FIRSTBORN SONS

| PROFILE
FIRSTBORN SON: | Sheik Rashid Kamal
AGE: | 37
STATS: | 6'1"; short, conservatively cut raven hair; shrewd dark eyes; tall, athletic build; handsome, exotic features
OCCUPATION: | Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Tamir
AREA OF EXPERTISE: | International diplomacy (and seduction!)
PERSONALITY: | Charmingly arrogant on the surface, Rashid is an intensely passionate man who cares deeply about life, and is determined to bring peace to his country.
FAVORITE SPORTS: | Polo and sailing
MOST CHARMING CHARACTERISTIC: | When he finally does fall in love, he’s a one-woman man.
BRAVEST ACT OF COURAGE: | Challenging the terrorist group known as the Brothers of Darkness—and winning
PREFERRED ROMANTIC SETTING: | His fabulous private Greek island
GREATEST PASSION: | Trying to convince a certain pregnant princess that marriage with him is the best way out of her dilemma

Dear Reader,

Happy (almost) New Year! The year is indeed ending, but here at Intimate Moments it’s going out with just the kind of bang you’d expect from a line where excitement is the order of the day. Maggie Shayne continues her newest miniseries, THE OKLAHOMA ALL-GIRL BRANDS, with Brand-New Heartache. This is prodigal daughter Edie’s story. She’s home from L.A. with a stalker on her trail, and only local one-time bad boy Wade Armstrong can keep her safe. Except for her heart, which is definitely at risk in his presence.

Our wonderful FIRSTBORN SONS continuity concludes with Born Royal. This is a sheik story from Alexandra Sellers, who’s made quite a name for herself writing about desert heroes, and this book will show you why. It’s a terrific marriage-of-convenience story, and it’s also a springboard for our twelve-book ROMANCING THE CROWN continuity, which starts next month. Kylie Brant’s Hard To Resist is the next in her CHARMED AND DANGEROUS miniseries, and this steamy writer never disappoints with her tales of irresistible attraction. Honky-Tonk Cinderella is the second in Karen Templeton’s HOW TO MARRY A MONARCH miniseries, and it’s enough to make any woman want to run away and be a waitress, seeing as this waitress gets to serve a real live prince. Finish the month with Mary McBride’s newest, Baby, Baby, Baby, a “No way am I letting my ex-wife go to a sperm bank” book, and reader favorite Lorna Michaels’s first Intimate Moments novel, The Truth About Elyssa.

See you again next year!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

Born Royal
Alexandra Sellers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Michael Hunter Lewis Sellers Fairweather my incomparable, much-loved nephew and godson who is also a firstborn son

U donad, U donad, U donad—U!

(He knows, He knows, He knows—He!)

—from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Bound by the legacy of their fathers, six Firstborn Sons are about to discover the stuff true heroes—and true love—are made of….

Sheik Rashid Kamal: To bring peace and prosperity to Montebello and Tamir, Prince Rashid must unite the Kamal and Sebastiani kingdoms. First order of business—pull out all the stops to claim the pregnant Princess Julia as his enamored bride. Let the games begin!

Princess Julia Sebastiani: Sheik Rashid Kamal is a dangerously attractive enemy for whom she has already proven she has a fatal weakness. Now the high-handed prince has gone too far by making a public marriage declaration without her consent! This willful princess will wed for love—or not at all….

Sheik Ahmed Kamal: As he rejoices in his heroic son’s triumphant return home, he realizes it won’t be long before Rashid receives the throne. But for now, a peaceful trade treaty between Montebello and Tamir must be forged. And to further that agenda, the mysterious origin of their bitter animosity needs to be unraveled.

The Noble Men: Over the years, they have taken calculated risks and sacrificed their own personal happiness to achieve their global pursuits. Has the time finally come to pass their legacy on to their firstborn sons?

A note from beloved author Alexandra Sellers:

Dear Reader,

I was delighted to be invited to write the final book in the Intimate Moments FIRSTBORN SONS series. It’s the first continuity I’ve taken part in, and I found it both difficult and exciting. I have really enjoyed collaborating with the other writers in the series, especially Virginia Kantra. Virginia and I co-wrote scenes in each of our books between the two princess sisters, Julia and Christina. That was good fun.

Born Royal is my thirtieth novel for Harlequin/Silhouette, and my eleventh sheikh fantasy. Readers familiar with me know that my passion for all things Middle Eastern dates back to my early childhood, when, in the tiny prairie town where I spent a very difficult two years, I discovered a book called The Arabian Nights. I began to dream of flying carpets, handsome princes and genies in magic lamps. I’ve never stopped.

Since then I have traveled to some of those places I dreamed of, and have been privileged to explore, a little, their languages and religion, history and wisdom. It is a world as deep, as rich and as many-layered as that magical book—which I still treasure—promised me it would be. I hope that in my own stories I am able to communicate to you some part of the fascination and wonder of the East that has enchanted me and enriched my life for so long.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

Prologue

Prince Rashid ibn Ahmed Kamal stood on the broad balcony of the palace smiling and waving as the love-roar of the crowd swelled almost to pain level and broke over his head.

Below the balcony, the huge, leafy square writhed ecstatically in the burning sunshine as the people cheered, shouted, laughed, sang, danced and kissed each other.

He was home. Their handsome Crown Prince, whom they had mourned as lost forever, had returned. And better still, he had returned a hero. As the man who had organized and masterminded the downfall of that band of murderous terrorists, the one so fearful no one liked to say its full name, but only called them Al Ikhwan. The Brothers.

Now the people need not live in fear of the threatened chemical attack. It was said he had found the actual laboratory where the filthy poisons were being made, and that the entire store of the evil virus had been destroyed.

No one needed to be told where the first attack would have occurred. But a country storyteller, who had a sizable group entranced with his version of the prince’s great exploit, told them anyway.

“Of course they would have attacked here in the islands of Tamir first,” he asserted in a terrible voice, and his audience gasped and nodded. “Such monsters as these are drawn to destroy truth and nobility, for they know instinctively there is no co-existence between evil and good.

“And for a certainty they would have come here, to the big island—and to this city, Medina Tamir. Perhaps even in this very square they would have released their foul poison, hoping to destroy the Kamal family and put their own puppet in Ahmed’s place!”

His audience of mostly city dwellers shuddered in horrified delight. The country people had a point—this was much more entertaining than the dry facts in newspapers or on television.

“And only when we died would the world have been alerted and begun to take action,” the turbaned, white-bearded ancient said, conveniently omitting the fact that the mission Prince Rashid had headed had been a joint one involving many nations. “Too late for Tamir. But what need have we of the world, when we have a prince such as Rashid? Brave, intrepid…”

The cheers redoubled as Prince Rashid was joined on the balcony by the rest of his family. The silver-haired King Ahmed, lovely Queen Alima, handsome Prince Hassan and his sisters, the beautiful and headstrong Princess Nadia, gentle, smiling Samira, and Leila—the youngest and, some argued, the loveliest.

It was Nadia who stood closest to Rashid as the family took their places, smiling and waving to the delirious citizenry. She glanced down at the crowd around the storyteller in the square, and pointed him out to her brother.

“By the end of the week you’ll have done the deed single-handed,” she remarked in an ironic aside. “Flying on the back of a giant bird, the Natobird, no doubt, and with the sword of your ancestors—I suppose they’ll call it the Kalashnikov sword—raised high, you dispatched the monsters after a fight to the death and won your way to the coffers wherein lay the terrible poison. You threw magical powder on the poison to render it harmless.”

Rashid laughed, not because she wasn’t right in her analysis. Nadia had an instinctive understanding of people and events, and it was a pity his father didn’t consult her more often in matters of state.

“Well, and if my mythical powers win the people to my side when I’m proposing a shift in foreign policy, among other things, I won’t object.”

Nadia flicked him a look. He should have known she would be quick to pick up on that hint. “Other things? As for example?”

Rashid shook his head, turning to lift his hand again and smile. The sun was high in the blue sky, burnishing the thick black curls, enhancing the glint in his dark eyes and the white, even teeth. The crowd swayed with reaction.

There was no one, Nadia reflected, whom he did not, one way or another, seduce. He had much more charisma than their rather severe father. It was no wonder that the people had been brokenhearted when Rashid went missing.

As for her, it had been like losing a limb. The miracle of having her brother back from the dead had not worn off yet. Maybe it never would.

