The Sheikh's Baby Omnibus (30 page)

‘I believed it was my duty to...to get close enough to you to
find out what you were doing.’

Sam could feel horror dripping through her, numbing her at
first, and then seizing her with a gigantic pain that held her like a vice,
allowing her no escape.

‘No...’ she protested.

She wanted to turn and run, to hide herself from him. But there
was no escape. He was speaking again, paralysing her where she stood.

‘I decided that the best way to undermine the Emir would be for
me to publicly take you, his tool, as my mistress.’

Vere heard her small whimper, like that of a small creature
caught in the cruel talons of a hawk.

‘I had to put Dhurahn first.’

Sam listened in silence. Was that an explanation or an excuse?
she wondered. Did she even care any more? He had hurt her more than she
deserved, and certainly more than she could endure. He had used her, knowing
she’d believed he wanted her.

From somewhere she summoned the last shreds of her pride to
demand, ‘Why are you telling me this now?’

‘Because whilst we were on our way here my brother rang to say
that the investigations I had ordered showed that it wasn’t possible for you to
be in the Emir’s pay. I have wronged you, and for that I can only apologise and
beg your forgiveness. Naturally I shall make whatever recompense is needed to
ensure that your career does not suffer because of this. As a cartographer—’

‘My
career
?’ Sam stopped him as she
battled against her pain. ‘How do you propose to recompense me for my loss of
pride and self-respect? For the fact that you let me think you wanted me, and
that you—’

She couldn’t go on. Tears flooded her eyes, emotion suspending
her voice.

Vere went to her.

‘No!’ She denied him as he made to take her in his arms,
beating her fists impotently against his chest in an agony of distraught
despair, forcing Vere to let her go.

She had turned away from him, heading back inside the palace,
when it happened: a darting movement, liquid and quicksilver, then Sam’s shocked
cry, the telltale puncture wound in her leg. Then his own reaction as he reached
her and told her not to move, knowing what even the slightest action would send
the snake’s venom speeding fatally towards her heart.

‘Keep still and trust me,’ he told her, pausing only to call
for help before he dropped down on his haunches to take hold of her leg and
place his mouth against the puncture marks, desperately trying to suck the
poison from them.

Vere’s voice had become oddly distorted and echoy, his
expression contorted. She tried to move, but his fierce command of, ‘No—keep
still,’ ricocheted through her.

Servants alerted by Vere’s cry came hurrying towards them, but
even whilst he told them to summon his doctor Vere didn’t take his gaze off Sam,
fixing it on her as though by doing so he could fill her with his own strength
and somehow keep her alive until she could be given the necessary antidote to
the snake’s poison.

The gardens were kept rigorously free of snakes, but somehow
this one—one of the most poisonous of all—had got in. Vere could feel his heart
thudding and pumping with the life force that Sam so badly needed. If he could
have opened his veins and given her life he knew he would have done so. She was
everything to him. Without her he was nothing, his life an empty wasteland.

Like a desert sandstorm whipped up by the winds of fate the
truth stormed through him, refusing to allow him to deny its existence any
longer.

He loved her.

Vere’s eyes burned with emotion. He couldn’t lose her. Not
now—not when he loved and needed her so much.

He could feel the beat of Sam’s heart slowing down. Her pulse
was so weak it was barely there. He would not lose her. He would
not.

The doctor arrived, his expression grave and taut with concern.
In the space of the time it took him to reach into his case for the antidote
Sam’s lips turned blue.

The doctor put down the hypodermic needle.

‘No!’ Vere denied fiercely.
‘No!’

‘Highness, it is too late.’

The doctor’s voice held a finality that Vere could not accept.
Images, memories flooded through his heart: the messenger who had brought them
the news of their parents’ death, the long flight he and Drax had had to make to
accompany their bodies back to Dhurahn for their state funeral, the grief and
anger that had possessed him ever since. He could not lose Sam as well. He could
not. His hand tightened on her wrist, and miraculously he felt a pulse; her
chest lifted slightly.

‘Look,’ he commanded.

Nodding his head, the doctor reached for the syringe.

