A FAINT MOAN parted Polly’s lips because her head was aching and she came awake with a sense of frightened confusion. Her eyes opened on an unfamiliar room. She saw a bewildering number of faces, blinked and registered that she was in a hospital bed with the side bars raised.
‘Polly?’ Rashad breathed tautly, springing out of the chair beside her.
‘What?’ she mumbled because moving her lips felt like too much effort. ‘My head’s sore...my hip.’
As she focused blearily on him he stepped back to allow the medical staff to attend to her and she wondered why he looked so tired and why the sun was shining into the room when only minutes ago it had been dark. A nurse checked her blood pressure and gave her a drink while a doctor asked her a series of questions. Her attention, however, stayed squarely on Rashad while she struggled to recall what had happened to her. Black stubble accentuated his stubborn passionate mouth, his luxuriant hair was dishevelled, his eyes shadowed, his powerful anxiety unconcealed. Recalling her fall on the stairs and the argument that had preceded it taxed her concentration and then, with a sudden whoosh of awareness, all that fell away on the shocking surge of apprehension that shot through her. She pressed a stricken hand against her stomach.
‘My baby?’ she gasped fearfully.
Rashad strode forward and rested a hand over hers in a soothing gesture. ‘Our baby is fine—’
‘For the moment. There has been no bleeding but you must rest. The next twenty-four hours are crucial to your recovery,’ the grey-haired doctor told her firmly as he urged her to lie still.
Rashad’s hand was trembling over hers and just as she noticed that he withdrew it in a sudden gesture and dug it into the pocket of his trousers. He knew that she was pregnant; he knew about the baby. She assumed that Dr Wasem had told him after she fell and knocked herself out. Polly closed her eyes, guessing just how guilty Rashad would be feeling. She was still furious with him but she knew his habit of blaming himself for everything bad that happened around him. If she lost their baby he would never forgive himself for upsetting her. How could she be furious with him and yet aching inside herself for what he was feeling at the same time? It was that crazy conundrum called love, she decided ruefully.
While the doctor talked to her about the concussion she had sustained, Polly tried to think clearly and focus but it was no use, she simply couldn’t. Both her head and her body ached. The mental confusion and the extreme fatigue the doctor had warned her about were steadily closing in on her because there was far too much to think about and it was infinitely easier to close it all out just then and drift. She still had her baby, she reflected with passionate relief, and that was the last clear thought she had.
* * *
Rashad paced the silent room. He had tidied himself up in response to Hakim’s pleas but he had not eaten, he had not slept. How could he? His temper, that wild surging rage he couldn’t always control, could have killed Polly. He looked at her, lying so still in the bed, white-blonde hair tumbling across the pillow, her face showing a little colour now, no longer that wan grey that had terrified him. She was so fragile, so precious...
And the baby? Rashad was still stunned by that development, that incredulous realisation that, if there was nothing medically amiss to prevent it, a pregnancy could happen so quickly, so easily, so...so normally, he recognised. He hadn’t expected that, hadn’t prepared for it either. In fact he had pessimistically assumed that although they might conceive a child eventually it would undoubtedly take a long time. Once again he had made the mistake of allowing past disappointment and disillusionment to influence his expectations in the present. And how could she ever forgive him for that?
He was fatally flawed, almost programmed to disappoint Polly. He had even failed to protect her from Hayat’s malice. ‘Either you’re mine or you’re still hers,’ Polly had flung at him, referring to Ferah, and he could see that now—could see that he had failed to make peace with the past and move on to embrace a wife far superior in every way to his first. And if it was wrong and disrespectful to think that then it was better to be wrong but at least rational enough to recognise that truth. Fate had rained gold on him when he least deserved it and he had virtually thrown away the opportunity he had been given, he conceded grimly.
‘You must eat and rest, Your Majesty,’ Hakim whispered fiercely from the doorway. ‘How can you support your wife if you are exhausted?’
‘As always, the voice of reason,’ Rashad conceded wearily, but his every instinct still warred against leaving Polly alone. At least while he watched over her he could actually feel as though he was doing something to help, but in reality, while she was under medical supervision, he could only be an onlooker.
* * *
Polly wakened and slowly savoured the strength returning to her body. She pushed down the bedding and tugged up her gown to squint at the horrid blue-black bruising covering her hip and stretching down her thigh. Better her hip than her stomach, she decided as a nurse came in and gently scolded her for sitting up in bed without help. Suddenly she was surrounded by staff again and she was changed and the bed was changed and then breakfast was ushered in.