“‘Among other things,’” Nadia repeated musingly, sliding an arm through her brother’s. “Now, what else would you be proposing besides a shift in foreign policy?” He was silent. “So the baby really is yours? I wondered.”

His gaze turning inward, Prince Rashid absently waved and smiled. The crowd cheered. He thought of Julia’s soft cry when his hands were on her, when what was going to happen was inevitable. Rashid, I’m—I’m a virgin….

He had not believed her. Other women had said it to him at such a moment; he had never understood why. Hoping to make his passion hotter, perhaps.

But it was true. When he realized it, too late, it had struck him a blow like nothing else he had experienced. A virgin. After all this time, she was a virgin.

“Yes, it’s mine,” he said.

He thought of the way she had melted at his touch, saw her face in his mind’s eye, those full lips stretched with desire. He had lost control.

“It will put an end to the feud, won’t it?” Nadia commented. “If marriage is what’s in your mind.”

Had it been his unconscious mind understanding that the one unanswerable way to bind them together was a child? Was that the reason such powerful desire had swept him, blinding him to every other consideration? His one chance offered, and he had taken it.

“The question is, what’s the best way of getting Father over the hump?” Rashid murmured. “He’s not going to like it, is he?”

Nadia laughed outright at the understatement. “The feud is what keeps him going, you know that.”

There was another round of cheers from below as their father and mother turned back inside the palace.

“I don’t want a war with him. But I have to do what I know to be right. If I could find a way to make him accept it—” He shrugged and waved to the crowds again as his sisters and brother left.

“Want some advice, big brother?”

Now there were only Nadia and Rashid. They waved a last farewell as the crowds went crazy with cheering.

“Yes, I want advice.”

“Play it the same way you played your last enterprise.” Nadia smiled and flicked her raised hand at him. “Surprise him.”

Chapter 1

Princess Julia Sebastiani twitched awake, her heart pounding, sweat on her forehead. She lay without moving, wondering where she was, as the memory of pleasure subsided in her blood. After a moment she sighed. She was in her bedroom at the palace. Alone.

The clock across the room read 6:30. Well, that was more sleep than she usually got when she dreamt of Rashid Kamal. She struggled to a sitting position and dropped her face in her hands. It was no use to try to get back to sleep; she had learned that through experience.

She slipped off the bed, crossed the room to the windows that looked southeast, and stood there, gazing out at the sun rising in splendour out of the Mediterranean Sea. It was a view she had loved all her life, but even in childhood her pleasure had been coloured by the knowledge that in that direction, over the horizon, out of sight, lay Tamir.

He was home. He was alive. Her child had a father—who was the son of her own father’s sworn enemy.

She had never known whether to think him alive or dead. Sometimes she had wondered if it had all been a plot to cast doubt on the Sebastianis—if Rashid Kamal had set it all up, the unexpected meeting, the surprised passion, and then his disappearance, so that the Sebastianis would be suspected in his disappearance just as the Kamals were suspected in the loss of her brother, Lucas. Other times she had despaired, sure that he was dead and that her son would all his life bear the stigma of belonging to a family suspected of killing his father.

He must know by now that she was pregnant. She wondered if he accepted that he was the father of her child. There was so much accusation and counter-accusation between the Kamals and the Sebastianis that it would hardly be surprising if he did not.

Julia and Prince Rashid to Marry!

A Montebello Messenger World Exclusive!

Crown Prince Rashid of Tamir and Princess Julia will marry “as soon as it can be arranged,” the Montebello Messenger has learned. In an exclusive interview with this reporter, the heir to the throne of Tamir, whose family has maintained a long-standing and well-publicized feud with Montebello’s own royal family, said that he felt the ill feeling between the two families was “a thing of the past” which should be forgotten.

“A man and woman cannot carry on an ancient feud when they are about to have a child together,” he said. “My interest is not in the past, but in the future. It is time to look ahead, to a time of peace between our two countries.”

The prince confirmed unequivocally that he is the father of Princess Julia’s child, a question about which there has been intense media speculation since his unexpected return from the dead early this week.

The palace here in Montebello has not so far responded to Rashid’s claims that a wedding between the Crown Prince and Princess Julia is in the offing.

“Damn you! Damn you!” Julia flung the Montebello Messenger to the floor with a cry of disbelief.

“Ma—madame?” a voice trembled behind her.

In the mirror her hairdresser’s face looked startled and wary.

“Oh—Micheline! Not you! Sorry!” she said, forcing a smile. She had never felt less like smiling in her life.

The paper landed with the front page up, and Rashid’s beard-shadowed face grinned at her, black grease smudged on his cheekbone and forehead. His eyes seemed to mock her even from a distance of ten feet. Behind him was a military helicopter. In one hand he held an assault rifle.

The hairdresser’s eyes followed hers. “’E is veree ’andsome, madame,” she said shyly.

Until this moment, none of her staff had had the nerve to mention in her presence the one subject that was on everyone’s mind, though Julia knew it was about all they discussed behind her back.

“Who is?” the princess snapped, in her mother’s best we-are-not-amused tone.

But Micheline was just too thrilled by this latest turn of events in the months-long drama the world had been following with such excitement. Who could have kept silent now?

“But the prince, madame!” she supplied breathlessly. “Et quel héros! Si brave!” She slipped into her native French, English being insufficient for her feelings. “To conquer those terrorists, madame! To risk his life to save us from the anthrax…” She sighed luxuriously. “I am sure you are very happy, madame. Who would not be, with such a man to love her?”

Julia pressed her lips together and made no reply. She might almost have been fooled by the romance of it herself, if she hadn’t known better. She couldn’t understand what game he was playing. But that it was a game was certain.

“Everyone is so happy, madame, to know that you will be happy at last!”

Julia’s jaw clenched. Whatever this latest move meant, it boded no happiness for her. Happy? With a man whose family was still manipulating a painful, century-old tragedy into a totally unjustified claim on Sebastiani land?

“So, madame, what do you think?” Micheline prompted, unabashed. It was a moment before Julia realized that she was being urged to admire her own hair.

Julia no longer wore the smooth pleat that had once almost been her trademark. This morning her long, dark hair had been loosely caught back, with soft curling tendrils escaping all around her head.

The style emphasized the fine bones of her face, very prominent now because of the weight she had lost over the past year, the porcelain skin, the wide blue eyes. She was starting to gain the weight back now, with the pregnancy, but she was still much thinner than she had been in those days when her marriage had seemed storybook perfect from the outside.

“Perfect, Micheline, thank you,” the princess said, her smile reflected in the deep blue eyes in a way that ensured that most of her staff would walk across burning coals if she asked them to. She got to her feet just as her chief private secretary came through the door, a sheaf of papers in one arm, an extremely odd look on her face.

“Valerie,” said Julia, as Micheline brushed her down, “have you seen that?” She indicated the newspaper on the floor, and Valerie stopped short and bent to pick it up.

A stupid question at nearly 9:00 am. The entire island had read or heard the story by now.

“Uh—yes,” Valerie replied blankly.

“Will you tell Bertrand I want to talk to him? Immediately, please, if he can make it.”

“I’m sure he’s waiting to talk to you,” Valerie said, pulling out her phone.

Micheline handed Julia into her jacket. The soft dusty rose suit had a pencil skirt—she could still wear those—but the boxy jacket hung low over her hips, disguising the first signs of her pregnancy. Underneath she wore a neat white bodysuit with a low scooped neck. She slipped on gold medallion earrings as Micheline passed them to her. On her wrist she wore the bracelet of gold and diamonds she called her lucky bracelet.

“Thanks, Micheline,” Julia said, with another smile.

Valerie meanwhile was talking to Bertrand, passing on her message. She disconnected as Julia took the newspaper from her hand.

“He’ll meet us,” Valerie said, and the two women left the room to stride down the hall together.

Although obviously consumed with curiosity, Valerie calmly began her usual briefing. “You’ve got the Arts Council representatives due at nine-thirty. I’ll put them in the Blue Room. They’ll be asking…”

Julia tried to concentrate, but the world seemed to be behind a veil. It was happening more and more lately—no doubt it was pregnancy hormones. She just didn’t seem to have the attack, or the cool nerves, she was known for.

Or maybe it was because she was preoccupied with what Rashid Kamal had said to the media. What game was he playing? Everyone knew a Sebastiani could never marry a Kamal, baby on the way or not. Even if she wanted to.

Which Julia certainly did not. Marry a Kamal? Not if he was the last man standing.

