Desert Prince, Bride of Innocence

by Lynne Graham

  ‘I’ll be with you in a couple of hours when we have landed,’ Jasim vowed as Elinor hovered anxiously. ‘Stop looking so worried. I’m qualified to fly fighter jets.’

  Elinor nodded agreement and wondered if she was turning into an awful clingy woman who had got too attached and couldn’t bear her husband out of her sight. She boarded her helicopter. Smiling at Sami, who was kicking his feet in excitement in his seat, she did up her belt. As the unwieldy craft rose into the air she saw a hurrying manservant bump into one of the gardeners and drop the box he was carrying.

  In the act of striding past to get into the other aircraft, Jasim was quick to notice the photograph that had fallen out of one of the books and he bent to scoop it up. It was a faded picture of his older brother as a young man with a woman in an evening gown. She was blonde and small with a wide sweet smile that had a strong tug of familiarity for him. He reached for the book and pulled out the folded sheet of paper also protruding from its pages. It was a letter. The harsh light of the sun at noon illuminating the still crisp copperplate English script, he began to read and it wasn’t very long before Jasim was being rocked by an appalling sense of guilt…

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘YOU MUST BE BORED witless after spending a month at the beach, hemmed in by the sea on one side and the desert on the other!’ Laila opined, all smiles and pleasantries as she sauntered into the sitting room where her mother, Mouna, was drinking tea with Elinor.

  ‘Laila,’ her gentle mother scolded. ‘That was impolite.’

  Laila rolled unconcerned eyes. ‘There are no shops at the beach and Englishwomen are said to be very fond of shopping.’

  ‘But all Englishwomen are not the same,’ Elinor responded as she stretched out a hand to restrain Sami from climbing into a large plant pot. ‘I like fashion but I get bored trailing round shops. I enjoyed the desert as well.’

  ‘Ninety-nine per cent of women would enjoy the desert with Jasim in tow,’ Laila remarked, lowering her voice to prevent her mother from hearing that sally.

  Lifting a drowsy Sami onto her lap, Elinor gave the beautiful brunette a serene smile. ‘You’re probably right. He made a wonderful guide.’

  ‘I hear you have been invited to open the new hotel and leisure complex and that the King has agreed.’

  Rocking Sami, who was tired and getting cross, Elinor concealed her surprise at what was news to her and simply inclined her head to the brunette in acknowledgement. Until Laila appeared, uninvited and looking quite ravishing in a white shift dress that hugged every curve, Elinor had been hoping Jasim would get back. Then, aware that the other woman would linger to take advantage of his presence, she had wished Laila away. Now turning a discreet eye to the watch on her wrist for about the fourth time, Elinor was more concerned that Jasim was so late and wondered what was holding him up.

  ‘Perhaps you’re about to become the figurehead for our new media-savvy modern monarchy,’ Laila commented, with an envy she could not hide, just as an older man in a business suit knocked on the sitting room door.

  ‘Your Highness,’ he greeted Elinor, who was still striving to adapt to her new title. ‘The King wants to speak to you.’

  Totally taken aback by that announcement, Elinor scrambled to her feet clutching Sami. Zaid, always a step ahead in questions of what was required within the household, had already summoned the baby’s nurse and the young woman hurried in to take charge of the little boy.

  On the way to see the King Elinor was a bundle of nerves, for she could not think of anything that Jasim’s father might have to discuss with her and her companion was as unresponsive as a block of wood to her curious questions. Could it be about the opening of the new leisure complex that Laila had mentioned? She would have expected any such request to be passed on to her by Jasim. Almost inevitably she began to wonder if she had done or said something wrong and if his father could be taking advantage of his son’s absence to tell her about it.

  The King was sitting in the ornate reception room where he conducted most of his meetings. The instant Elinor laid eyes on his stony face and grey pallor, her heart gave a sick thud inside her and she forgot the protocol she had learned from Jasim and spoke first. ‘What’s happened?’

  With his hand he urged her to make use of the chair that had been set beside his. Her legs feeling wobbly, Elinor sank down heavily, her eyes glued to the older man’s deeply troubled face.