An hour later, Rashad arrived, sleek and shaven in a beautifully cut dark suit. He looked fantastically handsome and considerably more groomed and calm than he had the day before. His stunning dark golden eyes immediately sought hers and instinctively she evaded his gaze, too full of conflict to meet it. He had revealed his lack of trust in her. He had believed that even though they were married she could still be tempted by another man and that she could be unfaithful. How could she overlook or forgive that?
‘I have a lot to say to you,’ Rashad murmured tautly. ‘But first your grandparents are waiting to see you and you should see them now to reassure them.’
‘Of course,’ she muttered uncertainly, wondering what he had to say to her, wondering what she would say to him.
‘If your medical team agree, I can take you home later.’
Polly compressed her lips in silence.
‘Hayat has now gone home to her mother. She won’t be returning to the palace staff,’ he told her in a harsh clipped undertone. ‘I was foolish to trust her near you—’
Polly studied him directly for the first time. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
His lean, strong face went rigid. ‘Apparently Hayat was angry and jealous that I had married you and she decided to cause trouble between us...and in that she succeeded,’ he divulged grudgingly. ‘I told her to cancel that dinner with Rio before I left the palace the day before yesterday. But she didn’t cancel it. She set you up instead, set us both up...challenging you to dine alone with him, knowing that I am not—at heart—the liberated male I must strive to be for your sake...’
Polly was shaken by that explanation. ‘But why would Hayat be angry and jealous? Were you involved with her before I came into your life?’
Rashad frowned. ‘Of course not...she is Ferah’s kid sister. I found it hard to warm to her personality, though—’
‘Hayat’s your sister-in-law?’ Polly exclaimed in disbelief. ‘Why did nobody tell me that?’
‘It wasn’t a secret. I didn’t think it was important. I didn’t want to discriminate against her either because she is, or was, very efficient.’ Rashad lifted his handsome dark head high and expelled his breath in an audible rush, frustration and regret tensing his lean dark face. ‘I made a mistake in allowing her access to you and I’m afraid you paid for my lack of judgement.’
Long lashes fluttering down, Polly cloaked her eyes to conceal her incredulity. How could he not have warned her about his familial relationship with the other woman? She remembered Hayat admitting that she had watched her sister break her heart over her inability to conceive and, remembering her own unease around the attractive brunette, she swallowed back angry words of condemnation. His first wife’s little sister, someone who would be challenged to wish Rashad’s second wife a long and happy life after Ferah’s tragic fate.
‘Hayat admitted that she resented my remarriage and our happiness,’ Rashad volunteered tautly. ‘I should have foreseen that likelihood and her spite.’
‘Well, it’s done and dusted now,’ Polly pointed out curtly, because she was annoyed at what she had learnt. ‘She’s left the staff and as it happens I’m all right—’
‘Inshallah,’ Rashad breathed, rising to leave as her grandparents bustled in, all smiles and concern, to present her with a very large basket of fruit. Their caring and affectionate presence was exactly what she needed to soothe her ruffled feelings at that moment. She received a hail of anxious words and a hug from her grandmother and a quiet squeeze on the shoulder from Hakim, who wasn’t given to drama.
Rashad came to collect her from the hospital. He explained that there were crowds waiting for a glimpse of her outside the hospital and they left by a rear entrance.
‘Why won’t you look at me?’ Rashad pressed on the drive back to the palace.
‘I’m angry with you,’ Polly admitted curtly.
Rashad released his breath on a slow hiss. ‘Of course you are. I spoiled what should have been a special moment—’
She assumed he meant that she had missed the chance to tell him privately about their baby.
‘Not only that,’ she broke in jaggedly. ‘You behaved as if I was some kind of harlot who couldn’t be trusted alone in a room with a man!’
‘I deeply regret the way in which I behaved,’ Rashad admitted levelly. ‘If I could go back and eradicate what I said I would...but I cannot.’
Colour scoring her cheekbones, Polly chewed the soft underside of her lower lip and made no response. What could she say? She knew he regretted it.
‘I didn’t like being confronted with the reality that you could think of me like that.’
‘We will talk when we get home. I don’t want to be interrupted,’ Rashad murmured tautly.
A tense silence fell and Polly did nothing to break it. In truth she was as annoyed with herself as she was with him. Wasn’t she usually a forgiving person? But what Rashad had said had struck at the very heart of their relationship and had deeply wounded her because she loved him. He didn’t know that she loved him. He hadn’t asked her to love him. And she wouldn’t tell him because he would assume that she craved some kind of matching response from him when she did not. She didn’t want Rashad to feel that he had to pretend to feel more for her than he actually did. It would make him uncomfortable and he would be hopeless at faking it. Over the long term, honesty and common sense would be safer than emotional outpourings that would only muddy the water between them.