Bertrand, in a smart blue suit and collarless shirt, was waiting in the anteroom of Julia’s private offices, one hand in his pocket, looking rather irritated. They all moved through to the inner office.

Julia tossed the newspaper down on a low table in the centre of a cluster of chairs and sofas before seating herself and waving at them to do the same.

“You’ve read it, Bertrand?”

Of course he had. As her press secretary he made it his business to see everything printed about her, usually before Julia did. He and Valerie slipped into seats facing hers on either side and he leaned forward and picked up the Montebello Messenger, looked at it, then at her.

“Yes, I got my own copy, as usual. May I say—”

“He’s got one hell of a nerve! I wonder what he’s playing at?”

Bertrand, his head bent, elbows on knees, lifted his gaze and looked at her under his brows in silent astonishment.

“I’d like to issue a statement as soon as possible, please.”

The press secretary paused, as if waiting for more. Then he prompted, “What do you want me to say, Princess?”

“A categorical denial that there’s any engagement or any possibility of a marriage, of course!”

“It’s not true?”

“I wish these—what?” She jumped as if her seat were suddenly electrified. “True? No, of course it’s not true! Are you crazy, Bertrand?”

His mouth relaxed imperceptibly. “Forgive me, Princess. I assumed the two of you had—”

“Had what?” Julia stared at him, and realized belatedly that Bertrand thought she had gone behind his back to make this announcement with Rashid. He had probably been mentally drafting up his letter of resignation, which was just one more sin to lay at Rashid Kamal’s door.

“Rashid Kamal is a Kamal. He is a long-standing enemy of the Sebastiani family, and that includes myself. I haven’t spoken to him since his return.”

Bertrand nodded, one eyebrow raised.

“Has Papa seen it? Has he called?” Her father and mother, thank God, were abroad this week. “He must be raving.”

“I understand that he has called. He did not speak to me,” her press secretary said carefully.

Julia almost laughed. “Well, and you’re grateful for that! Why didn’t he ask to speak to me?”

“I understand he has left a number and hopes that you will call when you have a moment.”

“That bad, huh?” Julia smiled, but inwardly she quailed a little. Her father would be in a towering rage until she could explain.

“I can’t believe the Messenger ran the story without calling us for a reaction! Why didn’t they check with us first?” she demanded furiously.

“Because what the prince said will sell papers,” Bertrand told her dryly. “Our reaction, which they hope to run in the later editions, will sell more copies. Prince Rashid has timed it very nicely. The Messenger is probably going to break all previous sales records today. And given the last few months, that’s saying something.”

“Well, make getting the statement out your first priority this morning. And I suppose I’d better make Papa mine.”

“Princess, if I may make a suggestion…”

She looked an inquiry.

“I’d like to suggest that we refuse to comment for the moment.”

Julia stared. “You want me to refuse to comment on a story that says I’m going to marry Rashid Kamal?” she repeated with slow precision. “Are you out of your mind?”

She felt the baby’s whisper of protest as adrenaline pumped into her blood. Julia paused, her hand automatically moving to her abdomen. She stroked for a moment and took a deep calming breath.

“Okay, Bertrand.” Julia’s other hand lifted gracefully, the palm pressing outward, as if to hold back the wave she felt coming towards her. Julia glanced at Valerie. “What’s your point?”

“Princess, all hell has broken loose this morning, which is no surprise. My private line alone has already logged over a hundred calls from journalists. We’ve had to call in half a dozen relief staff for the palace switchboard to cope with calls from citizens. And this is only a trickle compared with what’s to come,” Bertrand told her.

“Then the sooner we issue a statement, the better, surely?”

“We’re even getting calls from Tamiri citizens.”

“Screaming how appalled they are, I’m sure!”

“No. For once, Montebello and Tamir have synoptic vision on an issue. The truth is, Princess, everybody wants to believe it.”

Julia sucked in too much air too suddenly and started coughing. When the fit was over she stared at her press secretary.

“The citizens of both countries are thrilled at the prospect of a marriage that will put an end to this feud once and for all,” he informed her. “As a public relations coup, on top of the military action, it’s pretty damned good. He knows his stuff, Rashid.”

This made her furious.

“No doubt. I don’t know what Rashid Kamal has in mind, but he means us no good, you can be sure. No Kamal can be trusted.” She had a sudden sharp memory of his black eyes, burning into hers. Kiss me. Kiss me.

Valerie leaned forward. “Are you absolutely certain that he isn’t serious? It’s an extraordinary risk to take if he’s not. Where would he be if you publicly said yes?”

A little shock went through her. “Are you suggesting—no. No, of course he’s not serious! A Kamal marry a Sebastiani? Impossible!”

Valerie and Bertrand looked at her oddly. But neither wanted to be the one to point out a more impossible fact—that a Kamal had made a Sebastiani pregnant.

“I imagine the point of this exercise—” she waved at the newspaper “—is that Rashid Kamal gets to look like a knight in shining armour. I’m pregnant. He offers marriage. I turn him down. He’s squeaky clean.”

Her conscience tugged at her a little as she spoke. The Kamals had been characterized as monsters all her life, but Rashid had not seemed like that to her when she met him. If he hadn’t been a Kamal, she would even have called him… But her mind wouldn’t go there.

“Wouldn’t it be wiser to find out for certain what’s in his mind before we jump to any action? Everyone’s been very worried and stressed lately, Princess, afraid that another bomb was going to go off, or they’d be inhaling poison in the streets. It’s not going to hurt them to feel for a few hours that they’ve seen the end of animosity and the beginning of peace.”

Julia eyed Bertrand suspiciously, wondering what was in his mind.

“I don’t accept that the majority of the citizens of this country or of Tamir are rejoicing in the thought of such a marriage, however many calls there have been. But if they are, Bertrand, recollect that it is I who will tear this cup from their lips when the moment finally comes. I’d like to do that sooner rather than later.”

Bertrand gave her a steady look. “With respect, Princess, you’ll need to talk to Prince Rashid. I could start the ball rolling by calling my opposite number at the palace.”

“I’m not going to talk to him,” Julia said, keeping her voice as level as she could.

“Princess, that’s crazy. You—”

Julia got to her feet, catching the other two off guard. They scrambled to follow.

“All right, Bertrand, you can call the palace in Tamir,” she said. “And tell Prince Rashid from me that if he says any more about this supposed marriage to the media or anyone else, I’ll…he’ll…”

The threat, if it was one, was interrupted. There was a hurried knock, and then the office door burst open. One of the junior secretaries came in, wide-eyed and almost babbling with poorly suppressed excitement.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness, but I thought I should—um…they’ve just notified me that he’s here! He’s actually in the palace. Prince Rashid! And he—he wants to see you!”

“Bertrand, go down to him, please,” Julia commanded, in a low, trembling voice he had to strain to hear. “Will you explain that we are going to issue an unqualified denial of this story, and ask that he support that with a statement of his own.”

“Princess, wouldn’t it be better—” Bertrand began.

“No, it wouldn’t!” she cried, feeling goaded beyond her endurance. “Allow me to be the judge, please! Tell him whatever you like about why. Just make it very clear that I am not going to see him.”

“Predicting the future is a risky business,” chided a deep masculine voice from the open doorway. Julia, Bertrand, Valerie and the junior secretary all whirled.

In the doorway, beside an embarrassed and apologetic member of King Marcus’s staff, stood Rashid Kamal, smiling like an angel of vengeance.

“See? Wrong already,” he said.

Chapter 2

They both stood silent, half the width of the room between them, gazing at each other. Those watching the pair felt a curious sensation, as if they themselves, and the room, had somehow ceased to exist in the same reality.

Rashid’s mocking smile died as he took in the sight of her. He wondered when her face had become his icon of survival. There had been times in the past few months when he’d come up against the real possibility that he wouldn’t succeed in his mission, wouldn’t even survive it. He realized only now how often in those moments his thoughts had been of Julia. Julia and his child.

Julia licked her lips and swallowed. A huge relief flooded her, taking her completely by surprise. He was alive. Until this moment she hadn’t realized how much of a tragedy it would have been if he were not.

As if embarrassed to be intruding, the others began to shuffle uncomfortably. Reality suddenly returned. Their gaze unlocked.

“We have things to discuss,” Rashid said, entering the room and acknowledging the staff in one friendly but imperious nod. With wonderful noblesse oblige, he held the door for them to leave. And to Julia’s annoyance, her staff all instinctively obeyed, leaving her alone with the enemy.