  ‘Jasim has had to make an emergency landing and the rescue services are trying to locate the site as we speak,’ he said in a low fierce voice.

  Elinor felt the blood drain from her shattered face and her stomach gave a sick somersault. A horrible jumble of frightening images filled her mind. ‘Did he crash?’ she asked in a wobbly voice.

  ‘We don’t know—only that the helicopter developed a fault. He is an accomplished pilot. He passed out top of his year from the military school,’ the older man informed her heavily. ‘He will know what to do.’

  ‘He’ll be all right…he has to be,’ Elinor mumbled shakily, terror threatening her desperate attempt to maintain her composure. Had she been alone, she knew she would have crumbled and sobbed out her fear.

  The older man was sitting with lowered head and closed eyes, his lips moving as though he was praying.

  ‘He is not answering his cell phone,’ he revealed.

  Elinor stopped breathing. Jasim had boasted that there was not a corner of Quaram that did not enjoy good network coverage and she knew he never went anywhere without his phone. She stared into space while the seconds ticked by and she prayed harder than she had ever prayed in her life before. Now when she had found such happiness with Jasim, she could not bear to imagine life without him. She heard the buzz of voices beyond the doors and realised that word of the accident was spreading inexorably through the palace; a crowd of people was gathering in the hall. The voices grew louder until she heard the slap of running feet against the marble floor. One of the doors opened with noisy abruptness.

  Two of the King’s aides erupted into the room closely followed by a couple of Jasim’s. They raced down the room and burst into animated speech. Elinor had not a clue what they were saying but was convinced they could not be delivering bad news with so much animation and excitement.

  ‘Jasim has been located,’ his father announced grittily, reaching out to grip her hand in a supportive move. ‘He is well.’

  ‘How…well?’ Elinor demanded helplessly.

  ‘Scratches, bruises, but he is whole in limb and he will soon be here with us,’ the King proclaimed tremulously, waving both hands in urgent dismissal of his hovering aides, who were staring at him and then swiftly averting their eyes from their elderly ruler.

  Elinor turned worried eyes to Jasim’s father. Unashamed tears of relief were streaming down the older man’s face. He looked at her with anguished eyes of regret. ‘He was always good and worthy of praise and I ignored him.’

  ‘It’s not too late to change that,’ she murmured feelingly. ‘It’s never too late.’

  They sat there together in a surprisingly companionable silence while they waited for Jasim’s return. A curious calm had descended over Elinor. She was thinking that she too would have had regrets had Jasim been taken from her without warning. He might have died without knowing that she loved him and that awareness distressed her.

  The palace guard in the grounds discharged their guns in long noisy bursts to announce Jasim’s return. The King hurried down the long room to the doors to await his son. Elinor had already decided to leave the two men alone to talk, but she needed to see Jasim in the flesh to fully believe that he was safe and unharmed. He strode in, black hair tousled and dusty, the sleeve of his shirt missing and a bandage on his arm.

  ‘I thought you weren’t hurt!’ she exclaimed in dismay.

  ‘It’s only a scratch,’ he barked, an expression of shock and incredulity crossing his lean dark features as his father suddenly wrapped both arms round him and enveloped him in a hearty emot
ional hug.

  Although it hurt Elinor to walk away when she too longed for that physical contact to vent her relief from intense fear and concern, she slipped out of the door behind Jasim and left him in peace with his father while she headed back to their corner of the palace. She still felt dizzy and physically weak at the merciful reprieve from her worst possible fears. Jasim had become as precious to her as Sami and she was still in shock from the fright she had had. Ruefully conscious that stress and heat had left her clothing sticking to her damp skin, she went straight upstairs for a quick shower.

  She was wearing only a bra and pants when she heard Jasim return. Snatching up her wrap, she pulled it on and hurriedly knotted the sash before leaving the room to greet him.

  ‘I’m sorry I was so long,’ he groaned, ‘But my father had a great deal to say to me—’

  ‘I thought he might,’ Elinor confided, hauling him closer with two possessive hands, drinking in the familiar musky scent of his skin and the rich honeyed aroma of the frankincense smoke that the staff were always wafting ritually over him. ‘He was very upset. That’s why I left you alone.’

