CHAPTER EIGHT
Charlotte slammed the ball hard.
It sailed over the net and punched the grass at the other end of the court, landing with enough force to displace a wave of sand.
She grunted and reached for another ball, relishing the sensation of heat and fire that spread over her skin. The sun was at its zenith and she didn’t care.
She tossed the ball over her head, bringing her racket onto it with precision and power. The ball followed the trajectory laid out by its mate, flying the distance and thudding to the ground.
Her fingers curved around the felted sphere of yet another ball. She squeezed it and bounced it a few times, before wiping her eyes and forehead with the cream sweat band she wore on her wrists.
Her eyes blinked afterwards, refocussing on her goal. And then careened off the court, into the shadows that lined it. It was surrounded by thick, ancient palm trees. The fronds gave shade to the periphery, and there were white bench seats spread haphazardly around the court, allowing spectators to watch.
And something dark had moved in the field of her vision.
She bounced the ball again, out of habit, her eyes continuing to scan the circumference until she saw the source of movement. Her mother, and Ashad.
Her heart began to pound, and not because she’d spent the better part of the last hour slamming balls from one end of the court to the other.
No, her heart was slamming against her ribs because of him.
She hadn’t seen him since the day before.
The boat.
The kiss.
The almost-sex.
Her cheeks flushed and she wished she had thought to wear her sunglasses.
With a small flash of annoyance, she saw her mother beckoning her off the court. Charlotte replaced the ball in the basket and walked deliberately slowly towards them. As she got closer, she banged her palm against the strings of the racket.
She hadn’t been sure she wanted to see Ashad again at all, let alone in the presence of her mother.
“Hello,” she said with cool dignity, before smiling at Eloise.
“Darling,” Eloise grimaced, her eyes skimming her daughter from head to toe. Charlotte was wearing designer sports gear, skin tight pants that were a black and grey snakeskin pattern with a black shirt. She had no make up on and her hair was pulling into a plait that fell over one shoulder. “I hadn’t realised you’d be …”
“Playing?” Charlotte couldn’t resist teasing. “Despite the fact you knew I was on the tennis courts?”
Eloise compressed her lips with muted disapproval.
Ashad’s eyes sparked between the two women. “Exercise is an excellent way of releasing pressure,” he murmured, and Charlotte shot him a warning look.
“Yes, and I’d like to get back to it. Was there something in particular you needed, mother?” She asked, blanking Ashad with enormous difficulty.
Charlotte glared at her daughter and then shook her head.
“Forgive the princess,” Eloise offered an apology to Ashad. “She is so impatient for the wedding she forgets her manners sometimes.”
Charlotte resisted the urge to point out that her mother’s assertion made no sense whatsoever. There was no correlation between one event and the other. Nor had she forgotten to use her manners; she’d elected not to use them.
Her smile was tart.
“You are playing tennis alone?” Ashad asked, and just his voice sent a frisson of awareness along her spine.
“No. I have John McEnroe hiding down the other end,” she responded.
“Charlotte!” Eloise gasped.
“It’s fine,” Ashad promised. “Well, so long as John McEnroe doesn’t mind, I’ll volley with you a while.”
“I was just about to stop,” Charlotte lied.
“No, you weren’t.” Eloise’s expression was a warning that Charlotte knew she ought to heed. “You will be delighted to entertain His Royal Highness, I’m sure.”
Charlotte felt colour warming her cheeks as she thought of how she’d entertained him the morning before.
“Fine,” she shrugged, the word obviously dragged out against her will.
“Good,” Eloise nodded. Safe in the knowledge that her daughter was going to behave, she smiled at them both. “I’ll return to the palace then. Thank you for calling, Ashad.”
He bowed his head forward slightly. They watched her go, and once Charlotte was certain her mother was out of earshot, she hissed, “What are you doing here?”
He eyed her thoughtfully, and she noted, for the first time, that he had that same turquoise shopping bag with him. The Tiffany & Co. bag. He placed it on one of the white benches.
“We have unfinished business.”
“We are finished business,” she corrected, slamming her palm emphatically against her racquet.
“Charlotte?” He spoke softly yet she felt the strength of the word; enough to look at him sharply. “Play with me.”
