black joke of the century was on them both. Prince Raschid ibn Saud al Azarin had not wanted to marry her either. Damn him to hell! she thought abruptly. If that was true, why were they here now? Why had he even come to Ladybright? Oh, she wanted to scream! Some outdated code of honour had made him come, had made him refrain from admitting his unwillingness. But now—when he told her it was too late—he had slung it at her with hauteur, as if Polly and her family had gone in pursuit of him with a shotgun. Now she could review his grim and guarded manner at their first encounter. She had fallen hook, line and sinker for an act. The arrogant swine had actually been trying to put her off!
Equating his arrival with unquestioning acceptance of the marriage, she had been too wrapped up in her own anxieties to appraise his attitude logically. But why had he gone through with it? Her thoughts chased in concentric circles, her temper rising afresh. He had the gall to inform her bluntly that her sole saving grace was her face and figure. Suddenly she was dismissed as an individual and reduced to the level of a sexual plaything. It could have been worse—indeed? If it crossed her mind that there was a strong hint of the biter bit in her enraged reaction, she refused to identify it.
‘The obvious solution is a divorce as soon as possible,’ she pronounced, entering the cabin, her slender curves fetchingly attired in a full-length pale green gown which accentuated her air of spun silver delicacy.
‘Don’t be a child, Polly.’ Raschid glanced up from the papers he was studying at his desk, awarding her reappearance the most cursory interest.
She folded her arms, wrathful at being ignored. ‘If the only thing that brought you to Ladybright was that stupid assassination attempt on your father and the crazy promise he made then, I’m not being childish.’
Blue-black lashes swept up like silk fans. ‘I cannot refrain from saying that the attempt might have ended in a death which would have been tragic for my country’s survival and stability,’ he replied abrasively. ‘But I will concede that I too consider that promise to be rather…odd. My father is not a man of ill-judged impulse.’
‘But, like him, you believe in this honour nonsense.’
‘A concept which few of your sex have the unselfishness to hold in esteem. The pursuit of the principle infrequently leads down a self-chosen path,’ he delivered crushingly. ‘Nor was I made aware of the pledge between our fathers until three weeks ago.’
Polly was astonished. ‘Only three weeks ago?’
‘There was no reason for me to be told sooner. When I married at twenty, you were still a child. Since my father could not have supposed that an Englishwoman would desire to enter a polygamous marriage—’ He paused. ‘Although having met you and your family, I would not be so sure.’
It took her a minute to unmask that base insult. She flushed to the roots of her hairline while he spoke on in the same coolly measured tone.
‘My father cannot always have believed in that promise to the degree which he presently contends. Had it been otherwise, I would have been informed of it years ago,’ he asserted. ‘But I understand his motivation and I speak of it now, for it is no secret within the palace. It has long been my father’s aim to force me into marriage again.’
CHAPTER THREE
STUNNED by the unemotionally couched admission, Polly sank down on the other side of the desk. ‘But why me, if he didn’t believe…force?’ she queried.
‘The promise supplied the pressure. The means by which my father attained this conclusion might not be passed by the over-scrupulous.’ Raschid smiled grimly. ‘But be assured that before he even met your father, he would have made exhaustive enquiries as to your character and reputation.’
‘I was investigated?’
‘Without a doubt. You are very na;auive, Polly. You cannot suppose that my father would have risked presenting me with a bride likely to shame or scandalise the family.’ Sardonic amusement brightened his clear gaze.
In retrospect it did seem very foolish of all of them to have believed that King Reija would gaily give consent to his son’s marriage to a woman of whom he knew nothing. Raschid’s revelations put an entirely different complexion on her father’s meeting with him in London. Assured of her unblemished reputation and goodness knew what else, Raschid’s father had calmly manipulated hers at the interview. From the outset he must have known of her father’s debts. They could not have escaped detection.
Too much was bombarding Polly too quickly. The amount of Machiavellian intrigue afoot even between father and son dismayed her. But why had coercion in the form of that promise been required to push Raschid into marriage? While he might still grieve for Berah and appear virtually indifferent to her successor’s identity, he did not strike her as impractical. His position demanded that he marry and father children; that responsibility was inextricably woven into his future as a duty. Could he be so insensible to the necessity?
‘I don’t understand—you don’t really seem angry with your father,’ she said.
‘I must respect the sincerity of his intentions. He truly believes that a man without a wife cannot be content. In his view a married man is also a respectable and stable man,’ he volunteered, an inescapable harshness roughening his intonation.
‘But why didn’t you want to remarry?’ Polly pierced to the heart of the matter, weary of skating round the edges.
‘I preferred my freedom,’ he breathed dismissively. ‘Since I had spent most of my adult life married, what else?’
‘Well, if you’re so darned keen to have your freedom back, I’m not holding you!’ Polly sprang furiously upright.
‘Why this sudden alteration in attitude?’ Raschid studied her quizzically. ‘What has changed between us except a basic understanding? We stand at no different level now from that we stood at within that church.’
Anger shuddered tempestuously through her. ‘Yet somehow you’re behaving as if I trapped you into marriage!’
‘Nobody traps me, least of all a woman. I made a decision. If I had to remarry to satisfy my father’s expectations, why not you?’ he traded softly.
‘I notice too that, while your father mysteriously emerges from all this as morally above reproach when he’s been wheeling and dealing like the Godfather, I’m still being insulted!’
‘How have I insulted you?’ He vented a harsh imprecation. ‘I thought you would be quiet and inoffensive, but the second you left that church you suddenly located a tongue!’
Admittedly Polly had had difficulty in recognising herself over the past twenty-four hours, but the most even temperament would have been inflamed by Raschid. ‘Blame your father. Obviously he didn’t dig deep enough,’ she sniped, nettled by his candid admission that he had deemed her the type to melt mutely into the woodwork. ‘I find you unbelievably insensitive!’
‘And I find you like every other woman I have met in recent years—demanding.’ Exasperation laced his striking features. ‘Were you so sensitive in marrying a stranger purely for his wealth?’
Already very pale, she cringed from the cruel reminder. Pride made her voice the comeback, tilting her chin. ‘Was that how you viewed your first wife as well?’
He was very still. In the dragging
