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‘The firstborn, the future Queen of Rabalissa.’ He sighed. ‘Let me show you upstairs and you can lie down.’
On the wall in the graciously furnished bedroom there was a faded colour photo of a gorgeous brunette in a very glamorous outfit. ‘Is that her? Your mother?’ Claire asked curiously, removing her shoes and settling down on the mercifully modern divan bed awaiting her. ‘She was pretty spectacular in her heyday, wasn’t she?’
As Claire began to remove her clothing, Raif tensed. ‘Why are you so curious about her?’ he demanded.
‘Because you don’t talk about her,’ she pointed out, folding her trousers and top. ‘Why?Of course, I wonder why. I’m only human.’
Raif strode over to the window overlooking the sea, lean back and shoulders rigid. ‘Because my mother is a source of both shame and embarrassment to me,’ he admitted in a terse, driven voice. ‘Talking about her is difficult for me.’
As Claire dug into her suitcase for something light to wear, her brow furrowed into a frown. ‘But why is that?’
‘Her behaviour as my father’s ex-wife in London and abroad caused many scandals and destroyed her reputation. In polite company she will not be mentioned for that reason. She became an alcoholic but also very promiscuous,’ he framed curtly. ‘She slept with every man available, married or otherwise. My brothers refused to be associated with her and they stopped visiting her early on. I was twelve years old when my father sent word through my siblings that I could come back to live in Quristan at the palace with him.’
Claire was very shocked by what he was finally revealing, and she quite understood his previous silence on the subject. ‘My goodness,’ she whispered unevenly.
‘I don’t think my father ever forgave me for refusing to leave her. He took that as a personal rejection but howcouldI leave her?’ Raif swung back, his lean dark features pained, and he made an almost clumsy movement with his hands to accentuate the impossibility of his having made such a cruel choice. ‘She only had me left. How could I abandon her as well? I was shielded from many of her affairs by boarding school. Even so,I saw much that I shouldn’t have seen as an adolescent. But I loved her. Ilovedher to the bitter end when her liver failed from the alcohol.’
Claire shook her head slowly in sadness at what he had described, and her heart went out to him for the pain he was no longer attempting to conceal.
‘Don’t judge her from what I have told you,’ Raif asked in a strained appeal. ‘She was very unhappy. She had wealth and beauty but nothing she truly valued. Her depression led to her alcohol addiction and then to the men.’
‘I’m so sorry, Raif,’ Claire muttered heavily. ‘But thank you for telling me. I think I understand you a little better now. Is that why you were still a virgin when we met?’
In silence he nodded. ‘For me, sex has to be something more...notmerely a physical thing...and the association with my mother’s lifestyle repelled me.’
‘I hope we’re something more,’ she almost whispered.
‘How can you doubt it?’ Raif quipped as he sank down on the bed with her and began to help her to slip out of her pretty scraps of lingerie. He dropped the nightdress over her head as though she were a child to be dressed.
He gripped her hand. ‘Sleep now,’ he urged. ‘I’ll wake you in time for dinner.’
Claire slumped into the comfortable mattress. As the door closed, she remembered what she had wanted to discuss with him and groaned. It wouldn’t have been the right moment to open the topic. Raking up his mother’s past had upset Raif. She would wait for a more promising opportunity to ask him if it would be possible for Nahla to move into one of the palace apartments. Raif could be rather standoffish with her assistant. Admittedly their paths rarely crossed but he had an easy manner with his own staff. With Nahla, however, he was reserved and distant. She had begun to wonder if he simply didn’t like Nahla for some reason. Why didn’t he just say so?
‘What was he like back then?’ Claire had asked Nahla fondly, some weeks earlier.
‘He was quiet and serious. He always had his head in a book. He was also several years younger, so we didn’t spend much time together,’ Nahla had admitted, and she had giggled. ‘By then, I was already falling in love with my Yousuf. I wasn’t much interested in teenage boys, even though he was a royal and rather handsome prince.’
The following day, after a tour of the new resort site just along the coast and a late lunch, Claire and Raif travelled back to the palace in separate vehicles, the accident that had led to the death of both of Raif’s brothers having confirmed the security risk in official circles. Until Claire had given birth to the heir to the throne, the couple had agreed to exercise caution. Unfortunately, that entailed a very long, boring and lonely drive and Claire dozed most of the way.
It was early evening when Claire reached the palace. Circe greeted her first. Shorn of her cast and her restrictive collar, the palace cat was her sleek, confident self, only now she rejoiced in a jewelled collar and a name tag, worthy of her newly acquired status as the star of a cartoon based on political satire.
The first thing Claire wanted on her return was a lengthy shower. Clad in a yellow sundress, she waited until dinner was over and they had had coffee served in the sitting room before saying, ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, but I wasn’t quite sure how to open the subject.’
‘There should be nothing that you feel you cannot say to me,’ Raif countered with a frown of surprise.
‘Well...’ Claire hesitated and sighed. ‘I’ve noticed that you’re a little uncomfortable around Nahla.’
The faintest edge of colour accentuated the slant of his hard cheekbones. ‘I hardly know her,’ he pointed out. ‘But I have every respect for her and am grateful that you find her so useful.’
‘Then, can we offer her the chance to move out of your uncle’s house and move into the palace with her children?’ Claire pressed in a rush.
‘No,’ Raif countered with finality.
Claire went pink. ‘Just...no?’
‘Yes, just no,’ Raif confirmed, compressing his lips in a hard line.
‘But why not?’ Claire queried in bewilderment.