She didn’t understand, for a moment, what he meant. But he nodded at her racquet and she nodded. “Fine.” She stalked back onto the court and retrieved a spare racquet from her bag. She handed it to him, careful to avoid allowing their fingers to connect.
He held it for a moment. “Why don’t we make this interesting?”
She arched a brow. “What do you suggest?”
“I lost you yesterday.”
She swallowed and looked away from him. “I wasn’t yours to lose.”
“Yes, you were. One minute you were there, with me, needing me, falling apart with me. And the next you were shaking like a leaf. I want to know what happened.”
Her eyes showed bleakness. “I came to my senses.”
“No. Something frightened you. You’re afraid. And I want to know what of.”
Her breathing was laboured. “So you can fix it?”
“Perhaps,” he said quietly. “I want to know your secrets.”
“Well, that’s tough. Because I don’t want to… I mean, I can’t… it’s …”
He lifted an imperious hand to silence her. “Play tennis with me. If I win the first game, you’ll tell me.”
Charlotte shook her head. “I’m very good. You won’t win.”
His laugh was liquid oil on her skin. “So make the bet.”
“Fine,” she shrugged. She had been trained by two former world number ones. Her game was professional level. “I’ll even let you serve.”
He bowed low. “How good of you.” He grinned as he sauntered to the opposite end of the court and picked up a single ball.
It passed her almost at the speed of the light; it was a blur of fluorescent colour in the periphery of her vision. She lifted her racquet to return it but the ball had already thudded to the ground behind her well before she could connect with it.
She sent him a look of exasperation. “Beginner’s luck,” she muttered, though she was a lot less confident about that now. Still, anyone could strike an ace from time to time.
She’d underestimated him; a mistake she wouldn’t make again. She moved to the other side of the court and this time she braced for speed. She moved her weight from one foot to the other, her eyes trained on the ball.
He tossed it hard and slammed it over the net. She startled at his precision but not his power – she knew his power intimately. Her racquet connected with it this time, sending it back with a spin that made it bounce awkwardly for him. He was there, though, and he volleyed it back, almost managing to send it over her shoulder. But she reached up and slammed it, landing it with satisfaction in the corner of the court. It was on the line and he tapped his hand against his racquet in a silent clap – acknowledgement of the finesse of her shot.
“Very good,” he said softly.
Her response was a tight smile.
She waited for him to serve and again she returned the ball but this time he was too quick. He sent it back over the net low and fast, and on the other side of the court, so that even Superman would have struggled to return the ground stroke.
“Thirty, fifteen,” he said, as though she couldn’t keep score.
She ground her teeth together and swapped to the other service square. His next serve was an ace and her mutinous glare forestalled him pointing out that it was game point.
He lifted the ball, then bounced it at his feet. He watched her for a moment and then dropped the ball. He walked towards the net slowly and she did likewise, curiosity spurring her forward.
“I’m going to win,” he said quietly.
She didn’t argue.
“I don’t want you to confide in me because of a bet.”
Charlotte swallowed. “So why did you suggest it?”
His smile was lopsided and he shrugged. “Will you tell me what happened?”
Her eyes were enormous. He lifted a hand and curled it over hers, where it rested on the top of the net. His thumb curved beneath her wrist and stroked her pulse point. “Tell me because we were about to make love. Because you wish we had. Tell me because you’ve come to care for me. Tell me because I’m asking you to. Please.”
Her heart was cracking. She stared into his eyes and felt aches and pains lodge in her chest cavity. She nodded jerkily, her eyes showing that the agreement was not an easy one to give.
“I got scared,” she whispered, unable to meet his eyes. The net stood between them, and Ashad could do little more than stroke her wrist, comforting her, silently imploring her to continue.
When Charlotte didn’t say anything else, he prompted, “But you told me you have experience…”
“Not good experience,” she said with the sense of shame that accompanied the confession. She had seen a psychologist afterwards, Dr Medusans, who had helped her come to terms with what had happened. But the shame had never dissipated.
Ashad studied her beautiful face with confusion. Had her lover not been skilled?
“You don’t enjoy sex?”
Her enormous eyes lifted to his. “We didn’t have sex,” she said, the words robotic.
“You said you’re not a virgin,” he responded.
