she really knew about him. He’d still never mentioned his mother, and hadn’t said much about his father either. She remembered the day she’d arrived here, when he’d resolutely silenced her questions about his upbringing. And she had let him silence her, determined to maintain a precarious kind of peace no matter what the cost.
But pregnancy was changing more than just her body; it was changing the way she viewed the world. Hassan’s mother was not just a person whose name had caused the face of her elder son to darken with pain. She was also a part of the child whose daily kicking inside her belly grew stronger each day. And impending motherhood had also forced Ella to re-examine her views on her own family. She’d recognised that while she might not always approve of the way they behaved, she loved them all very dearly and could never deny their influence on her and the child she carried.
Why, this baby might be a boy who would grow up to be the spitting image of her father! And so what? She let her hand drift to lie on the hard swell of her belly. Was this what her own mother had felt, this powerful bond connecting her to her child? For the first time in her life, she acknowledged how difficult it must have been for her mother to have reared Bobby’s children and also the children he’d had with another woman. He’d been unfaithful for much of their marriage and she had simply turned a blind eye to what was going on.
And yet Julie Jackson had somehow managed to keep it together. Ella and her brothers and sisters may not have had much money, but their messy home had been full of laughter, hadn’t it? Not like this great, silent palace where Hassan had grown up. She tried to imagine him and his brother playing in the wide corridors and thought how lonely it must have been for them.
‘Ella?’
Still lost in her thoughts, she looked up to see that Hassan had arrived at the ‘studio,’ his dark brows raised in mocking question.
‘Sorry.’ She smiled at him. ‘I was miles away.’
‘I can see that for myself. Are you ready for me?’
‘Absolutely. Come and sit over here. That’s right, just here.’
He sat where she’d asked him to and as she smoothed the headdress which covered his black hair, she resisted the urge to lean over and kiss him. It was one of their rules—or rather, it was one of his rules—no physical intimacy outside the bedroom. He’d told her that protocol demanded it, that the aides and ministers who moved with such silent deference around the palace would not approve of their king fooling around with his new bride. Because kisses tended to get out of hand and lead on to other, deeper intimacies. And Ella understood that. Just as she understood that it was yet another way for her husband to keep her at arm’s length.
He glanced up at her. ‘What must I do?’ he asked.
She laughed. ‘You know exactly what you must do. You’ve sat for paintings before.’
‘Ah, but it was always with a man, never with the woman who just a few hours ago was lying in my arms.’
‘Can you please not talk about sex?’ She began to make rapid sweeps on the paper with her stick of charcoal.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it changes the look on your face. It makes your eyes turn smoky and your mouth grow tense.’
And not just his mouth, Hassan thought wryly, shifting his position slightly. He studied the sweeping movements of her hand and remembered the sketches he’d seen of her sister back in her house in London. The subject matter may have been a little outré for his taste, but there was no doubt that she had talent. ‘You’ve never had any formal training?’ he questioned.
‘Nope.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because money was too tight to send me to art school.’
‘I thought your father made a fortune.’
‘He made several fortunes, and then lost them again. Plus, there were his many alimony payments.’
‘He is known for his liking of women,’ he observed.
‘Understatement of the century,’ she answered acidly. ‘He is also known for his love of grand schemes and the temptation to make a quick buck, which is why there’s never been any real money in our family. Everything we owned was only ever temporary.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I see.’
‘I wonder if you do,’ she said as she put a finger to her lips to indicate that he should stop talking. He’d certainly never known what it was like to worry about paying the gas bill, or to hunt in the cupboard to find nothing but a long-forgotten tin of caviar and to wonder whether slimy fish eggs could possibly fill you up.
For a while she worked in silence and once again Hassan used the opportunity to watch her. Her movements were economical and the studio was completely quiet apart from the scrape of the charcoal and the occasional song of a bird outside. Yet beneath the calm surface of their life, he was aware of a dark kind of uncertainty. A time bomb which was ticking away inexorably. Both of them waiting for something which had the potential to change their lives in ways he couldn’t quite imagine. And didn’t want to imagine …
He had seen her patting her growing bump, her face growing almost dreamy as she did so. He’d watched her drawing little circles on the tight drum of her belly, as if she was playing some secret game with the child inside her, and his heart had given a painful wrench. He felt jealous, he realised—because his own mother could never have felt a bond like that if she’d been able to just walk away from him and his brother …?
‘Hassan, stop frowning.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Yes, you were.’ She stopped drawing, wondering what had caused that terrible bleakness to enter his eyes. ‘What is it, Hassan?’ she questioned softly. ‘What on earth was making you look that way?’
He saw the understanding on her face and instinct made him want to push her away. She wanted to probe into his past, as all women did. But with Ella he wasn’t in a position to terminate the discussion and then make a cool exit. With Ella there was no escape; the fact that she carried his child had made her a constant in his life. So why not tell her the truth and wipe all that sweet understanding from her face? Why not make her understand where he was coming from, so she’d learn why he could never really love a woman, nor she him?
‘I was remembering my mother,’ he said.
Something about the silky venom in his voice made the hairs on the back of Ella’s neck prickle with apprehension. ‘You never talk about her.’
‘No. Haven’t you ever stopped to wonder why?’
‘Of course I have.’
His mouth flattened into a grim line. He’d never told anyone, he realised suddenly. Even he and his brother had never discussed it. They’d locked the memory away in a dark place which was never allowed to see the light of day. As if such a rejection had been too painful to acknowledge, even to themselves. ‘Maybe you should know, Ella. Maybe it will help explain properly the man that I am.’
Something in his voice was alarming her, and the cold, dark look on his face was scaring her even more.
‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to,’ she whispered, but his face looked so frozen and forbidding that she wondered if he’d actually heard her.
He shook his head as the dark memories bubbled up from the deepest recesses of his mind. ‘My mother was a princess from the neighbouring country of Bakamurat,’ he said. ‘And she was betrothed to my father from an early age—as was the custom at the time. They married when she was just eighteen, and not long after that, I was born. Two years later, Kamal came along.’
‘But the marriage wasn’t happy?’ Ella saw the clenching of his jaw and bit her lip, appalled at her own naivety. ‘I’m sorry. That’s a stupid question. It can’t have been happy if she … left.’