A dangerously attractive enemy, for whom she was already proven to have a fatal weakness. With whom she had made a total, complete, and utter fool of herself. She shifted uncomfortably, then reminded herself where she was. This was her own private office.

“Are the Kamals now laying claim to this palace, as well as Delia’s Land?” she demanded with icy sarcasm.

Rashid looked at her in level scrutiny, ignoring her outburst. He took a step closer. “How are you, Julia?” She seemed well, with softer curves than when he had last seen her. But the shadow in her eyes as she looked at him was the same.

The scent of her perfume was a sudden, sharp reminder of that wild night when passion had nearly wrecked all his careful plans. In the months since, he had found ways to explain what had happened. His reaction had been a simple side effect of the dangerous enterprise he had been about to embark upon, he had told himself. Men going to war had always been prey to such reactions—the universal unconscious compulsion to leave some trace of his genes in the world before he left it had seized him, that was all.

But that did not explain his reaction to her now—the need to hold her, to wrap her in safety. He reached for her with impatient arms.

She stepped back, evading his embrace.

“All the worse for seeing you!” she retorted.

Rashid’s head snapped back as if a cat had scratched his cheek without warning.

“The worse for seeing me? Why?”

“Why did you tell that Messenger journalist we were engaged?” she demanded.

“The real reason?”

“Of course, the real reason!”

“I thought there was a chance it would go over better with your people if I gave the exclusive to a Montebello paper. I’ve heard it’s going down very well.”

Julia gritted her teeth. “You know perfectly well what I mean! What did you say it for? What’s your agenda?”

He frowned. “What’s yours?”

She wasn’t sure why she was so furious suddenly. “My agenda? That’s simple—to have a baby. With the least possible media intrusion on the event, if you wouldn’t mind!”

“There’ll be a lot less room for speculation and innuendo once we’re married.”

Julia jerked backwards as if he had burned her. She opened her mouth twice, like a fish. “Married?” she whispered faintly. “What—you—we can’t get married!”

The sparkle abruptly left his dark eyes. He had hoped—he had felt almost certain of her support in his plans, if no one else’s.

“Can’t we?”

Julia bit her lip and gazed at him, trying to figure him out. She had been convinced what he had done was merely another move in some elaborate game plan. A game plan in which she was a pawn who would be sacrificed when necessary.

“You seriously imagine that we might get married?”

He watched her, his dark eyes unreadable. She still didn’t believe it. She wished he would tell her what he really wanted. This was making her very uncomfortable.

“Why not?”

“Your name is Kamal. Mine is Sebastiani.”

“We managed to make a baby, nevertheless.”

Julia’s cheeks burned at this calculated reminder of what she had let happen. “Everybody’s allowed to go out of their tiny mind once.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“What do you call it?” she challenged.

He looked at her. Looked at the rich dark hair, the delicate skin moulding fine bones, the wide mouth that seemed to tremble with the passage of every feeling. Her long neck holding her head like a flower on a stem, and the soft, fresh skin of her throat. The slender body, with its high, lush breasts, fuller now than what his hands remembered. The slim hips, curving thighs, fine ankles. Shoes to match her suit and her pink mouth.

His examination left her shaking with a kind of fury.

“I call it going out of my tiny mind,” he admitted. “But why only once?”

She swallowed, her eyes widening at the implication. “You—” she began, half-panicked.

He stepped forward with his hands outstretched to grip her arms. Julia avoided the touch by backing up. Her knees bumped up against the sofa, and she sat down with less grace than she was known for. He stood looking down at her, his eyes dark and assessing. She moved her shoulders nervously.

“You are pregnant with my child. You must have been expecting this.”

“Expecting an offer of marriage?” she repeated disbelievingly. “From the man whose father used every opportunity to accuse me of having slept with you in order to murder you? I’m afraid not!”

She stiffened as Rashid sank down beside her. “I am sorry,” he said. “But you must see I had no control over this. We were working to stop the Brothers of Darkness. There was nothing I could do to set the record straight, without jeopardizing the whole enterprise.”

“Set the record straight? Why would you do that?” she cried. “You’d worked so hard to get me where I was!”

“Worked?” he repeated with a half smile. “You really were a virgin, weren’t you? That wasn’t work, Julia.”

She bit her lip as humiliation flooded her. What a fool she had made of herself with him. And how cruel of him to mock her.

“And how could I have known that you would get pregnant?”

“You knew damned well you were going to disappear that night, though, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Yes. And you arranged it so that I was the last person to see you ‘alive.’ I wonder if you can imagine what’s it’s like to have some very polite police detectives asking you in the kindest terms about the feud your families have been waging for the past century and how strongly you feel about it!”

“It was no part of my plan to incriminate you. Is that what you’ve been thinking? No. It was completely wrong of me to—” he paused and reached out a finger to stroke back a tendril of hair from her temple “—to allow myself to make love to you. But you know what inducement I had, Julia.”

“Inducement? I never—”

His voice changed, turning into a seductive growl as he reminded them both. His fingers caught the delicate curl of her hair, stopping her as she tried to move her head away.

The memory of his touch rippled over her skin.

“You were irresistible. So beautiful. You called my name, and I was lost.”

She struggled to subdue the heat his voice summoned up in her. She could not bear it if he made her look a fool again.

“If it hadn’t been for Lucas’s d-disappearance…” Julia choked. She felt the tears burn again, undermining her. Even now she could not say the word. Like her father, she couldn’t apply the word death to Lucas.

She burned with humiliation. “Yes, all right, I threw myself at you! But if Lucas…if I hadn’t been so distraught over my brother, you wouldn’t have got near me,” she finished.

“It should not have happened,” Rashid agreed, with an edge to his otherwise calm voice. “But it did happen, and we are left with the results. What is the benefit in arguing over how we got where we are? The important thing now—”

“It might help to clear the air!” Julia exclaimed.

“Damn it, what is unclear?”

“What is unclear is what can be feeding your delusion that we are going to get married! Or what you thought gave you the right to undermine me with the announcement of our engagement!”

“Undermine you? Julia, I came home to a barrage of media speculation that I was going to repudiate you and your claim to be carrying my child. My first thought was to protect you from any suspicion that I doubted your child was mine.”

“Your first thought was to get Delia’s Land,” she corrected him. “I suppose it was to please your father.”

Prince Rashid abruptly lost his grip on his calm. “How dare you accuse me of this? You must know that my father was distraught over my disappearance—too distraught to be rational. Your own father has expressed his sufferings in the same unintelligent way!”

“My father at least never used his grief as an excuse to grab Tamir land—”

“Your father accused my father of masterminding your brother’s disappearance,” he interrupted ruthlessly. “Also of planting bombs and orchestrating the kidnap attempts on you and your sister. What was this, if not an attempt to undermine my father’s reign, distance his allies and assist the Ikhwan al Zalaam—the Brothers of Darkness—in their bid to unseat us?”

His voice flicked her like a whip.

“There was good reason to suspect the Kamals!” she cried. “One bomber even confessed he’d been hired by your father! What would you expect my father to think?”

“The bomber lied. It was deliberate disinformation,” Rashid informed her levelly, as if she didn’t already know. “And I would expect from your father what I would expect from any intelligent person in a position of power—a calm and reasoned response to something that could easily have provoked a crisis.”

“Like King Ahmed’s, I suppose! Waiting till my father’s beside himself over Lucas and then demanding Delia’s Land again.”

They were almost shouting. He realized, not for the first time, how little self-control he had around her.

Rashid shook his head in exasperation. “Julia, can’t you understand that what Delia’s Land represents to my father isn’t land, but a sense of closure, of justice? Rightly or wrongly, a century ago the Kamal family believed that their Crown Prince was murdered by the Sebastianis. In their view they were entitled—”

Julia flared up. Nothing was more certain to get Sebastiani blood hot than a repetition of this stupid, baseless accusation. Tamir’s Crown Prince Omar Kamal and Montebello’s Princess Delia Sebastiani had been engaged lovers when copper was unexpectedly discovered on the Montebellan land marked out as her dowry, and to suggest that the Sebastianis had been so greedy as to murder the prince in order to prevent the marriage and retain the rich dowry land was an appalling slur against the Sebastiani name.

