ever heard that Rashid did not share his family’s century-old obsession.
“Really? Why?”
“Because it is futile. It serves no good purpose. You must see this. If I could uncover the truth about Omar’s death and satisfy my father’s need to know, I would. But for myself I have no need to know. We are where we are. If Omar had lived, I would be only a very distant cousin of the Crown Prince of Tamir, if I existed at all. He did not live. I am Crown Prince. Mash’Allah. What occupies me is not how I came to this position, but how I will fulfill it for the people’s good.”
Julia said nothing.
“You and I could work together in this, Julia. And bequeath to our son a nation that lives in peace.”
“Oh!” She drew a long, enlightened breath. So this was the answer. Not an elaborate game, not that he loved her, or even that he felt obliged to protect her unborn child.
It was a political marriage that motivated him. Her heart clenched painfully. She couldn’t speak.
“Over the past few months I have had time to think,” Rashid began quietly. “I thought about whether you had a reason for what happened. Sometimes I wondered if it was your intention to put us in this very situation—you pregnant with my child. I thought perhaps we had a similar view of the stupidity of this feud between our families, and how to heal it. Was I right?”
She stared at him. “What do you mean? That I planned to—that I meant to trick you into getting me pregnant so you’d be forced to marry me, for the sake of…” She faded off, swallowed, and continued in a whisper, “For the sake of peace between Tamir and Montebello?”
“Is it not so?”
She flung herself to her feet, unable to contain her feelings. “Is that what my child means to you—he’ll force us into a political marriage that will be advantageous to your country?”
He was watching her from where he sat, not quite understanding her ferocity. “To both our countries, I hope,” he said. “It is an end I have had in mind for a long time.”
“An end you’ve had in mind for a long time?” she repeated blankly.
“It is years since I first thought of it as the surest way to re-establish peace between our countries. A marriage between the two ruling houses would be as advantageous now as it would have been a century ago. But when you married, I naturally gave up on it.”
She blinked at him in amazement. “Why? You clearly didn’t care about me personally.”
“I did not know you personally. But I had seen you—”
She didn’t want to hear the calm appraisal he had made of her suitability for the post of royal wife taken to cement a peace.
“Why not Christina, then? She wasn’t married up until last month! Or Anna? She’s available!”
“I never considered them,” Rashid returned. Having said it, he was aware that such a position required some explanation. “Christina had renounced public life.”
He understood only distantly that this was an after-the-fact rationalization. The truth was, he had never once considered Princess Christina in his plans—not even to reject her. And facing that fact now, he found it oddly inexplicable. He had given up his ideas of a political marriage with the Sebastianis when Julia married. “And Anna is too young.”
“So when Luigi and I divorced your plans kicked right back in,” she said dryly.
“It was not as simple as this, Julia. Let’s not argue over the past. We have a child to think of. And our countries.”
“There’s a little drawback here. I’m not interested.”
Rashid suddenly found himself exasperated. “Do you tell me you prefer to give birth to a child unmarried? You are a princess! You are in the public eye whatever you do! Have you not had enough of scandal?”
Julia gritted her teeth. The fact that he was only saying aloud what she had been saying to herself did nothing to calm her.
“I’ve already been through the worst of it in your absence,” she said. “You may be a hero to your citizens, but don’t try riding into my life on your white horse! You have overwhelmed me once. That will have to be enough for you. I intend to use my own judgement here, and that tells me—”
His lips tightened and his eyes narrowed as he watched her. “What did you tell your father about how your pregnancy happened?” he interrupted roughly.
“Not much.”
“And the police?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Have I been looking in the wrong direction? Is this merely another Sebastiani attempt to make the Kamals look like wild animals?”
Julia gasped. “How dare you?”
“What have you told the world about how you got pregnant? Has our moment of madness become a rape, perhaps? Did I meet you at Harry and Mariel’s wedding only to assault you?”
She gritted her teeth against overwhelming fury. “I told them nothing beyond the bare facts.”
“How blind I’ve been! Of course you can’t marry me, if you have been painting me in such colours! No wonder you are so furious! If this was a calculated move to make me look like a monster—of course a proposal of marriage is the last thing you want!”
A cold calm suffused Julia at his words. “So because I won’t marry you, you suddenly see a plot to blacken your reputation? Is it really impossible to believe that a woman could actually prefer life as a single mother to marriage with you? What an ego!”
“When there is so much good to be derived from the marriage—” he began.
“Rashid,” she said hoarsely, holding up a hand. “I am not going to marry you. I have had one loveless marriage already. Believe me, it was one too many.”
“Loveless?” He reached out to cup her shoulder with one strong palm, stopping her retreat. “Why should it be loveless? We already know, Julia, how well we suit each other physically.” His other hand gently tipped her chin up, then slipped around her back, drawing her irresistibly into his embrace.
Julia licked her lips. It was impossible to resist him when he touched her. Half of her longed to throw herself into his arms and accept the protection he offered.
But he was a Kamal. A member of the family that had blackened the proud Sebastiani name a century ago and was still raking over the coals of that ancient dispute.
Her eyes were suddenly burning. Julia twisted out of his embrace and stood facing him.
“It would be loveless,” she said, with a precision born out of her determination not to weaken, “because you do not love me. And I do not love you.”
Chapter 3
“Who the hell is this?” growled a deep male voice. Julia took a breath.