CHAPTER TEN

S
AM
put down the book she had been
trying to read. She was sitting in the elegant drawing room that Vere had told
her had been decorated for his great-grandmother. She had eaten her solitary
dinner, and now she looked at her watch.

Vere had been so loving and tender towards her whilst she had
been recovering, coming to talk to her often and letting her know that it was
her colleague James who had been the Emir’s pay. But now that she had been
pronounced fully well and allowed to get up out of bed he had retreated into a
coldness that left her feeling desperately hurt and confused. She hadn’t seen
him at all today, apart from one brief visit during which he had made no attempt
to hold her or even talk properly to her. His voice had been sharp and somehow
almost hostile.

She was beginning to feel that she must have imagined that
moment when she had opened her eyes to find him sitting at her bedside, had
thought she had heard him whispering to her that he loved her and feared to lose
her. She must have done, because he certainly wasn’t behaving as though he loved
her now. She suspected that he regretted having spoken such words to her. But
why? He must know that she loved
him.
After all, she
hadn’t made any attempt to hide her feelings from him.

Was it really only a little over twenty-four hours since he had
sat with her in the darkness of her room, holding her hand and cupping her face
in his hands, whispering emotionally how much she meant to him?

‘I can’t wait for Dr Sayid to pronounce you fully fit. My bed
has been as empty without you as my heart and my life would be if I lost you. I
yearn to be with you, flesh to flesh, heart to heart and mind to mind. With
nothing between us, no barriers to separate us.’

Sam’s heart turned over now, just replaying those words inside
her head. Vere was such a passionate lover. Going into his arms was like opening
a door into their own secret special world.

And yet now that Dr Sayid had pronounced her properly well,
instead of taking her to his bed, as she so longed for him to do, Vere was
ignoring her.

Why?

She ought to try and find out, Sam knew, but she just didn’t
think she had the courage—even though a part of her said that she should find
it. By staying here without knowing the truth of what Vere’s feelings were she
was cheating them both, not just herself. Vere needed to be free to share his
life with a woman he loved, and she was not that woman.

Her close brush with death had changed her, Sam recognised,
making her all too aware of her physical vulnerability and the uncertainty of
life, but at the same time giving her new emotional strength and an unshakable
belief in the importance and value of love.

Like life itself, true love should not be treated lightly nor
taken for granted. It demanded respect and the most tender of care.

She had had plenty of time to think about his life and the role
she could reasonably expect to play in it whilst she had been recovering from
the snake bite, and now that she was over the initial shock of his revelations
about his misjudgement of her she was desperately trying to see past them and
focus instead on the care he had shown her whilst she was ill. A care, she
comforted herself, which must indicate that she meant
something
to him.

Vere stood in
front of the formal
state portrait of his parents. It dominated the palace’s formal audience room.
It was here that subjects traditionally came to speak to their Ruler, and to
have their voices heard.

The portrait was extraordinarily lifelike. During the early
months after their death Vere had often come here to look at it, almost as
though by focusing on the couple it would somehow bring them back to life. But
of course he had known that this was not possible, and he had always left the
room feeling as though he couldn’t bear the weight of his own pain.

It was in this room, beneath this portrait, that he had made a
solemn mental vow that he must separate himself from his own vulnerability for
the sake of his people, and that he must never allow himself to fall in
love.

How could he rule wisely and properly if he was constantly in
fear of life taking from him the person he loved? He could not.

But he had broken that vow in loving Sam, hadn’t he?

Vere knew he would never forget how he had felt when he had
thought she was dying. He had had a vision then of his own future, his life
stretching out ahead of him as a barren wasteland of nothingness.

But he could not afford that kind of vulnerability. Like
someone once burned, he was mortally afraid of the remembered pain and of
suffering it again. Better to live without the warmth of fire than to risk the
agony it could inflict.

He couldn’t keep Sam here now. He knew that. It was too
dangerous.

A protective veil had been ripped away from inside his heart,
allowing him to see what was hidden inside it. He couldn’t pretend to himself
any longer that it was only physical desire he felt for her, and that it was
therefore safe to keep her with him in his life and in his bed.

