Rumours: The Billion-Dollar Brides. Lynne Graham
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Traditional red and gold embroidery and rich blues had been laid down on the finest cream silk fabric that flowed like liquid and screamed designer just like the matching shoes. Her head was bare, her hair loose, as was the norm in Dharia for a bride. A magnificent set of sapphires glittered at her ears, her throat, her neck and her wrists. Delicate henna swirls decorated her hands and her feet and beneath the dress she wore a chemise with a hundred buttons for her groom to undo on the wedding night. Ellie was more intimidated than she wanted to admit by the pomp and ceremony of Rashad and Polly’s wedding and the deep fear that she was losing her sister to another world and another family. She knew that Polly’s affections ran loyal and true but how could she possibly compete?
As for Rashad? Well, it went without saying that he was very, very nice to look at, very well spoken as well as educated and civilised but, like the buttons waiting to be undone beneath Polly’s dress, what was her future brother-in-law really like below the smooth polished façade? That was the main source of Ellie’s concern because in her one brief meeting with Rashad she had reckoned that a great deal more went on below that smooth surface than trusting, caring Polly was probably willing to recognise. A man traumatised as a boy by the loss of his entire family, forced into marriage at sixteen, widowed ten years later and then raised to a throne over a population who worshipped him like a god because he had rescued them from a dictator’s tyranny? That was quite a challenging life curve to have survived. How much did her sister genuinely know about the man she had agreed to marry?
‘Would you please stop worrying about me?’ Polly urged Ellie with troubled blue eyes. ‘I want this to be a happy day.’
‘I’m always happy if you’re happy,’ Ellie declared, giving her a gentle but fond hug of apology.
But Polly knew different. Ellie had always been a worrier, expecting the worst outcome in most situations. She refused to borrow that outlook, wanting to look forward with all the hope and optimism that her wonderful discovery of her loving grandparents had already fanned into enthusiasm. Why shouldn’t their marriage work out? She wasn’t expecting an easy ride. Of course there would be obstacles and surprises and disappointments but surely there would also be joys and unexpected benefits along the way?
She refused to admit even to her sister how isolated and rejected she had felt at having barely spent even a moment with Rashad since agreeing to marry him. And worse still and far too private for her to share, how very apprehensive she actually felt at the prospect of having sex for the first time with a man she had yet to even kiss...
The wedding was to be very much a public event and screened on television. Refusing to give way to nerves, Polly went downstairs with her sister and her bevy of chattering companions to be ushered into the throne room that had been set up to stage the ceremony.
A sharp pang of regret pierced her that she should still have an unknown sister who could not be part of her day and she wondered how soon after their marriage it would be acceptable for her to ask Rashad for his financial help with that problem. How else was she to locate their missing sister, Penelope?
As she strove to ignore the camera lenses while at the same time studiously trying not to do anything unsightly with her face, her nervous tension surged to an all-time high. And then she saw Rashad, exotically garbed in magnificent red and gold ceremonial robes, and all her anxiety was swallowed alive by a sense of awe and wonder that she was on the very brink of marrying such a divinely handsome male. She felt ridiculously schoolgirlish when she looked at him but, on another, much more intimate level, she also felt surprisingly wanton.
Rashad made her wonder about stuff that she had truly never wasted time thinking about before because for so long sex had been part of other people’s lives but never hers. That was just how it had been while her freedom was restricted by her grandmother’s long illness. Her gaze locked onto the wide sensual curve of Rashad’s mouth and she simply tingled as she wondered what he would taste like, what that glorious long bronzed muscular physique of his would look like naked and, inevitably, what it would be like to be in bed with him. As her colour fluctuated wildly, a tide of heat claimed her innermost depths to encourage an embarrassing dampness at the heart of her and she pressed her thighs together and stood rigid as a rod to discourage her colourful imagination. It embarrassed her to be so very impressionable.
‘Wow...’ Ellie mumbled at her elbow, overpowered by the sheer medieval splendour of their surroundings. ‘Who’s that guy with the bridegroom?’
‘Some Italian Rashad went to uni with. I haven’t met him but I think his name is Rio,’ Polly whispered, unable to focus on anyone but Rashad because she was now wondering why her future husband looked so impossibly moody and tense. Didn’t he realise that he should be smiling for the cameras? Or was any show of human emotion forbidden to him as a ruler? Or was it even possible that he genuinely loathed figuring as a leading light in such a public event?
The ceremony was short and sweet, translated into both their languages. Polly’s hand trembled in the firm hold of Rashad’s when he slid the ring onto her slender ring finger. His slightest touch invoked a storm of churning, rippling awareness throughout her entire body and she was embarrassed by it, questioning that it could be normal to be so susceptible to a man. But that anxiety was squashed by her astonishment when she belatedly registered that her wedding ring was a feminised miniature of the famous fire-opal ring that Rashad wore on his hand. It seemed deeply symbolic to Polly that he had deliberately made a feature of the ring that had first brought them together and a brilliantly warm and happy smile softened her previously tense mouth as she looked up at him with starry eyes of appreciation.
His wide sensual lips almost made it into an answering smile of acknowledgement but his shimmering dark eyes remained cool and evasive and a faint pang of disappointment touched Polly. Yet somehow she sensed that his self-discipline was so inflexible and so intrinsic to his character that he would not allow any relaxation of his innate reserve to betray his true feelings. Simultaneously and for the very first time she wondered what those feelings actually were...
Of course she knew and accepted that he wasn’t in love with her, even respected his essentially honest nature because he had not tried to deceive her with any false show or foolish promises. But there was something so distinct about his obvious emotional withdrawal that she felt guiltily unnerved by it.
* * *
At least Polly was pleased about the ring, Rashad was thinking wryly. It was very probably the first positive thought he had had in the two frantic weeks of meetings and reorganisation required before it was possible for him to free up the time to become a husband. And future father, he reflected joylessly. Back to the life of being a sperm donor and praying that the seed took root this time around, he reflected with a pang of distaste. That was, after all, he believed, the only reason for him to even get married: to father a child and create the generational continuity for the throne that his people needed to feel safe in the future. He recalled Ferah’s heartbreak when she had learned that she had a medical condition that made conception a virtual impossibility and guilt engulfed him over his derisive musings. The ability to have a child would have meant the world to his first wife.
Did Polly have any idea what she had got herself into? And why hadn’t he made the effort to warn her?
Why hadn’t he? he asked himself afresh, disconcerted by that truth and belatedly recognising that he could have told Polly many things that would have put her off marrying him but that, inexplicably, he had shared not a single one of them. He breathed in slow and deep, more than a little disturbed by the worrying nature of his failure to discuss something so very crucial to the likely success of their marriage. His conscience was suddenly laden down by that awareness.
Admittedly it was a sore subject from his point of view and he saw no good reason to dangerously overshadow the present with the tragic clouds of the past. In truth he had never shared his feelings about marriage with any living person and loyalty and honour demanded that he protect his first wife’s memory. After all, Ferah had suffered horribly from the stigma of a ten-year childless marriage and in death she deserved his respect at the very least.
‘You need to smile,’ Polly whispered under her breath as Rashad guided her out of the throne room in front of an audience