she cried again. “I thought he betrayed me, I thought…”
She bit her lip and fought for calm.
“He loved me.” Her voice cracked. “He did love me.”
The stranger with Jamshid’s eyes moved and was sitting beside her. “Yes,” he murmured comfortingly. “Yes, he must have loved you very much.”
“Why didn’t he tell his grandfather about me?”
“My grandfather was a man who had suffered great reverses in his life, and for his favourite to have married an Englishwoman was—” He broke off. “For now, comfort yourself with the knowledge that your husband’s last thoughts, before going to war, were of you. You and the child.”
His deep, gentle voice tore away the last thread of her control. A cry ripped her throat, and when she felt his arms going around her it seemed natural and right. He was Jamshid’s cousin. Rosalind rested her head against the rough tweed of his jacket and wept as the mixture of grief and the deep hurt of betrayal shuddered through her and was at last released.
Najib stroked the long, smooth, honey-brown hair, and thought what a tragedy it was that she had been made to doubt his cousin’s love. But there was good reason why Jamshid had not told their grandfather of the marriage….
He remembered the terrible uproar that had ensued when Jamshid came home determined to go to war at the side of Prince Kavian. As one of the prince’s Cup Companions, as a man raised all his life in his mother’s country, Jamshid had insisted, he must do his duty to that country in its time of need. His grandfather had shouted, had threatened, had told him of his higher duty to his own family, to his father’s country and his fate….
The storm of the old man’s fury had raged over their heads for weeks, all through the buildup to the first, inevitable Kaljuk invasion, while the urgent diplomatic attempts, one after the other, fell on waste ground. Jamshid had stood resolute through it all, but it had certainly not been the moment to raise the matter of his marriage to an Englishwoman, which his grandfather would have opposed with the utmost bitterness. That might have killed the old man.
So Jamshid, his grandfather’s favourite and named heir, had gone off to battle with the old man’s curse ringing in his ears, and a few weeks later they had carried his lifeless body back across the threshold, broken, bruised and thin, in early promise of what horrors the war would bring to Parvan. His grandfather had been knocked to his knees by the blow. He never recovered. The change in him had shaken them all. That tower of strength reduced to rubble in an hour.
Rosalind’s letter and its revelations must have seemed the final horror to a mind finally driven beyond its limits. Perhaps, in the human way, the old man had turned on her as a way to ward off his own deep guilt. To curse a man going into battle was a terrible thing….
It was a tragedy that he had succumbed to such emotions at such a time. If Rosalind had been taken into the family then, she and Jamshid’s child would already be under their protection. But thank God fate had revealed her existence at a time when they could still take steps. Najib thought that it would be his job to protect her now, and his arm tightened around her, making him conscious of the train of his thoughts, so that he deliberately released her.
Rosalind wiped her eyes and cheeks with her fingers, snatched a tissue from the box on the table. She sat up, snuffling, blew her nose, wiped her tears.
“Thanks for the shoulder,” she muttered.
“I am sorry to have offered it five years late.”
Rosalind shook her head and pulled her still-trembling mouth into a half smile. “Well. What now?”
“I should tell you the contents of his will before anything else, I think.”
“All right.”
Najib al Makhtoum returned to his own seat, where he drew the will from his case, flipped over a few pages, and began softly, “Jamshid left you his flat in Paris and another in New York outright. In addition, there is a lifetime interest in the villa in East Barakat to be held by you until your death, in trust for the child. Another property, in trust until the child reaches twenty-one years of age. Certain valuables and some investments intended to provide an income for you.” He outlined them briefly, and then said, “The provisions are slightly altered in the case of a daughter, to protect her property on her marriage.”
He rested the document on his knees. “Fortunately, none of the real estate or property has been sold in the intervening years. A lump sum payment of the accumulated income is, naturally, due to you immediately.”
Rosalind stared at him, her astonishment increasing with every word of this recital. He passed her a list of figures, and she looked at the total he indicated with sheer disbelief.
“Did Jamshid really own all that?”
He looked at her, wondering if her astonishment was genuine. If he really had told her nothing, Jamshid must have been crazy, Najib reflected. But looking at Rosalind, he could see plenty of reason for madness.
“His father died when he was an infant. He came into his personal inheritance at the age of twenty-one. I have taken the liberty of bringing you one of the jewels that forms a part of your inheritance.”
He reached into the case, and brought out a small wine-coloured velvet bag. Rosalind watched in silent stupefaction as Najib al Makhtoum expertly pulled open the drawstring and shook out onto his palm a ring. He picked it up between thumb and forefinger, glanced at it, and held it out to her.
It was a diamond as big as all outdoors, in an old-fashioned setting between two pyramided clusters of rubies. It took Rosalind’s breath away. It glowed with a rich inner fire, as if it had been worn by a deeply feminine woman and her aura still surrounded it.
“It belonged to our great-grandmother,” Najib explained. “She was famed for her beauty, and was a woman of great charm.” He looked at Rosalind and thought that he had never met a woman with such feminine impact. Family legend said Mawiyah had been such a woman.
Rosalind stared at the ring. “I don’t—are you sure?” she asked stupidly, and, with something like impatience, for she was now a wealthy woman and this ring was no more than a token, he took the ring from her again and picked up her hand.
“Put it on,” he said, slipping it onto her ring finger and down over the knuckle, and for a moment reality seemed to flicker, and they realized that it was her left hand. They both blinked and then ignored the fact that unconsciously he had performed the age-old ritual that bound men and women together for life.
They spoke simultaneously, in cool voices. “It’s very lovely,” Rosalind said, and Najib said, “It’s only one of several very fine pieces that are now yours.”
She shook her head dumbly. “He never said a word about this. Not a word.”
But then, Jamshid had always been reticent about his background. They had dated for months before she even learned that he held the rank of Cup Companion to Prince Kavian.
In ancient times, the cup had meant the winecup. The companions were the men with whom the Prince caroused and forgot world affairs. But in modern times the position was much more than an honourary one. The Companions now were like a government cabinet.
It was a very prestigious appointment, but Rosalind had somehow not
