AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Of course, it isn’t,’ Zoe agreed soothingly because she was shaken as well by the accident that she had so narrowly escaped. ‘OK, you were right and I was wrong.’
‘I swore to look after you and I have failed in my duty,’ Raj informed her hoarsely.
Zoe paled. ‘It’s not your duty, Raj. I’m a fully grown adult and I made an unwise decision when I chose not to consult a doctor. Please don’t blame yourself for my mistake.’
‘How can I do anything else?’ Raj shot back to her with seeming incredulity. ‘You are my wife and you are in a country foreign to you. Who else should stand responsible for your well-being?’
I’m not your real wife. The declaration sprang to her lips but she didn’t voice it, belatedly recognising that whether Raj viewed her as his real wife or otherwise he would still feel that it was his duty to ensure her well-being. Three months ago she would happily have flung that declaration of independence at him but now she knew him a little better, knew the crushing weight of responsibility he took on without complaint. As his father, the King, suffered increasing ill health and days he was unable to leave his quarters, more of his obligations were falling on Raj’s shoulders. Unsurprisingly, Raj didn’t have an irresponsible bone in his lean, beautiful body and he was infuriatingly good at blaming himself for any mishap or oversight.
‘I’m sorry if I seemed to speak rudely and angrily,’ Raj breathed tautly, silvered dark eyes locked to her lovely face. ‘But I was very concerned.’
‘I understand that and I’m fine. In fact I think I’m recovered enough now to make that appointment.’
‘No, they will have to settle for me doing it in your place,’ Raj sliced in forcefully. ‘You’re not going out anywhere until we have heard from the doctor—’
‘Raj, for goodness’ sake, I’m fine,’ she told him again, swinging her feet down onto the floor to punctuate the statement.
‘We’ll see,’ Raj asserted with tact as he reached for her hand to help her upright, tugging her close to him, his stunning dark deep-set eyes below his straight black brows roaming over her delicate face. ‘But we will not see today...however, I am free this evening, and if you were to feel strong enough to welcome me home on that couch, I would be extraordinarily pleased.’
Zoe gurgled with laughter and stretched up on tiptoe to taste his wide sensual mouth with her own. And that was that, he was magically distracted from his overwhelming anxiety about her welfare. Her heart hammered and her fingers closed into his shirtfront because she wanted to rip it off him. Against her, she could feel him hard and ready and hunger coursed through her, turning her wanton with need.
With an enormous effort, Raj set her back from him. ‘We can’t. People are waiting for my arrival,’ he reminded her raggedly. ‘But it is one of those occasions when I wish I had the freedom to tell everyone but you to go to hell!’
Zoe flushed, censuring herself for tempting him merely to distract him because it had been a selfish move and he was never selfish, which made her feel bad. On the other hand, the couch invitation was welcome, she acknowledged with a tiny shiver of anticipation, wondering what had happened to the genuinely shy young woman she had been mere months earlier. She wasn’t shy with Raj. In fact, she was doing stuff with Raj she had never dreamt she would ever do with any man, once alien things like purchasing very fancy lingerie and posing in it, revelling in the rush of powerful femininity his fierce desire for her and his equally audacious appreciation gave her every time. She had discovered a whole new self to explore and secretly it thrilled her.
Outside the office door, she thanked the guard who had saved her from falling and he grinned at her, telling her in broken English that he would have died sooner than let anything happen to her on his watch. His undeniable sincerity shook her and she climbed the stairs, thinking that until now she hadn’t quite grasped how the people around her and those she met during engagements viewed her as Raj’s wife, certainly hadn’t taken that level of care and concern as seriously as they did. It struck her that many of those same people would be disappointed when she and Raj split up. But then there was nothing she could do about that, was there? She was a sham wife but they didn’t know that, didn’t know that she was nothing more than a glossy convenient lie foisted on the public, she ruminated unhappily.
She was having lunch when the middle-aged doctor she had glimpsed in Raj’s office called to see her. Dr Fadel was King Tahir’s doctor and resident in the palace and, fortunately for her, he had qualified in London and spoke excellent English.
After the usual polite pleasantries, he asked if he could dismiss the hovering staff and she nodded acquiescence with a slight frown, her tension rising. Of course, he was about to tell her that her hormones were all out of kilter, which was the most likely diagnosis, and she didn’t want to discuss her absent menstrual cycle with an audience either.
