Cinderella's Desert Baby Bombshell
Autore
Lynne Graham
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CHAPTER ONE
THE HEIR TO the throne of the Middle Eastern kingdom of Alharia, Prince Saif Basara, frowned as his father’s chief adviser, Dalil Khouri, knocked and entered his office with a charged air of importance and the solemn bearing of a man about to deliver vital information.
In recent years Saif had heard every possible story relating to his father’s eccentric dictates and views. He was thirty years old, his difficult parent’s successor, and the courtiers of his father’s inner circle were now routinely playing a double game—nodding with false humility at his father’s medieval dictums and then coming to Saif to complain and lament.
The Emir of Alharia was eighty-five years old and horrendously out of step with the modern world.
Of course, Saif’s father, Feroz, had come to the throne in a very different age, a feudal ruler in an unstable era when a troubled country was overwhelmingly grateful to have a safe and steady monarch. Oil had then been discovered. Subsequently, the coffers of Alharia had overflowed and for decades everyone had been happy with that largesse. Unhappily for Feroz, the desire for democratic government had eventually blossomed in his people, as well as the wish to modify cultural rules with an easier and more contemporary way of life. He, however, remained rigidly opposed to change of any kind.
‘You are to be married!’ Dalil announced with so much throbbing drama that Saif very nearly laughed until he registered that the older man was deadly serious.
Married? Saif stiffened in surprise, well aware that only his father’s misogyny had allowed him to remain single for longer than most sons in his position. After four failed marriages in succession, Feroz had become deeply distrustful of women. His final wife, Saif’s mother, had inflicted the deepest wound of all. An Arabian princess of irreproachable lineage, she had, nonetheless, abandoned both infant son and elderly husband to run away with another man. That she had then married that man and become joint ruler of another small country and thereafter thrived in tabloid newspaper photographs enraptured with her beauty had definitely been salt rubbed in an open wound.
‘Married to a very bad choice of a woman,’ Dalil completed with regret, mopping his perspiring brow with an immaculate linen handkerchief. ‘The Emir has turned his back on all the many respectable possibilities both in Alharia and amongst our neighbours’ families and has picked a foreigner.’
‘A foreigner,’ Saif repeated in wonderment. ‘How is that possible?’
‘This woman is the granddaughter of your father’s late English friend, Rodney Hamilton.’
As a young man, the Emir had undergone a few months of military training at Sandhurst in England, where he had formed an unbreakable friendship with a British army officer. For years, the two men had exchanged letters and at least once there had been a visit. Saif dimly recalled a whiny, weepy little girl with blond pigtails appearing in his nursery. His future bride? Was that even possible?
Dalil dug out the mobile phone he kept carefully hidden from the Emir, to whom mobile phones were an abomination. He flicked through photos and handed it to Saif, saying, ‘At least she is a beauty.’
Saif noted that his father’s adviser took it for granted that he would accept an arranged marriage with a stranger, and he swallowed hard, shocked by the apparent belief that he was required to make that sacrifice. He stared down unimpressed at a laughing, slender blonde in an evening gown. She looked frivolous and wholly unsuited to the life that he led. ‘What do you know about her?’ he prompted.
‘Tatiana Hamilton is a socialite, an extravagant party girl...not at all the kind of wife you would wish for, but in time...’ Dalil hesitated to avoid referring to the reality that the Emir’s failing health would not conserve the ruler for ever. ‘Obviously, you would divorce her.’
‘It is possible that I will refuse this proposition,’ Saif confessed tautly.
‘You can’t...it could kill your father to go into one of his rages now!’ Dalil protested in consternation. ‘Forgive me for speaking so bluntly, but you do not want that on your conscience.’
Saif breathed in slow and deep as he faced the truth that he was trapped. He banked down his anger with the ease of long practice, for he had grown up in a world in which personal choice about anything was a rare gift. He had been raised to be a dutiful son and, now that his parent was weak and ailing, it was a huge challenge to break that conditioning. It didn’t help that he also understood that it would be very painful for his traditional parent to be confronted by a defiant son. Arranged marriages might have been out of fashion for decades in Alharia but, at heart, the Emir was a caring father and Saif was not cruel. He was also very conscious that he was indebted to his father for the loving care he had practised in an effort to ensure that his son was less damaged by his mother’s abandonment.
Consequently, he would wed a stranger, he acknowledged, bitterness darkening his stunning green eyes.
‘Why would a spoilt English socialite want to marry me and come out here?’ he demanded of the older man in sudden incomprehension. ‘For a title? Surely not?’
A look of distaste stamped Dalil’s wrinkled face. ‘For the money, Your Royal Highness. For the lavish dowry your father is prepared to pay her family,’ he replied in a tone of repugnance. ‘They will be greatly enriched by this marriage and that is why you will wish to divorce her as soon as possible.’
Saif was aghast at that statement. It gave him the worst possible impression of his future bride and filled him with revulsion. He knew that he would find it very hard to pretend any kind of acceptance of such an unprincipled woman...
