by Penny Jordan
Natalia could tell from Zahra’s swift and audible intake of breath that she hadn’t been prepared for her to be so outspoken.
‘I am far too modest to dare to dream of such an honour.’ Zahra told her, sounding anything but modest. ‘It is enough for me that Kadir is generous to bestow his loving desire on me.’
Just so long as it came with a huge helping of expensive gifts and public recognition of the importance of his mistress’s unofficial role, Natalia decided cynically.
‘For me Kadir’s happiness is far more important than my own,’ Zahra continued unconvincingly, ‘and that is why I am forcing myself to put aside my natural feelings in an effort to help you to become the kind of wife Kadir needs.’
Zahra was clever, Natalia admitted. Zahra wanted a fight and she certainly knew how to provoke one, there was no doubt about it. With those few well-chosen words she had well and truly ignited the slow burning fuse of Natalia’s own sensitive temper.
‘Look,’ she told her curtly. ‘Let’s not waste one another’s time. Why don’t I be blunt? Kadir has chosen to accept an offer put to him from the King of Niroli, my country, not Kadir’s and certainly not yours, to become its next King; a role which he is only eligible to play through the mother you seem to despise so much. King Giorgio has chosen me to be Kadir’s wife because, whilst I may know now nothing of the customs of Hadiya, I do know the hearts and the minds of the people of Niroli. I know what matters to them, how they think and how they feel, what they want in their new King and what they don’t, because I am one of them. That is why King Giorgio asked me if I would consider giving up my personal freedoms as a single woman to become the wife of Niroli’s future King. It is out of love for my country and my duty to its future that I agreed. A large part of that duty as Kadir’s wife is to make sure that he is kept aware of the needs and beliefs of his adopted people.’
Let Zahra think about that! She was not going to allow Zahra or anyone else, but most of all Kadir himself, get away with thinking she was some docile obedient fool, dazzled by the false glitter of a royal title; someone so shallow and lacking in substance that she could be bribed with it into accepting the bullying of her husband’s mistress. Natalia had her own agenda for her future as a royal wife, and it certainly wasn’t for the royal title that she had agreed to marry Kadir.
‘I don’t need you to tell me that his marriage to you was not of Kadir’s choosing,’ Zahra interrupted her angrily. ‘Do you really think I do not know why Kadir did not come to you last night?’
Now it was Natalia’s turn to suck in a breath as sharply as though she had sucked on the fruit of one of the lemons growing on the trees outside in the courtyard.
‘You talk very cleverly about the practicalities of your arranged marriage, but you cannot deceive me. I can see into your heart and what you want to conceal there. You want Kadir as a man.’
Natalia felt the words as though they were physical blows. They weren’t true. They couldn’t possibly be! She wasn’t going to let them be. Kadir meant nothing to her. No? Then why had she behaved the way she had in Venice?
That had had nothing to do with wanting Kadir. She had just…
She had just what—just wanted sex?
Yes!
No! Because if that were true then why had she been able to spend so long living her freely chosen celibate life so comfortably?
She had been celibate for too long, that was all. Kadir could have been anyone.
Liar—isn’t it the truth that the moment you saw him you felt…
I felt nothing, she denied furiously. Nothing. And she continued to feel nothing for him now despite what Zahra was trying to say.
‘Did you really think I would not know?’ Zahra continued to taunt her. ‘Kadir and I have laughed about it. Kadir has his duty to perform, of course, but it is to me that he gives his true passion. I am the one who will sit beside him when ultimately he rules both Niroli and Hadiya. It is my destiny to be with Kadir, not yours. Kadir is mine and I will never let him go. Nor will I ever let anyone or anything come between us, and you had better remember that. It is our destiny to be together,’ she repeated, ‘and nothing can stand in the way of that destiny.’
How had it happened that suddenly their argument had veered off the apparently straight road at such a sharp angle that it had completely thrown her? The conversation had taken a completely new and disturbing direction, Natalia realised, remembering the intensity she could hear in Zahra’s voice.