‘I am blessed to be the doctor to break such momentous news,’ he then informed her with a beaming smile. ‘You have conceived, Your Royal Highness...’
‘Conceived...?’ Zoe repeated as if she had never heard the word before, and she tottered back down into the seat she had vacated to greet him, so great was the shock of that announcement. That her deepest fear had been confirmed rocked her world to its foundations.
‘The blood test was positive. Of course, it is impossible for me to tell you anything more without a further examination.’ He looked at her enquiringly. ‘Would that be in order? Or would you prefer another doctor, perhaps a specialist, to give you further information? I’m not inexperienced. I do have many female patients in the royal household.’
Zoe was in a daze. She pushed her hands down on the table to rise again. Pregnant? she was screaming inside her head, still wondering if it could be a mistake and willing to subject herself to any check-up that could possibly reveal his diagnosis was a mistake, she reasoned fearfully as she followed him from the room and he lamented the lack of lifts in the palace. A lift would have to be installed immediately, the doctor began telling her, particularly when her near accident earlier was taken into consideration. A pregnant woman couldn’t be expected to run up and down flights and flights of stairs, particularly not a woman carrying a child he described as ‘so precious a child for Maraban’.
It wouldn’t be precious to Raj, Zoe thought miserably, not to a man who had frankly referred to such an unlikely event as a disaster. Suddenly she was in total conflict with herself and split into two opposing halves. On the one hand she adored children and she very much wanted her baby if she did prove to be pregnant, but on the other, she was sort of guiltily hoping that the doctor’s verdict was wrong because of the way Raj would feel about it and that felt even more wrong.
A glimpse of the trim and determined little nurse who had jabbed her with a syringe the night she was kidnapped was not a vote winner in the troubled mood she was in, but Zoe refused to react, deeming her potential pregnancy more important as she lay down on an examination couch and an ultrasound machine was wheeled in. An instant later she heard the whirring sound of her baby’s fast heartbeat and she paled, feeling foolish for thinking that the doctor could have been in error. It was an even greater surprise to discover that she was already three months along and almost into the second trimester, which meant that she had conceived very early in their marriage.
The doctor happily dispensed vitamin tablets and congratulated her on her fertility, studying her literally as if she were a walking miracle. She supposed in comparison to the last generation of the royal family, she did strike him that way because it had taken over thirty years and three wives to produce Raj.
‘The King will be overjoyed,’ he told her cheerfully.
‘Oh, but...’ Zoe hesitated, questioning if it was even possible to keep a lid on such a revelation within the palace.
‘The King needs this good news, with his health as precarious as it has been,’ his doctor assured her with gr
avity.
‘Then my husband can tell him after I have first told him,’ Zoe countered firmly.
But on one level she thought she was probably wasting her breath because the cat was out of the bag and there was nothing she could do about that: the doctor, the nurse and whoever had done the blood test already knew of her condition. Just how fast the news had spread was borne out only minutes later when she returned to her room and was ushered into the bedroom where tea, a ginger biscuit and the book she had been reading awaited her by the bed like a heartfelt invitation to rest as pregnant women were so often advised to do. Smothering a groan, she lay down, ironically worn out by the day she had had. Off came her shoes and then her dress and she lay back, confronted by the daunting evening lying ahead of her because she had no choice other than to tell Raj immediately. Would it sound better if she did the couch thing first? Or would that look manipulative?
In the event, she didn’t get to make that decision because she slept through most of the afternoon, only wakening when the sound of a door closing jolted her awake. She opened her eyes on Raj striding towards the bed and the slumberous expression in his shimmering dark scrutiny as he looked at her lying there in her flimsy underwear. He sank down on the edge of the bed. ‘How are you feeling now?’
‘OK—hungry now that the sickness has taken a break. Dr Fadel said that with a little luck that should start fading soon,’ she told him tightly. ‘You see, I’m not ill as such. I’m pregnant...’
As she hesitated, her nerves getting the better of her for a moment, she studied Raj; his lean, darkly handsome features had locked tight, his jaw line clenching hard.
‘I think it must’ve been that time in the shower just after the wedding. You forgot to use anything. I should’ve said something then but I really didn’t think anything would come of it,’ she acknowledged uncomfortably, wishing he would say something.