He couldn’t send her away yet, though. Not until he was one
hundred percent sure that she was fully recovered. It was all very well for Dr
Sayid to say that she was, but Vere suspected that she still wasn’t restored to
full physical strength. And besides, where would she go? How would she support
herself?

A surge of protective urgency so strong that it caught him off
guard thundered through him. He looked up at his parents’ portrait. His father’s
arm rested protectively around his mother. The gesture reflected just how he
wanted to keep Sam within the protection of his own love. But who could protect
him from the pain he would suffer if he should lose her for any reason?

The only person who could do that was himself, by not loving
her in the first place.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
T
was two days now since Sam had
been told she was fully recovered, but she hadn’t seen Vere even once during
that time... Tears pricked at Sam’s eyes. She felt abandoned and rejected, not
knowing what she had done to cause Vere to treat her in such a way.

She put down the book she had been pretending to read and got
up to wander aimlessly round the room, relieved to have someone else to talk to
when Masiri appeared with a tray of coffee.

‘I am sorry I am late,’ she apologised. ‘Only the Princess
called me and I had to go...’

‘The Princess?’ Sam queried uncertainly.

Vere had made no mention of any princess living in the
palace.

‘Yes.’ Masiri nodded her head vigorously. ‘The Princess. She is
the wife of His Highness. She has been away, visiting her own country, but now
she has returned.’

Sam’s whole body had gone icy cold with shock.

Vere was
married
?

‘The Princess is the Prince’s wife?’ Sam could hear herself
stammering, as the answer to her question as to why Vere was ignoring her became
all too apparent.

‘Yes,’ Masiri confirmed.

Why hadn’t Vere told her he was married?

Did she really need to ask herself that?

He hadn’t told her because she was just his lover, his
mistress, and men—especially men like Vere—did not discuss their wives with the
women they chose to sleep with outside their marriage.

But Vere had told her he loved her.

That was what men told their lovers. And now that his wife was
back he was regretting having said those words to her and wanted to back off
from her. She hadn’t even really been his mistress, had she, never mind had his
love? After all, the real reason he had brought her here had nothing to do with
him wanting her.

It was as though two separate people were arguing inside her
head. One the shamed, betrayed woman deeply in love, the other her cynical
bitterly angry counterpart, savage with fury at the part she had unwittingly
been forced to play in another woman’s marriage.

‘The Princess...?’

Masiri was looking at her, waiting for her to continue, but Sam
knew that she had no right to ask the questions burning her heart.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she told Masiri tonelessly.

Vere was married. Another woman had the right to call herself
his wife, to share his life and his bed. Another woman. Never in the wildest
reaches of her imagination had Sam ever envisaged herself playing the role of
‘the other woman’. If she had known right from the start that Vere was
married...if he had told her...then she would never have...

She would never have
what
? Fallen
in love with him? Gone to bed with him? Accepted his protection as her lover? At
which one did she draw the line?

Sam felt sick with horror and shame.

She couldn’t stay here now. She would have to leave. It
nauseated her to think what she had done. And what about Vere? How could he have
done such a thing? Or did he expect his wife to understand that he had taken Sam
to bed for the sake of Dhurahn, and that because of that it didn’t mean
anything? Would
she
be able to accept that if she
had been his wife? Or would it haunt her for the rest of her days that her
husband might be lying to her and might have wanted that other woman?

The man she had thought Vere was could never have behaved as
Vere had.

His behaviour was unforgivable, and he had dragged her down
into its nastiness with him.

Sam knew that she would have left there and then but for the
fact that Vere had taken charge of her passport for sakekeeping. She would have
to wait until she could see him.

The smell of the coffee Masiri had poured for her before
leaving the room was making her feel suffocated and sick. She badly needed some
fresh air. She half ran and half stumbled into the pretty courtyard garden, now
thankfully free of snakes.

She skirted the fish pond, hurrying down the path that led past
it, unable to bear looking at it. Then she noticed for the first time that,
almost obscured by the roses that smothered it, there was a high wrought-iron
gate in the far wall of the garden.

What lay beyond it? Sam wondered absently, automatically going
to look, pleased with any distraction from her thoughts on the horror of the
reality of her situation.