“I’m not.” She swallowed. “We … he …” She closed her eyes, unable now to meet Ashad’s face. “I told you that I arrived at his house and saw that he had become obsessed with me.” She pushed back the memory; it was so fresh despite the fact it had happened years earlier.
“And that you had already been intimate.”
“No, we hadn’t.” She bit down on her lip. “I liked him, but part of what I liked was that he never pressured me. He knew that I couldn’t just sleep with my boyfriend. I thought he would wait – that he wanted to marry me, even.”
Ashad nodded, stroking her wrist gently, calmly, hoping she felt his heart’s truth through his fingertips.
“When I saw all those pictures and realised that I’d fallen into a trap, he knew it was over.”
Danger was ahead. Ashad felt it. A murderous rage was festering in his chest. “And?”
“He told me that if I wasn’t going to be with him, he’d make sure no else would ever want me. That no royal marriage would be arranged for a slut like me.” She didn’t realise she was crying until tears dropped from her eyes and landed on the back of her hand. She looked down, as if just noticing that his hand had curved over hers; that her tears had dribbled onto his flesh, too. She made to pull her hand away but he held it tight and lifted it to his lips, kissing her wrist gently, then chasing one of her tears with his tongue.
His anger was a raging tsunami but he didn’t indulge it. He wouldn’t. Because she needed him to support her, not to indulge his own emotions. “But you weren’t a slut,” he said softly.
She shut her eyes again, unable to see the disappointment she knew he would feel.
“I often wonder if I could have fought harder. The thing is, I was terrified. And I kept telling myself that I’d misunderstood. That somehow everything was going to be okay. I didn’t fight him.”
“He raped you,” Ashad said in a matter-of-fact voice.
“No. Yes. I mean, I hate that word because I think of rape as violent and something that happens in dark alleys, not … by your boyfriend, in his bed, with the flowers he’d bought for you sitting in a vase right near your head.”
“He raped you,” Ashad said softly, insistently. “And that’s not your fault.”
“I know that. It took me a long time to realise it though.”
“I scared you yesterday.”
“No!” She turned her hand and squeezed his fingers now. “It wasn’t you. It’s just that no one’s touched me since him, and I just found it overwhelming. The memories, even though you’re nothing like him, and I didn’t feel anything like that when he … when we… it was so different.”
“I’m sorry.” He lifted his hands to her shoulders and he gripped her tight. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” She blinked at him, and strangely, having revealed this part of herself to him, she felt lighter. As though the guilt she’d carried for years had been dispersed momentarily.
“To have, even unknowingly, caused you pain. I would never have wanted you to relive those feelings and memories.” He lifted a hand higher, cupping her cheek. “I wonder, though, at the wisdom of your parents, in arranging your marriage. Syed is a good man; but what if he wasn’t? What if your husband to be turned out to be unpleasant or sexually aggressive?”
Syed. Crap. Why did she keep forgetting about her intended husband?
“My parents signed a contract with your uncle the day after it happened. There had long been an understanding between them, first that I would marry Zahir, and then that I would marry Syed. But after they learned what had happened with Marook, they feared the truth would come out and that Adin would refuse to accept the arrangement. I was spoiled, you see. No longer the perfect princess bride to barter. And so they locked the arrangement in place in a way that could never be set aside. Not even if Syed wished it, or I wished it. Don’t you see that, Ashad? We are prisoners of this agreement.” She sobbed.
“Do you want to marry him?” He asked desperately.
“Didn’t you just hear me? I have to. I have to.” She pulled away from Ashad and walked slowly beside the net. He did the same, until they met at the edge. She guided him back to the chairs that surrounded the court, sitting beside the Tiffany & Co bag. “My parents never said they were disappointed, but I know they were. They had never liked Marook, and I had dated him to defy them.” Her smile was humourless. “I won’t defy them again.”
Ashad didn’t sit beside Charlotte. Instead, he crouched in front of her, his hands light on her knees. “Is this the same woman who stormed into my office, reminding me that we’re in the twenty first century?” He smiled at her and the world cracked open – she could see hope and light in his face and she wanted to reach for it.
“But I’m still a princess of Falina.”
“And I am a prince of Kalastan.” He leaned forward. “What if I told you I could fix this? Would you trust me again, Charlotte?”
