have a country to run and many pressing matters. We have only just finished fighting a war. I won’t be in London and neither will you, for you will fly back to Kashamak with me, just as soon as your replacement can be appointed.’
Ella looked at him blankly. ‘Kashamak?’ she said faintly.
‘The land that I rule which produces fine warriors and great poets,’ he said proudly. ‘And the child that you carry must know all about their heritage, Ella.’ There was a pause. ‘And so must you.’
Yet deep down, he suspected she would find his land much too harsh for her Western sensibilities. What if prolonged exposure to Kashamak made her want to escape from its restrictions and return to the freedoms of her old life? What if she discovered that motherhood was not for her?
A sudden and audacious thought occurred to him.
She could leave the child behind. Leave him to care for that child, as his own father had cared for him. Because didn’t he know better than anyone that you didn’t need a mother in order to survive?
Hassan’s heart began to beat with an exultant kind of excitement as he realised what lay within his grasp. That perhaps this was the answer to his prayers. The heir he knew his people wanted and yet which, so far, he had been unwilling to provide, because the idea of marriage had been abhorrent to him. But now he was being forced to marry, wasn’t he? And that completely changed the playing field.
Ella watched as his body tensed and wondered what had caused his face to darken like that. ‘But I might not want to go and live in Kashamak,’ she objected. ‘And then what?’
‘I think you’ll find that you don’t really have any choice in the matter,’ he snapped, because the alternative was unthinkable, especially now that he had glimpsed the possibilities. The idea of his child being tutored in the ways of the world by the Jackson family would simply not be allowed to happen. He forced his voice to soften as he looked down at her. ‘Your welfare is my number-one concern, Ella, and I cannot monitor it if you are thousands of miles away.’
She heard words which sounded as empty as the look in his eyes and a shiver of trepidation whispered its way over her skin. Her welfare was his ‘number-one concern,’ was it? Sure it was! She didn’t believe him. Not for a minute. This felt more about possession than anything else. His child and therefore his woman.
His hawk-like features looked cruel in that moment, almost triumphant. How she wished she could just pull the bedcovers over her head and make him and all her problems go away.
But he was right. She didn’t have a choice. Not really. She was pregnant with the sheikh’s baby and she was going to have to accommodate that fact, as were other people. For the first time she thought how this piece of news would go down in Hassan’s homeland and she looked up into his flinty eyes.
‘Won’t your people find it odd if you just turn up with a Western woman who’s so obviously pregnant?’
‘They would find it completely unacceptable,’ he agreed silkily, realising that there was only one solution to their predicament. One which would inevitably mean a deeper association with the outrageous Jackson clan. Instinctively, he baulked against it, but what choice did he have other than to accept it? He looked down into her ice-blue eyes. ‘Which is why we must be married immediately.’
Married? Ella stared at him, her heart beginning to beat very fast. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Not last time I looked.’ He saw the tension in her face. ‘What’s the matter, Ella, were you holding out for Mr Right?’
She thought of her father’s multiple marriages and the women whose hearts he had trampled along the way and she shook her head. ‘I’m too old to believe in fairy tales,’ she said.
His cynical smile mirrored hers. ‘Me too. So you see, maybe we are more alike than you think, since neither of us have any illusions to destroy. Maybe that makes us the ideal couple to get married, if the purpose of marriage is to legitimise children. And my country tends to be rather liberal about divorce. If you find living in Kashamak to be unbearable, I will give you your freedom, once the child is born.’
Ella’s teeth dug into the fleshy cushion of her bottom lip, because his offer of an easy divorce seemed to make a complete mockery of his marriage proposal. Yet wasn’t his suggestion the only thing which made sense in this whole crazy situation? That there was an escape route all mapped out if she chose to take it—and frankly, she couldn’t imagine not taking it.
It was just his arrogant certainty that he could just snap his fingers and she’d fall in with his plans which made her want to rebel. And so did something else—the very real fear that going to a faraway country to live with Hassan would throw up all kinds of new problems. Alone with a man who seemed to despise her … How on earth could she feel comfortable about something like that?
‘And what if I refuse?’ she challenged quietly. ‘What then?’
Hassan stared at her. Was she seriously pitting her will against his? It seemed that she was, judging by the sudden determined tilt of her chin, and he forced himself to remember that she was pregnant, and volatile. ‘Don’t make it hard on yourself, Ella,’ he said silkily. ‘Why not sit back and let me take care of you?’
His words were like soft but very effective weapons aimed straight at the most vulnerable part of her and Ella felt temptation wash over her. Someone to take care of her. Because when had that ever happened before? She thought about the struggle of doing this pregnancy on her own. Of lumbering into work every day on the train and worrying like crazy about money.
And then she thought about this man who had put her in this predicament. She saw the glitter of his black eyes as they observed her. Would it be so terrible to let him take over, to use the abundant power at his fingertips to make her life a little easier? A wave of nausea washed over her and briefly she closed her eyes to let it pass. But it had the effect of emphasising her general weakness and, with a heavy sigh, she nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll marry you.’
Hassan looked down into her ashen face as he registered her grudging tone and the briefest of smiles glimmered on his lips. Whoever would have predicted it?
That after years of women plotting and scheming to get him to commit, his eventual bride should consent to marry him with such obvious reluctance.
CHAPTER NINE
‘SO YOU really are called Cinderella?’
Ella had been staring out of the car window at the stark beauty of the desert speeding by, but she turned now to look at the robed figure by her side. Her new husband. She might have thought she was in the middle of a particularly bizarre dream were it not for the faint weakness and queasiness she was still experiencing from her pregnancy. But she dredged up a rueful smile from somewhere as she turned to answer Hassan’s question. ‘I’m afraid I am. Apparently, my father told my mother that giving me such a name meant I’d be bound to marry a prince.’
‘Then for once, your father was right,’ commented Hassan drily. ‘I am rarely surprised, but I certainly was when the registrar read out your full name during the marriage ceremony.’
‘I wasn’t planning on announcing it,’ she admitted, giving a little shrug of her shoulders. ‘It’s something I tend to keep quiet about, but the registrar insisted that I declare