Tearful staff greeted her on their knees in the entrance hall. She was deeply touched by that demonstration of affection. Rashad’s people were very emotional and unafraid to show it. She marvelled that they had a king who worked so hard at concealing every emotion he experienced as if emotion were something to be ashamed of.
‘The doctors advised that you rest now,’ Rashad reminded her as they entered the private wing of the palace.
Flowers were everywhere in the airy drawing room and piles of gifts cluttered every surface. ‘What on earth...?’ Polly began to ask.
‘As soon as it was known that you had suffered an accident the flowers and the presents came flooding in,’ Rashad explained. ‘There has been no official announcement of your pregnancy, nor will there be for some time, but I suspect rumours are already on the streets. There were too many servants and guards hovering after your accident and Dr Wasem’s anxiety on your behalf was unmistakeable.’
‘And what about you?’ Polly whispered. ‘How did you react?’
‘It was the worst moment of my life,’ Rashad declared without hesitation, his strong jaw clenching hard. ‘Until I realised you were still breathing I was afraid you were dead—’
‘Or that I would lose the baby,’ she slotted in wryly.
‘I could have borne that better than the loss of you,’ Rashad parried harshly. ‘There could always be another baby...but there is only one you. And you are irreplaceable.’
There was a little red devil in Polly’s brain because somehow she was not in the mood to listen while he made such comforting complimentary statements. ‘No, I’m not,’ she disagreed, turning her violet eyes onto his lean, perfect profile. ‘You would still have women queuing up to marry you and become your Queen and the mother of your children.’
‘Two dead predecessors in the role would limit my appeal somewhat. I would seem like a regular Bluebeard.’
A startled laugh was wrenched from Polly. ‘There is that,’ she conceded, turning away to hesitantly finger a tiny velvet soft frog toy that had been unwrapped.
It was undeniably a toy intended for their unborn child. Her eyes prickled with tears. Her most private secret had become public and she had been deprived of the right to share the news of her first pregnancy with her husband. She dashed the tears away with an angry hand, scolding herself for getting upset by gifts intended to express heartfelt good wishes.
‘I wanted to tell you myself,’ she framed gruffly.
‘I know... I screwed it up,’ Rashad bit out jerkily.
‘Maybe we both did,’ Polly muttered heavily. ‘In a marriage it takes two to screw up. Whatever way you look at it, it’s a partnership.’
‘No,’ Rashad disagreed. ‘I didn’t allow us to be a partnership. I have no experience of a marriage of equals. I have no experience of sharing feelings or memories. I have always had to keep such things to myself but with you...’ He hesitated, shooting a look at her from shimmering dark golden eyes. ‘With you, my control breaks down and things escape.’
Polly studied him and her heart felt as though he were crushing it because she bled for him at that moment, seeing him boy and man, rigorously disciplined to hold every feeling in, never allowed to be natural. ‘That’s not necessarily a bad thing,’ she whispered shakily.
‘It was a bad thing when I confronted you about your dinner with Rio,’ Rashad pointed out heavily. ‘I was...irrational. Rage engulfed me. I could not bear to think of you enjoying his company or admiring him. You do not need to tell me that I’m too possessive of you... I know it. I have never known such jealousy before and it ate me alive—’
‘Well,’ Polly murmured, inching a little closer because his sheer emotional intensity drew her like a flame on an icy day, ‘I understand a little better now. But it upset me a lot that you seemed to distrust me—’
Rashad swung back to her, his stunning eyes bright with regret. ‘But that is what is so illogical about it. I do trust you and Rio is my best friend and I know he would not betray me but still those feelings overwhelmed me!’
Polly brushed his arm with hesitant fingers. ‘Because you’re not used to dealing with that kind of stuff. You’re on a learning curve.’
‘I hurt you. If it hurts you I do not want to be on that curve,’ he breathed rawly.
‘But not expressing what you feel makes you a powder keg, which is more dangerous,’ Polly argued.
‘It won’t ever happen again,’ Rashad intoned. ‘I will be on my guard now.’
‘But that’s not what I want,’ Polly admitted ruefully.
‘I have kept too many secrets from you,’ Rashad confessed, striding over to the window, deeply troubled by his sense of disloyalty to his first wife’s memory but accepting that such honesty was necessary. ‘My first marriage was very unhappy—’
‘But you said you loved her,’ Polly reminded him in complete surprise.
