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Impervious to her mutinous fury, he considerately covered her up again. Angrily she sat up, anchoring the sheet beneath her arms. ‘I think I’m entitled to a room of my own. There’s a dozen available.’
‘But then I would be put to the inconvenience of fetching you.’ Calmly he finished dressing, attaching a curved dagger, an ornate silver khanjar, to his belt. Straightening, he flipped the edges of his flowing gold-bordered black cloak back over his shoulders. The snap and crackle in the atmosphere appeared to leave him untouched.
‘I hate you for this!’ Abruptly Polly let loose her pent-up rage and frustration. ‘I’ve never hated anyone in my life, but I hate you!’ Her attack throbbed with feeling.
‘A category all to myself? I am honoured, and I do understand. It was very selfish of me not to consider your feelings and make it a brutal rape.’ Raschid flashed her a glittering glance of sheer masculine provocation and taking advantage of her thunderstruck silence, he pointed out equably, ‘You’ll be safe in the shower now,’ before he departed.
The minute he walked out of the door Polly believed he forgot her existence, just as he had contrived to forget it for the past two weeks. He treated her like a partner in a casual affair. She didn’t feel like a wife. How could she? He didn’t behave like a husband. But he had warned her how it would be in advance. He had warned her that love and sentiment would play no part in their alliance. And she had accepted those terms—mutely, unthink-ingly, her head buried in the sand.
The instant he left the room, the stimulus of anger mysteriously ebbed away. Behind it lurked a great well of unbearable loneliness. She had made a devil’s bargain. It was costing her more than her freedom. It was stealing away all peace of mind, all pride. She needed those pretences he had disdained. What she could not stand was that he should contentedly remain utterly detached from her. It was the ultimate rejection.
It was late when he returned. Polly didn’t hear him enter the lounge. He moved like a night-prowling cat. Looking up, she saw him, darkly stilled just inside the pool of light shed by the lamp to one side of her. Her pulses quickened, her breath catching in her mouth. She told herself it was fright.
‘Some unexpected guests arrived,’ he imparted. ‘It would have been impolite for me to leave sooner.’
Polly gave a shrug. Her earlier emotionalism had hardened into a cold and bitter implacability. ‘You don’t need to explain yourself to me.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I consider it simple courtesy to do so.’
It was Polly who went pink. She gathered up the letter she had been writing, intending to remove herself. Raschid moved a staying hand and sank down on the seat opposite. ‘I was most disturbed to learn that you did not leave the palace during my absence. You had only to order a car.’
‘Until recently I didn’t feel up to much.’
‘Surely you might have enjoyed a drive? You are not living in the Bastille,’ he said drily. ‘It isn’t good for you to be shut up after your illness.’
Polly leapt with grim satisfaction into reply. ‘Nobody told me that I could order a car, and where would I have gone? Jumani?’ she enquired. ‘I don’t have any money.’
Faint colour barred his cheekbones. ‘I should have thought of these things. You have reason to complain.’
‘I wasn’t complaining, I was merely stating facts.’
‘I should have phoned you. You could have reminded me.’ He sighed. ‘As a rule I am not lacking in manners.’
Incensed by the information that he regarded a couple of phone calls to his wife as a duty courtesy, Polly stiffened. ‘It’s all right, I didn’t really notice.’
Unanticipated humour lightened his features. ‘I feel duly punished now, Polly. For a deliberate omission not to be noticed is a just reward.’
The force of that unchoreographed charisma of his nearly splintered through her cold front. She wanted to smile back. The acknowledgement unnerved her. His attraction was a hundred times more powerful because he seemed quite unaware of it. She could not help comparing him with Asif, whose charm was boyishly calculated and gilded by unhidden conceit. Raschid’s sophistication was not Asif’s. Raschid might be cultured and cynical, but he would never possess his brother’s studied air of bored languor. His vibrancy, shielded by that cool austerity, beckoned to Polly with the burning heat of a fire on a winter’s day.
‘Tomorrow I will take you into Jumani. There are furniture warehouses there.’ He surveyed the shadowy room and the cosy corner Polly had incongruously set up for her comfort with grim disfavour. ‘I have never entertained here. I have never even used this room before.’
It was so wretchedly typical of Raschid to reappear the very epitome of well-bred and reasonable behaviour. Gone was the passionate lover, who had taken her by storm and ruthlessly rejoiced in conquest. An odd little shiver, indecently reminiscent of anticipation in reverse, assailed her. Hurriedly she got up. ‘Fine. I’m going to bed now, unless you have some objections.’
He eyed her set face unreadably. ‘Go to bed if you wish. I have work to do.’
From the door she glanced back. He was motionless by the window, a solitary dark figure in splendid isolation. He didn’t need her, he didn’t need anybody. But still that view of him unawares tugged wilfully at her heartstrings. She couldn’t sleep. It was one in the morning and he was working. Even if he had slept during the flight, time zones played havoc with anybody’s system. Polly curled up in a damp heap round a pillow.
Furniture, she reflected incredulously. He talked about her refurnishing when a divide the width of the universe stretched between them. Did he think that all he had to do to keep her in contented subjection was throw a king’s ransom in jewellery at her and let her spend a fortune on a home which was not her home and never would be? Did he think that that would miraculously convert her to her lot? Could he really believe that she valued herself so low?
Around dawn she discovered that she was wrapped round Raschid instead of the pillow. There was not a lot of excuse for that in a bed six feet wide. As she began gingerly to detach herself, he turned over and anchored her to his lithe, brown body, murmuring something indistinct in Arabic and then her name. He kissed her, and her toes curled shamelessly. While she was trying to uncurl them, he darted his tongue hungrily into the moist recesses of her mouth and what her toes were doing receded in immediate importance for a ve
ry long time.
He sauntered fully dressed to the foot of the bed. Polly’s heartbeat tipped against her breastbone. ‘What time is it?’ she whispered.
‘Almost half-past six.’
‘Is that all?’ Gratefully her eyelids dropped again.
‘It’s the coolest part of the day. Later it will be too hot for you. I always go riding in the morning. You can join me. That is not a pleasure you have to do without here. Have you inspected the stables yet?’
She didn’t want to look at him. As memories touched wilfully and cruelly on her all she wanted to do was curl up and die, preferably without an audience. ‘I’m not a very good rider.’
‘That’s not important.’ But he couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.
‘Apart from that, I’m not in the mood to go riding,’ she muttered. ‘Enjoy yourself.’
‘You are not making this any easier for either of us,’ he breathed. ‘You are being childish.’
‘It’s funny how I’m always being childish when I disagree with you or obtrude as an individual,’ Polly said bitterly from the depths of the bed.
Her tiredness put to flight, she tossed for a while before getting up. She was being foolish. She was driving a further wedge between them. Twenty minutes later she arrived breathlessly in the domed porch, just in time to see Raschid swinging himself up into the saddle of a magnificent black thoroughbred. The stallion’s sleek lines were pure Arabian, beauty and stamina superbly matched. Feeling she was too late and fearful of a cool welcome, for in all likelihood the invitation had been spurred by politeness alone, Polly didn’t advertise her presence.
‘How very wifely!’
Startled, she spun. Asif grinned at her. ‘Marzouk and Raschid are very impressive. Aren’t you joining him?’
She flushed. ‘No.’
‘He prefers to ride alone.’ Then he groaned. ‘But now that you are here, naturally that will change.’
‘I’m not much of a rider. I don’t think I’d hamper him with my company.’ She forced a smile, glad she hadn’t rushed outside to publish her change of heart.
