am not Bariah. I grew up in a different society.’
‘One day soon you will be a queen and such familiarity from your subjects would seem disrespectful.’
Aware that a man old enough to be her grandfather was almost certain to cherish a less liberal viewpoint on suitable behaviour, Ruby dropped the subject. But she had not noticed Raja standing on ceremony with their guests at the reception the evening before. He had appeared equally friendly and courteous with everybody.
When she got back to the palace she was so tired she lay down. For quite some time she thought sadly about Leyla. The little girl had touched her heart and she was wishing that there were something she could do to help her before she finally fell asleep for several hours. She wakened when a maid knocked to deliver a garment bag. Unzipping it, she extracted an opulent sapphire-blue evening dress and high-heeled shoes. Her expression thoughtful, she checked the size of both.
Only minutes later, Raja joined her in the bedroom.
‘Did you organise this?’ she asked, extending the dress.
‘Yes. This evening you’ll be meeting friends and relatives of your late uncle and his family. You would feel ill-at-ease if you were underdressed in such a gathering,’ Raja forecast smoothly.
‘You even got my sizes right,’ Ruby remarked, thinking how very, very handsome he was, even when in need of a good shave, for dark stubble clearly accentuated the sensual curve of his sculpted mouth. ‘You’re obviously used to buying clothes for women.’
A slight frown at that remark drawing his ebony brows together, Raja swung fluidly away to remove his jacket and made no response.
But Ruby was not so easily deflected. ‘Are you in the habit of buying for your sisters?’
‘They do their own shopping,’ Raja admitted.
‘So, you are accustomed to buying clothes for the other women in your life,’ Ruby gathered, not a bit averse to making him uncomfortable if she could.
‘No comment. I’m glad you like the dress.’
Her brown eyes flamed amber. ‘Your hide is as tough as steel, isn’t it?’
‘I never said I was a virgin,’ Raja shot back at her with sardonic cool, his strong features taut.
‘Oh, I had already worked that out for myself,’ Ruby retorted, thinking of how smoothly he had seduced and bedded her.
In retrospect the level of his experience with her sex was obvious to her and to her annoyance that awareness loosed a whole flock of curious questions inside her head. How had she compared to his other lovers? Did he go for blondes, brunettes or redheads or any of the above? Would he even have found her attractive had she not been a long-lost and almost forgotten Ashuri princess? Every question of that ilk that crossed Ruby’s mind infuriated her. Why was she letting him make her feel insecure and vulnerable? Now that she knew the truth behind their consummated marriage, she would be better able to protect herself.
‘There will not be another woman in my bed while you remain my wife,’ Raja volunteered abruptly, his brilliant, dark eyes welded to her expressive face.
‘My goodness, do you think I care?’ Ruby forced a laugh and then plastered an amused and scornful smile to her lips. ‘I couldn’t care less what you do. I have to take account of the reality that we’re stuck with each other for the foreseeable future so there’s no sense in fighting every step of the way.’
‘You make a good point,’ Raja responded although outrage had shot flames of gold into his gaze when she declared that she didn’t care what he did.
‘And I’m not asking you to sleep on the sofa tonight and I’m not sleeping on it either. We’re adults. I’m asking you to respect that agreement you think is so foolish and forget that we ever had sex.’
Wonderment consumed Raja as she spoke. Forget about the sex? She stood there looking like every fantasy he had ever had in her little black dress with her beautiful eyes, sultry pink mouth and glorious legs tempting him and she thought he could easily return to treating her like a sexless stranger? He had deceived her by cloaking his true intentions, he reminded himself fiercely. This was the punishment, the payoff. He had to give her time to adjust to her new role.
‘I will do my best,’ Raja replied flatly.
He emanated angry vibrations and she wondered why that was. The need to get inside Raja’s head and understand what made him tick was, Ruby was discovering, a constant craving. Did he only want to make love to her because he thought that should be his right as a husband? Or would he have wanted her anyway just for herself? And why, when she had never planned to become intimate with him, should that distinction matter to her?
Later he did up the zip on the blue dress and it fit her like a tailor-made glove, the rich colour flattering her fair colouring. As she sat at the dressing table straightening her hair Raja came to her side and handed her a jewellery box. ‘It is a small gift.’
Ruby lifted the lid and stared down dumbstruck at the flawless glittering teardrop diamond on a pendant. Small wasn’t the right word. It was a big diamond and, although she knew next to nothing about the value of jewellery because she had never owned any beyond a wristwatch, she guessed that a diamond that large had to be worth a small fortune.
‘Thanks,’ she mumbled in shock.
‘Allow me.’ While she lifted her hair out of the way, Raja clasped the pendant at the nape of her neck. She shivered as his fingertips brushed her sensitive skin and that little knot of sexual hunger in the pit of her stomach tightened up a notch. ‘I would’ve given you earrings but your ears aren’t pierced.’
‘No, I’m a total unbelievable coward. I once went with a friend and she fainted when they did her ears. She bled all over the place too—it put me right off!’ Ruby confided, suddenly desperate to fill the awkward silence.
His shrewd, dark eyes screened in his reflection in the mirror, Raja rested a hand on her taut shoulder. ‘Ruby …’
‘My mother said my father chose my name, you know,’ she volunteered abruptly. ‘He said that a virtuous wife was worth more than rubies. It’s kind of insulting that the only future he could see for me was as someone’s wife.’
‘But I am grateful to have you as my wife.’
‘Only because I was part of the peace treaty,’ Ruby fielded, flatly unimpressed by that declaration. ‘Spoils of war and all that.’
Two weeks later, the night before Ruby’s first visit to Najar, Raja was enjoying a pleasant daydream. A century or so earlier had he acquired Ruby as the spoils of war, she would have belonged to him … utterly. It was a heady masculine fantasy to toy with while he was being driven to the orphanage that his wife had contrived to visit alone almost every evening since her initial official visit there. He had Wajid to thank for that information, for Ruby had kept very quiet about where she took off to during their rare moments of leisure.
Ruby took care not to share that time with him. It was yet another vote of no confidence from his wife, who was not his wife in any way that mattered, Raja conceded grimly. They might still share the same bed but she had placed a bolster pillow down the middle of it. That had made him laugh the first night, but
