smile reaching his eyes now that he had managed to banish the sadness from hers. And, dipping his head beneath the brim of her hat, he kissed her.
They were by now completely alone beneath the wedding canopy, so Evie didn’t really need to pull away quite as quickly as she did. Their mouths had barely warmed in welcome to each other before she was carefully separating them and placing some much needed distance between their clinging bodies.
‘Are you trying to seduce me in broad daylight, Sheikh?’ she demanded mock sternly in an attempt to soften her rejection of him.
But Raschid refused to play the game. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I was trying to demonstrate how deeply I care for you.’
‘What—here?’ Evie mocked that also, but this time the mockery was ever so slightly spiked. ‘In front of a Christian altar—what will your God say? Or did the tent above your head make you forget where you were for a moment?’
‘My God is the same God as your God, Evie,’ he answered very grimly.
‘Well, just in case you’re wrong, I’m off, before we get struck down by a bolt of lightning or something,’ she said, clinging to her bantering tone despite his much—much graver one. ‘I’ll see you later—’
‘Evie.’
She had already turned her back on him when he said her name like that, making her go still as the muscles around her heart gave a painful pinch.
Raschid wasn’t stupid, she knew that. Those all-seeing liquid-gold eyes of his had caught the haunted look in her own eyes before she’d turned away.
‘What?’ she prompted warily.
There was a moment’s complete silence from behind her that trickled down her rigid spine like a warning. And she closed her eyes, mouth gone dry, heart still pinching in protest at what she was struggling to keep bottled up inside her today.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she denied.
‘The same “nothing” that has made you as elusive as a rare butterfly for the last few weeks?’ he grimly suggested.
‘You’ve been busy. I’ve been busy,’ she murmured defensively.
‘You’ve been hiding,’ he corrected. ‘And you are still hiding.’
‘I just need to get through this day with my dignity intact, that’s all,’ she sighed.
‘And you think that my kissing you here diminishes that dignity?’ He sounded cold all of a sudden—as haughty as hell. Which was a bad sign. For Raschid a bruised ego always—always made him insufferably arrogant.
‘I did warn you not to come,’ she reminded him.
‘And because I refuse to hide like you I am to be punished, is that it?’
Put like that, he had a right to sound offended, Evie wearily acknowledged. ‘You’re a man,’ she said dryly. ‘Bedding one of England’s most eligible females only adds to your standing, whereas I get called a cheap little slut.’
‘The woman in the awful lilac dress!’ Raschid recognised instantly. ‘The words match her sour expression.’
Despite her heavy mood, Evie couldn’t resist smiling at his caustic description of dear Great-Aunt Celia. ‘To be fair,’ she twisted around to say to him, ‘she did call you a womanising barbarian.’
A sleek, superbly drawn black eyebrow arched in enquiry. ‘And you agree with her?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she admitted. ‘But then,’ she added softly, ‘I like you barbaric.’
The darkening look in his eyes set her stomach fluttering.
‘I have to go,’ she murmured, turning away what that fluttering sensation was tempting.
‘More evasion?’
‘I’ll see you later,’ was all she replied, and walked gracefully away.
Stepping out from beneath the sultry-aired canopy was like stepping into another world. The sun was bright, the air crystal-clear, and the sights and sounds of celebration were everywhere.
The bridal party was posing for photographers in front of a perfectly placed beech tree that looked as if it had been standing there for at least a thousand years. All about them their guests stood around in small groups watching them. A small army of white-jacketed waiters wove in and out with silver trays laden with fluted champagne glasses, trying to avoid the children who were running about like swirling dervishes and letting off steam.
The band was still playing, and it seemed odd to Evie that she hadn’t heard a single note while she had been with Raschid.
But then, Raschid had that kind of effect on her. When he was there her world began and ended with him alone. Which was why this other world out here felt so very strange and alien.
Julian caught sight of her and called out, then waved his hand in an imperious command for her to come and join them. Evie nodded her head in acknowledgement but took her time making her way over there. Her brother didn’t know it, but she had no intention of appearing with them on any photograph.
So she stopped a waiter to collect a champagne glass, paused then to chat lightly to the first group of people she came to. Saw, from the corner of her eye, her brother’s attention become claimed by more pressing duties that made him forget all about her, and kept her social smile fixed firmly in place as she wandered from group to group—the only group she carefully avoided being the Arab contingent.
Someone appeared at her shoulder and tentatively touched her arm. She turned her head, the social smile still fixed firmly in place, found herself looking into the ruefully smiling face of an attractive man with brown hair, grey eyes and a shy disposition.
And instantly her expression mellowed into true tenderness. ‘Harry,’ she greeted softly. ‘How lovely to see you.’ It was purely instinctive for her to go up on tiptoe to press a kiss to his lean cheek.
From not very far away several people stood observing the exchange from completely different perspectives. Her mother observed with unmasked satisfaction, Raschid with grim speculation as he watched Evie’s face, saw that smile as the one he’d always believed was reserved exclusively for him—and discovered that it hit him rather hard to know another man warranted such tenderness.
He knew, of course, who the guy was, and what he had once been to Evie. They had been childhood friends, sweethearts in their teenage years—but never lovers, he reminded himself as he watched the Marquis of Lister place hands that most definitely coveted around Evie’s slender waist.
‘He’s still in love with her,’ a cold voice murmured beside him. ‘She broke his heart when she left him for you. Will you break her heart, Sheikh Raschid, when it’s time for you to let my daughter go?’
‘I wonder what appeals to you more, Lady Delahaye,’ Raschid smiled tightly. ‘The prospect of your daughter receiving that broken heart or my leaving her?’
‘I love Evie,’ Evie’s mother declared stiffly.
‘Really?’ he drawled. ‘Then I beg leave to inform you that it doesn’t show.’
‘She has a right to be able to stand alongside the man she loves with her head held high in pride, not to avoid his presence at all cost!’
‘And whose fault is it that she does avoid me?’ Raschid challenged. ‘Certainly not mine,’ he denied.
‘She doesn’t look well,’ Evie’s mother stated tightly. ‘She most certainly doesn’t look happy. And that smile she is offering Harry is the first genuine smile I’ve seen from her today.’
‘I know…’ Raschid acknowledged quietly, his mind locked on something else Lady Delahaye had said that had managed to strike at the very heart of him.
Because,