“In their view,” she interrupted in a hot, unstoppable flood, “the Kamals figured if they made an accusation of foul play they could still get their hands on Delia’s dowry land after Omar’s and Delia’s deaths. It was cynical manipulation then and it’s cynical manipulation now. The Sebastianis were just as horrified as the Kamals when Omar was killed. Your family doesn’t seem to want to remember that Delia was so unhappy over Omar’s death she committed suicide! The Sebastianis were hit just as hard as the Kamals. And then to be accused of murder on top of it! The accusation was disgusting enough a hundred years ago. For your father to—”

Rashid held up a hand. “Whatever my father feels about this feud, Julia, I am not interested in prolonging it.”

She stared at him, her anger arrested in surprise. This was the first she had 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.

“Jack? This is Julia, Christina’s sister. Is she there?”

“Julia.” He cleared his throat. “Right. Hi. Hang on.”

She heard the click of a lamp, and a confused murmur, then Christina’s sleepy voice came on the line. “Tiss? What’s up?”

“Oh, God, Squidge, you were sleeping! I’m sorry! I completely forgot the time difference. Is it really late?”

“No, that’s okay,” her sister said softly. “Actually…it’s almost morning.”

Julia gave a half laugh. “Oh, I’m sorry! I’ll call back!”

“No, no, I’m awake now. Let me just…” Another murmur, followed by the noise of the receiver being set down on a hard surface, then her brother-in-law’s voice in the distance.

“Going somewhere?”

“I’ll talk in the other room so you can get back to sleep. Will you hang this up?”

“Yes. Where exactly are you taking the duvet?”

“To the other room. It’s a bit chilly.”

“Yes, it is. Bathrobe,” she heard in tones of firm masculine command. “The duvet stays with me.”

“My he-man! I thought you were immune to cold!” Christina’s voice teased.

“The duvet is my insurance,” he said. There was a smile in his voice. “You might forget where you were if you didn’t have a warm bed to come back to.”

“Oh, for sure!” There was a giggle from Christina that reminded Julia of those long-ago, carefree days of childhood. It was full of mischief and fun that was very unlike the cool Dr. Sebastiani Christina had become, and she thought, They really are in love.

Suddenly she felt like crying. Why couldn’t it happen like that for me? Why is it I only get proposed to for political convenience?

“Are you still there, Tiss?”

There was the sound of the other receiver being gently replaced. Julia swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“What is it? Is everything all right?”

Where to begin?

“We heard about your engagement on the news. Congratulations.” There was just a hint of hurt in her sister’s voice. “It was a bit unexpected. First they were hinting that Rashid would deny pat—”

“Squidge, it was a surprise to me, too. The first I heard I was marrying him was when I read it in the Messenger.”

There was an sharp intake of breath, and she had the satisfaction of knowing she’d shocked Christina. “Excuse me?”

“He didn’t bother to propose to me. He was so sure I’d be grateful for his offer he—”

“Grateful!” Christina yelped. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Thank you for that. I’ve been wondering if I’m the crazy one and should be panting with gratitude for being offered another chance at the married state.”

“Is that his attitude? I thought at least that he loved you. I wasn’t sure about your feelings, but—”

“He does not love me,” Julia said ruthlessly.

“Then why would he want to marry you?”

“For the same reason he cooperated with NATO to get those terrorists. Because he wants to signal that Tamir’s ready for an alliance with the West. He wants peace between us and Tamir. All those good things. And all we have to do is sacrifice our personal happiness for the good of our countries.”

“My God.” A long silence. “I’m sorry, Julia. The newscaster said…I confess I was really hoping that you did love him. It would be so nice to think of you being happy at last.”

“No, it’s the same old question here. Do I marry for the sake of the kingdom?”

“That’s awful. What does Papa say about it?”

“They’re still away, thank God. After an initial apoplectic attack, Papa backed off. I think he just can’t cope. You know how old-fashioned he is, he hates to think of a baby being born outside of marriage. On the other hand…”

Christina gave a breathless little laugh. “On the other hand, when the father’s a Kamal… Oh, Tiss, what a mess. What are you going to do?”

Suddenly the tears were threatening again. “That’s what I called to ask you. What am I going to do? Got any ideas?”

A humming silence. Then, “It’s not like they teach this sort of thing in grad school, Tiss. Of course it would be better if you could be married, but not… Are you sure Rashid doesn’t love you? Not even just enough to build on?”

“Yes, I’m sure. He told me himself he wanted the marriage for political purposes. Apparently he’s had this dream of ending the feud through a marriage for years. He even imagined I might have deliberately got pregnant because I had the same goal, can you believe it?”

“No,” Christina said. “I can’t believe anyone would think you’re that calculating. But Julia, how did it happen?”

“I guess for a critical moment I went out of my mind. It’s not based on anything real.”

“But you did—Tiss, forgive me if I’m missing something here, but there must be something between you.”

“Squidge,” Julia began a bit desperately, “it happened the night they announced they were calling off the search for Lucas. It was—I mean, my feelings were just so close to the surface…. I’m sure you must have felt the same.”

A long, sorrowing silence fell between the sisters. “Has there been any news at all?” Christina asked quietly.

“Nothing. And Papa still can’t accept it. Well, neither can I, in my heart.”

“Me neither. And that’s what caused you to lose your head with Rashid that night? Don’t you think that just the very fact that you could turn to Rashid in such a moment shows—”

“No!” Julia’s heart was beating fast suddenly. “I wasn’t really attracted. I was just out of my mind.” She said it like a mantra, as if the denial might protect her from something. Something like truth.

Christina sighed with regret. “Well, you can’t marry him, then. And you shouldn’t feel you have to. This isn’t the fourteenth century, Julia. Our countries don’t need a marriage contract. They need a peace treaty.”

Julia breathed deep. “Yes, you’re right. You’re right.”

“Don’t marry someone you don’t love, Tiss. You know how bad a loveless marriage is, but you don’t know how good a loving one is. You deserve better next time around—a man you love, and who loves you, with a once-in-a-lifetime sort of love.”

Warmth and certainty flowed through the phone line. She could hear the smile behind Christina’s words that said her sister had found that kind of love. She felt a pang so painful she almost gasped.

“All right. Thanks, Squidge. Go back to bed now,” she ordered softly.

“Well…are you really all right?”

“Yes.”

“Good night, then.”

“Night. Give my love to Jack.”

“Mmmmm.” It was a sound of rich happiness. “And Tiss—”

“Yes?”

“Don’t let them make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

Julia sat with her hand on the phone for a long time after they had hung up, feeling the connection with her sister. Imagining Christina going back into the bedroom and snuggling down beside her husband, knowing he loved her…. How lucky they were. Alone together on their honeymoon in the middle of nowhere, no staff, no bodyguards, no servants. Just two people who loved each other.

You don’t know how good a loving marriage is.

Suddenly the tears burned up and overflowed, and this time she couldn’t stop them. It was as if she was crying for everything at once—for Lucas, for her loveless marriage, for her child who would be raised without a father…for the fact that Rashid wanted to marry her for all the wrong reasons.

A newsmagazine with his photo on the cover was lying on her bedside table. No doubt because some romantic member of the domestic staff imagined she would want the picture of her intended. She glanced down at his face. His eyes were at once stern and laughing, and they seemed to pierce her defences.

If he had pretended he loved me instead of telling me the truth, I might have imagined…. She quickly broke off the train of thought. Thank God he didn’t. My emotions are close to the surface, and I miss Lucas so much. I’ll have to be careful. I could weaken. I weakened once before.

At the age of nineteen, Princess Julia had felt herself to be at the doorway of an exciting future. She had passed her university entrance exams with excellent marks at the Swiss school she attended, and a small documentary film she had made as an extracurricular project, about Montebello’s famous street market, had won her a place at a prestigious college of film in London. That was the future she had yearned for. She had wanted to make films.

Papa had had other ideas. His ideas all centred upon duty. And he wanted Julia to come home, marry and have children in the good, old-fashioned Montebellan tradition.

He even had a husband all picked out for her. Handsome Luigi di Vitale Ferrelli, scion of one of Montebello’s wealthiest aristocratic families, was among Julia’s large circle of friends. Papa knew that Julia already liked Luigi. The di Vitale Ferrellis had always been staunch allies of the Sebastianis, but never before had there been a marriage to cement the bond.

Julia and Luigi had announced their engagement and the country had gone crazy with delight. She was so beautiful, he was so handsome—and one of Montebello’s own! So much better than marrying her off to some foreign prince.

The engagement would be a long one. Luigi, only two years older than Julia, was learning about his family’s business from the ground up. He was often out of the country, travelling to distant parts of the family empire, and his schedule was impossible to predict.

Julia’s father would not agree to her going to London, even so. Instead she stayed in the palace, working with her father, learning a job she enjoyed, but would never be called upon to perform.

