Modern Romance May 2015 Books 1-8. Кейт Хьюит

and he was the worst of all...’ she admitted heavily.

      ‘In what way?’ Jaul prompted.

      ‘It’s sordid,’ she mumbled, abruptly pulling away from him.

      Jaul hauled her back into his arms without hesitation. ‘There should be nothing you can’t tell me. Your mother’s mistakes are not your mistakes and I will not judge you by them.’

      Chrissie swivelled round in the circle of his arms. ‘Before Mum died, my stepfather was making her work as a prostitute,’ she framed sickly. ‘Men would come to the house during the day. Lizzie doesn’t know about it because she was at secondary and she had a job after school but I was only seven and home at lunchtime. Once I went upstairs to the bathroom and I saw Mum in bed with a man and there was a huge row.’

      Jaul tipped up her face, seeing the distance and defensiveness etched in her turquoise eyes. ‘What happened?’

      ‘My stepfather hit me. I was much older before I understood what was going on. After that I was locked in my room every day after school... I was very scared of my stepfather.’

      ‘I am so very sorry you had to go through that,’ Jaul breathed in a raw, driven undertone, wishing he could look up the stepfather and kill him for terrorising the sensitive, innocent child Chrissie had once been. ‘But it is not your disgrace to bear.’

      ‘It’s never felt like that, though,’ Chrissie confided, willing to meet his beautiful eyes again, anxiously in search of any sign of revulsion in his gaze and relieved to see only concern etched there. ‘Now tell me something you’re ashamed of...’ she invited to distract him from asking further questions.

       Not checking out his father’s story about her once he was fit to do so.

      But Jaul didn’t want to rake up that divisive past and instead presented her with another less than stellar moment. ‘I lost my virginity with a very high-class hooker in Dubai,’ he told her grimly. ‘Believe me, I was of an age where it was past time I found out what sex was like.’

      ‘Why was that?’ she asked curiously.

      ‘The first real freedom I had ever had was when I went to university in the UK,’ Jaul confided with a grimace. ‘I had no experience whatsoever of normal life.’

      Chrissie rested her head down on his shoulder and studied him with drowsy turquoise eyes of sympathy while thinking of how badly she had misunderstood him when she’d first met him and assumed he was the quintessential Arab playboy. In truth he had spent his youthful years of supposed irresponsibility in boarding school and the army with even his free time mapped out by his controlling father. If he had gone a little wild when he’d first slipped that leash, she was sure only a saint could blame him for it.

      It dismayed her to appreciate how little they had actually known about each other when they had first married, but it soothed her that she understood him better now and could accept that in possession of his faculties and the true facts he would never have abandoned her.

      * * *

      Bandar greeted Jaul over his morning coffee by the fire the following morning.

      His aide gave him a list of the day’s events and passed on urgent messages before pausing to extend an envelope. ‘This arrived in the diplomatic bag yesterday. It’s from Yusuf and apparently it’s personal and confidential.’ Bandar raised his brows at that surprising label being applied to any item sent by as aloof a personality as his former boss.

      Jaul stiffened and lost colour before grasping the envelope. As soon as he was alone, he tore it open. Somewhere in the depths of the tent he could hear Chrissie singing tunelessly in the shower but, for once, he failed to smile. He was reading what his father’s former adviser had to say and in the short note of fervent apology one sentence stood out clearer than any other.

      Bearing in mind my actions two years ago, it would have been an offence for me to enter the same room as your queen and offer my best wishes on the occasion of your wedding.

      And there it was in a handful of words: what Jaul had most feared. It was confirmation of everything Chrissie had told him because it was obvious that Yusuf had felt too ashamed of his treatment of Chrissie in the past to attend their wedding. That confirmation struck Jaul like a body blow. His stomach lurched and he sprang to his feet, too unsettled to sit still. Evidently, everything Chrissie had told him was the truth. She had been thrown out of his Oxford apartment and humiliated. She had gone to the Marwani Embassy in London to enquire about her missing husband, only for those visits to be mocked and hushed up. She had not accepted money from his father.

      Jaul had nourished a secret hope that Chrissie could be exaggerating her experiences after his disappearance, that perhaps what she had endured was not quite as traumatic as she had made it sound, but Yusuf’s reaction to Chrissie’s reappearance in Jaul’s life as his queen was uniquely revealing. Jaul still wanted to hear the details of Yusuf’s dealings with his wife on King Lut’s behalf but he would wait until the older man returned to Marwan to receive them. After all, he already knew the most crucial facts, he reminded himself heavily. His wife had told him how she had suffered and he had doubted her every word, had literally prayed that her lively imagination had encouraged her to embellish her story. And wasn’t this his due reward for his lack of faith in his wife and his all-consuming loyalty to his father’s memory? What had happened to his loyalty to the woman he had married?

      Self-evidently, his father had lied to him shamelessly over and over again. Lut clearly hadn’t cared what he’d had to say or do to destroy his son’s marriage. Jaul was appalled that the man he had respected and cared for could have gone to such brutally selfish lengths to deprive his son of the woman he loved.

      As the sun began to climb higher in the sky, driving off the early morning chill, Jaul paced the sand, oblivious to the anxious watch of his guards. He could not escape certain devastating conclusions: he had virtually wrecked Chrissie’s life and, worst of all, he had not just done it once, he had done it twice. The first time he had married her and left her pregnant and without support and the second time he had blackmailed her into moving to Marwan and giving their marriage a second chance. How did any man come back from such grievous mistakes? What right did he have to try and hold onto a woman he knew he didn’t deserve?

      While being angry and hostile at the outset, Chrissie had come round sufficiently to offer him a measure of forgiveness and understanding. But she didn’t owe him either, did she? He had done nothing to earn her forgiveness. An honourable man would let her go free, Jaul reckoned, perspiration dampening his lean dark features in the heat of the sun. An honourable man would instantly own up to his mistakes and give her the freedom to make a choice about whether she wanted to stay or go...

      It was the most humiliating moment to discover that he was evidently not an honourable man, for the prospect of facing life without Chrissie and the twins by his side was not one that Jaul could bring himself to even contemplate.

      He had screwed up, he had screwed up so badly, he reasoned fiercely, that he could only do better in the future. But the shame of his misjudgement felt like a giant rock lodged in his chest. He watched Chrissie curl up on a seat in the shade while fruit and rolls were brought to her for breakfast. Her shining hair was loose round her lovely face and she wore not a scrap of make-up, her slender body fetchingly clad in khaki capris and a plain white tee. She was his wife...but for how much longer? Stress locked tight every muscle in his lithe, powerful body.

       CHAPTER TEN

      ‘WHAT HAPPENED TO that horse you idolised?’ Jaul asked lazily.

      ‘Hero’s in a sanctuary close to the farm where I used to live with Dad,’ Chrissie told him as they rode back to the oasis encampment with the sun slowly rising to chase the coolness from the sky. Her eyes were wide and bright, appreciative of the surprising and colourful beauty of the barren landscape at dawn. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t seen him in months.