At first all she could see was another garden, more modern in
concept than the one she was in, ornamented with sleek pieces of artwork in
stone and metal set in beds of gravel planted with grasses and spiky plants.
Water jetted upwards in a thin straight plume from some unseen source. As she
turned away she saw Vere, coming from the far corner of the garden. She drew in
her breath. He was dressed in European clothes—a business suit that emphasised
the breadth of his shoulders—and the greenery surrounding him threw shadows
across his face. Sam waited for her heart to give its normal eager kick of
recognition and joy, but strangely it didn’t.

He was turning his head away from her, without having seen her,
holding out his hand to someone.

A woman came slowly towards him, wearing a white dress, a hat
covering her head. She was very obviously pregnant, leaning into him and then
smiling up at him. He was putting his arm around her to support her, bending his
head to kiss her on the forehead, his hand resting protectively on her swollen
body.

The desire to be violently sick cramped Sam’s insides. Unable
to watch any longer, she turned and ran.

Sam had no
idea how long she had
been sitting there in the garden. She knew that every now and again her body
shuddered violently of its own accord, and that in between those shudders her
forehead broke out into a sweat. She knew too that she felt slightly
light-headed. Light-headed, but oh, so very heavy-hearted.

Was Vere still with his wife? Was he cradling her and their
child, his hand resting on the womanly flesh that held the new life they had
created together, as it had done when she had seen them in the garden? Her teeth
started to chatter together, but it was far from cold.

She could hear light footsteps on the path. Masiri, no doubt,
coming to see where she was and if she wanted more coffee.

She stood up clumsily, the colour leaving her face as she
stepped forward and saw that it wasn’t Masiri but Vere’s wife.

‘Oh, I’m sorry—I’ve startled you and I didn’t mean to.’

She had a light musical voice, and her smile was warm and
genuine. ‘I’ve seen you walking in the garden, and I’ve been dying to come and
talk to you. You’re English as well, aren’t you?’

Sam nodded her head, completely unable to speak.

‘I shouldn’t really be doing this, of course.’ She laughed, a
soft, indulgent sound. ‘Vere won’t approve at all, and will be cross with me, I
know, but I was so curious about you I couldn’t resist.’

Sam fought to match her calm, easy manner, feeling as though
she had strayed into some surreal and alien world

‘Yes. Yes, you must have been curious.’

‘I can’t stay very long.’ She patted her stomach and pulled a
face. ‘Vere’s been worrying that I might go into labour before my due date. I’m
Sadie, by the way. I do hope that we’re going to be friends.’

Friends!

‘Yes,’ Sam agreed, wondering inwardly what on earth she was
saying. She could never, ever be a friend to Vere’s wife. This was tearing her
apart, destroying her. How could his wife be so nice to her? Unless...maybe she
didn’t know that Vere had made love to her? Yes, that must be it, Sam decided
feverishly. She didn’t know. Vere must have lied to her. How could it hurt so
much, loving a man she knew wasn’t worthy of that love?

‘I’d better go,’ Sadie was saying. ‘I don’t want Vere to come
and catch me here with you.’

Sam could feel herself trembling violently as she watched Sadie
walk back the way she had come.

She had to get away from here. If only she could access her
passport, Sam thought. She would do anything to escape her searing pain and
equally searing guilt about having slept with Sadie’s husband. She didn’t have
anything much to pack, as she certainly didn’t intend to take with her the
clothes Vere had bought for her, even if she had given in and worn them these
last few days.

Where was Vere now? With his wife? Reassuring her that she and
their child were all that mattered to him? Was he whispering to Sadie the words
of love and passion he had whispered to her? She would have to go and see him to
demand that he return her passport, but she didn’t have any fears now that he
would try to prevent her from leaving. He would probably be all too relieved to
see her go.

Sam went back to her room and asked Masiri to have a message
sent to Vere, telling him that she had to see him urgently.

Vere had been
on the point of
getting together with his twin so that Drax could update him on his recent trip
when he was informed of Sam’s wish to see him ‘urgently’.

