attraction was too strong.’
‘I have never wanted any woman as much as I wanted you,’ Jaul admitted in a raw undertone and he bent over the tray stationed on a table by a pillar to fill a glass and extend it to her. ‘I have never loved any woman but you...’
At that statement, her hand shook a little as she accepted the glass, hastily sipping the cool sweetness of fruit juice. He had never loved anyone else, she was thinking, that surely had to be a point in her favour.
His lean, darkly handsome features were grim and taut with tension. In a restive, uncertain gesture he raked long, elegant fingers through his luxuriant hair, tousling it. ‘I loved you yet I let you down. You were alone and pregnant and I wasn’t with you. I accepted my father’s lies.’
Chrissie’s heart was thumping very hard. ‘Jaul—what’s brought all this on tonight?’
‘Yusuf was with my father when he visited you in Oxford. His conscience was uneasy and he was eager to clear it,’ Jaul recounted flatly. ‘I was appalled when Yusuf described what happened that day. It shames me that my father could have treated my wife in such a way and that I was unable to prevent it from happening.’
The backs of her eyes were gritty with tears because she was remembering what had been one of the worst days of her life. Confronted by King Lut, she had felt alone and helpless, not to mention devastated by her father-in-law’s complete rejection of her as his son’s wife. ‘You were in hospital,’ she reminded him shakily. ‘There was nothing you could have done.’
‘Yusuf told me the truth.’ Jaul was ashen below his dark skin, his brilliant eyes tortured as he gazed at her. ‘But let us be honest here—Yusuf told me truths which I should’ve accepted when you spoke them.’
‘Yes,’ Chrissie cut in to confirm without hesitation. ‘I have never lied to you...’ A split second of silence fell before she coloured and added, ‘Well, only once and I’ll sort that out later.’
‘I swallowed my father’s lies about you and in my bitterness and hurt I learned to distrust my every memory of you. When I came back to find you last month, I should have listened more, thought deeper.’
‘Naturally you trusted your father’s word when he told you that I’d taken the money and run.’
‘How was it natural?’ His tone derisive in emphasis, Jaul set down her glass with a definite crack. Dark eyes flaming gold, he studied her, nostrils flaring, beautiful stubborn mouth tight at the corners with strain. ‘You were my life. You were my wife. My first loyalty should always have been to you. Will you please stop trying to make excuses for my failure to support you when you most needed me?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘I let you down in every way possible—’
‘Your father did this to us. He separated us, lied to us both and hurt us both,’ Chrissie responded shakily. ‘Put the blame where it belongs, Jaul. You were in a coma and then you had surgery and were struggling to recuperate. You weren’t in any condition to fight my corner or yours. When your father lied to you then, you were very vulnerable—’
‘I’m trying to say sorry, trying to grovel but you won’t let me,’ Jaul muttered unevenly, his eyes suspiciously bright.
‘I don’t want you grovelling. I don’t want your guilt—’
‘This is not guilt, this is...shame,’ he labelled roughly. ‘You are my wife and I let you down and I don’t want to lose you. There’s nothing I won’t do or say to keep you as my wife!’
Recognising his increasingly emotional frame of mind, Chrissie almost smiled. ‘Oh, I think I worked that out straight after that pre-nuptial agreement was stuffed beneath my nose when I looked as though I might be ready to walk away from you,’ she confided.
‘It was an empty threat,’ Jaul confessed grittily. ‘A pre-nup has no standing as yet in a British court of law. In addition you signed it without the benefit of independent legal advice and you were very young at the time. I knew that the pre-nup wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.’
It was Chrissie’s turn to be taken aback. As she had listened her eyes had widened and her soft mouth had hardened. ‘I should’ve called your bluff. But maybe I didn’t fight more because I didn’t want to. Has that occurred to you?’
His lush black lashes swept up and down over his frowning eyes. ‘But why would you have behaved that way?’
Chrissie stiffened, reluctant to give him the words of love that were as effective as chains in binding her to both him and the twins. He knew the truth now about his father, her pride and her sense of justice finally satisfied. He knew what she had endured and he knew that she had not accepted a financial settlement in lieu of their supposedly invalid marriage. Keen to change the subject of why she was being so tolerant of his stubborn misjudgements, she said with forced lightness of tone, ‘Who on earth lit all these candles?’
‘Zaliha supplied the candles and the snacks. I lit them. The fountains have been kept in good working order and only had to be switched on. I couldn’t allow any other female staff in here because they would have been very much shocked by the murals.’
Chrissie scanned the hundreds of candles and hid a smile, touched by the effort he had made on her behalf. ‘The murals may be shocking but this place is beautiful all lit up like this.’
The beginnings of the smile that had relaxed her full pink mouth filled Jaul with a craving for the softness of her, the warmth and the strength that ran like a core of inner steel through her seemingly fragile body. He had never appreciated how strong she truly was until he’d learnt what she had had to withstand at his father’s hands. His lean brown hands snapped into fists, anger stirring afresh because he had been incapable of protecting her. The guilt, which he was struggling to master, felt insurmountable.
‘I should’ve contacted you as soon as I was mobile again,’ he stated with savage regret, the hard, sculpted planes of his darkly handsome face stark with strain in the flickering light. ‘But I couldn’t face seeing you again knowing that I had lost you... It is hard for me to admit that but it is, at least, the truth of my feelings back then. Seeing you again, being in your presence when you were no longer mine, would have hurt too much.’
‘It still mattered that much to you?’ Chrissie pressed in surprise.
Jaul shot her an incredulous look. ‘I loved you. I loved you with all my heart! But I lost faith in you while I lay alone in hospital.’
Pained regret slivered through Chrissie. She was furious that his father had subjected him to that ordeal of believing that she no longer cared about him. I loved you with all my heart. It hurt Chrissie to hear that. ‘I would’ve been there with you if I’d known—’
‘I know that now...that’s what killing me!’ he bit out, swinging defensively away from her, broad shoulders bunched with tension below his thin shirt.
‘But it’s pointless wasting all this energy on a past that’s gone, done and dusted,’ she declared, tilting her chin. ‘We have to move on from it—’
‘How can I do that when my father’s lies cost us so much?’ Jaul framed emotively, turning back to her. ‘Once you were mine, completely, utterly mine and it is my dream that some day you will feel like that again. But, sensible and fair as I have tried to be, I still find myself thinking wholly unjust thoughts about the fact that—’ His
