Zarif's Convenient Queen

by Lynne Graham

  Ella felt too dizzy and sweaty to argue. Dr Mansour arrived with a nurse, his voice a deep soothing rumble that eventually contrived to make Zarif simmer down. Anyone would be forgiven for thinking that a minor bout of sickness was an emergency, Ella thought ruefully. Some tests were done with her assistance and were quickly followed by an examination.

  At the end of it all, Dr Mansour asked the nurse to wait in the other room. A big beaming smile had transformed his guarded expression and the look he spread between Zarif and Ella was warm with appreciation. ‘I am deeply honoured to offer my congratulations on this happy event, which will mean so much both to you and to our country...’

  ‘H-happy event?’ Ella stammered in bewilderment.

  ‘You have conceived, Your Majesty. You must’ve conceived almost immediately after your marriage,’ the older man informed her cheerfully. ‘Hardly a surprising development for a young and healthy couple but a very welcome one.’

  In shock, Ella focused on Zarif, who appeared to be frozen in the centre of the room. She could see the pallor spreading below his bronzed complexion, the skin tightening over his spectacular bone structure. Pregnant? How on earth could she be pregnant?

  ‘But I’ve been taking the contraceptive pill,’ Ella protested and named the brand.

  ‘We wanted to wait a few months,’ Zarif breathed stiltedly, clearly already engaged in a cover-up because the older man had not been able to hide his surprise that in their circumstances they could have chosen to use contraception rather than try immediately to provide the very much wanted heir to the throne.

  The older man smiled wryly. ‘Of course but that particular brand, I’m afraid, was not a good choice. It is usually prescribed to regulate a woman’s system.’

  ‘Which is what I was taking it for...’ Ella’s voice was dwindling away while the great tide of sheer astonishment was rolling over her. A baby... She was going to have a baby, Zarif’s baby? Even in that first piercing moment of disbelief, she was aware of the warm tide of acceptance and happiness rising inside her. She might not be able to have him but he couldn’t stop her from having his child, she thought helplessly.

  ‘Unfortunately that type of pill has to be taken strictly at the same time every day and it is not reliable if pills are missed or there is an episode of illness, such as you had on your wedding day,’ Dr Mansour explained. ‘Other precautions would have had to be taken for the rest of that month.’

  Ella nodded with all the animation of a marionette and dared not look at Zarif to see how he was reacting to the news that her ignorance of the efficacy of her contraception had contributed to their current predicament. ‘Thank you for clarifying that, Doctor.’

  The older man lingered to advise her on how best to cope with the morning sickness and recommended an obstetrician in the city, while adding ruefully that it would be unwise to consider conducting the allergy tests he had advised until after she had given birth.

  A baby? Zarif was in a daze. He studied Ella’s flat stomach and thought of his child growing there and he wanted to touch her so badly at that moment that his hands knotted into fists by his side. Ella had conceived. Had she planned it that way? There could be no surer way of holding onto her status as his wife than by giving him a child.

  ‘You said it was safe,’ Zarif reminded her tautly as soon as they were alone.

  Ella stared up fixedly at the canopy of the bed above her, guilt slashing through her at the simplicity of that reminder that really said all that needed to be said. He felt he had been deceived. He felt trapped by a development he would actively have guarded against had he known it was possible.

  ‘I honestly did think it was safe. When I began taking that pill, it wasn’t for contraception and I probably didn’t pay a lot of heed to any warnings that were in the instructions. That first day...we were together,’ she framed awkwardly, ‘I assumed it would be safe because I’ve been taking it for a couple of years and one’s always reading about how very long it can take for a woman to fall pregnant. I mean, I really didn’t think it could be that easy.’

  ‘Obviously you’re very fertile,’ Zarif pointed out flatly.

  ‘I couldn’t help the fact that I was sick the night before we slept together!’ Ella argued, feeling that she had to defend herself. ‘It didn’t occur to me that I was probably no longer protected because of that. I was convinced that I was telling you the truth when I said it was safe.’