Julia had believed—or wanted to believe—that the liking between her and Luigi could develop into love. Lots of the girls in her set were half in love with him. He was good fun, and had charm.

Luigi was very respectful, and surprisingly old-fashioned. Right from the start he treated her as untouchable. “Don’t worry, Julia,” he assured her during one of their brief meetings between his flying trips. “I won’t rush you. There’s plenty of time. When we get married, everything will fall into place.”

For a while she accepted it. But there was a lot of pairing off among her friends, and Julia began to yearn for romance in her own life. Once, when Luigi came home on one of his increasingly rare visits, she tried to hint this fact to him.

He took her in his arms and kissed her passionately for the first time. His passion seemed almost anguished, and Julia had responded openly, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing into his embrace.

Then he had stopped. “No, Julia,” he said. “We can wait. We should wait. Be patient. My father will bring me home soon to work at head office, and we can be married.”

The months passed, and stretched into the first year, and then the second, and Luigi never budged from this position. He swore that he loved her, with a torment in his eyes that mystified her. If they loved each other and they were going to marry, what was the point of his torment? She teased him, she touched him, she enticed him, using all the confidence of her new young sexuality, trying to break down the wall of his reserve.

Her attempts failed. And gradually, humiliatingly, she saw the truth—much as he liked her, and she didn’t doubt that, Luigi just didn’t want to make love to her. When she finally accepted it, she was awash with embarrassment and shame for the way she had exposed herself.

And she had a clear understanding that marriage between them could never work. She made the decision to go to her father and tell him that she wanted out of the engagement.

With cruel precision of timing, before she could act on her decision, her sister Christina’s scandal broke. Her photo appeared in the tabloids—topless, with the newspapers making no secret of the fact that it was her own boyfriend who had sold them the pictures.

Before she could talk to her father, King Marcus came to speak to her. To protect Christina from further media attention, he wanted to make the date of Julia’s wedding firm. He had spoken to Luigi’s father, who had agreed that it was time to bring the young man home and let him settle down. The wedding would be next month.

Julia had tried to tell her father then, but it was too late. It was the first time her father had pleaded with her. “Please don’t bring another scandal on our heads, Julia. I ask this as your father and as the king. Montebello asks you….”

The wedding had thrilled her father’s subjects, but Julia had repeated her vows with misery in her heart. And in Luigi’s eyes had been a hunted look that told her, too late, how desperately he, too, had wanted out.

She was not surprised at his complete inability to consummate the marriage. She was a lot less naive at twenty-two than she had been at nineteen. She tried to help in every way she could, but the end was always the same—frustration and anger.

After a while Luigi began to blame her, and worse, to mock her attempts to arouse him. That was the beginning of a much deeper humiliation. Luigi told her she was the only woman with whom he was impotent, listed the names of others—her friends, sometimes—with whom he had had very successful, satisfactory flings. Every time he bedded another woman he would brag to her about it.

She learned to doubt his bragging, just as she learned to dread the appearance of the regular stories in the press speculating about the reasons for the golden couple’s lack of children. Inevitably it would mean Luigi coming to her bedroom to try again. And blaming her.

She knew that he was telling his friends that she was frigid and that was the reason for the lack of children. His friends dutifully leaked the information to journalists. When she pointed out the unfairness of this, he responded with a furious attack on her lack of femininity, lack of sex appeal…what do you want me to tell them? The truth? That you disgust me?

Julia buried her misery in work. She was intelligent, and she had an instinct for public work. Her father came to rely on her more and more for a calm and reasoned opinion on foreign and domestic affairs.

Publicly, and within the family, she and Luigi presented a united front. No one knew how deeply, fundamentally flawed the storybook marriage was.

Until the scandal broke like a tidal wave over all their heads. Without warning, photographs of Luigi in an unmistakably compromising position with George Dimarno, Julia’s own chauffeur, were published in a tabloid paper.

Even the fact that the media universally condemned Luigi and sympathized with Julia was unbearable. They speculated endlessly about his treatment of her. They published tidbits from palace staff eager to set the record straight at last. In the end they published the horrible, self-exculpating interview that Luigi, driven almost to insanity, had given. It was awful to see him expose himself so brutally, painful to read how he had turned on her.

That interview had been the breaking point for Julia. She withdrew into herself, distancing herself from public life, and even from her family, as she slowly sank into the depression she had been keeping at bay for so long.

It was himself Luigi hated, not her. She could see now that he had rejected his own sexuality, rejected for as long as he could, even the knowledge of it. She could understand, but understanding did not undo the cruel damage he had inflicted on her sense of herself.

It took her a year to get through it. A long, cold year in which she had had no interest in life, no appetite. The only place she felt comfortable was alone in her private gym. She ate too little, exercised too much, lost too much weight. She had enjoyed the feeling of control over her body. It was the only part of her life over which she felt any control.

And then one day the long black tunnel showed light, and Julia realized that there would be an end to her shapeless, colourless days. She resolved to start over, to make a life for herself more in line with what she wanted.

But it wasn’t a light at the end of the tunnel. It was Rashid Kamal, on a collision course.

Chapter 4

“The course of true love not running quite smoothly?” Nadia asked Rashid over dinner that night. Brother and sister were alone in the palace in Tamir. Everyone else was at one or another function tonight, except for their brother Hassan, who was miles away in the oil fields as usual. They were sitting at a little table on the East Terrace, overlooking the gorge. In the velvety darkness the sea rushed and shushed against the rocks.

Rashid leaned back in his chair. “Why do you say so?” he hedged. They were speaking English so that the serving staff would not understand.

His sister smiled mockingly. “Because Nargis told me. And before you ask, Nargis looks after my wardrobe. The staff is buzzing with the news that you are being uncharacteristically rude and withdrawn today. Everyone knows you went to Montebello to talk to Julia earlier.”

“Do they? Damn it!”

“So there’s speculation about whether it’s because Princess Julia has accepted you, in which case you’re regretting the loss of your playboy lifestyle, or rejected you, in which case your heart is broken. Naturally everyone prefers to believe the intensely romantic version. Care to comment?”

“Damn it to hell.”

“I believe it’s nothing more than a bad headache,” Nadia said with a grin, “but then I’m your sister and I know it’s a rare woman who makes you snarly.”

“She is a rare woman,” he couldn’t stop himself saying, and watched Nadia’s eyebrows go up.

“Ah! And am I to infer from this that she has rejected your proposal?”

He was aware of mounting irritation. “Yes, she has! I can’t figure her out!” He glared at his sister as if she were part of this mystery. “Why would she turn me down? She’s pregnant and the press have been on her like wolves! Why won’t she see that—”

He stopped because Nadia was laughing. “Haven’t you ever before met with a woman who turned you down, Rashid?”

“I’ve never proposed to a woman before,” he said shortly.

“You didn’t propose to Julia, the way I hear it.”

“What do you mean? I proposed very publicly!”

Nadia shook her head. “There’s a difference, big brother, between asking a woman to marry you and telling the world that she’s going to marry you and then expecting her to agree.”

He looked at her, indignant. “You’re the one who advised me to rush my fences.”

“With Father, not with Julia! Can’t you see how arrogant it is to assume that a woman will jump at the chance to marry you? And a beautiful princess, too! Why on earth didn’t you talk to Julia first?”

“You know what the speculation was like! What was so wrong? I realized what Julia had been going through for the past few months and wanted to put an end to it.”

“Knight in shining armour, huh?”

Rashid moved his shoulders, reminded of Julia’s Don’t try riding into my life on your white horse. “Look,” he said forcefully, as if somehow he were justifying himself to Julia, “if I delayed, someone was going to put words in my mouth! I didn’t want Julia reading that I was surprised to hear I’d been named the father of her child, or considering my options, or something like that. What would be worse, do you think? To get a proposal after someone has spent time considering whether he’s really the father of your child, or—”

“Pax!” His sister lifted her hands and laughed. “This is Nadia here, not Julia, notice?”

He subsided with a clenched jaw.

“I couldn’t make her see it.”

“A new experience, I take it. I think I’m going to like Julia. When I remember all the women who have cried on my shoulder trying to solve the mystery of how to reach your feelings, it does my heart good.”

Rashid frowned. “This has nothing to do with my feelings. I’m trying to do what’s right for all concerned!”

“Noble. Sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure. What do you mean?”

“Well, there is a certain question of how she got pregnant in the first place.”