  ‘I am married to an angel of tact and intelligence,’ Jasim drawled softly, holding her back from him to gaze down at her flushed and anxious face with unashamed appreciation.

  ‘What happened to your cell phone this afternoon?’

  ‘I was in such a frantic hurry to follow you back to Muscar that I left my phone behind at the villa.’

  Elinor frowned. ‘Why were you in such a hurry?’

  ‘I knew I had to offer you a grovelling apology for ever having believed that you would lie to me.’

  Her brows pleated. ‘What are you talking about?’

  Jasim dropped an arm round her slim shoulders and walked her into the bedroom. He dug into his shirt pocket and removed a photo and a sheet of paper. He gave her the photo first. ‘I believe that this woman may be your mother, Rose.’

  Elinor stared down in surprise at the photograph, which she had never seen before. It depicted her late mother with a much younger and slimmer Prince Murad, both of them clad in evening dress. ‘Yes, it is. Where did you get it from?’

  ‘It fell out of a copy of the Koran that Murad cherished…along with this letter.’ He passed her the letter.

  It was a letter written by her mother to Murad, telling him gently that they had to get on with their lives since they could not be together and that staying in contact would only make that more difficult. ‘It’s very sad,’ Elinor whispered.

  ‘Murad must have loved her very much to keep the photo and the letter for so many years. When I saw the date I understood why my brother did not ask for his father’s permission to marry your mother. It was the same year that my mother deserted my father and clearly Murad saw no point in requesting the King’s blessing for his marriage with a foreigner. My father was so bitter over what he saw as his own mistake that he would have refused. I’m afraid that if my brother told your mother that he was threatened with disinheritance, he was lying.’

  Elinor was shaking her head in rueful comprehension. ‘It’s awful how something one person does can affect so many other lives in different ways.’

  ‘But I misjudged you and insulted you,’ Jasim reminded her darkly, brilliant dark golden eyes welded to her. ‘I believed Yaminah’s melodramatic suspicions and I kept on crediting her take on your relationship with Murad, even after I should have accepted that you were telling me the truth!’

  ‘Yes, but you do tend to see wheels within wheels where none exist. You’re jealous and possessive by nature,’ Elinor pointed out ruefully. ‘You make everything complicated—’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Jasim gave her a look of reproach.

  ‘Well, you have since I met you. You always seem to expect the worst from women—’

  ‘Yet I have received only the best from you,’ Jasim interrupted, closing lean hands over hers. ‘You are everything that I ever dreamt of finding in a woman. I know that now yet I almost lost you for ever. I feel sick at the thought that I might never have found you and Sami again.’

  ‘You’re hurting my hands,’ Elinor told him apologetically. It did seem a very prosaic comment to make in the midst of that emotional flood of appreciation.

  He lifted her crushed fingers to his lips and kissed them, massaging them to restore her circulation after the ferocity of his grip. ‘It took me a long time to realise that I loved you. I didn’t think I could fall in love and then I was too slow to recognise it when I did.’

  Bemused by that declaration, she stared at him, scarcely daring to believe that he could mean what he was saying. ‘I never thought I’d hear you say those words.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ Jasim confided, gathering her close to his lean, powerful frame. ‘But I love you very much and I feel amazingly lucky to have you, hayati—’

  ‘I love you too.’ Elinor allowed her fingertips to trace one hard, angular cheekbone in a tender caress. ‘I honestly believed that you were never going to feel the same way.’

  ‘You must have suspected when I took you out to see the wild flowers,’ he breathed in wonderment. ‘I’ve never done anything like that in my life before with a woman.’

  ‘I must have been slow on the uptake as well. I simply thought that you were trying to teach me about Quaram.’

  ‘I believe I fell for you the first time I saw you on a horse.’ His irreverent grin slashed his lean, strong face. ‘You looked like a wild warrior woman: sexy, strong—’

  Highly amused, Elinor smiled up at him. ‘Whatever turns you on.’

