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‘I could have stopped you,’ he agreed slowly.
‘So why didn’t you?’
He didn’t answer straight away because it was important to get this right. He wanted to send out a message to her. A very clear message she could not fail to understand. That it had meant nothing to him. That it would be a mistake to fall for him. That he caused women pain. Deep pain.
‘Sometimes sex is like an itch,’ he said deliberately. ‘And you just can’t help yourself from scratching it.’
Her face didn’t register any of the kind of emotions he might have expected. No indignation or hurt. He suspected that hers was a world where feelings as well as faces were hidden. But he saw her eyes harden, very briefly. As if he had simply confirmed something she had already known.
‘I’m sure that the romantic poets need have nothing to fear from your observations,’ she said sarcastically.
He picked up his goblet of wine, twirling the long golden stem between his fingers. ‘Just so long as we understand each other.’
She leaned forward, and he caught a drift of some faint scent. It made him think of meadow flowers being crushed underfoot. He found it...distracting.
‘Oh, I get the message loud and clear,’ she said. ‘So forgive me if I ignore you as much as possible for the rest of the meal. I think we’ve said everything there is to say to each other, don’t you?’
CHAPTER FOUR
LEILA GRIPPED THE side of the washbasin as terror sliced through her like the cold blade of a sword. She wanted to scream. Or to throw back her head and howl like an animal. But she didn’t dare. Because her fear of discovery was almost as great as the dark suspicion which had been growing inside her for days.
She stayed perfectly still and listened, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. Had anyone heard her? Had one of the many unseen servants been close enough to the bathroom to catch the sound of her shuddered retching?
She closed her eyes.
Please no.
But when she opened them again, she knew that she could no longer keep pretending. She couldn’t keep hoping and praying that this wasn’t happening, because it was.
It had started with a missed period. One day late. Two days late—then a full week. Her nerves had been shot. Her heart seemed to have been permanently racing with horror and fear. She was never late—her monthly cycle was as reliable as the morning sunrise. And the awful thing was that she’d had to pretend that it had arrived. She’d forced herself to wince and to clutch at the lower part of her stomach as if in discomfort, desperate not to alert the suspicions of her female servants. Because in that enclosed, watched world of the palace, nothing went unnoticed—not even the princess’s most intimate secrets.
She had told herself that it was just a glitch. That it must be her body behaving in an unusual way because it had been introduced to sex. Then she had tried not thinking about it at all. When that hadn’t worked, she’d made silent pleas to Mother Nature, promising that she would be good for the rest of her life, if only she wasn’t carrying Gabe Steel’s baby.
But her pleas went unanswered. The horror was real. The bare and simple fact wasn’t going away, simply because she wanted it to.
She was pregnant.
Her one brief experiment with sex—her one futile attempt to behave with the freedom of a man—had left her with a consequence which was never going to leave her. Pregnant by a man who never wanted to see her again.
She was ruined.
With trembling fingers, she tidied her mussed hair, knowing she couldn’t let her standards slip. She had to maintain the regal facade expected of her, because if anyone ever guessed...
She thought about the meagre options which lay open to her and each of them filled her with foreboding. She thought what would happen if her brother found out, and a shudder ran down her spine. She gripped the washbasin, and the cold porcelain felt like ice beneath her clammy fingers. Murat must not find out—at least, not yet.
She was going to have to tell Gabe.
But Gabe had gone back to England and there were no plans for her to see him again. He had spent a further fortnight working here in Qurhah without their paths ever crossing. Why would they? He had made it clear that he wanted to forget what had happened and she had convinced herself she felt the same way. She’d found herself reflecting how strange it was that two people who’d been so intimate could afterwards act like strangers.
Even the farewell dinner given in honour of the English tycoon had yielded no moments of closeness. She and Gabe had barely exchanged any words at all, bar a few stilted ones of greeting. During the meal she’d read nothing but cool contempt in his pewter eyes. And that had hurt. She had experienced for the first time the pain of rejection, made worse by the dull ache of longing.
Her mind working overtime, Leila shut the bathroom door behind her and walked slowly back to her private living quarters. Gabe Steel might not be her first port of call in normal circumstances, but right now he was the only person she could turn to.
She had to tell him.
But how?
She looked out over the palace rose gardens where the bright orange bloom which had been named after her in the days following her birth was now in glorious display.
