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The crowd was now going wild with joy, some of the younger and bolder onlookers calling up to the balcony, ‘Kiss her, Your Highness. Kiss your bride-to-be.’ It was all Natalia could do to struggle to assimilate the true enormity of what was happening. How could this be? How could the man she had given herself to so ill advisedly in Venice be her future husband? She felt feverish and yet also cold, numb and yet acutely sensitive.
As though in obedience to the wishes of the crowd Kadir was leaning toward her. Instinctively she pulled back, as alarmed as though she were sixteen and a virgin and not twenty-nine and a mature woman. The hand clasping hers tightened its grip to an almost bone-crushingly punishing intensity, the green eyes sent her a message of warning and fury, and then the hard-cut male mouth was brushing hers to put a cold seal on the prison she herself had willingly walked into.
‘One more thing,’ King Giorgio was saying, as he had to raise his voice to make himself heard about the exultant roar of delight. ‘In recognition of how much pleasure it gives us that Natalia should become the wife of our son, we wish to publicly make this gift to her.’
Somehow both the countess and the Chief Minister had managed to make their way to the front of the balcony carrying the leather-covered jewellery case, which they were now opening for the king.
The glitter from the sunlight reflecting on the diamonds inside it was so brilliant that it made Natalia’s eyes hurt to look at them.
‘These diamonds were my gift to my beloved first wife, Queen Sophia,’ the king said emotionally. ‘Since her death I have kept them locked away, unable to countenance seeing anyone else wearing them. Until now. Now it is my belief that it is fitting and right that they should now be worn by my son’s betrothed, Natalia.’
Obediently she bent her head, shivering as she felt the cold, heavy weight of the diamond necklace lying against her skin.
‘Kadir.’ King Giorgio motioned to his son, indicating the enormous diamond ring that lay with the bracelets and tiara in the box.
As he picked up the ring Kadir looked at her again, his green eyes so hard with dislike and rejection that Natalia felt as if it were a physical blow.
‘Let him give you the ring,’ the countess snapped in her ear. ‘The people will want to see you wearing it.’
Wrenching her gaze from Kadir’s, Natalia held out her hand. Her fingers, long and slender, looked unfamiliarly delicate against the width of his palm and the length of his hand whilst the ring, held between his fingers, seemed to glitter malevolently at her. She was trembling so much that her hand brushed against him. Immediately he closed his fingers into a fist as though in rejection of the physical contact with her. Natalia’s face burned. She longed for the courage to simply turn and walk away. But it was already too late. He was sliding the ring onto her ring finger, and holding up her hand to show the crowd.
The noise of their roared approval was almost deafening. King Giorgio was looking triumphant but she dared not look at Kadir to see how he might be feeling. Her heart felt heavy with the weight of what she feared lay ahead of her. But it was too late for her to have regrets now, she told herself sickly, before rallying to remind herself that she hadn’t been alone in what she had done. But she had no explanation for what had happened; no rational means of making it seem more palatable. Unless she told him the truth. What truth? The truth that she had been so overwhelmed with desire for him that nothing else had mattered. Surely as her husband to be he would welcome that news.
CHAPTER SIX
WHEN was it going to end? Natalia wondered tiredly. She had not imagined, when the countess had told her that there was to be a formal reception after the announcements on the balcony, that she would have to stand at the side of her husband-to-be under such devastatingly untenable circumstances. Her head was throbbing and she could hardly move thanks to the constriction of her gown and the weight of the king’s gift to her. It would have been bad enough if they had simply been the strangers they should have been and not…not what they really were.
There was no need for Kadir to tell her what he thought of her, those hostile looks he had been giving her had made it mercilessly plain, and yet what right did he have to judge her? What after all had she done that he had not? There was no point in her even thinking about trying to wave the equal-rights flag in this situation, though. In a marriage such as theirs there was all the difference in the world between the moral laws applying to the woman and those applying to the man. Historically men of power and position married virgins on the assumption that way they would be guaranteed that the child born hopefully nine months after the consummation of the marriage would be theirs. The all-important first-born son. Despite the changes in the world over the last fifty years, the old beliefs were too deeply ingrained in some men to ever be erased or even softened. Kadir’s heritage from his mother’s people would mean that even more than most his pride would demand that the woman to whom he gave his name and his seed would be his alone. Natalia could sense that about him as clearly as though he had said the words to her himself. Her mistake was not so much what she had done, but that she had not thought more deeply about the expectations and mind-set of the man who would be Niroli’s next King before allowing herself to be carried away on a wave of emotional loyalty to her country.
Theirs would not, she realised now, be a prosaic marriage of convenience between two people who understand one another’s goals and beliefs. Even without Venice she would never have been the kind of woman Kadir would want as his wife. Her lip curled slightly in womanly contempt for a man she now saw as inwardly weak in all the ways that mattered the most to her, for all his raw masculinity and sexuality; a man who was so steeped in old-fashioned beliefs that he automatically considered it beneath him to take as his wife a woman who had been ‘used’ by another man.