  ‘Unfortunately, my jealousy of the bond I believed you had already formed with Murad coloured everything,’ Jasim admitted flatly. ‘It clouded my reasoning. I couldn’t wait to take you to bed because only then would you be really mine.’

  Elinor linked her hands round his neck, loving the fact that he was just so basic and masculine in his reactions. ‘Everything with you happened way too fast for me and I don’t adapt well to things like that,’ she murmured. ‘We barely had five minutes together as a couple before I discovered that I was pregnant, and then playing a leading role in a shotgun marriage didn’t make me feel any better about myself or the decision I was making.’

  ‘I should have explained to you how I felt about marrying you behind my father’s back. But I should also have looked to the future and made it a more joyful day.’ Jasim frowned. ‘I can see how my attitude gave you the impression that I was a reluctant husband and contributed to your lack of faith in me later that day when you overheard Yaminah.’

  ‘It was just the last straw, but you weren’t the only one of us who got it wrong. I should have confronted you, rather than just walk out.’

  Jasim held her fast to him and tugged up her chin so that their eyes met. ‘The worst of your sins was failing to get in touch even to tell me that you were well and safe. You were pregnant. I was afraid that you might have decided not to continue with the pregnancy.’

  Her eyes widened in consternation. ‘Jasim, no, I wouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘But I didn’t know that,’ he reminded her ruefully.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t phone you. I was horribly bitter. For a long time I thought I h-hated you.’ Her voice faltering to a halt, Elinor wrinkled her nose. Her eyes were prickling with tears, the weight of stress she had borne earlier taking its toll on her, and she buried her face in his shoulder, needing the warmth and security of his closeness. ‘But I think I still loved you and only hated you for hurting me.’

  ‘I’ll never hurt you again,’ Jasim swore huskily. ‘We have found so much together. I could not bear to lose it.’

  ‘I was scared you would try to take Sami away from me when you found me again,’ she confessed.

  ‘I grew up without a mother and I would not have sentenced Sami to the same experience. But I was ready to put on the pressure, pull him away a little and make a lot of noise if it meant that you followed him and came back to Quaram with me.’ Dark gol
den eyes vibrant with amusement as he made that frank admission, Jasim looked so gorgeous he made her mouth run dry. ‘I wanted both of you back in my life full-time. For the eighteen months you were missing, you were all I thought about and other women didn’t exist for me, hayati.’

  ‘I wish I’d known,’ Elinor lamented.

  ‘Maybe I needed to lose you to fully appreciate you.’ Tiring of talk, Jasim captured her mouth in an intoxicating kiss and her world went into a sensual spin. Gathering her yielding body into his arms, he urged her down on the bed.

  The lingering edge of fear from the afternoon made her as eager for him as he was for her. They shed their garments in a tangled heap and rolled across the mattress welded to each other like magnets. But the act they shared was slow and sweet and joyful with love and mutual appreciation. Afterwards she lay replete and content and very weary in his arms, revelling in the tenderness in his eyes and the way he kept on telling her how much he loved her, words she knew she would never tire of hearing.

  ‘Some day I’d like another child,’ Jasim murmured huskily, one hand splayed across her flat stomach. ‘I would be there right from the beginning and I would not leave your side until the baby was born, habibti.’

  Elinor was almost asleep, a dreamy smile on her lips. ‘Some day, I might take you up on that,’ she whispered.

  Almost three years later, Elinor entered the nursery at Woodrow Court wearing a beautiful green satin evening gown and a magnificent set of emerald and diamond jewellery that glittered fierily below the lights.

  Sami was tucked up in bed clutching a toy racing car. His sister, Mariyah, a dark-eyed toddler with her mother’s ready smile, was fast asleep, and the newest addition to the family, Tarif, at four months old, was mesmerised watching the cot mobile above him with big drowsy eyes as it turned and played a lullaby. He was a laid-back good-natured baby who only cried when he was hungry. She was the mother of three children, Elinor reflected in bemusement, still amazed by the speed with which her life had changed and flourished. Mariyah, if truth be known, had not been planned, but the pregnancy had been easy and the delivery quick and Elinor had decided she would like her third child to be born within the same age range as the other two.