a conservative place he would naturally have to be discreet about his liaisons.
Azrael breathed in deep. ‘I didn’t want you to be subjected to that type of unpleasant rumour and targeted by the press. It would have damaged your reputation.’
Molly tilted her head back and studied him in wonderment. ‘If I lived in Victorian times, I expect I would have worried about my reputation but not these days—’
‘I do not think you—an innocent woman—would have enjoyed the sort of opinions that would have been bandied about in the press,’ Azrael asserted. ‘And you did not deserve such a humiliating experience after what Tahir had already done to you. When I faced the crowd outside the cave I wanted to protect you from adverse comment of any kind and for that reason I said you were my wife.’
A pin-dropping silence fell. Rigid in her chair, Molly stared at him as if he had been telling a joke and she were still waiting to hear the punchline.
Relieved by her lack of reaction, Azrael went on talking. ‘I spent six months in London last year, forging useful alliances while I waited to make the final push of our campaign against Hashem. Few people have any idea what I did during that period and, if asked, I intended to say that I had met and married you while I was living in London—’
Molly’s green eyes were huge and her lower lip had dropped. He had so much more imagination than she would ever have dreamt, she registered in awe, but he also had an insanely honourable streak a mile wide. ‘What a crazy, crazy thing to have done in your position!’ she exclaimed in consternation. ‘What on earth got into you?’
‘Sadly that is not the end of the story,’ Azrael extended grudgingly. ‘I have since learned that that simple public statement that we are married is accepted in law in Djalia as a legal declaration of marriage. That is what I have to tell you. According to our most senior judge we are genuinely husband and wife now.’
Very slowly, as if her limbs were stiff, Molly rose from her seat. ‘No...that’s not possible,’ she told him firmly.
‘I wish it were not but that is the situation as it stands,’ Azrael countered grimly. ‘We are legally married.’
Molly looked at him in disbelief. ‘We can’t be. You admitted it was your fault and that it was a mad impulse. You said something...foolish, so now you fix it.’
Azrael threw his wide shoulders back. ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘Of course you can,’ Molly shot back at him half an octave higher in her mounting frustration. ‘Of course you can fix it! You told me that you were the law in Djalia.’
‘If only it were that simple, Molly,’ Azrael sliced back. ‘But it is not. Many other factors are involved here—’
‘I don’t care about other factors. I only care about me!’ Molly snapped back roundly, ringlets dancing round her flushed cheeks. ‘You unfix this stupid marriage or I’ll be guilty of murder!’
‘It is unthinkable for me to request an immediate divorce. It would look very bad, as if I am a man who does not know his own mind, a man who casts a woman off without even living with her for a few months—’
‘While the real truth is that you’re nutty as a fruitcake and locked in the ethics of a bygone age!’ Molly threw at him at full volume. ‘Who the heck but you would worry about a woman’s reputation in this day and age?’
‘I am not ashamed of an honourable urge to protect you—’
‘I don’t need protecting!’ Molly yelled at him at the top of her voice. ‘I’m a strong, independent woman, perfectly capable of looking after myself—’
‘But not when you’re being kidnapped and not when you’re lost in the desert,’ Azrael derided.
‘And only you would dare to throw that at me!’
‘It is the truth,’ Azrael pointed out without hesitation. ‘In the space of a few days I have rescued you twice from dangerous situations. Now I find myself in a position where I need to ask you to be understanding and reasonable.’
‘You were not reasonable with me!’ Molly flung at him straight off, green eyes electric with anger. ‘You threatened to keep me a prisoner until I agreed not to slap charges on Tahir, but now I do understand one thing. The Djalian royal family are all crazy as loons. Your brother kidnaps me, you imprison me and tell me we’re married without me even being asked how I feel about that—’
‘I am sure you feel as trapped and resentful as I do,’ Azrael cut in.
Molly lost colour and tossed her head, turning away defensively, wondering why she wasn’t warming to that honest admission of his the way that she should. He felt trapped and resentful at the idea of being married to her. When she didn’t want to be married to him in the first place, how could that acknowledgement hurt her feelings? Why did she feel very much as though he had just smacked her in the face with a wounding truth?
‘We can’t possibly be married when I didn’t agree to it,’ she told him dismissively, taking refuge in a more basic argument.
Azrael breathed in deep. ‘In the days when that law was made women didn’t have equal rights and were treated in law much the same as a piece of property.’
‘This is not the time to be telling jokes, Azrael,’ Molly warned him tartly while throwing back her slim shoulders as if she was trying to make her diminutive stature look more physically impressive.
The movement drew the silk taut across her lush breasts, revealing the crowning peaks of her nipples, and Azrael ached the instant he remembered the succulent taste of those ripe buds. ‘I am not joking,’ he breathed thickly. ‘I wish I was.’
‘You have to get us out of this marriage and fast!’ Molly spelt out fiercely.
‘When my people are already celebrating the fact that I have taken a wife?’ Azrael shot back at her rawly. ‘How would that look?’
Molly tilted her chin, almost tripping over the coffee table when her eyes encountered the shimmering gold of Azrael’s smouldering gaze. ‘That’s really not my problem.’
‘But it is,’ Azrael contradicted, concentrating his attention on her lush full mouth instead, his tension pronounced as he fought his arousal. ‘You are my wife and my people will look to you to be a queen. Are they to pay for my mistake? My misguided attempt to protect you?’
An angry flush mottled Molly’s fair skin and she turned angrily away from him, fury and conflicting feelings pulling her in different directions. He called his attempt to protect her reputation ‘misguided’, but she knew that her grandfather would have called it noble and would have applauded him for his desire to shield her. Of course, Maurice was an old-fashioned man, a former soldier, who had grown up convinced that women were the weaker sex in need of a strong man to defend them from the harsh realities of life. Indeed, her grandfather was the only person who had ever tried to protect Molly from anything...until Azrael came into her life.
She had always had to fight her own survival battles, only leaning on her grandfather while she was a teenager, and she had been so proud once she knew she could stand on her own feet and had felt even stronger when she could repay Maurice’s kindness by fighting to ensure he received the best care possible. In a nutshell it shook
