used to adore him when you were young. Be happy.
Be happy? That was impossible.
Another text had arrived, this one from Carlotta, demanding, Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?
Hitting Reply, Sophia wrote defiantly through the emotion threatening to close up her throat. It’s a dream come true. Have loved Ash forever and couldn’t be happier.
Couldn’t be happier, she had told Carlotta, but wasn’t the truth that she couldn’t have been more unhappy?
Ash stared out of the window. He had done the right thing, the only thing given the circumstances, in subjecting his decision to exactly the same logical tests he would have subjected a vitally important business deal, given the development of a situation that meant that decisive action had to be taken and quickly. Yes, he might have had to make the best of a bad job as it were, but his decision had passed those tests.
So why did he have a niggling feeling that there was something important that he had failed to consider? Why did he feel this wary sense of some kind of danger from which he should retreat? Ash knew the cause of his disquiet perfectly well. It could be traced back to those minutes in bed with Sophia on the plane when he had come so close to relinquishing his self-control. Of almost glorying in succumbing to his own need to abandon that self-control for the sake of the pleasure he had known it would give him to take her without it. That would have been an act as reckless in its way and with potentially as far-reaching effects further down the line as if he had had full sex without using any protection. If he had given in to that need, if he had allowed his desire for Sophia to breach his self-control then … But he had not. The steward’s timely interruption had seen to that, and now that he was aware of that possible weakness within him he was in a far better position to deal with it. And he would deal with it.
THEY flew out of Mumbai, its crowded streets swarming with busy life and brilliant with the vibrant colours of its fabrics and decoration that Sophia had already come to feel somehow warmed against the coldness of the loss of her dreams and the harshness of reality that was chilling her heart. It was just after night had fallen, so that below them, the city was a brilliant spangle of multicoloured lights against the darkness of the night sky.
Ash glanced towards Sophia as she sat still strapped in her seat, and looking out of the jet’s cabin window. He heard her indrawn breath and saw that they were flying over Marine Drive with its plethora of lights.
‘They call it the Queen’s Necklace,’ he told her.
Sophia nodded her head. After all those teenage dreams of becoming Ash’s wife, the mundane reality of the two of them together with nothing of any importance to say to each other was certainly not what her fevered longings had once imagined. But then conversation of any kind hadn’t featured in those teenage longings, Sophia was forced to acknowledge, other than a passionate ‘I love you’ murmured in between the unrestrained passion of Ash’s kisses and caresses.
‘Nailpur isn’t Mumbai,’ Ash felt obliged to warn Sophia as they left the city behind and headed west.
‘No, I know,’ Sophia answered him. ‘I loved what I saw of Mumbai but I’m really looking forward to seeing Nailpur and Rajasthan. I read somewhere that the name translates as the Land of Kings. My father would certainly approve of that.’
‘Nailpur isn’t Jaipur, nor is it any of the other well-known and well-established tourist destinations of Rajasthan. Nailpur is a poor state, its people uneducated, its palaces crumbling. It is my duty to lift my people from that poverty. The days when the maharaja class could live a life of luxury whilst their people endured poverty are not something that can be tolerated any more. And just as it is my duty to lift my people from that poverty so it is also my duty to live amongst them. Your duty as my wife and the mother of my children will be to live with me. So if you were hoping to live in Mumbai—’
‘I am not.’ Sophia stopped him, too cast down to feel like telling him that as a girl she had read everything she could about Rajasthan in general and Nailpur in particular simply because then she had seen it as a part of him and she had wanted to know every thing she could about him.
He couldn’t allow this marriage to turn out like his first, Ash thought. No matter what either of them felt, this marriage would endure and not just for the sake of his pride. Only a son brought up to understand and value their family history and the history of their people could truly take his place when the time came.
A royal bride with royal blood was something that his people with their conventional outlook on life, and their belief in the old feudal codes of family and marriage, would expect. He knew that. He had always known it.
A royal bride whose royalty would satisfy the traditional desires of his people.
And a woman whose sensuality would satisfy the desire she aroused in him in a way that his first marriage had denied him?
As always, whenever he thought about the failure and disappointment of his first marriage, guilt gripped him. Must the whole of his life be shadowed by the mistakes he had made then? Nasreen had died because of those mistakes, Ash reminded himself.
The truth was that he had married expecting to give and find love within that marriage and when he had found that love could not be forced by either of them he had retreated from Nasreen. He had allowed her to live her own life because of his own anger and disappointment, because of the blow to his pride of the reality of their marriage, and his discovery that no amount of willpower on his part could ignite the love he had been so arrogantly sure they would share. Because of that Nasreen had died. He could never allow himself to forget that.
Where Sophia was concerned things were different. There could and would be no emotional complications. It was safer that way.
The plane had started to lose height, and below them in the silvery light from the moon and the stars Sophia could see acres of plastic tunnelling of the kind used to grow crops. Turning to Ash, who had been working on his computer throughout the flight, she said curiously, ‘I thought this area was too dry for crops and that was why the people were poor and nomadic?’
‘It is, but the experts I commissioned discovered an underground river that we’ve been able to tap into via bore holes and this has allowed us to begin cultivating crops. The people are used to traditional ways and it isn’t always easy persuading them to accept new technology. However, I intend to persist. Our water supply is a precious resource, so in addition to educating the people about modern methods of cultivation we also want to educate them to use this resource wisely. The reason I commissioned experts to look into the possibility of an underground source of water was because I’d seen paintings of my great-great-grandfather’s indoor bathing pool—it no longer exists but obviously the water had to come from somewhere, and fortunately my guesswork proved to be correct.’
The seat-belt light flashed. Sophia had been relieved to discover that the steward on this flight was not the same one who had been on their previous flight, and she was even more thankful when the plane came to a standstill and the door was opened to see that there were no photographers waiting for them, merely a small group of officials.
Ash had telephoned ahead to his Royal Council to tell them of his marriage, and duly introduced Sophia to them once they had left the plane. As a royal daughter she was well versed in the formality of such things and Ash could see the looks of relief and approval on the faces of his officials as