‘At the outset when we were teenagers trying to behave like grown-ups, we clung to each other for that was all we had. She was my first love even though we had very little in common. I made the best of it that I could but I did not love Ferah as she loved me,’ Rashad declared with strong regret etched in his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘And she knew it. Her inability to conceive was a constant source of stress for both of us and she became a deeply troubled woman. Nothing I said or did comforted her. I tried many times to get through to her and I failed. What love there was died until by the end we were like two strangers forced to live together.’
Polly stared at him in shock, utterly unprepared for that revelation.
‘Now you know the real truth,’ Rashad completed grimly.
‘But...’ she began uncertainly, frowning in bewilderment.
‘For the last five years of our marriage I was celibate. That side of our marriage ended the day Ferah learned that she could not have a child. She turned away from me,’ he revealed curtly, his difficulty in making that admission etched in the strained lines of his lean dark features. ‘I felt unwanted, rejected...’
‘Of course you did,’ Polly framed, still in shock from what he had just told her, her every belief about his first marriage violently turned on its head and her heart going out to him.
‘And that is why you were right to accuse me of a lack of enthusiasm on the day we married.’ Rashad surveyed her with anguished dark eyes, full of guilt and regret. ‘You said you wanted it all so I am telling you everything. I knew it was my duty to remarry but I dreaded the thought of being a husband again. I had nothing but bad memories of the first experience and my expectations were very low—’
Polly unfroze with difficulty and sat down on legs that felt weak, not quite sure she was strong enough to take the honesty she had asked him to give her because what he was now telling her was beginning to hurt. ‘I can understand that,’ she said limply.
‘I was completely selfish in my behaviour. I was bitter and angry. I felt trapped. And then you saved me,’ he framed harshly. ‘I did nothing to deserve you, Polly. I am not worthy of the happiness you have brought into my life.’
Reeling from that ‘trapped’ word that had pierced her like a knife, Polly studied him in confusion. ‘You’re talking about the baby?’ she pressed. ‘That’s made you happy?’
His black brows drew together. ‘No, I’m talking about you. Our baby is a wonderful gift and I am very grateful to be so blessed but my happiness is entirely based on having you in my life...’
‘Oh,’ Polly mumbled in surprise.
Rashad crossed the rug between them and dropped down on his knees at her feet to look levelly at her with insistent dark golden eyes. ‘I think I probably fell in love with you the first time I saw you. It was like an electric shock. I had never felt anything like it before and of course I didn’t recognise it for what it was. It was love but I thought it was lust because I didn’t know any better...’
‘Love?’ Polly almost whispered. ‘You love me?’
‘Madly, insanely,’ Rashad extended raggedly. ‘I can’t bear to have you out of my sight. I think about you all the time. The thought of losing you terrifies me. And yet I have made mistake after mistake with you and done nothing to earn your regard—’
Polly grinned at him, the happiness he insisted she had brought him bubbling up through her in receipt of such an impassioned declaration. She definitely loved him and loved him all the more for abandoning his reserve and his formality and his pride to convince her of the sincerity of his feelings for her. ‘I felt that electric shock thing too,’ she told him teasingly. ‘Every time I laid eyes on you, I felt like an infatuated schoolgirl. Why do you think I married you? I married you because I fell in love with you...’
‘Truly?’ Rashad exclaimed in ego-boosting amazement as he sprang upright and stepped back for an instant simply to savour her beautiful glowing face.
‘Truly,’ Polly confirmed with a helpless beaming smile of encouragement.
Rashad scooped her up very, very gently, being mindful of her sore hip, and carried her into their bedroom to lay her down on the bed. He shed his jacket and tie and settled down beside her to ease her fully into his arms. ‘I love you so much, habibti. But I am forbidden to do anything more than hold you close for a few days,’ he admitted in a roughened voice. ‘Yet it is enough to still have that right, believe me.’
Ignoring the hint of soreness from her stiff hip, Polly squirmed round in the circle of his arms to face him. She ran wondering fingers across a high masculine cheekbone and marvelled at the silky black lashes semi-veiling his adoring eyes. ‘I think a kiss is in order...and I’m expecting a real award winner of a kiss,’ she warned him cheekily.
‘I will try to deliver,’ Rashad groaned, gazing down at her clear blue eyes with fervent appreciation. ‘I always try to deliver—’
‘Well, you were pretty nifty in the baby stakes,’ she conceded.
‘Nifty together...’ He nibbled at her full lower lip and she closed her eyes, literally so happy she felt that she should be floating on high, but then she wouldn’t have let go of Rashad for anything because his lean, powerful body felt so very good against hers. And they might be different and he might be much more old-fashioned than he was willing to admit, but she knew that they complemented each other beautifully.