Listening to Zahra, Natalia was suddenly struck how very similar in attitude Zahra seemed to be to the kind of woman the press delighted in labelling a ‘stalker’. But maybe she was being unfair and jumping to the wrong conclusions. Maybe that was the way a passionate Middle Eastern woman spoke? If so it certainly contrasted with her own far more pragmatic approach to life, Natalia admitted. Zahra must of course know that there was no way Kadir would ever succeed to the Hadiyan throne. After all Kadir had already renounced the throne of Hadiya. Zahra was something of a bully, Natalia guessed, and no doubt used to frightening others into giving way to her. Well, she was going to have to learn—and Kadir with her—that she was not bullied so easily. Far from it.
‘You are beyond foolish if you think that Kadir does not see as I do that for all your pretence not to, you yearn to give your heart to him.’ Zahra astounded Natalia by throwing the accusation at her, and in doing so changing tack yet again. ‘How predictable you are to fall in love with him as you have done. I told him it would be so. How indeed could it not be with a man such as Kadir? But he does not want your love; he does not want anything of you. Why should he when he has me, and when he will always have me? I am the one he loves and he will never give me up…never.’ Zahra moved closer to Natalia and then unexpectedly grabbed hold of her arm before Natalia could move out of the way. Her nails were long and lacquered a blood dark red. ‘Do you understand that?’ Very determinedly Natalia stood up, ignoring Zahra’s hold on her.
‘I understand that if I don’t get ready now I shall be late for my formal duties,’ she answered her as lightly as she could.
What nonsense Zahra had talked. As though she would be foolish enough to fall in love with Kadir. She was a mature woman, not some foolish young girl with daydreams. If she believed in romantic love, and Natalia was not sure that she did, then she still felt that a couple needed far more to build a life together on than merely ‘falling in love’. They needed shared beliefs, and shared interests, a shared sense of commitment and dedication; they needed of course the passion that came with mutual sexual desire to truly have the foundations of a long-term relationship, but sexual desire could not be relied upon to last and was surely the least important of all those ‘must haves’.
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘Well, I do not want to talk to you,’ Natalia snapped back smartly at Kadir as he followed her into her rooms dismissing the waiting maids with a curt inclination of his head.
‘That is something you have already made more than evident today,’ Kadir retaliated sharply as the maids melted away leaving him to slam the door enclosing the two of them in the dimly lit room.
In the time it had taken them to walk through the palace from the cars, darkness had fallen. They had just come from the final formal event of that day, the opening of a new shopping centre, attended by not just the two of them but also Kadir’s brother and his wife and family. The glass doors to the courtyard were still open and Natalia went to stand in front of them to breathe in the rose-scented air. The car in which she had travelled had reeked of the strong Arabian perfume favoured by Zahra. Natalia could smell it coming off Kadir now.
‘What was there for me to say?’ she challenged him. ‘Your mistress pre-empted every attempt I made to speak.’ She wasn’t going to let him see how angry and then humiliated she had felt at the way in which Zahra had upstaged her or how foolishly hurt she had been about the fact that she had not had the opportunity to use the few words of Arabic she had so carefully
learned and rehearsed so that she could greet the children in their own language. To do so would make her seem petty, and reinforce Zahra’s accusation that she was emotionally vulnerable to Kadir, which she wasn’t; not in the least! Not now and not ever. Zahra was welcome to him in that respect. In that respect maybe, but Natalia, in her role of consort to the Crown Prince of Niroli, did not intend to continue to allow herself to be humiliated the way Zahra had done, for the sake of Niroli itself.
‘Why bring Zahra into this?’ Kadir demanded angrily. ‘She has nothing to do with it.’ It had thrown Kadir completely on his return to Hadiya with his wife to find Zahra insisting on behaving as though they were still lovers. He fully intended to discuss her behaviour with her and remind her that their relationship was over.
