I assumed you knew I wasn’t Fleur’s mother. But, face it, you wanted to think the worst you could about me, Xavier. You enjoyed thinking it! Revelled in it. I tried to warn you that you were getting it wrong, when you totally misinterpreted those comments by the prince! Remember?’
‘Have you any idea just what problems this is causing?’ he demanded harshly.
‘What I have done?’ Mariella gave him a disbelieving look. ‘My sister is a modern young woman who lives a modern young woman’s life. Her biggest mistake, in my opinion, was to fall in love with your wretched cousin, and yet you have talked about her as though—!’ Mariella compressed her lips as she saw the flash of temper darkening his eyes.
‘Are you trying to say to me that you too are a modern young woman who lives a modern young woman’s life, because if you are I have to tell you—!’
Xavier broke off abruptly, remembering the character references the prince had insisted on him reading when he had stormed into the palace earlier in the afternoon, demanding an immediate audience with him.
Mariella was not only a very highly acclaimed artist, she was also, it seemed, a young woman of the highest moral integrity—in every facet of her life!
‘That is none of your business,’ Mariella told him angrily.
‘To the contrary. It is very much my business!’
Mariella stared at him, her heart thumping.
‘Fleur is my cousin’s child, which makes her a member of my family. Since you are also of her blood, that also makes you a member of my family. As the head of that family I am, therefore, responsible for both of you. There is no way I can allow you to live here in Zuran alone, or work unchaperoned for the prince. Our family pride and honour would be at risk! It is my responsibility!’
‘What?’ Mariella looked at him in open angry contempt. ‘How can you possibly lay claim to any right to pride or honour? You, a man who was quite prepared to take the mother of his cousin’s child to bed, just so that you could enforce your wish to keep them apart? This has got to be some kind of joke! I mean, you… you abuse me verbally, and physically. You insult and denigrate me and… and now you have the gall to turn round and start preaching to me about pride or honour! And as for your so-called sense of responsibility! You don’t even begin to understand the meaning of the word, as decent people understand it!’
Mariella could see the tension in his jaw, but she suspected that it was caused by anger rather than any sense of shame.
‘The situation has now changed!’
‘Changed? Because you have discovered that instead of being, and I quote, your cousin’s “whore” paid to have sex with men, I am a career woman.’
‘I have received a… a communication from Khalid confirming that he is Fleur’s father, and because of that—’ his mouth tightened ‘—I have to consider Fleur’s position, her future… her reputation!’
‘Her reputation!’ Mariella gave him a scathing look. ‘Fleur is four months old! And anyway, His Highness has already done everything that is necessary to stem any potential gossip.’
‘I have been to see His Highness myself to inform him that, whilst you are here in Zuran, you will be living beneath the protection of my roof! Naturally he is in total agreement!’
Mariella couldn’t believe her ears.
‘Oh, no,’ she denied, shaking her head vigorously from side to side. ‘No, no, no. No way!’
‘Mariella. Please see it as a way for me to make amends by offering you my hospitality. Besides, you have no choice—the prince expects it.’
He meant it, Mariella recognised as she searched his implacable features.
‘I shall wait here until you have packed and then we will return to my home. I have arranged for my widowed great-aunt to act as your chaperone for the duration of your stay in Zuran.’
Her chaperone!
‘I am twenty-eight years old,’ she told him through gritted teeth. ‘I do not need a chaperone.’
‘You are a single woman living beneath the roof of a single man. There will already be those who will look askance at you having read that article.’
‘At me, but not, of course, at you!’
‘I am a man, so it is different,’ he told her with a dismissively arrogant shrug that made her grind her teeth in female outrage.
Mariella couldn’t wait to speak to her sister to tell her what had happened!
Right now, though, Mariella dared not take the risk of defying him! He could, after all, if he so wished, not merely put his threats into action, but also take Fleur from her here and now if he chose to do so!
It took her less than half an hour to pack their things, a task she performed in seething silence whilst Xavier stood in front of the door, his arms folded across his chest, watching her with smoulderingly dangerous eyes.
When she had finished she went to pick Fleur up, but Xavier got there first.
Over Fleur’s downy head their gazes clashed and locked, Xavier’s a seething molten grey, Mariella’s a brilliantly glittering jade.
The limousine waiting for them was every bit as opulent looking as the one the prince had sent for her, although Mariella was surprised to discover that Xavier was driving it himself.
Somehow she had not associated him with a liking for such a luxurious showy vehicle. She had got the impression that his tastes were far, far more austere.
But, as she had discovered, beneath his outwardly cold self-control a molten, hot passion burned, which was all the more devastating for being so tightly chained.
It didn’t take them long to reach the villa, but this time the gates were opened as they approached them and they swept in, crunching over a gravel drive flanked by double rows of palm trees.
The villa itself was elegantly proportioned, its design restrained, and Moorish in inspiration, Mariella noticed with unwilling approval as she studied its simple lines with an artist’s eye.
A pair of wrought-iron gates gave way to a gravelled walled courtyard, ornamented with a large central stone fountain.
Stopping the car, Xavier got out and came to open her own door. A manservant appeared to deal with her luggage, and a shy young girl whom Xavier introduced to her as Hera, and who, he told her, would be Fleur’s nanny. Smiling reassuringly at the nanny he handed Fleur to her before Mariella could stop him.
She certainly held Fleur as though she knew what she was doing, Mariella recognised, but even so! A pang of loss tightened her body as she looked at Fleur being held in another woman’s arms.
‘Fleur doesn’t need a nanny,’ she told Xavier quickly. ‘I am perfectly capable of looking after her myself.’
‘Maybe so, but it is customary here for those who can afford to do so to provide the less well off amongst our people with work. Hera is the eldest child in her family, and her mother has recently been widowed. Are you really
