Royal and Ruthless: Innocent Mistress, Royal Wife / Prince of Scandal / Weight of the Crown. Robyn Donald
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beside her Rafiq said, ‘There are always two openings for any new hotel on Moraze. The first is for the people who actually do the building, and then there is a more formal one, like the one you attended the other night, where publicity is a factor. That was rather stuffy; this will not be.’
The year she’d spent in Illyria had accustomed Lexie to royal occasions, but the moment she walked in with Rafiq she realised how right he was—this was indeed something special.
Smiles and cheers and applause greeted their arrival. Without the burden of being the only child of the dictator who’d terrorised the onlookers, it wasn’t difficult to smile back, to relax in the warmth of their greetings.
Until she saw a face she recognised.
She must have flinched, because Rafiq demanded sharply, ‘What is it? You are not well?’
‘I’m perfectly all right.’ After all, why on earth should she be afraid of Felipe Gastano?
He came towards them with a smile on his too-handsome face, and the air of someone completely sure of his welcome. ‘Dearest Alexa,’ he said smoothly as he bent to kiss her cheek.
Rafiq pulled her a little closer to his side and the unwanted kiss went awry.
Something glittered a second in Felipe’s pale eyes, but the smile stayed fixed as he nodded to Rafiq. ‘I am sorry,’ he said in an apologetic tone that grated across Lexie’s nerves. ‘I was so pleased to see an old friend that I forgot protocol. Sir, it is a pleasure to be here on this auspicious occasion.’
Rafiq said, ‘We’re pleased to see you here.’
An apparently sincere greeting, yet somehow the calm words lifted the hairs on the back of Lexie’s neck. She sensed a very strong emotion beneath his glacial self-control, and wondered if she was the cause of it.
Felipe didn’t seem to notice. Still smiling, he transferred his gaze to Lexie, held her eyes a moment, then turned back to Rafiq. ‘I thought I’d like to see whether my friend Alexa was enjoying all that Moraze has to offer its guests.’
Lexie stiffened, wondering exactly what he meant by those enigmatic words.
The noise level soared suddenly, fuelled by a group of musicians who’d gathered around a bonfire blazing on the sand.
‘I hope you enjoy the evening,’ Rafiq said coolly. ‘After a few short, official speeches there will be dancing on the beach.’ His narrow smile gleamed. ‘Our local dances are a feature of the entertainment here.’
‘I’m sure I shall find them very interesting,’ Felipe said, fixing Lexie with a significant look.
She met it with hard-won composure, both relieved and glad when he stepped back to let another couple be introduced.
As Rafiq had promised, the official part of the evening was short, punctuated by champagne toasts and much good cheer, and then the party really got going. Down on the beach, the band struck up again in impressive rhythm, guitars and keyboards vying with older in struments—a triangle, gourds with seeds inside, and an insistent drum.
‘The hotel dancing troupe will do a demonstration first, but later everyone will join in,’ Rafiq told her as the crowd moved onto the sand, the better to watch the spectacle. ‘You will find it a little different from western dancing; in the sanga, people do not touch.’
Watching the dancers—women in brightly coloured cropped tops and full skirts that reached their ankles, and men in white pirate shirts knotted at the waist above tight breeches—Lexie decided they didn’t need to.
Because the sanga was erotic enough to melt icebergs.
The women began it, holding out their full skirts while they approached the men with sensuous, shuffling steps. They swayed to the music, bare feet moving in an intricate rhythm, smiles bold and challenging as they danced from one partner to another, choosing and discarding until eventually they settled on one particular man.
When that had happened, the drum beats began to build to a crescendo and the dance took an even more provocative turn. Both women and men taunted and teased their partners, hip movements suggesting a much more intimate encounter, smiles becoming slow and languid as the dancers gazed into each other’s eyes.
The insidious spell of the dance—the rhythm set up by the drums and the primitive imperative of the fire, the heat and the gorgeous, primal colours of the women’s full, flounced skirts—set fire to something basic and untamed within Lexie. Her cheeks burned and her eyelids were heavy and slumbrous.
And then, with the drumbeats reaching a frenzied climax, only to abruptly halt, the world seemed suspended in dramatic silence. After several seconds people began to applaud, releasing the dancers from the erotic spell of their own contriving. Many relaxed, laughing, calling out jests to the crowd; others walked off together—still not touching, Lexie noticed.
Carefully avoiding Rafiq’s scrutiny, she looked across the leaping flames of the bonfire and met Felipe Gastano’s cynical smile.
She nodded, wishing she’d never been so silly as to go out with him, wishing—oh, wishing a lot of foolish things, she thought bracingly, trying to still the constant thrumming of her heart.
No wonder people talked of going troppo! This had to be the dangerous enchantment of the tropics.
As though sensing her restlessness, Rafiq said, ‘Would you like to see around the hotel? The gardens and pool area are magnificent.’
‘I’d love to,’ she said, grateful for the chance to get away from too many interested eyes.
They walked there through a grove of casuarinas, the long, drooping needles whispering together in the scented breeze. Lexie recovered some of her composure as she admired the glorious gardens and a pool out of some designer’s Arabian dream, only to lose it when they walked back to the beach and Rafiq said, ‘A moment.’
She stopped with him, looking up enquiringly. He was smiling, but the intent expression of his eyes warned her what was coming, and her blood sang inside her.
Quietly he said, ‘I neglected to tell you how very lovely you are.’
The kiss was merely an appetiser, one snatched before they rejoined the crowd, but she longed for more. The screen of trees was thick enough to hide them from anyone on the beach, but she hadn’t thought Rafiq was the sort of man to indulge in almost-public displays.
Emerging from the feathery shade of the grove, she felt slightly embarrassed, as though everyone knew about that kiss.
From beside her Rafiq said, ‘I’m afraid I must leave you for a few minutes.’ A swift lift of his brows summoned a younger, good-looking man to stand beside her. ‘You will enjoy discussing the dancing with Bertrand,’ he said after introducing them.
Which she did. Bertrand was respectful and knew a lot about the dances of Moraze, revealing that different areas had different versions, some more restrained…
‘And some—ah—less so,’ he finished with a cheerful smile. ‘But you won’t be seeing any of them tonight. Everyone is on their best behaviour because our ruler is with us.’
She encouraged him to talk about Rafiq. Not that he needed much encouragement, she thought with a wry, inner smile after five minutes. Clearly he thought his ruler only one step below the gods!
‘You are laughing at me,’ he said, and grinned before becoming quickly serious. ‘But I am truly beholden to him. Without his intervention, I would have been cutting either sugar cane or flowers in the fields. He sits on the board that chooses the ones deserving of further education, and although I was a bad boy at school, he persuaded them to give me a chance. Everyone else thought I was beyond help; he did not. I would die for him.’
His words were simply stated, without false bravado.
‘It’s a lucky ruler who can inspire such loyalty,’ Lexie said, meaning it. She too had