  ‘Were you really?’ Zarif queried in a tone she had never heard him use before, a tone of doubt and mistrust. ‘Or did you work out for yourself that this is the one development that will ensure I do not divorce you and set you aside after a year?’

  Ella dealt him an appalled appraisal, shaken that he could think her capable of such manipulative behaviour. ‘That’s a filthy thing to say. How can you even suspect that?’

  ‘Naturally I’m suspicious...particularly after you threw yourself at me last night. Presumably you didn’t yet realise that you were already pregnant and we had not been having sex. Obviously you had to ensure sex took place to have any hope of conceiving.’

  ‘I did not throw myself at you!’ Ella launched, rearing up in the bed in a positive fury.

  Zarif knew he was burning boats but he couldn’t stop himself from working up a firestorm in which resentment, incredulity and suspicion dominated. Just at that moment it was too deeply painful for him to think about the baby on the way and the savage irony that for him and Ella conception had happened so very easily. All that he would allow himself to think was that once again he was being forced into a path he had not freely chosen. There were very few things in his life that he was free to choose for himself but this time around, at least, he had had the freedom to choose his own wife. And now that was gone and his little piece of self-indulgence had become a life sentence.

  His stormy departure left a terrible silence stretching in its wake. Slowly, carefully, Ella got up, standing only when she was convinced that the sick dizziness had faded. She sat down at the breakfast table and sipped at the special ginger tea Dr Mansour had said he would order from the kitchens for her. She supposed she would have to start thinking of all sorts of things that she had never had to consider before. In fact her every action would have to be tailored to whatever would best suit the baby she carried. A baby, Ella thought, splaying a hand across her flat tummy with quiet and loving satisfaction. Zarif’s baby. Yet how could she want the child of a man she hated?

  Of course hatred was a little over the top as a description of her feelings, she conceded. Events had suddenly got wildly out of control and Zarif was a dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ man, who liked to plan everything. The conception of a child with the wrong woman was a shockingly unexpected development and he hadn’t reacted well. Had she supposed he would? Presumably being male he was not being bombarded by the warm, positively fluffy pictures of a cuddly baby currently consuming her thoughts.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ZARIF SHARED THE news with Halim and Halim was overjoyed and hailed Ella as the most wonderful woman ever. ‘So soon...already a little mother-to-be,’ he kept on saying, patting his nephew’s arm in fond emphasis. ‘A gift is in order, a gift to express my great joy and gratitude.’

  ‘It could be a girl,’ Zarif pointed out, disconcerted by his uncle’s gushing effusions and suddenly painfully aware that his own reaction should have been similar.

  ‘Then the next will be a male.’ Halim would not allow anyone to rain on his parade. ‘Are you happy, my boy? Or does all this only bring back unhappy memories?’

  ‘A little of both,’ Zarif admitted truthfully. ‘You will forgive me if I return to Ella now?’

  ‘This is a new beginning for you and our family, Zarif,’ the old man told him quietly. ‘Don’t allow the sadness of the past to shadow the present.’

  But the past had made Zarif who he wa
s, honing him down to the essentials of duty and honour and making him a very tough judge of his own behaviour. And now without the smallest warning he was aware of all the many things that he had not said to Ella and, desert robes swishing in accompaniment to his long, forceful stride, he sped back to the quarters he shared with his wife.

  When Zarif strode into the dining room, Ella spared him a careless glance of acknowledgement. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said in the same voice with which she might have greeted an unappetising serving of cold porridge.

  ‘I said some things I should not have said,’ Zarif announced.

  ‘How’s that new?’ Ella asked waspishly, watching his long, beautifully shaped fingers flex across the chair back in angry response and getting a mean kick from that tiny display of human frailty. ‘Apparently you think I am calculating and mercenary, and someone who wants to stay a queen and spend loads and loads of your money.’

