The Sultan's Choice. ABBY GREEN
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looked about eighteen, even though he knew she was twenty-five. And she was pale enough to have precipitated his question about her colouring. He’d forgotten that interesting nugget about her heritage.
It surprised him how clearly that memory of her knocking over the table had come back to him. He’d felt sorry for her at the time; she’d been mortified, standing there with her face beetroot red, throat working convulsively. Another memory hovered tantalisingly on the edges of his mind but he couldn’t pin it down.
Absurdly long lashes hid her eyes. He had to admit with a flicker of something that she wasn’t what he’d expected at all. Obeying some rogue urge to force her to look at him, so that he could inspect those aquamarine depths more closely, he drawled, ‘So, Princess Samia, are you going to tell me why you were about to leave?’
Samia’s eyes snapped up to clash with the Sultan’s steady gaze. She couldn’t get any hotter, and had to restrain herself from opening the top button of her shirt to feel some cool air on her skin. He was looking at her as if she were a specimen on a laboratory table. It couldn’t be more obvious that she left him entirely cold, and that thought sent a dart of emotion through her.
‘Sultan—’ she began, and stopped when he put up a hand.
‘It’s Sadiq. I insist.’
The steely set of his face sent a quiver through her. ‘Very well. Sadiq.’ She took a deep breath. ‘The truth is that I don’t want to marry you.’
She saw the way his jaw tensed and his eyes flashed. ‘I think it’s usually customary to be asked for your hand in marriage before you refuse it.’
Samia’s hands clenched tight on her lap. ‘And I think it’s customary to ask for the person’s hand in marriage before assuming it’s given.’
His eyes flashed dangerously and he settled back in the chair. Conversely it made Samia feel more threatened.
‘I take it that you overheard some of my phone conversation?’
Samia blushed again, and gave up any hope of controlling it. ‘I couldn’t help it,’ she muttered. ‘The door was partially open.’
Sadiq sat forward and said brusquely, ‘Well, I apologise. It wasn’t meant for your ears.’
Giving in to inner panic, Samia stood up abruptly and moved behind the chair. ‘Why not? After all, you were discussing the merits of this match, so why not discuss them here and now with me? Let’s establish if I am conservative enough for you, or plain enough.’
A dull flush of colour across the Sultan’s cheeks was the only sign that she’d got to him when she said that. Otherwise he looked unmoved by her display of agitation, and Samia cursed herself. Her hands balled on the back of the chair. He just sat back and regarded her from under heavy lids.
‘You can be under no illusion, whether you heard that conversation or not, that any marriage between us will be based purely on practicality along with a whole host of other considerations.’
When she spoke, the bitterness in Samia’s voice surprised her. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ve no illusions at all.’
‘This union will benefit both our countries.’
Suddenly a speculative gleam lit his eyes and he sat forward, elbows on the desk. Samia wanted to back away.
‘I’d find it hard to believe that someone from our part of the world and culture of arranged marriages could possibly be holding out for a love match?’
He said this sneeringly, as if such a thing was pure folly. Feeling sick, Samia just shook her head. ‘No. Of course not.’ A love match was the last thing she would ever have expected or wanted. She had seen how love had devastated her father after losing her mother. She’d had to endure the silent grief in his gaze every time he’d looked at her, because she’d been the cause of her mother’s death.
She’d seen how the ripples of that had affected everything—making his next wife bitter. Love had even wreaked its havoc on her beloved brother too, turning him hard as a rock and deeply cynical. She’d vowed long ago never to allow such a potentially destructive force anywhere near her.
The Sultan sat back again, seemingly pleased with her answer. He spread his hands wide. ‘Well, then, what can you possibly have against this marriage?’
Everything! Exposure! Ridicule! Samia’s hands were tightly clasped in front of her. ‘I just … never saw it in my future.’ She’d thought she’d faded enough into the background to avoid this kind of attention.
And then, as if he’d taken the words out of her brother’s own mouth, Sultan Sadiq said with a frown, ‘But as the eldest sister of the Emir of Burquat, how on earth did you think you would avoid a strategic match? You’ve done well to survive this far without being married off.’
Purely feminist chagrin at his unashamedly masculine statement was diminished when guilt lanced Samia. Her brother could have suggested any number of suitors before now, but hadn’t. She’d always been aware that Kaden might one day ask her to make a strategic match, though, and this one had obviously been irresistible. This one came with economic ties that would help catapult Burquat into the twenty-first century and bring with it badly needed economic stability and development.
As much as she hated to admit it, they did come from a part of the world that had a much more pragmatic approach to marriage than the west. It was rare and unusual for a ruler to marry for something as frivolous as love. Marriages had to be made on the bedrock of familial ties, strategic alliances and political logic. Especially royal marriages.
If anything, this practical approach which eschewed love should appeal to her. She wasn’t in any danger of falling for someone like Sadiq, and he certainly wouldn’t be falling for her. She was almost certainly guaranteed a different kind of marriage from the one she’d witnessed growing up. Their children wouldn’t be bullied and belittled out of jealous spite.
Sultan Sadiq stood up, and panic gripped Samia again. She moved back skittishly and cursed this mouse of a person she’d become in his presence. She ruled over thirty employees at the library, and was used to standing up to her brother, who was a man cut from the same dominant cloth as the Sultan, but mere minutes in this man’s presence and she was jelly.
He prowled around the room, as if he couldn’t sit still for longer than a second, and Samia recalled that he had a well known and insatiable love of extreme sports. He’d been the youngest ever sailor to take part in the prestigious Vendée Globe race. As a keen sailor herself, she was in awe of that achievement.
In the tradition of men of his lineage he’d studied in both the UK and the US, and had trained at the exclusive royal military academy at Sandhurst. He had a fleet of helicopters and planes that he regularly flew himself. All in all he was a formidable man. Along with that came the notorious reputation of being one of the world’s most ruthless playboys, picking up and discarding the most beautiful women in the world like accessories.
And every year—not that she needed to be reminded—he hosted the biggest, most lavish birthday party and raised an obscene amount of money for charity. For years after that humiliating incident at his party, she’d been scornful of the excess he presided over. But she’d seen the evidence of how much bona fide charity work he did when time after time he was lauded for his fundraising. And how did she know all this? Hours spent researching him on the internet last night, much to her shame.
He stopped pacing and quirked an ebony brow. ‘Are you going to insist on refusing my offer of marriage and force me to look elsewhere for a wife?’
Samia heard the unimstakable incredulity in his voice. Patently he hadn’t expected this to be hard. It gave her some much needed confidence back to see this chink in his arrogant armour.
‘What would happen if I said no?’
He put his hands on narrow hips, and Samia’s gaze couldn’t help but drop for a moment to where