Rashid grunted. “It was nothing but a kind of—insanity.”

“At your age,” Nadia agreed in cheerful incredulity. “I see.”

“And however it happened, it’s done. What I have to think about now is what I’m going to do in the future. Julia is going to issue a statement denying the engagement tomorrow, I think.” Rashid irritably waved away the waiter who was trying to pour him more coffee. “I’ve got to prevent that.”

Nadia opened her eyes at him in mute reproach and, pointedly gracious, said to the waiter in Arabic, “Yes, thank you, Iqbal, I will have some more coffee.

“And how are you going to do that?” she asked, when Iqbal had retreated.

“I have to swear you to secrecy, Nadia.”

“All right.”

“I’ve got to get her alone. I think she’d see sense if she didn’t have that coterie of Kamal-haters around her.”

Nadia’s eyebrows went up. “And?”

Rashid rubbed his chin and stared out into the darkness. For a moment they listened to the sound of the waterfall.

“I’m going to have to kidnap her.”

It was when Lucas’s plane went missing, oddly, that Julia woke up at last. Perhaps because she suddenly saw how precious life was. And she had given away a whole year of hers.

No one knew whether Lucas would be found alive or dead. All they had was hope. Julia had returned to the family emotionally to share that hope with her sisters and her parents, and keep it alive.

She had learned a lot during her year of self-exile. She felt she had come a long, long distance from the repressed, self-doubting perfectionist she had become in order to cope with Luigi’s rejection.

Mariel de Vouvray had been her friend since the two girls had attended private school in Switzerland together. When Mariel’s wedding invitation had arrived, she had turned it down, like every other invitation she received during that year of darkness.

But as the day grew closer, Julia began to change her mind. She and Mariel had been very close for a while, and it was only physical distance that had changed that. She wanted to see Mariel married to her prince. Haroun al Jawadi was a man Julia didn’t know, brother of the new Sultan of Bagestan.

Mariel had said on her invitation that the wedding was going to be “as private and personal as we can make it. We emphatically are not selling the story to Hello! magazine. So you won’t be on show—we hope!—if you come.”

She knew that a last-minute acceptance would cause logistical problems. The high-profile wedding guests were staying overnight in the château where the wedding was being held, as Julia had been invited to do. She didn’t want to put Mariel to the trouble of a reshuffle. She also knew that if word got out that Princess Julia was making her first public appearance at the wedding after a year’s exile it would boot up the media interest in the wedding.

She decided to go incognito. She travelled on her private passport and put up in a tiny family hotel where, if she was recognized, at least no one made a fuss.

The ceremony itself would take place in the beautiful old chapel attached to the château. Julia slipped into the church with a group of non-celebrity arrivals. No photographer recognized her in the ankle-length dark blue coat and low-brimmed hat. For good measure she had pulled her white silk scarf up over her chin.

Inside, she sat on the bride’s side of the church, tucking herself beside a pillar where she couldn’t be seen from most of the church. She couldn’t see, either, and she didn’t look around for people she knew.

So she didn’t realize until the ceremony was almost over that one of the guests was Rashid Kamal.

“We need to talk,” Rashid’s voice said firmly in her ear. Julia twitched nervously, feeling hunted. She shifted the receiver to her other hand.

“Do we? Why?” She had had a mostly sleepless night last night, and she wasn’t ready for this.

She could almost hear him gritting his teeth. “Because you are pregnant with my child and I want to marry you. And we need a reasoned discussion of the choices before you go public with a denial of our engagement.”

Julia was silent.

“You haven’t already done it, have you?”

“No.” Coward that she was. She should have picked up the phone when the mood was on her and called the newspaper reporter most loyal to her. She had told herself that she needed breathing space before stirring up yet another round of speculation. “Not yet.”

“No, of course not,” he reminded himself. “Someone would have called me for a comment immediately if you had.”

“And what would you have said?” She did not want a war with Rashid to be fought in the media. But she did not forget that he was the one who had put her in this position.

“What could I say? That I regretted your decision. And I do, Julia. But I don’t believe that decision is final, or should be.”

“It is!” she cried, almost panicking. “Totally final! I’m going to do it today!”

Damn it, did he always have to handle her wrong?

“Look,” he said, as calmly as he could. “I’d like us to talk. Before you do that.”

She sighed uneasily, not sure why she didn’t feel safe talking to him. He had such charisma. Suppose he convinced her to marry him against her better judgement? Once was enough.

“All right, go ahead,” she said, suddenly wishing she had Christina here to support her through this.

She heard him expel an exasperated breath. “Not over the phone, damn it, Julia! I need to see you face-to-face. And away from the palace somewhere.”

Panic threatened in her stomach. The baby did a somersault. “Where? We’ll be chased wherever we go.”

He said dryly, “I think I can promise to get us to a venue where there will be no journalists.”

“I don’t see what there is to talk about.”

“How about the fact that at the moment a Sebastiani child is the only direct descendant of the Kamal ruling house in the next generation and my father’s people will want to know whether he’s to be in line for the throne?” Rashid said impatiently. “Do you feel that question could be important enough to discuss?”

The panic rushed up to grip her throat. Might the old man name her son a prince of Tamir? She supposed he had the right to confer the status of prince on his illegitimate grandson, if he wished. She was pretty sure that in the dim and distant past of Tamir, Rashid himself had a bloodline that dated back to a favourite concubine.

What kind of chaos would it cause in her life, to be raising the child destined, however briefly, for the throne of another nation? An enemy nation. And what suffering was in store when Rashid married and had a legitimate son, as he surely would, and her son was displaced as heir?

“He can’t do that!” she cried. Rashid was right. They had to talk. “All right, what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to agree not to issue any statement until we’ve talked.”

Her nerves tightened. “Twenty-four hours,” she said.

She heard him breathe. “That’s not much time.”

“Twenty-four hours,” she repeated.

“Twenty-four hours it is. If you can convince your father not to have my helicopter shot down on arrival,” Rashid said with mordant humour, “I’ll pick you up in an hour. Pack a swimsuit.”

It was a beautiful ceremony. Mariel was stunning, with an unusual and artistic scrunch of white veil and flowers framing her head, and a gorgeous silk brocade dress styled with a medieval flavour that exactly suited the chapel. Haroun al Jawadi looked proud and handsome, and every time he gazed down at his bride a shiver of delight went through the congregation.

She wasn’t sure how Rashid Kamal had drawn her eye. When the congregation was kneeling, Julia was no longer hidden by her pillar. A baby started to babble, and her gaze automatically flicked towards the groom’s side of the church.

A man’s black hair was burnished by the winter sunlight streaming in through a stained-glass window. She watched with a smile of absent pleasure before she suddenly recognized the shape of his brow and chin.

Then she pressed her lips together and resolutely bowed her head, feeling as if someone had just walked over her grave. It wasn’t the first time they’d been at the same function, but always before it had been at large, formal gatherings. She’d never been invited to such an intimate gathering with him before. There probably weren’t a hundred people here.

She had no one to blame but herself. If she had accepted the invitation in the normal way, of course Mariel would have forewarned her. And if she had thought for even a moment, she might have guessed that the Crown Prince of Tamir might number among the friends of the groom. For a few moments Julia considered slipping away immediately after the ceremony, but she didn’t want to go without even saying hello.

“Julia! Oh, thank you for coming after all! How wonderful to see you!” Mariel cried with delighted surprise when, in the château later, Julia came over to give her friend a hug. “I’m so glad! It must mean you’re feeling better.”

Then her eyes widened at a thought. “Oh, my goodness!” she said faintly.

Julia laughed. “It’s all right, I’ve seen him.”

“He’s one of Harry’s best friends,” Mariel confided in a low voice. “I was going to warn you if you accepted.”

“I’m keeping out of his way. We’ve done this kind of thing before, after all.”

“Maybe he won’t even recognize you! You look so different, Julia! Have you changed your style completely?”

“Do you like it?”

“Absolutely! You look—softer. You’re way too thin, but—there’s a glow that wasn’t there before. And I love your hair! Is it metaphorical? Are you letting your hair down at last?”

Julia enjoyed herself at the party that followed, and it was easy to avoid Rashid Kamal. People recognized her, but there were quite a few celebrity and royal faces in the room. No stranger paid her particular attention until a gorgeous redhead she vaguely recognized stopped beside her.

“I was just wondering if you’d heard any more news,” she said apologetically, when the two women had exchanged greetings. Astrid had dated Lucas for a while a couple of years ago.