‘She has everything to do with it,’ she contradicted him. ‘You may think that by foisting your mistress off on me as my official Hadiyan female companion it is only me who is insulted, but you are wrong. What you did insults the Throne of Niroli as well because it elevates your mistress to a superior position than me, your wife. This is not what King Giorgio had in mind when he agreed that I should accompany you here.’
‘You dare to lecture me on my behaviour? You dare to question my decisions on matters of protocol and diplomacy?’ Kadir was practically incandescent with fury, Natalia recognised. ‘If Zahra is my mistress.’
‘If? There is no “if” about it, is there, Kadir? She told me herself this morning exactly what she is to you. Your mistress may feel she has the right to pass on to me her expertise on the subject of how best to act as your consort so as to make the best impression on you and the people of Hadiya. However, you are not becoming King of Hadiya, but King of Niroli, and it seems to me that she is in danger of making the same mistake as you and that is in believing that Niroli is some kind of extension of Hadiya, simply because you want it to be. Your word is not law, Kadir, and my guess is that you have already found that out here, but because you cannot accept it you have blamed your mother for your own inability to adapt to become the ruler Hadiya needs. If you aren’t careful you will repeat that mistake on Niroli. The more I learn about your mother, the more I wish I had met her. How brave she must have been and how saddened and disappointed that you, the son she did so much to nurture and protect, should be so lacking in vision and so filled with self-delusion and bitterness that you cannot see her for the wonderful loving and giving person that she was.’
‘Why, you—’
Kadir was looking at her as though he wanted to lock his hands round her neck and choke the life out of her, Natalia recognised, but she didn’t care. If he hadn’t had the decency to protect their marriage and his new wife from the venom of his mistress, then he could take the consequences. She looked across at him. The lamplight revealed Kadir’s features quite clearly. She could see the harsh down-turned curl of his mouth and the cold glitter of anger in his eyes.
‘You hate this, don’t you?’ she challenged him before he could finish. ‘You hate being married to me. Well, you only have yourself to blame.’ She saw the flash of temper igniting the jade-green darkness of his eyes.
‘I am to blame for your immorality?’
He was as adept as his mistress about changing the direction of a conversation to suit his own ends, Natalia acknowledged, but she was not going to give in to those tactics.
‘The fact that you have chosen to think me immoral does not make me so. And what you are to blame for is insisting on marrying me when you have already judged me to be not good enough to be your wife. You are angry with me, but in reality your anger should be for yourself.’
‘How typical of a woman that you use words with the same deceit with which you use your body.’
‘There is no deceit apart from in your imagination,’ Natalia rejected his accusation.
‘Have you forgotten the wanton way in which you, a woman on the brink of marriage, gave yourself to me?’
‘My physical desire for you had no bearing on my commitment to this marriage. As a single woman, which I was, I had the right to own my own body and my own desires, and besides…’
Just in time Natalia managed to stop herself from admitting that he was the only man she had given herself to in a very long time.
‘And as your husband-to-be, I had the right to expect you to bring yourself to our marriage bed free of any evidence of another man’s possession of you. I will not be cuckolded in the way that my mother—’
‘But there isn’t another man! And it always comes back to what happened with your mother, doesn’t it?’ Natalia retorted. ‘You can’t move forward into the future, Kadir, because you will not let go of the past. Your mother was eighteen,’ she told him grimly, already protective of the young girl who must have suffered dreadfully and been so afraid. A true man, a loving son, surely would have compassion for her and understand how she must have felt. But it was not Kadir’s mother she wanted to discuss. ‘You talk of my supposed immorality. That is so hypocritical when you yourself have a mistress. And by the way,’ she added cuttingly, ‘the next time you feel like discussing my failings as a wife with that mistress, I suggest you at least tell her that you’ve already had sex with me.’
‘What do you mean the next time I feel like discussing you with my mistress? What are you talking about? Tell me!’
