was no one about as she walked down the stairs. The hour was too early for most people after last night’s partying, so she wasn’t particularly surprised about that. But the house had been carefully locked up for the night, she realised belatedly, and the huge cast-iron bolts that were still rammed across the double front doors looked lethal, much too big for her to attempt to shift them.
Luckily a servant appeared in the hallway. He looked a trifle disconcerted when he saw Evie standing there so early. But he recovered quickly.
‘Good morning, Miss Delahaye,’ he greeted politely. ‘If you’re looking for the breakfast room, it’s this way…’
‘No—’ He was about to move off when Evie stopped him. ‘I was hoping to go outside for some fresh air before breakfast, but the bolts on that door look pretty much beyond me,’ she explained with a rueful glance at the door.
He smiled back, half relieved he wasn’t going to have to serve her yet, and came quickly towards her. Two minutes later the front door stood open, and Evie was stepping out into one of the soft, still, slightly misty mornings that were so typical of an English summer.
About to walk off to the right with the intention of making for the lake, she was stalled by the sound of a car coming up the driveway that skirted the lake on its left-hand side. A moment later the car appeared around the side of the chapel, where it stopped and the driver got out.
He saw her, and waved. It was Harry. ‘Morning, Evie,’ he called out, striding briskly towards her. ‘You’re an early bird!’
‘So are you.’ She found a tight smile from somewhere.
‘Force of habit in my business.’ He grimaced.
‘But—didn’t you stay here last night?’ Evie asked frowningly.
He shook his head. ‘I bunked down with some friends a couple of miles away,’ he told her. ‘But I left my jacket here last night, so I decided to collect it on my way home.’
‘You’re going home?’ Evie’s heart stopped beating for a moment, a sudden, very cowardly idea popping into her head. Harry lived only ten miles outside London.
‘I have a mare due to foal at any minute,’ he nodded. ‘It will be her first, so I want to be there just in case there are any problems.’
‘Harry—can you give me a lift home?’ she asked, suddenly very sure it was what she desperately needed to do. Get away—escape.
‘Of course,’ he agreed, frowning slightly when he noticed belatedly the bruises around her eyes and the strained pallor of her skin.
‘Can you wait while I throw my things into my bag?’ Evie was already turning eagerly back to the house. ‘Five minutes, Harry. I just need five minutes.’
But she was back down the stairs in only three, looking flushed rather than pale now and ever so slightly hunted as she came towards Harry who was waiting by the door with his recovered dinner jacket draped over one arm.
‘Is everything all right, Evie?’ he asked worriedly.
She nodded, allowing him to take her bag from her. ‘It’s all right,’ she assured him. ‘I left a note in my room for my mother, explaining where I’ve gone.’
‘And Sheikh Raschid?’
Evie didn’t answer; instead she walked out of the house again, head down, back straight, the tension apparent in her slender frame enough to snap wire cables.
She was already sitting in the front passenger seat by the time he’d stashed away her things then climbed in beside her. Wisely holding his own counsel, Harry started the engine and turned them around. Neither spoke until they had put several long miles between them and Beverley Castle.
Then, ‘Thank you,’ Evie whispered.
Harry sent her a concerned glance. He had known her for most of her life, so he recognised distress when she was suffering it. ‘Would you like to talk about it?’ he asked.
‘It’s over between Raschid and I,’ she heard herself announce, and wondered how she was able to say the words without breaking up inside.
But what was worse was that Harry was painfully unsurprised by the announcement. ‘The rumours about it were rife last night,’ he nodded. ‘Something to do with his father being ill and him having to go home and marry before he can officially take over from the old man…’
For a space of thirty long, dreadful seconds, Evie didn’t move—didn’t breathe—didn’t function on any basic level. Harry’s words simply hung there in block letters in front of her while other words uttered in the heat of the moment began to take on an entirely different shape.
Words like: ‘Do you have any conception of what those two weeks are going to mean to me? The problems they are going to cause?’
Had his father laid down an ultimatum during Raschid’s last visit home? Was that why those two weeks had been so important?
‘And what does rumour say, exactly?’ she asked carefully.
Changing gear with a flourish, he sent her a small grimace. ‘That he has a month to sort his life out before he goes home to marry some cousin of a cousin or some such person. Is it true?’ he asked curiously. ‘Is that why he’s finished it?’
Evie didn’t answer. She didn’t do anything but sit there staring directly ahead of her while new horrors settled over old horrors. Some cousin of a cousin being the new horror.
For Evie knew all about Aisha. Raschid had never been anything but honest about his cousin of a cousin who had been nothing more than a shadow in the wings of his life while she grew from child to woman enough to marry a prince.
‘Are you okay?’ Harry asked. ‘You’ve gone awfully pale…’
No, Evie thought. I’m not okay. ‘What a mess!’ Raschid had muttered. ‘What a damned mess!’
He hadn’t been joking. The whole thing was a mess! She had already been living on borrowed time with him when she’d broken her news last night.
And, what was worse, she had probably been the last one to know it!
It didn’t matter. Nothing seemed to matter any more. It was over. In every which way she looked at it, the affair was most definitely over. She only wished now that she had kept her stupid mouth shut about the baby. At least then she could have walked away from him with some semblance of dignity intact.
Now?
The whole wretched thing was just destined to get ugly. With their families, with the press, between themselves.
For she was not going to go down in history as the woman who held her Arab sheikh lover to ransom with a baby! Evie grimly promised herself. And Raschid, she was sure, was not going to go down in history as the Arab sheikh who deserted his pregnant mistress to marry elsewhere!
The car ate up the miles while Evie sat there so sunk in the wallowing mire of her own muddy thinking that she wasn’t aware of the frequent worried glances Harry kept on sending her, or what he was seeing when he did look at her.
She didn’t look well. There were bruises around her eyes and a white ring of tension around her mouth. Her skin was too pale, and her fingers trembled where they rested on her lap.
They arrived in Chelsea where her mews cottage stood only a short walk away from the World Aid Foundation, where she worked on a purely voluntary basis, drumming up gifts of money from the wealthy.
The cottage belonged to Julian. It was one of several properties the family owned in and around London. Her mother resided in something similar in Kensington. And Julian himself used a classy apartment not far from Hyde Park.
Great to have money, Evie bleakly acknowledged. Great to able to do what you wanted when you wanted to do it without having to consider the cost.
Great