She, on the other hand, was proud of everything that she was, of all that she had learned and all the ways in which she had grown from girlhood to womanhood by making her own choices and learning from them. Until Venice there had never been a relationship she had regretted or felt shamed by. She was a mature woman, morally the only judge she believed she needed, perfectly capable of policing her own sexual behaviour, instinctively knowing what was right for her and what was not. She had always believed that to deny her sexuality as she matured would have been as much of a sin as being promiscuous. And she wasn’t promiscuous. How could she be when she had been celibate for so many years? The only time she had broken her own self-imposed moral rules—the only time she had ever wanted to, in fact—had been that one night with Kadir, but how could she make him understand and believe that, as she must—for the sake of their marriage and Niroli?
Here they were standing side by side as they greeted the guests invited to meet them, joined together by the king’s own hand and by the heavy weight of the ring she was wearing, by the expectations of the Nirolian people, and yet in reality already divided by suspicion, deceit, mistrust and attitudes to life that were worlds apart.
Kadir could feel the stiff gold braid embossed collar of the uniform jacket he was wearing pressing against his flesh. It felt alien and constricting after the more familiar softness of the Arab robes he wore on formal court occasions in Hadiya, and more than that he felt almost as though he were dressed up to take part in a play, with a role imposed on him by th
e expectations of others, rather than living through a vitally important part of his own future life.
The research he had done on Niroli after his mother’s devastating revelations had shown him an island with the potential to play a vitally important role on the world stage. Geographically alone, its position was unique. The world was changing; old powers giving way to new; men with minds sharp enough, perceptive enough, forward-thinking enough to encompass what could be achieved were in a unique position to guide that world through its rebirth. He had learned so much from studying the history of his own country and the Middle East in general. He wanted his future sphere of influence and that of his sons to reach far beyond Niroli, and to that end he had decided that he needed a wife who understood this, a wife who would dutifully provide him with children he knew would be his, not a woman who would casually give herself to any man who happened to stir her to lust—a woman who could be stirred to that lust as easily as a bitch on heat.
Kadir could feel fresh fury raging through him as he relived the moment on the balcony when his wife-to-be had stepped out to show herself. His wife-to-be was a whore…worse than a whore: she gave herself for nothing other than her own pleasure; a whore at least put a price on her virtue or lack of it. Every time he thought of the casual contempt with which she had disregarded their marriage to throw herself at him he wanted to turn to her and rip the diamonds from her neck and the ring from her finger, the clothes from her body, to reveal her as she really was.
How many times had she slipped away from Niroli to pose as she had done with him in a role that allowed her access to men? Ten times? A hundred? A thousand? How long had she planned to wait after their marriage before doing so again? A year…a month?
It was of course unthinkable that his father knew the truth about her. He had seen in King Giorgio’s eyes the same arrogant pride he knew burned within himself. His father would never have considered her as a potential bride if he had known. The last thing he wanted to do was marry her, but the potential complications if he refused now were too great to be contemplated. He was the one who was the outsider here; the one who had to prove himself and win the acceptance of the island’s people. To reject one of their ‘daughters’ would be seen as an insult, here just as it would be in Hadiya, no matter how justified his reason. No, he was stuck with the marriage if he wanted Niroli. And Kadir knew that he did.
The last of the guests were finally being persuaded to leave by the courtiers discreetly walking them towards the exit.
Kadir, deep in conversation with his father, was ignoring her. Deliberately? Did she need to ask herself that? The longer the reception had lasted, the more time she had had to think and to assess the stark reality of her future, and how impossible it was going to be for her to live it. She could see the countess coming towards her, no doubt about to suggest that it was time for her to ‘retire’, Natalia thought wryly.
Nirolian court etiquette remained firmly fixed in the habits of the early nineteenth century, where the men had to wait to ‘let their hair down’, as it were, until after the women had ‘retired’. To judge from those left in the ornate grande salon now, with its décor and mirrors so very much in the style of the mirrored ballroom at Versailles the conversation amongst them would be very much on the future political strength of Niroli and its ruling Royal Family.
The countess had reached her and was waiting.
‘What should I do about these?’ Natalia asked her, briefly touching her diamond necklace.
‘The king has made it plain that it is now your personal property,’ the countess answered her briskly. ‘It will make a good start for the jewellery collection you will need as Prince Kadir’s wife. Of course, once he ascends the throne you will have access to the Crown Jewels of Niroli, and I dare say when he takes you to Hadiya with him after your marriage he will make a gift to you of his late mother’s personal jewellery. Of course you can also expect to receive gifts of jewellery from the heads of other states and countries on your marriage, but for now, if you are ready to retire…’
