is something I want to talk to you about, as well,’ Sophia responded.
Once they were together inside the car, though, heading back to the palace, the darkened windows of the limousine somehow made the interior of the vehicle more secluded and intimate. Sophia didn’t feel quite as confident about broaching with Ash the possibility of taking for herself a more proactive role in his modernisation plans as she had done when she had listened to Aashna on their outward journey. She couldn’t forget how her father had rejected her request to do something on Santina, and how that had made her feel.
Ash looked out of the darkened car window. The sight of Sophia crouching on the floor surrounded by the village children, communicating with them and so plainly loving being with them, had touched a nerve. Only once had he been able to persuade Nasreen to visit one of his schools with him. She had complained that the children were dirty and had refused to have anything to do with them. Ash could still remember the confused, hurt looks he had seen on their faces and those of their mothers. He had sworn that he would never allow that to happen again. Sophia came from a different culture to his own and if anything he would have expected her to be even less inclined to have anything to do with the children than Nasreen. Instead, though … Instead she had reached out to them in such a way that he had seen how happily they had responded to her.
Abruptly he told her, ‘My most senior adviser has suggested that it might be appropriate for you to have a formal role to play. I was wondering how you’d feel about getting more involved in the new-schools programme.’
Immediately Sophia turned towards him, her face alight with delight and excitement. ‘Oh, Ash, I’d love that. In fact, I was going to ask you if I could become involved. I … I love children.’ A small look away from him and a sudden surge of colour into her face told Ash as clearly as though she had spoken the words out loud that she was thinking of their children, of the children he would give her and the children she would conceive for him. The sudden urgency in his body, the slamming thud of his heart and the ache of fierce desire burning in him would have told him exactly what was happening in his own imagination if he hadn’t already known.
‘I was going to ask you if there was a role that I could play, something that might perhaps relieve you of some of the burden of your own royal duties.’
‘There’s also the new hospital plan for women and children,’ Ash answered her. ‘The women, especially those from the nomad tribes, are more likely to be open with you about their medical needs than they are with me. Their culture forbids them contact with men outside their own family circle. In time I want to bring them more into the modern world, but that is complicated and can’t be rushed.’
‘No,’ Sophia agreed. ‘Such things have to be handled sensitively. I could perhaps have lessons in their language—just to learn a few words, you know, to break the ice….’
Suddenly the atmosphere in the car had eased, and Sophia felt able to talk easily to him just as she had done when she was younger. ‘I want to fulfil my role as your wife, your maharani, as fully as I can,’ she told Ash enthusiastically and truthfully. They drove in under the gate which had now become so familiar to her, their car leaving the dust of the open road behind them as the sights and busyness of the walled city closed round them.
‘Since you have said nothing to the contrary I take it that …’
Guessing what he was going to say Sophia interrupted him to confirm, ‘Yes. That is to say, no, I am not pregnant.’
Tonight. Tonight he would allow himself to go to her, Ash decided. He wouldn’t be giving in to an unwanted need within himself if he did. It was, after all, his duty to ensure that he had an heir. Sophia was his. That he should choose to take her to bed to create that heir meant nothing, and did not break his vow to remain emotionally distant from her. Didn’t it? Then why was his heart thudding in such a heavy and impatient manner? Why was his body already aching with its need for her? Physical desire, that was all. Physical desire for her and nothing more.
Sophia would have liked Ash to stay with her after their return to the palace but he had business matters to attend to, and as Parveen told her with some excitement, ‘many boxes’ had arrived from Santina. They were now awaiting her inspection in her bedroom.
Ordering tea and the small sweet biscuits that were a local delicacy and to which she was half afraid she was becoming dangerously addicted, Sophia made her way to her apartment, where the boxes were waiting in her dressing room.
When she opened the first one there was a large rectangular package on top of her clothes with her father’s personal seal on it.
Frowning slightly, Sophia removed it and broke the seal, remembering as she did so how as a small child she had been entranced by the ‘magic’ of stamping her father’s seal in hot wax and then applying it to a piece of paper. She had been happy then, before she had realised that there were doubts about her parentage.
Inside the package was a handwritten letter from her father. His letter would no doubt be a reminder of how she should conduct herself and how angry she had made him, Sophia reflected. She was tempted not to read it but she had been brought up with an observance to duty that prevented her from doing that.
Sitting down she opened the letter and began to read it. To her astonishment, rather than being critical of her and angry, her father’s words were relatively warm and approving.
‘My dear daughter,’ he had written, ‘I write to tell you how delighted I am by your marriage. It is an excellent marriage and one that pleases me a great deal. To have the ties first established via the friendship Alessandro and Ash shared as schoolboys further cemented by your marriage to him can only strengthen the bond between our two states. Such bonds play an important role in the minds of rulers, which is why I have always stressed to all of my children the importance of the right kind of marriages.
‘If I have been overstrict with you then it is because I have been concerned for you. However, I know that in Ash’s care you will be well protected.
‘I know, too, that our two states can look forward to forging even stronger bonds via their shared business, as well as their shared personal interests.’
The letter was signed with her father’s familiar bold and flourishing signature.
The words blurred in front of her as she read them again through the tears she couldn’t hold back. My dear daughter, her father had called her, even if his letter had turned quickly to the more material advantages he hoped her marriage would bring to Santina.
Such small things really, a kind letter from her father, and an acknowledgement earlier in the day from Ash that he trusted her enough to give her a personal role to play with his people. Neither of them could compare with the great love that had once been her goal, but in their way both of them offered her some comfort and some hope for the future.
A young maid arrived with her tea and biscuits. Smiling at the girl as she quietly left the room, Sophia sat down to drink the tea she had poured for her. When she’d finished, she put down her cup and then stood, ready to sort through the boxes of clothes that had been sent to her from her home.
Two hours later, she and Parveen had opened all but three of them and filled virtually all her wardrobes and cupboard space with the exception of the small row of wardrobes along the dressing room’s shortest wall.
‘What’s left in these last three boxes can go in there, Parveen,’ Sophia told the maid, indicating the remaining wardrobes.
Immediately her maid looked apprehensive
