the note she had handed in to reception would find its way safely to Raoul. In it she had told him briefly that she would be gone for a couple of hours. If he did not choose to wait for her she had sufficient money to get herself back to London and, feeling more confident than she had done since leaving London that morning, Claire settled back in her seat, watching the familiar countryside flash past.
Teddy's school had once been the country seat of a wealthy Victorian landowner, and Claire was warmly welcomed into the Headmaster's panelled study by that august gentleman. She had told him briefly on the telephone of the reason for her visit, and after exchanging pleasantries with her, he suggested that she might like to join Teddy in the small sitting-room off his study where they could have some degree of privacy.
Although it had only been Christmas when she last saw her brother, Claire was amazed at the way he had shot up. He badly needed new trousers, and it took her several seconds to get used to the unusual sensation of noting this without the sinking feeling of despair which normally followed such an occurrence. Teddy greeted her warmly, but with a boyish insouciance which brought home to her how quickly he was growing up.
'The Head told me you were coming. Said you'd got something to tell me…'
Both of them were remembering how she had been the one to break the news to him of their parents' death and Claire smiled reassuringly. 'Nothing to worry about. I just wanted you to know that I'm getting married.'
In order to avoid confusion, she had made up her mind that she would stick as closely to the Sheikh's story as possible, and so she explained to Teddy that she had recently met Raoul and that they were to be married abroad, all of which he accepted without too many questions, his main concern being whether he could come out to Omarah to spend some of his summer holidays with her.
'We'll have to see,' Claire hedged, deftly turning the conversation to other channels, asking him about his proposed trip with his schoolfriend, and handing over to him the money she had brought with her. 'You'll need some new clothes,' she added practically. 'I'll have a word with Matron before I leave.'
Because they had so many overseas boarders the school was perfectly accustomed to replenishing its boarders' wardrobes and Claire envisaged no problems in this respect. Before she left, two hours later, she had managed to fit in a brief discussion with Matron who had assured her that she could safely leave everything in her capable hands. A final goodbye and thank you to the Headmaster completed her afternoon's work, and Claire would have been surprised had she known his thoughts as he watched her walk down the drive.
A brave girl, and a selfless one who had shouldered the responsibility of her younger brother with a courage he wished more of his pupils could imitate. Dr Harwarden was a wise and knowledgeable man and he only hoped he was mistaken in his fears that this marriage, arranged so suddenly, was being entered into for the right reasons. Not that he doubted Claire's motives, but he was concerned that she might sacrifice herself for others. He knew there had been financial problems following her parents' death, and of the close relationship between brother and sister. Sighing a little, he turned his attention back to the mound of papers on his desk, telling himself that Claire was old enough to make her own decisions.
Wrapped up in her own thoughts, it wasn't until she drew level with the school gates that Claire saw the Rolls parked on the other side of them, Raoul lounging back in the driver's seat. Her footsteps slowed instinctively, apprehension feathering along her spine. How had he known where to find her? Did he know about Teddy? It was only stubborn pride that had kept her from telling him the truth herself. Let him think the very worst of her if he wished, she wasn't going to be the one to show him the error of his ways.
Instinctively, she knew if she told him the truth, his condemnation of her would be much less harsh, but the way in which he had immediately leapt to the wrong conclusion had stung her pride. Was that honestly how he saw her? If so, then let him, and as she approached the gates Claire knew that she did not want him to know the truth. She would rather he thought the worst he possibly could of her. It was as though his contempt of her was a protective barrier between them, although why she should need its protection she wasn't quite sure.
As he saw her approach, Raoul opened the car door and came towards her to unfasten the gate. His unfailing politeness set her teeth on edge, as though his actions were designed somehow to underline his contempt for her.
'How did you know where to find me?'
His eyebrows rose fractionally as she spoke. 'It wasn't very difficult. I simply checked with the taxi firm. So your lover is a teacher. Is that why he doesn't mind you leaving him for a year, because it is difficult for the two of you to meet? What will you do with the money my uncle is paying you for acting the part of my wife? Help him to find more congenial employment?'
Expelling her breath on a faint sigh of relief, Claire refused to rise to his taunts. At least he didn't know the truth. 'I think that's my business, don't you?' she said loftily as she followed him back to the car, stopping in her tracks as Raoul suddenly came to a halt in front of her, grasping her c
hin with his fingers and tilting it upwards so that he could study her face.
'It must have been a very cool leave-taking,' he said slowly at last. His thumb brushed slowly against the fullness of her lower lip. 'Your mouth doesn't even look as though it has been kissed.'
Shock widened her eyes, her cheeks flushed as she wrenched herself free of his grasp. 'I don't think that's any of your business either, do you?' she asked icily, reaching for the door handle. 'Or is that the sort of thing that turns you on? Hearing about other people's…'
The ferocity of the expletive that left Raoul's lips cut across her words, and her body tensed automatically as she shrank away from him. 'Your innuendos are an insult,' he told her harshly, 'and no doubt the product of a silly, immature mind. Remember that from now on to all intents and purposes you are my wife, and you will be expected to behave accordingly.'
'By obeying your every word and abasing myself before you like… like a slave?'
The icy contempt in his eyes made her tremble at her folly in goading him. 'By remembering that I value my self-respect, even if you don't value yours, and that as my wife, my honour and good name are yours, and that any attempt to sully either will be swiftly punished.'
It was enough to keep her silent until they were well on the way back to London. Once or twice she stole a quick peep at his arrogant profile, each time reading a rejection and contempt there that reinforced her silence. If he didn't want to talk to her then he needn't. There was still much she would need to know about their life together; about his family, and how she would be expected to behave, but she wasn't going to beg to be told.
It was a relief to get back to the Dorchester, and the now familiar routine of caring for Saud. The little boy was openly pleased to see her, but Claire was conscious of Raoul's eyes boring into her back as she picked Saud up and cuddled him.
'Someone should tell your lover how good you are with children,' he murmured against her ear as she straightened up. She hadn't realised he was so close to her and Claire felt almost suffocated by the warmth of him against her back, a primitive flood of awareness burning through her body as it responded to the proximity of his. 'Or doesn't he care enough for you to give you the gift of his child?'
