it been exactly the same when she’d met him? Hadn’t he brought that same element of uncertainty into her life? He wondered why he had never seen that before, but the answer came to him almost immediately. He’d never seen it because he’d never allowed himself to see it.
‘He wants to know whether we are planning to go to Alex and Allegra’s wedding.’
She looked at him. ‘And what did you tell him?’
‘I said that we hadn’t decided. Because that’s the truth of it, isn’t it, Ella? We haven’t decided so many things, and I don’t think attending your sister’s wedding is top of the list of things we need to resolve.’
Ella nodded, but his words made her heart plummet. She knew they couldn’t keep putting off the inevitable, yet she was afraid to face up to it. Afraid of what lay ahead—of a cold and empty future without her husband by her side.
Hadn’t she hoped that they could just forget the past and move on? Capitalise on the love—yes, love—which had pulsed through the air between them after their baby had been born. That moment of pure and unfettered joy when their eyes had met and they had silently acknowledged the new life they had created.
She looked at Hassan now, wondering whether they should postpone any decisions for a few days longer. He still looked slightly shell-shocked, even though it had been a week since they had returned from the desert. The longest seven days of her life, and easily the most eventful.
They’d been dazed and disorientated as they had entered the celebrating city of Samaltyn, cradling their newborn daughter with pride. They’d called her Rihana because they both liked the name, and when Ella had discovered it meant ‘sweet herb,’ that had clinched it. Because hadn’t Hassan been making sweet, herbal tea when she’d gone into labour? For a while she’d been on such a high of hormones and emotion that it was all too easy to pretend they were like any normal couple who’d just had a baby.
But now the intensely intimate memories of the birth had started to fade, leaving a couple who had resolved nothing. Who had begun to eye each other warily, as if each waiting for the other to make a move. She found herself wishing that she was back in that simple Bedouin tent again, where she had felt so incredibly close to Hassan. But she couldn’t keep getting herself into medical emergencies just to get him to show some feelings, could she?
‘You said you wanted to go home,’ Hassan said roughly, his words breaking into her thoughts and sounding almost like an accusation. ‘Have you thought any more about that?’
Ella winced as his stark words brought reality crashing in. During the ecstatic days following Rihana’s birth, it had been all too easy to forget about her insecurities, but Hassan’s question brought it into such sharp focus that she could no longer ignore it. Her insecurity was all bound up in her marriage, she realised, in her relationship with him. And nothing had changed.
Yes, during those heightened and unbelievable moments in the desert, she’d felt as close to him as she’d imagined it was possible for a man and woman to feel. When the helicopter had landed and the obstetricians had rushed in and taken over, before leaving the two—no, three—of them alone again for a few minutes, it had seemed a very precious time indeed.
Their eyes had met over the dark head of the baby who had latched so eagerly onto her breast and she thought she’d read something other than dazed pride in Hassan’s expression. She’d clung to the hope that he might now want to forge a new and closer future. A future for all of them.
But all those hopes had evaporated by the time they returned to the palace, where it seemed that normal procedure was to be renewed almost immediately. Hassan had done what he did best and occupied himself with the practicalities. Making sure that she had the best after-care. Issuing statements to the world media and declining to the give them the full and dramatic story of Rihana’s birth. Filling the nursery with a department-store quota of soft, fluffy toys.
Yet the subsequently smooth transition from pregnant queen to new mother seemed to have left Ella feeling just as displaced as before. And nothing would ever change so long as she was with Hassan, she realised. Why would it, when he didn’t seem to want anything more than this?
Now she focused on his words and realised that it was worse than she’d thought. That he actively wanted her to go.
‘I’d thought I’d wait—’
‘For what, Ella?’ he interrupted bitterly. ‘For me to bond even more with Rihana so that I’ll find it unbearable when you take her away from me?’
‘You want me to go,’ she stated dully.
Hassan flinched. Was she determined to twist the knife, to make this even more painful than it already was? And could he really blame her, if that was the case, for surely he deserved everything she chose to heap upon his head?
‘I can’t see any alternative.’ His voice was harsh. ‘Surely you can’t wait to get away from a man who forced you to come here even though you wanted to stay in London. A man who doesn’t have a heart, nor any compassion. Because I now have looked at myself through your eyes, Ella, and I do not like what I see.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she whispered.
He shook his head as the memory swam into his mind, like dark, distorting smoke. ‘That portrait!’ he grated. ‘I have just been into the studio and seen the man that you have painted. A ravaged man—’
‘Hassan—’
‘Isn’t there some novel where the man agrees a trade-off with the devil for eternal youth?’ he demanded. ‘And meanwhile there’s a portrait in the attic which shows the growing darkness inside him?’
‘It’s called The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ she said automatically.
‘Well, the darkness is right there on that canvas you’ve done of me, only I haven’t even had the eternal youth in exchange,’ he said bitterly, until he realised that wasn’t quite true. Because in a way, every man who ever had a child was given the gift of eternal youth. Only he would never see the daily miracle of his daughter’s developing life. He would be resigned to meeting her on high days and holidays, their precious time eaten into by the initial adjustment of having to reacquaint themselves every time they met. He would grow older never really knowing his child, and he would have no one to blame but himself.
Ella stared at him. ‘What are you trying to say, Hassan?’
He knew that he had to tell her. Everything. Every damned thing. She had to know the terrible lengths to which he had been prepared to go—and that would be the end of their marriage, once and for all.
‘Do you want to know the real reason why I was so insistent you came out to Kashamak when I discovered you were pregnant?’ he demanded.
She remembered the way he had expressed it at the time—as concern for her morning sickness and the need for someone to look after her. But she hadn’t been naive enough to think they were the real reasons. ‘It was about control, wasn’t it? About making sure that I conducted the pregnancy in a way you approved of.’
‘Yes, it was. But deep down, it was even more manipulative than that,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought you’d have trouble adjusting, you see. That motherhood would cramp your style.’
‘Cramp my style?’ she repeated blankly.
‘That was when I was still labouring under the illusion that you were a good-time girl. A social butterfly. I thought you’d hate your life here and you’d want to be free again. And that’s what I wanted too.’
Ella saw the muscle which was working frantically at his cheek and the expression in his black eyes. But for once, they were not empty. Instead they were filled with the most terrible look of bleakness she had ever seen. Even worse than the time he’d told her about his mother.
‘You wanted me to leave?’ she guessed slowly. ‘And to leave the baby behind, with you?’