‘Tell you? Yes, I will! Zahra couldn’t wait to let me know that she knew I spent last night alone. You’re a fine one to talk to me about morality. And, no, I didn’t descend to her level and spoil the fun she was having letting me know how wonderful you think she is in bed by telling her that I already know that by my standards her idea of fun isn’t anything to write home about.’
‘You must have misunderstood her,’ Kadir stopped her curtly. ‘I did not spend last night with Zahra.’ Kadir could hardly believe what he was admitting, and he certainly did not know why he was admitting it.
‘Oh, come on, you don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?’
Ignoring her, Kadir continued coldly, ‘I spent last night in the desert. My brother had made arrangements for us to visit the tomb of our mother together.’ His voice had become clipped. ‘It was her wish that she was buried with her parents. We spent the night there together in prayer.’
Something—shame, perhaps; regret maybe—fierce and scalding burned its way through her, but she couldn’t let it sway her.
‘You cannot deny that she’s your mistress, though.’
Kadir’s eyebrows rose. ‘You sound more like an emotionally jealous and possessive traditional wife than someone taking part in an acknowledged dynastic marriage.’
Kadir’s criticisms were so close to what Zahra had said to her—so close that it was obvious to Natalia that they had shared a discussion about her and her supposed ‘feelings’ for him. What had they said? And where? In the intimacy of their shared bed? And no doubt when Kadir made love to Zahra he…The pain seized her out of nowhere shocking her rigid; leaving her unable to either fight it or deny it. If she had any sense she would abandon this discussion and now before it got totally out of hand, a warning voice inside Natalia’s head urged her, but she refused to listen to it. Her pride was hurt and demanding recompense for the wound inflicted on it.
‘My concerns are exactly the same as your own,’ she told Kadir furiously. ‘On health grounds alone, you must see that you can’t expect me to share your bed when you are having sex with another woman.’
She saw from the faint widening of his eyes that she had caught him off guard, but he recovered very quickly, telling her coldly, ‘I wasn’t aware that I had asked you to share my bed.’
‘Good, because although Zahra may consider you to be a good lover…’ she began insultingly.
‘You do not?’
How had he managed to get so close to her without her noticing him moving? Too close, she recognised uneasily. ‘No, I do not! But then of course my experience of you as a lover can hardly compare to Zahra’s, can it?’
What
was she doing? What was she saying? She might as well throw herself off the top of one of Niroli’s cliffs, her behaviour had become so self-destructive, Natalia recognised.
‘If that is meant as a request for me to remedy that disparity—’ Kadir began.
‘No, it is not.’ Now look what she had done, fool, fool that she was!
‘Of course a woman like you will not be able to go very long without hungering for the feel of a man between her legs.’
She did not deserve so cruel and cutting an insult. ‘A woman like me?’ Natalia’s eyes flashed a stormy petrol-blue-green.
‘You know nothing about women like me. How could you? Zahra is your image of what a woman should be; everything about her is fake, from her dyed hair, through her faked submissiveness, to her no doubt faked orgasms,’ she threw at him passionately, and then stopped as something in his silence told her that she had gone too far.
‘Keep away from me,’ she protested apprehensively, backing away from him. ‘Don’t touch me.’
‘I am your husband. I have the right,’ Kadir reminded her silkily.
‘Keep away from me,’ Natalia repeated. ‘You…you stink of her scent,’ she told him wildly. ‘It makes me feel sick.’
‘With what? With jealousy?’
There it was again; that accusation that made her heart jump around so painfully inside her chest.
‘No! Why should I be jealous of a relationship I would not want, and will never want, even if you went down on bended knee and offered it to me? I am your wife and it is my duty to have sex with you.’
‘Your duty? You mean like it was your duty in Venice,’ he taunted her.
He was circling her like a hawk circling its prey, Natalia acknowledged. Even the unmoving air in the room felt heavy and weighted with the promise of implacable determination to make her back down. She had pushed him too far, Natalia admitted, dangerously too far, and for what reason? Because Zahra had got under her skin?
