to her at the time. After all, they had not been planning to start a family immediately and the prospect of babies and the problems of custody should their marriage run aground had seemed as remote as the Andes to her back then. They had been madly in love, at least she had been in love and, trusting and naive soul that she was, it had not occurred to her that some day in the not too distant future her blithe acceptance of that clause might come back to haunt her...
HE HAD TRIED to play nice, Jaul reflected grimly, but nice hadn’t panned out too well with Chrissie, who was suspicious of his every move and had ensured that they were now down to the brutal bare bones of legal agreements and custody. Possibly he wasn’t very good at playing nice, he acknowledged in exasperation, having much more experience of playing nasty. The King’s word was the last word to be heard in serious disputes in Marwan and there was always an aggrieved party, convinced of unjust treatment and favouritism. He had learned that, regardless of negotiation and compromise, someone would always be dissatisfied with his decision.
Like a drowning woman forced to review the most important moments of her life, Chrissie was pale as death as she stared down at that clause in the pre-nuptial contract. Her heart was sinking down to the very soles of her feet. She could not see how she could possibly combat an agreement that she had voluntarily signed.
Jaul breathed in slow and deep, muscles rippling below the T-shirt, wide shoulders taut. ‘At some future date, should you remain convinced that you want a divorce—’
Her turquoise eyes flared back to life like the unholy blue hot streak flickering inside a flame. ‘You’d better believe that I won’t change my mind!’ she traded furiously.
‘Then you will be entitled to your own household in Marwan in which to raise the twins. I’m afraid that is the best I can offer you should you want your freedom back,’ Jaul imparted grittily, white teeth flashing bright against golden skin.
‘But...for the moment, a separate household for the three of us is out of the question?’ Chrissie prompted dangerously.
‘I’m afraid so. At least this way, however, you retain shared custody of our children,’ Jaul pointed out.
‘They’ve never been our children, they’ve always been mine!’ Chrissie vented painfully, biting back a flood of recrimination.
‘Only because I didn’t know I was a father,’ Jaul parried.
‘And what you refer to as “this way” means that you expect me to pretend that we still have a real marriage?’ she interpreted jaggedly as she stalked to the door and spun back again. ‘How could you do this to me after deserting me for two whole years? Don’t you have any moral decency?’
‘It is not that simple for me. In an effort to secure our children’s status and acceptance by my people, I’m prepared to pretend I’m part of a happy couple. That’s part of my duty of loyalty and care towards them and their needs,’ Jaul framed in a raw undertone. ‘They will take their place in the royal family as the prince and princess they are and that is my responsibility and yours.’
Yanking open the guest-room door, Chrissie was reckoning that she could have done without the parental slap on the wrist. He scarcely needed to remind her of the maternal obligations that had consumed her youthful freedom throughout the time they had lived apart. It was so unfair, she thought bitterly, that Jaul could have walked out on her, abandoning his responsibilities and then walk back into her life only when it suited him to demand that she observe a duty of care that he had royally ignored.
‘Will you agree to it?’ Jaul asked, striding after her impetuous exit to follow her down the corridors that led to the giant upper landing.
Adrenaline on a high, her steps faltered while common sense and survival instincts took over. The twins had become a weapon and if she wanted to keep her children she had no other option but to take up residence in Marwan.
On one level she recognised the position he was in, on another she hated him for making it her responsibility as well. It was one thing to own up to a two-year-old marriage and two young children and shock the Marwani population but it would be another thing entirely to stage that shock along with a headline-grabbing divorce in the UK while they fought a bitter custody battle over their children. Because, no matter how damning that agreement she had signed would prove to be when aired in a courtroom, Chrissie knew she would still fight for her children regardless. But such a fight would undoubtedly damage everyone involved.
Did she really want to land the stress of a custody battle on Cesare and Lizzie as well? Hadn’t she already caused them as much grief as a wayward teenager with her exam agonies, touchy pride, carefully kept secrets and unplanned pregnancy? Did they really deserve to have to deal with more on her behalf? Shouldn’t she be handling her own problems and standing on her own feet? Wasn’t that really what adulthood was all about?
‘Chrissie...?’ Jaul prompted, falling still. ‘I need an answer.’
‘I’ll do it because I don’t appear to have the choice of doing what I want,’ Chrissie shot back at him tightly. ‘But I won’t forgive you for it.’
Brilliant dark eyes veiled, his beautiful mouth compressing. ‘You’ve never forgiven me for anything I did wrong.’
Chrissie refused to believe that was true. She must have forgiven him at some stage for something. She was not a hard, unforgiving person, was she? Her first impressions of Jaul returned to haunt her and, along with it, her long-held refusal to consider the fact that she might have misjudged him. Very faint colour warmed her cheeks.
She recalled that she had never forgiven her mother for what the older woman had put her through and frowned. Francesca had died before her younger daughter reached the age of confrontation and the older woman had taken her guilty secrets to the grave with her. Chrissie swallowed hard, struggling to shake off the dirty, shamed feeling that always engulfed her when she thought of Francesca. She was older now, wiser and less judgemental, she reasoned tautly. Her mother had not been a strong person and she had been very much abused in some of her relationships with men. Her second husband, the very last man in her life, had been the worst of all, taking advantage of Francesca’s weakness and dependency on him to propel her into an unsavoury lifestyle. Some day she might tell Lizzie the truth about their mother, but certainly she could never ever imagine sharing that sordid story with Jaul.
‘I think this is an incredibly weird and ugly house,’ Chrissie remarked curtly on the way down the massive staircase, which reminded her of something out of an ancient Hammer Horror movie. It only lacked zombies sidling out of the mummy cases in the hall to totally freak her out.
‘Blame my grandmother. She furnished this place.’
‘The Englishwoman who walked out on your grandfather?’ That was the bare bones of what Chrissie knew about her British predecessor in the Marwani royal family. ‘Tell me about her.’
‘Why?’
‘Fellow feeling...aren’t I sort of following in her footsteps?’ Chrissie quipped, eager to talk about something, anything other than the agreement she had just given and what had occurred in the tumbled sheets upstairs. That extraordinary passion had left her aching in intimate places and even walking wasn’t quite comfortable. Jaul had been so...wild and forceful...and she had revelled in that display of primal passion, but now she was being forced to pay the piper and put her whole life back in Jaul’s hands. She should never have let herself down like that, she thought painfully. He was running rings round her now.
‘I hope not. She deserted her son,’ Jaul proffered censoriously. ‘She met my grandfather Tarif on a safari in Africa. She was a socialite from an eccentric but aristocratic English family...Lady Sophie Gregory. Tarif fell deeply in love with her but he was simply a walk on the wild side for her...a novelty. A couple of months of life in backward Marwan where there were no ex-pats for company was too much for my