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‘Years ago, you would have relied on messengers riding on horseback across the desert to relay news but now you use the Internet and telephones, just like everyone else. I remember you telling me about that guy you brought in to shake up Qurhah’s international profile—the one who ended up marrying your sister.’
‘Gabe Steel,’ he said automatically.
‘That’s right. And you told me what a brilliant job he did. But hasn’t it occurred to you that you’ve modernised everything except the man at the top—you? You’ve moved with the times and yet you’re sticking to some outdated law which says that you’ve got to marry a virgin, when hardly anyone is these days.’
‘But you were,’ he said suddenly. ‘You were.’
His words swiftly brought her to her senses and Catrin’s mouth closed, her objections fizzling away to nothing as she wondered what on earth she was trying to do here. Was she trying to argue her corner in some mistaken belief that Murat would consider taking her as a bride? Did she really think that was ever going to happen—especially now, when he’d just seen what dodgy genes she had?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s none of my business. You must marry who you choose.’
He leaned forward himself, mirroring her own elbowed pose, so that their faces were close as they looked at one another across the table.
‘But if I could choose with my heart rather than with my head, then I would choose you, Cat,’ he said softly. ‘Because you are the woman I love.’
Her heart gave a hard and painful beat. ‘Don’t.’
‘I must. I need you to understand,’ he said. ‘No matter what happens, I need you to know what you mean to me.’
‘Murat...’
‘Because after everything that has happened, I owe you this much,’ he said, then took a deep breath. ‘You captivated me from the first moment I set eyes on you. You fulfilled every fantasy I’d ever had. You were beautiful and spirited and, yes, you were a virgin, too—and I will not lie when I tell you how much that meant to me, once I’d got over my initial shock. So I brought you back to London with me, not thinking beyond the first month or even the first week.’
‘Neither was I,’ she whispered.
He lifted his fingertips to her face, running them down over her cheek and Catrin could do nothing to stop herself from shivering beneath his touch.
‘I had never lived with a woman before you,’ he said. ‘And I suppose if I’m being really honest maybe I was trying it out for size. Seeing what it was like to share your life with someone.’
Like test-driving a new car, thought Catrin, but she didn’t say anything.
‘And then you changed,’ he said. ‘Maybe that was inevitable. I don’t know. You became more...polished. It was like a transformation. You fitted into my life so well. More than you should have done. Living with you was easy, maybe too easy, and I guess we were just drifting along.’
‘And then I found out about your secret courtship.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And you were furious—rightly so. And that was when you stopped being the textbook mistress. You stopped being the smooth, unflappable Cat I had become used to. You became the Cat I had fallen for all that time ago. Fiery Cat. Outspoken Cat. You showed me your claws, Cat. You scratched me and drew blood, and I...I found myself falling in love with you.’
Catrin pulled away, sitting back and locking her trembling fingers together, because this was terrible. Terrible and wonderful all at the same time, because it was all too late. ‘Why on earth are you telling me all this?’ she whispered. ‘And why now?’
‘Because I want you to know how I feel about you,’ he said. ‘I need you to know that I love you. Very much. I love you in a way I hadn’t thought myself capable of. But I am. And I do.’
She received the words in disbelieving silence, wondering if she dared tell him that she felt exactly the same way. Or had he guessed a long time ago that a woman would never behave as she had behaved unless she also loved?
But she was cautious. He had hurt her before and he was capable of still hurting her. ‘What is it you’re saying?’ she questioned boldly. ‘That we have some kind of future together?’
He shook his head and swallowed. ‘Not the kind of future which another man will one day be able to offer you,’ he said, and now his face looked as if it had been carved from some cold, dark stone. ‘I can’t marry you, Cat, no matter how much I might wish that I could. And anyway, it is all academic now. Because my advisors in Qurhah have informed me...’ there was a pause while he seemed to be struggling to find the right words ‘...have informed me that a perfect bride has at last been found. Apparently, she fulfils all the criteria.’
Catrin was grateful that she hadn’t eaten, because for one brief moment she honestly thought she might throw up. And that thought was quickly followed by the desire to punch him. How dared he raise her hopes like that and then smash them down again? She wanted to beat her fists hard against his chest and demand to know whether he took some kind of perverse pleasure from engaging in a sadistic form of torture...
But she quashed that instinct and relied instead on the cool logic she had become so good at. He was being honest, that was all. She couldn’t complain when he didn’t tell her what was going on his life and then moan when he did, just because she didn’t like it.
He had cared for her when she’d been sick. He had provided her mother with a bail-out package and sent her to an expensive clinic in Arizona. He had let down his guard enough to tell her that he loved her and she knew him well enough to recognise that such an admission would not have come easily. He was a good man, not a bad man. A man who was governed by a strong sense of duty and doing the right thing for the country he served.
She couldn’t blame him for that, just because she didn’t agree with it. Just because her heart felt as if he had taken a sledgehammer to it and smashed it into a thousand little pieces.
‘I think you’ll understand if I don’t show any interest in hearing about this perfect bride of yours,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’m qu
ite modern enough to do that.’