  ‘Instead of which you are the heartbreak of the Qurzah shopkeepers because you browse and never buy. I know that material things are not important to you,’ Zarif told her tautly, ‘but from this moment on we are truly man and wife with all that that entails and it is permanent.’

  Ella stared stonily at the jug of hot chocolate whose fumes now made her tummy roll as though she were on the deck of a storm-tossed ship. ‘Permanent?’ she queried half an octave higher. ‘No, thanks. I still want the divorce I was promised.’

  Zarif stared back at her in stark disbelief, darkly fringed tawny eyes full of condemnation. ‘You can’t have a divorce now...you’re pregnant.’

  ‘And yet you are not a happy camper about that,’ Ella slotted in drily, ramming back her sense of pained rejection as she made that observation. ‘So, please don’t think for one moment that I intend to ruin both our lives, and our child’s for that matter, by staying with you as your wife for ever. On those terms for ever sounds like a death sentence.’

  Zarif straightened to his full imposing height. ‘Even if I have to lock you up and throw away the key, understand one thing now...’ he advised harshly. ‘I will not lose another child.’

  Jolted out of self-pitying sarcasm by that very real statement of loss, Ella pushed herself up out of her seat with a troubled frown. ‘Zarif?’

  ‘My son died as a stranger to me,’ Zarif bit out not quite steadily, shocking her where she stood from the pain he made no attempt to hide, lean, dark features stamped with lines of grief and regret he had never allowed her to see before. ‘I held him only once and briefly after his birth. Then he was kept away from me because men were not welcome in the nursery. It wasn’t thought proper or normal for me to take too much of an interest in him while he was still a baby. I was told I could get to know my son later when he was older...but there was no later and he never did get any older...’

  And Ella’s heart cracked right down the middle inside her, tears on his behalf stinging her eyes and clogging her throat. She hurt so much for him at that moment that she almost crossed the room to wrap her arms round him in a desperate effort to comfort him. ‘I’m so sorry, Zarif,’ she said weakly instead.

  ‘That is why I will not let you leave me or take my child away from me. Boy or girl, it is immaterial. I will be here for this child at every stage of his or her life,’ he completed hoarsely.

  ‘I completely understand how you feel,’ she whispered and she honestly did. He had lost his infant son and her talk of divorce had made him feel threatened and, of course, if she were to take their child back to the UK, he would see little of him or her, so his concern and fear on that score were perfectly understandable.

  ‘Then understand that I will not let you go,’ Zarif repeated doggedly. ‘We will stay married and, if need be, we will work at staying married.’

  Ella lost colour, wondering if he would need to work that hard to live with her as his wife. Would he be constantly wishing she were Azel? Wishing she were a woman from his own culture? Longing for a break from her? Wishing he could occasionally ring the changes by taking another woman to his bed?

  Exactly how would it feel to be granted the status of being a for-ever wife purely and simply because she had given birth to his baby? She believed that the burden of being essentially unwanted would crush her spirit. She wanted him to want her, didn’t she? She always had. She thought of her clumsy seduction attempt the night before when she had been thrilled by his response and her face burned hot. Sadly, Zarif was not saying anything she wanted to hear and he never would, would he?

  He hadn’t wanted or planned a child with her. He hadn’t chosen her as the mother of his child. He had chosen her to share his bed, to provide light entertainment and sexual satisfaction within the respectable guise of marriage. But he hadn’t ever wanted a real marriage with her, had he? And why did that hurt so much? Why did all her emotions feel raw-edged? Why did she feel so desperate and despairing?

  Because she wanted more from him, had always wanted more from the instant she looked at him at the tender age of seventeen and fell head over heels in love for the one and only time in her life. And now she was looking at Zarif afresh and with much greater maturity and the sudden sinking acknowledgement that she still loved Zarif al-Rastani with all her heart and her soul. No other man had ever stirred her brain or her body the way he did, no other man could hurt her so easily. Pride had made her tell herself that she had got over him but she had been lying to herself all along. Unrequited love could have tremendous sticking power.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Ella admitted thinly, ‘is that three years ago you wanted to marry me and yet now you’re behaving like you’ve been trapped by some designing hussy! What changed?’

