AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Something was going dreadfully wrong. She could sense it, taste and smell it almost in the air that separated her from Zahra. The other woman’s words now surely had turned away from those of a jealous, vengeful mistress determined to stake her claim in a shared man and had instead become a direct threat to Natalia herself. The first tiny tendrils of fear began to unfurl coldly inside Natalia’s stomach.
Where were her maids and the countess? It was too late now to regret insisting that she preferred to be left alone unless she sent for them. Zahra was standing between her and the main doors into the public corridor. The other doors in the room, which were further away, led towards the rest of the apartment, which was empty.
Surely, though, she was being overly dramatic, something that perhaps all newly pregnant women were inclined to be when it came to the safety of their unborn child, Natalia reasoned, but no sooner had she offered herself the comfort of this thought, Zahra began to rant.
‘Do you really think I will let you take Kadir from me? Do you really think that just because you tell him that you are to have a child that he will choose you above me? If so you are a fool. Because he won’t. I won’t let that happen. Not ever. I am the one he loves and wants. I am the one who is destined to stand by his side. Kadir is mine. Our sons will be his male heirs, and not yours. He can never be yours.’
Suddenly the tone of Zahra’s voice had dropped to a chilling hiss that brought up the hairs at the back of Natalia’s neck in warning.
‘I will kill you first! You and your child. I will slit your throat and then tear the child you carry from your belly before I let you take Kadir from me.’
Zahra was mad. Completely and totally insane, Natalia recognised in a rush of shocked horror. Insane and dangerous, she admitted, icy cold fear gripping her as Zahra’s words sank in. Instinctively Natalia looked towards the door. Quick as lightning Zahra intercepted and correctly interpreted her look.
‘It is no use. You cannot escape.’
She must do something to try to calm her down, Natalia recognised. She must not panic and make an already dangerous situation even worse by playing into Zahra’s hands. Someone would come, they were bound to do so. Desperately she tried to force herself to think past her panic and her instinctive and urgent need to protect her baby, to use logic, calming measures to diffuse the situation.
‘There’s no need for this, Zahra,’ she told her, trying to keep her voice calm and steady. ‘I don’t want to take Kadir from you.’ If she could just skirt round Zahra and get to the inner corridor doors she could escape into the corridor and lock herself in her bedroom until she could summon help.
‘You’re lying. You love him and you want him for yourself. I have seen it in your eyes. You have told him that you are carrying his child in an attempt to keep him, but it will not work, because you will not be carrying it for much longer.’
To Natalia’s horror Zahra suddenly reached within the flowing sleeve of the long gown she was wearing and produced a wickedly sharp-looking curved and pointed dagger.
There was no doubt now that Zahra was totally insane, Natalia recognised numbly. There was no point in her trying to reason with her because wherever Zahra was it was somewhere way beyond listening to any kind of logical reasoning.
‘First it was that mother of his who stopped him from marrying me,’ she panted as she started to move towards Natalia. ‘She did not approve of me. She did not think I was good enough for Kadir. And now because of her and her lies there is you, a European nobody who Kadir has been forced to marry. But he doesn’t want you. He wants me. And I want him. Only you stand between us and our happiness. It is my duty to kill you, because it is my duty to make Kadir happy, and I am the only one who can give him true happiness.’
She had to reach those inner doors, Natalia knew, because if she didn’t Zahra would try to harm her baby and try to kill her. She was the taller of the two of them and the more athletic, but she had no knowledge of how to use a knife or how to defend herself from one and from the slashing stabbing movements Zahra was making as she stalked her. Zahra was well versed in handling the murderous-looking weapon she was holding.
Even if she turned and ran for the doors, they were heavy and not easy to open and Zahra would be on her before she could do so, bringing that dagger down to rip and tear at her flesh.
Oh, what was she to do? Natalia found that she was praying silently for strength and help, begging God or anyone who was nearby to please help her and, more importantly, her baby.
The vines were in their resting period, row upon row of immaculately tended brown stems. As he watched and listened to Giovanni Carini, Natalia’s grandfather, as he lovingly described their virtues and their vices to him it was as though he were talking about his children, Kadir recognised. Each vine was known to him and cherished for its individuality.
‘And these are the new vines that were the gift to us of Rosa Fierezza,’ Giovanni told him proudly. ‘Their strength grafted onto our own vines will produce our best wines yet.’
‘You obviously love them as though they were Nirolian born,’ Kadir teased him gently.
‘Surely it is every man’s duty to cherish that which is a gift of love as much if not more than that which he has created himself?’ Gioivanni told him steadfastly.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, inside his head Kadir could see an image
of his mother as she had been in her last weeks, frail in body but the strength of her spirit shining through as she begged him to be proud of his true paternity.
‘Niroli will benefit from all that you bring to ruling it, Kadir, just as Hadiya would have done had you chosen to take up your inheritance there. Your brother is a good administrator, and a fair and kind man, but you are the one who has the vision and the passion that is needed by a true leader and those are your gifts from your natural father. I beg you, do not turn aside from them or scorn them.’
His mother…How she would have loved Natalia. And the child Natalia was carrying? As clearly as though she had been standing at his side he could hear his mother’s voice telling him softly, ‘Do not deny your child, Kadir; do not turn away this precious gift, out of fear.’
Was that it? Was his refusal to accept that he was the father of the child Natalia was carrying based on fear? He knew perfectly well, despite having denied it to Natalia, that condoms were not always reliable; what man did not? In every other way Natalia had proved to him over and over again her honesty and her strong moral code through the things she said and did. Was it therefore so very unlikely that she would not tell him the truth about this child…? This child…His child. And he wanted to believe her, didn’t he? He wanted her to be truly his wife, his partner, his, totally and completely. Again he felt that sharp stab of fear. The fear of a man deeply in love so lacking in true strength that he feared he was not able to win and hold the love of the woman he loved so deeply, because in the past he had felt unloved?
Kadir had never imagined that he would ever be called upon to look so deeply within himself and question his own motivations. But when a man fell deeply in love, the way he looked at everything changed.
Deeply in love? Him? With Natalia? Well, wasn’t he? Wasn’t that what this was all about? Was he really not man enough to accept her word that this child was his? What if their positions were reversed? What if he was being accused of having fathered a child who was not his, for instance, and she refused to believe him? How would he feel? All at once Kadir knew he needed to see Natalia and talk to her, honestly and openly, to lay before her his own insecurities and his love for her. He had been the first man, the only man she had slept with in many years, she had told him. How did accepting the truth of that admission make him feel? Didn’t it make him ache to wrap his arms around her and tell her just what it did to him to know that her immediate and overwhelming desire for him had led her to break her own rules and show him how she felt? He looked discreetly at his watch. The tour was only half over, it would be several hours yet before he could return to the palace.
A sudden powerful surge of wind bent the vines to the ground, whistling as it ripped through the air around them, followed by the splatter of heavy rain.
‘It is the notorious Niroli storm,’ Giovanni told them. ‘They come out of nowhere from the sea, blessedly infrequently, but when they do come…’ He was looking anxiously at his precious vines and Kadir could see that he was impatient to do what he could to protect them.
