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‘A century ago?’ Polly practically screeched at him, gripped by incredulity that that could possibly be the starting point of any acceptable explanation for her apparent loss of all freedom.
‘Close your mouth and sit down!’ Rashad raked back at her in sudden frustration, his dark deep voice startlingly like a whiplash in the silence. ‘If you refuse to listen, how can I speak and explain?’
Polly compressed her lips and sat down with a look of scornful reluctance on her heart-shaped face. ‘Well, if you’re going to shout about it—’
‘I must make you aware of the most powerful le
gend in Dharian history. A hundred years ago, my great-grandmother, Zariyah, came to Dharia with the fire-opal ring and gave it to my great-grandfather, who then married her. My people think it was love at first sight,’ Rashad advanced. ‘But in actuality it was an arranged marriage, which was very popular and which ushered in a long period of peace and prosperity for Dharia—’
‘That name,’ Polly whispered with an indeterminate frown. ‘Zariyah. That’s the name I was given at birth.’
‘The ring is also invested with enormous significance in the eyes of my people. The name on your passport was noticed. It may even be the reason why you were singled out for the drug screening process we have begun. You also brought the ring back to Dharia—’
‘Not to give to you!’ Polly objected vehemently.
‘You are much given to interruption,’ Rashad fired back at her rawly.
‘And you are much given to being quietly listened to.’
‘My country endured dark times for over twenty years. My people suffered greatly under the dictator, Arak,’ Rashad told her in a curt undertone. ‘They are very superstitious. Your appearance, your name and your possession of the ring has led to a hysterical outpouring of sentiment in the streets. At this moment in Kashan, people are waving signs bearing the name Zariyah because my great-grandmother was very much loved. If you left the palace, you would be mobbed and it would be extremely dangerous.’
Polly stared back at him with a dropped jaw. She could barely get her head around what he was trying to tell her. ‘You mean, the coincidence of me having that name and the ring is sufficient—?’
‘To cause all that excitement? Yes,’ Rashad confirmed heavily.
Polly stared numbly into the fire pit, genuinely bemused by what he had explained. People were demonstrating in the city and waving those placards on her behalf? It was beyond her comprehension and her lashes flickered over blue eyes widening in growing amazement.
‘But I don’t understand. What do they want from me?’ she queried numbly.
‘In a nutshell, they want you to marry their King,’ Rashad replied very drily. ‘A single monarch, a single woman with the name of a famous queen…in their eyes it’s a simple equation.’
‘They want me to marry you?’ Polly cried incredulously.
‘And everything about you plays into their fantasy conclusion,’ Rashad imparted with an edge of bitterness because the more he watched those crowds waving flags in the streets, the more his sense of duty warred with his brain. ‘You are very beautiful. What man would not wish to marry such a beauty? And while you could have followed some inappropriate career as a stripper or a lap dancer, which would admittedly have doused their enthusiasm somewhat—’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Polly exclaimed furiously, jumping upright again.
‘Instead you work in a homeless shelter helping the underprivileged,’ Rashad completed. ‘Yes, our media are every bit as given to spying as your own. You have been framed even in the newspapers as the perfect wife in the eyes of my people.’
Polly bolted out of the shade of the tent to stand by the rail in the golden sunshine, staring out at the lines of the shallow sand dunes gradually shifting into larger ones in the distance. ‘I’m mortified—’
‘I am trapped,’ Rashad traded without sympathy, raging at the fates that had created such a disturbing and difficult situation. When he was crowned he had sworn to do whatever it took to make the people of Dharia secure and happy and he had never once considered that sacrifice of freedom as a personal constraint. Only now when it came to the question of his marriage was he finally appreciating the true cost of that pledge. But it also gave him a great deal to think over, he acknowledged, studying Polly and wondering what it would be like to go with the flow of popular sentiment rather than sit it out and hope it eventually died a natural death.
‘Certainly not by me!’ Polly lashed back at him, one small hand lifting in emphasis off the rail.
Without warning Rashad caught her hand in his, studying the slender bones below the skin that was so pale against his bronzed colouring and the intricate tracing of blue veins at her inner wrist. As if under a compulsion, he bent his proud head and pressed his mouth to that soft, smooth, delicate skin.
Polly studied that down-bent head in complete shock while tiny little tendrils of prickling awareness traversed her entire body. That one little contact was so screamingly sensual she couldn’t believe it. She had had passionate kisses that left her cold as ice but the brush of Rashad’s mouth across her wrist made her nipples tighten almost painfully inside her bra and forced a surge of hot liquid heat to rise between her thighs in a manner that made her rigid with discomfort. She quivered, shaken, aroused, suddenly out of her depth with him in a way she had never been before. When that skilled mouth roved across her palm and shifted to enclose a single fingertip and suck it, her knees trembled and her legs almost gave way beneath her in response.
Mesmerised, Polly looked up into shimmering golden eyes alight with raw sexual hunger.
An urgent burst of Arabic sounded from somewhere behind them and she flinched in surprise while Rashad immediately dropped her hand.
Hakim was outraged by what he had seen. He had trusted his King. He had overlooked the reality that his King was a young man with all the appetites of a young man in the company of a beautiful young woman.
‘This meeting is most improper,’ Hakim informed his granddaughter unhappily. ‘But I do not blame you for it.’
Further exchanges took place over Polly’s head, which was bent because she was seriously embarrassed. After all, she had requested the private meeting and was guilty of disrespecting what appeared to be the cultural norms of Dharia. Rashad had only kissed her hand though, for goodness’ sake, she thought angrily, thoroughly disliking the old man who had intervened and who was contriving to behave as though he had interrupted a raw and shocking sex scene.