“Fix it how?”
He lifted off the ground and sat beside her now, lifting the shopping bag. His eyes held hers. “Trust me.”
She did. She did trust him. She nodded slowly. “I suppose there’s no harm in trying.” She looked at him with confusion. “Are you going to tell Syed? And Adin?”
“That you were raped, many years ago?” His anger briefly popped into the words and he covered it with effort. “No, azeezi. That is your trauma, and while I am grateful you have shared it with me, I recognise that you chose to do so. Who you tell, and when, is exactly that – a choice. I will not add extra grievance to what you suffered by violating your privacy.”
She expelled a small sound of surprise. “How do you know just what to do? I needed you to say that to me, and yet I didn’t know it until you spoke. Thank you.”
He nodded, then handed the bag to her. “This is for you. I had meant to give it to you yesterday, but …”
“Yes.” She smothered the rest of his statement, not wanting to revisit what had happened the day before. She peered into the bag with interest. “What is it?”
“Have a look.”
With interest, she dug out two boxes, both larger than she’d seen from the jeweller. She opened the ribbon on one, her fingers deftly disposing of its satin length before cracking the lid off the top.
The most beautiful mask she’d ever seen was inside. It was designed to cover the eyes and nose only, and it was decorated with hundreds of diamonds. She stared at it with an expression of confusion.
“It’s beautiful …” She looked at him, then back to the mask. “I already have a costume for the ball.” She thought of the mask she’d been going to wear. The whole outfit was black – an incredible gown and mask that had been designed for her. Hope filled her now though – a hope borne purely of love and trust. “But I’ll wear this instead.”
And she would find a new dress – one that was as bright and beautiful as the mask warranted. “Thank you.”
He watched as she carefully placed the mask beside her and reached for the second box. She opened it, and at the sight of the garments inside, flushed to the tip of her head. “Ashad,” she said, the word choked from her.
For inside was the most beautiful bra and pair of underpants she could have imagined. The bra was made of a fine mesh material except for in the very middle of each cup, where there was a strange thickening of the fabric – it was coarse and had small beads stitched into it. She ran her finger over it, and then turned her attention to the front of the bra. There were strings of diamonds along the cups. In between, there was a diamond, perhaps twenty carats. The pants were no less stunning. The same mesh material, with delicate diamonds beaded down the front, and at the waistband, it looped three times, in what she imagined would create the impression that she had been tied up by diamond rope.
“They’re beautiful,” she said quietly, the inappropriateness of the gesture making it impossible for her to enthuse over the gift even as her stomach knotted and her heart leaped somersaults.
“I want you to wear them to the ball. Think of me as they touch you intimately. And afterwards, I want to remove your dress so that you are wearing only these, and your mask. I want to obliterate any thought from your mind but pleasure, and me. Will you do that for me, Charlotte?”
A shiver of anticipation was bundling through her. “Ashad…” she thought of her parents and Syed, of Marook and her past, and then she thought of Ashad and her nod was determined.
“Because I don’t care who you’ve been with, or who you are to marry. I know only that I need you, and I think you need me too.”
She nodded again. “Yes. I do. I will.”
* * *
Ashad left shortly afterwards. As he stood on the edge of the tennis courts, he reached down and squeezed Charlotte’s hand one last time; a small gesture that spoke of a big promise. “Trust me,” he mouthed and she nodded, her smile radiant.
“I do.”
Emerging down the path at that exact moment, followed by a servant who carried a tray of refreshments for the Kalastani delegate and the Falinese princess, Eloise froze, so that the servant almost bumped into her. She watched the interaction with a deep sense of unease.
It was over within a second; and for all she knew, he was simply reassuring Charlotte about the wedding.
But then, Eloise knew a thing or two about unrequited love. Her own experience gave her insight and knowledge.
She recognised it between the two of them and she turned on her heel, anger pinking her cheeks. “Take it back,” she snapped at the servant as she stormed into the house.
So her daughter had fallen for the wrong prince, had she?
Well, well. Eloise would have to act to put all thoughts of that from Charlotte’s mind. It would not be easy, but Eloise was nothing if not determined.
She reached for her phone and dialled the number. It connected on the third ring.
“We need to speak; there might be a problem.”