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Pushing back her chair, she got to her feet, aware that the mother of the toddler was still looking at them. ‘We’ve said all there is to say, Murat. I don’t think there’s any point in prolonging this, do you?’
She walked out of the café without a backward glance but it seemed that he wasn’t letting go of her that easily. Outside, he caught her by the arm and she whirled around, the soft rain on her face mingling with the tears she couldn’t hold back any longer.
‘What is it you want from me?’ she demanded brokenly.
‘You know the answer to that. I want you.’
‘Well, you can’t have me. Not in the way you mean. I won’t be your mistress any more. I...can’t. It’s over, Murat, so leave me alone. Please. Promise me that much at least.’
There was a long silence, broken only by the cawing sound of distant seagulls. She thought his face looked almost grey now. That it matched the sky and the sea and her heart.
‘I promise,’ he said.
It was only when she heard the break in his voice that she realised her own heartache was mirrored in his eyes. And it came as something of a shock to realise that Murat was struggling to hold onto his own composure.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MURAT PACED THROUGH the room, oblivious to the gleam of gold or subtle scent of sandalwood, or to the hawk-faced portrait of his great-great-grandfather, which glowered down from above the mighty oak desk. He was oblivious to everything except the cold and heavy feeling in his heart.
There was a tap on the door and he knew he could no longer ignore his advisor. For wasn’t it the mark of a coward to hide from something he could not bear to face?
‘Come!’ he said, and the huge door opened to admit Bakri, the trusted emissary who had been with him since his friend Suleiman had left to make himself a fortune.
Carefully closing the door behind him, Bakri walked into the room and bowed deeply.
‘Sire, I am pressed to remind you that your decision cannot be delayed for much longer. The delegation from Jabalahstan grows impatient for your decision.’
‘It is not their place to grow impatient,’ said Murat, his barely restrained anger beginning to erupt at last. ‘I have told them that I will give an answer once my deliberations are concluded and they are not concluded yet.’
‘I understand that.’ Bakri cleared his throat. ‘And if I can be of any assistance in helping you to arrive at that decision, sire, then it will be both my honour and my duty.’
Duty. There it was again. That damnable word which haunted royal men from the moment they left the cradle. Murat gave a heavy sigh as he turned to look out of the windows overlooking the palace gardens. This room had been his father’s—and his father’s before that—all the way back along the Al Maisan line, from when the mighty palace had first been built. It was a place to which women were never admitted, and previously he would have considered such a restriction both right and fitting. For it was a place where wars had been plotted. Where kingdoms had been argued over before inevitable divisions were made. It was a very masculine room where once he would never have been able to envisage the softness of a woman. But now...
Now he found his mind playing tricks with him. He had started to imagine Cat standing there. Cat with her long dark hair tumbling down her back. Cat clad in the softly flowing robes of a Qurhahian Sultana.
He shook his head, but still he could not shake off the tantalising image. Just as he could not escape from her presence in every dream he’d had since returning from England. It seemed that the impossible had happened.
His heart ached.
He could not think straight.
And for the first time in his life, he was unsure what to do.
Just before he’d left, he had told her that he loved her, thinking that such an admission would be cathartic. That he could let out those strange feelings which had gripped his heart so intensely and then he would be free of them. But he was not free of them. On the contrary, he was bound by them as surely as if they were chains of iron. He missed her as much as he had done from the beginning and he wanted her even more.
He thought about the way he’d felt as his car had driven away from that little Welsh seaside town. How the tears had slid noiselessly down his cheeks, unseen by anyone else, but startling him, all the same. He had only ever cried once before and that had been when his mother had died. He had been brought up in a culture where strength was everything; where it was considered wrong for a man to ever show his feelings. And that had never been a problem before, because he’d never had real feelings for a woman before.
But suddenly, he was consumed by them.
He looked at the portrait above the desk, at the fierce expression of the ancient Sultan and those hard and glittering black eyes which marked out all the Al Maisan men. He thought about what his life must have been like and then compared it to his own.
His mind went back to the things Cat had said to him, just before he’d left. Her breathless words and the appeal in her eyes had haunted him for days afterwards. He had tried very hard not to think about her, but that hadn’t worked either. And suddenly he found himself wondering how he could have been so...stupid.
He turned to Bakri and his emissary tensed, as if he had seen something in his monarch’s face which was momentous.
‘I cannot marry the princess,’ said Murat and his words sounded flat and hard as they echoed around that high-ceilinged room.
‘But, sire—’