Sam’s use of the word ‘urgently’ produced within him a
dangerous mix of volatile emotions, dominated by a recklessly urgent need of his
own that had very little to do with dry dialogue and everything to do with a
very male possessive instinct.

He had to confront his vulnerability, Vere decided. Avoiding
any kind of contact with Sam was a coward’s way of dealing with the situation. A
coward who was too weak to send her away, not strong enough to trust his own
self-control. He inclined his head and gave instructions for Sam to be brought
to his office.

The fact that
Vere was seeing her in
his office told her everything she needed to know, thought Sam as she was bowed
into it, to find Vere seated at his desk, apparently engrossed in reading some
documents he had in front of him.

He couldn’t have made it more obvious that it was over between
them, and of course Sam knew exactly why. Beneath her pain the volcano of her
pride sent up a lava-hot surge of protective anger.

‘It’s all right Vere,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t come to beg you
to take me to bed, or to remind you about what you said to me when I was
ill.’

Sam had the satisfaction of seeing the way the muscle in his
jaw tensed beneath the lash of her latter comment.

‘All I want is my passport.’

He was looking at her now, a flicker of something unreadable
briefly darkening his eyes before he averted his gaze.

‘So silly of me to feel concerned that I might be burdening you
with my unwanted love, and
that
is why you haven’t
been anywhere near me for the last couple of days, when the real reason is that
your wife has returned to the palace. And so very naïve of me not to have
guessed that you were married.’

She loved him. But then of course he knew that, because he now
knew her. He knew that without loving a man she could not and would not give
herself in the way she had given herself to him.

A pain, slow and sharp and unending, was piercing him. He must
endure it, because it was the price he had to pay for his future without her,
and for the emotional security that future without Sam would bring him.

‘Your wife—
Sadie
—came to see me.’
Sam gave a laugh that was too high-pitched and haunted with despair. ‘She seemed
to like me. She said she wanted us to be friends.’

All Vere had to do to stop her pain was tell her that she’d got
it wrong and that Sadie was Drax’s wife. All he had to do to stop his own pain
was take her in his arms and tell her that
she
was
the one he loved, the one he would always love.

All he had to do to cross the chasm that separated his past
from a future filled with love was to push his way past that mental imagine of
his mother’s body, her face frozen into an unnatural calm by the undertaker’s
skill. It had been his duty to see her—a horror from which he had protected Drax
by taking it upon his shoulders alone.

Only he knew how often during those hours it had been touch and
go for Sam. He had seen that memory reform inside his head, with Sam’s face
replacing his mother’s. A fierce shudder ripped through him.

No wonder he shivered at the thought of his wife befriending
her, thought Sam bitterly.

‘I’m packed and ready to leave, so if you will give me my
passport I’m sure you’ll be only too happy to see that I get the first empty
seat on a plane leaving for Zuran.’ Her head lifted proudly as she spoke. Not
for the world was she going to let him see the heartache she was feeling
inside.

It was the perfect solution to a situation that had become
untenable and, if he was honest, unbearable. Far better to let Sam think the
worst of him, for her to walk away from him despising and hating him—for her
sake. Perhaps, in fact, that was the best gift he could give her. He had no idea
just how she had come to think that Sadie was his wife, but it made sense to let
her go on thinking so.

He opened one of the drawers in his desk and removed her
passport, placing it down on the desk between them and then withdrawing from
it.

Sam could almost taste her own bitterness. He obviously didn’t
even want to risk touching her fingers.

How could she still care, knowing as she did what kind of cheat
he was?

Where was her self-respect? Crushed, like her dreams, beneath
the weight of her heavy heart.

Vere pressed the buzzer that would summon one of his aides,
telling him when he arrived to organise a car to take Sam to the airport.

‘By the time you reach the airport a flight will have been
arranged for you.’ Even if that meant sending her out of Dhurahn in the royal
jet, Vere decided, as he started to stand up. ‘My brother is waiting to see me,
so if you will excuse me I will leave my PA to escort you to your car.’

It was over, thought Sam shakily. Over? How could it ever be
over when she still loved him? her heart protested. But she could not listen to
it, because if she did she would surely shame herself utterly and completely by
going to him, clinging to him, begging him... It
was
over. It had to be.