“There’s nothing,” Julia said sadly. “We’re just waiting.”

“But it was definitely his plane?”

Julia frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The piece of wreckage they found yesterday. Are they definite that—” Astrid broke off in horror when she saw Julia’s face. “My God, haven’t you heard?”

Julia clutched at her. “They—they found the wreckage? Lucas? Did they find—” she gasped breathlessly.

“Oh, hell! I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you! But I don’t—the newscast I heard just said a piece of wreckage had been found and they thought—”

Julia was already groping in her bag for her phone. “I left home yesterday.” And last night had been spent in the tiny, old-fashioned hotel with no TV in the room. Her mother had said nothing last night when she phoned. “Excuse me, I’ve got to go and phone!”

She dashed out the nearest door, into a hallway. But there were people strolling up and down, and she took the nearest stairwell up. She came out in a shadowed, darkly wainscotted hall, with doors along one side and arched windows on the other. Looking for a place to hide, Julia ran to a corner at the far end that was partly protected by a carved panel, and huddled in the darkness, dialing home.

It was the private line, and her mother answered. “Mama? It’s Julia!” she breathed.

“Hello, darling. Having a good time? Where are you?”

“At the château. Mama, someone just told me—”

“Oh, Julia,” said her mother, and those words were enough. Her hopes that it could be a mistake died. She sobbed a breath.

“It’s true, then?”

“Yes, we heard late last night.” Her mother’s voice held the memory of tears. “After you called. I didn’t—I didn’t want you to be alone with the news, so I didn’t call back. I suppose it was foolish to hope you wouldn’t hear before you got home. I’m sorry, darling. I wanted you to have a good time at your friend’s wedding. You’ve had so little enjoyment lately.”

“I don’t know any details, Mama. Just that they’ve…” She swallowed, her throat aching with unshed tears. “Is it true they’ve found the plane?” Julia asked.

Her mother’s voice trembled. “A piece of the wreckage. They’re pretty sure—” she swallowed and continued in a calmer voice “—pretty sure it’s Lucas’s plane.”

“Was there any sign of—of Lucas?”

“No. At the moment they seem to think the plane broke up in the air. Julia, the worst of it is, they—the authorities there have called off the air search.”

It was like hearing her own death warrant.

“No!” she protested, and the unshed tears burst from her in a flood. “Noooo! Oh, Lucas!”

“Anna’s very distressed. Your father is insisting that some sort of search should continue, but—well, at this distance it’s hard to know exactly what’s…what’s…oh, Julia,” she wailed helplessly. “What are we going to do?”

“Going off with Rashid Kamal?” her father repeated, his voice rough with incredulity. “Why? Where?”

Anna was staring at her sister with a wild surmise. Only the queen went on calmly drinking her coffee.

Julia bit her lip. She might have known she’d run into flak on this. It wasn’t anything she liked, either, but it had to be done. She wished her father would accept it without a lot of argument. Argument just made her more jittery.

“I am not going off with him, Papa. We are simply going somewhere we can talk for a few hours over lunch.”

“Where?” he repeated grimly.

“I don’t know. Somewhere we can be reasonably alone, I imagine. I’ve left it to him.”

“You’ve lost your bearings, Julia!” He looked at his wife for support.

They were sitting in the small breakfast room over a late Saturday breakfast. Anna was now hiding a smile. She flicked Julia a conspiratorial, admiring look and picked up her cup. Julia wanted to cry, I am not sneaking off to a lovers’ assignation!

The queen remained silent, and her father returned to the attack. “I forbid you to go anywhere with a Kamal! Have you forgotten your brother’s fate?”

“Papa, you have surely accepted by now that it wasn’t the Kamals who did that. If anyone, it was the Brothers of Darkness. And who has done most lately to spike their guns?”

Her father subsided a little. “That still doesn’t make it safe for you—”

“Look,” Julia interrupted. “I don’t like it any better than you do. But like it or not, Rashid Kamal is the father of my child. And at the moment, according to him, his father is contemplating naming my son as his heir. Whether that’s an empty threat or not, it just points up the fact that there are things we have to discuss. And since I don’t want those things leaked to the media, we are going somewhere alone, and I will not be taking a bodyguard.”

She won the argument. But by the end she was so worn out with pretending to trust Rashid Kamal that she was sweating with nerves.

The helicopter beat the air as it slowly settled onto the grass, whipping Julia’s long hair and the full skirt of her soft yellow dress. She put a hand up to hold her hat. Rashid watched the way her dress clung to her stomach, looking for the signs that a child was growing there.

When he cut the rotor, she came across the lawn towards him and leaned in the passenger door, peering towards the seats in the back of the helicopter. Rashid pulled his mouthpiece away from his chin so she could recognize him.

“Hello!” he cried over the engine noise.

Julia did a double take. She hadn’t been expecting him to be piloting the helicopter himself, and a fresh wave of nervous energy swept her.

“Hello!” Her voice held the sound of her determination to keep this pleasant. She had a deep, primitive urge to turn and flee.

“Can you climb in?” He spoke so matter-of-factly that her fears were momentarily calmed. He’s a Kamal, she told herself. That doesn’t mean he’s going to murder me in cold blood.

He leaned across to offer her a hand, but she clambered in without his help. He frowned to himself without knowing why. Something to do with wanting to be needed. Especially because she was pregnant.

With his son.

He helped her strap herself in, however, and gestured towards a headset in front of her. Julia took off her straw hat and slipped the headset over her ears. A moment later the chopper lifted smoothly off under his guidance, and they were airborne.

“Did you bring a bathing suit?” Rashid’s voice said in her headset.

It felt too intimate to have his voice inside her head like this. It reminded her of the last time she had heard him so close. Then he had not needed the assistance of a headset to give the impression of closeness; his voice had sounded close because his mouth was against her hair.

Beautiful, he had murmured. You are so beautiful….

Julia’s cheeks burned with the memory. “I did,” she said, hefting her drawstring bag as evidence without meeting his eyes. She dropped the bag between her feet and turned to look out. He had taken them out over the water and was heading north.

So the private place he had in mind was not on any of the Tamir Islands. She had wondered if he meant to take her to his horse farm on Siraj.

“Are we going to a yacht?” she wondered, half to herself, forgetting that her headset, too, had a microphone.

“No, an island.”

“An island? Rashid, I don’t have a passport with me!”

He laughed. “Stop worrying, Julia.” Again his voice was intimate and seductive in her ears. “Your seat reclines. Lie back and relax.”

In the cocoon of the helicopter with him, she felt strangely detached from the normal world. If she had not known Rashid was a Kamal, she would have felt an instinctive trust of him.

There was nothing she could do about this situation except start screaming to be taken home. Or go along with it.

She was tired after her sleepless night, and she would do better in the coming discussion if she caught some sleep now. With a resigned shrug, Julia found the mechanism, reclined her seat, and, with the sun bright above them, and sparkling almost painfully from the deep blue of the Mediterranean below, closed her eyes and let herself drowse. The memory was never far away….

Chapter 5

After her mother hung up, she had crouched on the floor, her head in her arms, alternately sobbing her brother’s name and begging God to let him live. “Lucas, oh, Lucas! Please, God, please, no!”

She’d thought she’d faced the possibility, been prepared for the worst ever since learning that Lucas’s plane had gone missing. She saw now what an illusion that was. Now, when all her hopes came crashing down around her, she could see how wildly she had been hoping, how she had staved off any real acceptance that the worst might happen.

She was crouched in the gloom, sobbing wildly, when a hand touched her shoulder.

“Please go away,” she hiccuped desperately, hiding her face in her hands. “Please.”

“I can’t do that,” said a voice. “I can’t leave you here like this. Come.” The voice was strong with masculine authority, and perhaps it was because she felt lost without Lucas in the world, felt as if her sheet anchor was gone, that she took comfort from his presence.

He drew her to her feet, and she allowed him to do it, then buried her face in a strong, comforting shoulder as he held her and gently stroked her hair. “My brother,” she sobbed. “My brother—”

She was swept by another bout of inconsolable weeping, and her knees collapsed. He caught her as she slumped, and without a word bent and swung her up in his arms.

His hold was strong and sure, like her father’s when she was a child. He strode down the corridor and stopped by a door, and she heard the sound of a key in the lock. In another moment she was inside in deep darkness. He bent and she felt something soft under her back. A bed. He tried to straighten, but she clung to him. “Hold me,” she begged. “Just hold me for a minute, please.”

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