  ‘You said no,’ Zarif growled like a grizzly bear.

  A great storm of fiery emotion engulfed Ella, who was thoroughly sick of his inability to work out the obvious. ‘Of course I said no. I was madly in love with you and then you told me you still loved Azel and that she was irreplaceable—’

  His brilliant dark eyes narrowed as he stared back at her in evident bewilderment. ‘I’m sure I did not say that.’

  ‘You did say it. You said she would always be in your heart and only a total madwoman would have married you after being told that!’

  ‘You said you were madly in love with me...’ he breathed uncertainly.

  ‘Three years ago...before I wised up and realised that you were a lost cause better left lost in the past!’ Ella parried with hot cheeks and acid bite as she stalked past him.

  Zarif was frozen in the centre of the room trying to recall saying what she had flung at him. Had his guilty conscience stirred him into making that claim? Could he really have been that crass that day? Was it possible that Ella had loved him then? A flicker of gold burned in his abstracted gaze as he mulled that idea over until it burst like a rainbow on a sunny day over his every thought. Inshallah, he had been blessed by the gift of another child and the perfect excuse to keep the woman of his dreams. Did he really need that excuse? What had he been agonising about? And why had he driven her away?

  Even his uncle had urged him to move on and recognise that this was a fresh start. But he hadn’t moved on, had he? He had allowed his guilt and regret from the past to wall him off from the infinitely more promising present. It was time to tell her the truth even if that threatened to change her view of him in a way that he dreaded. Swallowing hard, Zarif headed to his office safe. Pride was all very well but his marriage was on the line and he did not think he was in a strong enough position to keep secrets.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ELLA WAS SO angry and wounded that she wanted to scream her hurt to the rooftops. Zarif wanted the baby but he didn’t want her.

  Ella would only be tolerated and accepted as a wife because she was the baby’s mother. Zarif would continue to view Azel as the perfect matchless partner even while Ella lay in his bed and gave birth to his child. It wa
sn’t fair, it simply wasn’t fair, she thought with ferocious resentment even though she knew that life was frequently unfair. She could not face leading such a life with Zarif even for the sake of their unborn child. Such a marriage could not possibly be happy and their child would be damaged by the strife between them. He had to divorce her. Somehow she had to persuade him that a divorce that would grant him liberal access to their child was the best solution for all of them.

  Of course, she could do something scandalous, which would make it much easier for him to accede to a divorce, she conceded, her brain roving off on a tangent as she descended a rear set of stairs in search of fresh air. She was desperate to escape the palace and leave behind the hothouse tension of her row with Zarif. It was running away and she knew it was running away but she couldn’t face another session with Zarif, particularly not after having exposed herself to the extent that she had. Why had she told him that she had been madly in love with him three years earlier? What had she hoped to achieve with that admission? In retrospect she felt humiliated but knew she had brought it on herself.

  As the heat engulfed her in an area not cooled by fans, Ella longed for a breeze and thought nostalgically back to the occasion when her father had taken her mother and her out for a drive in an open-topped sports car. Of course, if she wanted to scandalise the populace she could go for a drive now, she thought suddenly, thinking of the vast basement of high-performance cars she had viewed only the week before when she was exploring the palace. Zarif might rarely drive himself anywhere but he had a fabulous collection of vehicles. Her chin rising at a combative angle, Ella crossed the courtyard to the garage block.

  It was the work of a moment to indicate which car she wanted brought out to the two men engaged in lovingly polishing one. Naturally they didn’t question the command: she was Zarif’s queen and they undoubtedly assumed that he or someone else would be driving her.