The Desert Sheikh's Captive Wife by Lynne Graham

Author:Lynne Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2007-09-03T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

RASHAD had only got as far as the landing when he recalled his mobile phone, which he had switched off, and he immediately put it on again. He cursed the selfish streak of recklessness that had caused him to ignore the phone’s demands barely thirty minutes earlier. Almost immediately, the ringtone sounded again and he answered it. Informed that his royal parent was waiting to speak to him, he was bewildered.

‘My son,’ King Hazar boomed on the line as if he were addressing a packed audience chamber, ‘I am overjoyed!’

‘You are in good health, my father?’ Rashad breathed in astonishment.

‘Of course.’

Rashad was still shaken by the fear that had seized him. ‘Then, why has the Prime Minister flown out to the desert to speak to me?’

‘The occasion of your marriage is of very great importance to us all.’

Rashad came to an abrupt halt at the head of the stone staircase. ‘My…marriage?’

‘Our people do not wish to be deprived of a state wedding.’

‘Who said that I was married, or even getting married?’ Rashad managed to ask in as level a voice as he could muster.

‘A journalist contacted your sister, Kalila, in London and showed her a photo taken at the airport. Kalila contacted me and e-mailed that picture of Tilda for us all to see. She is very beautiful and a magnificent surprise. I should have sat up and taken more notice the day I heard you were having the old palace refurbished!’

Rashad was thinking fast and realising that so many facts were already out in the family and public arena that he could not simply dismiss the story out of hand. He had been frankly appalled by the presence of the paparazzi at Heathrow—the rumours must have been flying around about his relationship with Tilda before he’d even got his jet off the ground in London! So much for discretion and privacy! He was even more taken aback by his father’s hearty enthusiasm at the news that his son had married a woman he had never met.

‘When you proclaimed that Tilda was your woman and required no visa, old Butrus almost had a heart attack until it dawned on him that you must already be married to her to make such an announcement. And, even had you not been—’ the king chuckled in the best of good humour ‘—according to the laws of our royal house once you declared Tilda yours before witnesses, it was a marriage by declaration. The statute that saved your grandfather’s skin was never repealed.’

Rashad found it necessary to lean back against the wall for support. A marriage by declaration—a law hastily trotted out to clean up the scandal after his licentious grandfather had run off with his grandmother with not the slightest intention of doing anything other than bedding her. It was still legal? He felt as if the bars of a cage were closing round him.

‘My father…’ Rashad breathed in deep.

‘As if you would bring any woman other than your intended bride into Bakhar!’ the older man quipped.

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