‘George has just asked me to marry him!’ Ana carolled, practically dancing out of the bathroom where she had been talking on the phone to her ex-boyfriend. ‘Isn’t that typical of a man? It took me to come to Alharia and be on the very brink of marrying another man to get George to the point!’
‘Well, it’s a bit foolish, him asking you this late in the day,’ Tati opined with innate practicality as she studied her beautiful and lively cousin with sympathetic blue eyes. ‘I mean, we’re here in the royal palace and you’re committed now. The preparations for the wedding are starting in less than an hour.’
‘Oh, I’m not going through with this stupid wedding now—not if George wants me to marry him instead!’ Ana declared with sunny conviction. ‘George has already booked me on a flight home. He’s planning to pick me up at the airport and whisk me away for a beach wedding somewhere.’
‘But your parents...the money.’
‘Why should I have to marry some rich foreign royal because my father’s in debt to his eyeballs?’ Ana interrupted with unconcealed resentment.
Tati winced at that piece of plain speaking. ‘Well, I didn’t think you should have to either, but you did agree to do it and if you back out now, it’ll plunge us all into a nightmare. Your father will go spare!’
‘Yes, but that’s where you are going to help me play for time and ensure that I can get back out of this wretched country!’ her cousin told her without hesitation.
‘Me? How can I help?’ Tati argued in bewilderment, because she was the most powerless member of the Hamilton family, the proverbial poor relation often treated as little more than a servant by Ana’s parents.
‘Because you can go through these silly bridal preparations pretending to be me, so that nobody will know that the bride has scarpered until it’s too late. I mean, in a place as backward as this, they might try to stop me leaving at the airport if they find out beforehand! I bet it’s a serious crime to jilt the heir to the throne at the altar!’ Ana exclaimed with a melodramatic roll of her big brown eyes. ‘But, luckily, no member of the groom’s family has even seen me yet and Mum’s certainly not going to be getting involved with these Alharian wedding rituals, so the parents won’t find out either until the very last minute, by which time I’ll be safely airborne!’
Tati dragged in a ragged breath as her cousin completed that confident little speech. ‘Are you sure this isn’t an attack of cold feet?’ she pressed.
‘You know I’m in love with George and I have been...for ever!’ her cousin stressed with strong feeling. ‘Didn’t you hear me, Tati? George has finally proposed and I’m going home to him!’
Tati resisted the urge to remind her cousin how many other men she had been wildly in love with in recent years. Ana’s affections were unreliable and only a month earlier she had claimed to be excitedly looking forward to her wedding in Alharia. Back then, Ana had been as delighted as her parents at the prospect of no longer being short of cash, but of course, that angle would no longer matter to her, Tati conceded ruefully, because George Davis-Appleton was a wealthy man.
‘I can understand that you want to do that.’ Tati sighed. ‘But I don’t think I want to get involved in the fallout. Your parents will be furious with me.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a wet blanket, Tati! You’re still family,’ Ana declared, impervious as always to her cousin’s low standing in that sacrosanct circle. ‘Mum and Dad will get over their disappointment and they’ll just have to ask the bank for a loan instead.’
‘Your father said that he’d been refused a loan,’ Tati reminded her gently.
‘Oh, if only Granny Milly was still alive...she would have helped!’ Ana lamented. ‘But it’s not my problem...it’s Dad’s.’
Tati said nothing, only reflecting that their late and much-missed Russian grandmother had had little time for her son Rupert’s extravagant lifestyle. Milly Tatiana Hamilton, after whom both girls had been named, had controlled the only real money in her family for many years. Tati had been surprised at her uncle getting into debt again because she had assumed that he had inherited a sizeable amount after his mother’s death.
‘Sadly, she’s gone.’ Tati sighed heavily.
She did not, of course, point out that she had a vested interest in her aunt and uncle remaining financially afloat because she felt that that would be utterly unfair to Ana. She could hardly expect her cousin to go through with a marriage that would be abhorrent to her simply for Tati’s benefit. In any case, Ana appeared to have no idea that her father paid for his sister Mariana’s care in her nursing home. Tati’s mother, Mariana, had lived there since her daughter was a teenager, having contracted early onset dementia.
‘So, will you do it?’ the beautiful blonde demanded expectantly.
Tati flinched because she knew that she shouldn’t risk angering her aunt and uncle lest they withdraw their financial support from her mother, but at the same time, she was as close to Ana as a sister. Ana was only two years older than Tati’s almost twenty-two years. The pair of them had grown up on the same country estate and had attended the same schools. Regardless of how different in personality the two women were, Tati loved her cousin. Selfish and spoilt Ana might occasionally be, but Tati was accustomed to looking after Ana as though she were a young and vulnerable sister because Ana was not the sharpest tool in the box.
The whole ‘marrying a foreign prince sight unseen to gain a fat dowry’ scenario had never struck sensible Tati as anything but ludicrous. Naturally, her cousin should have had the sense to refuse to marry Prince Saif from the start because Ana was not the self-sacrificing type. But at first, Ana had seen herself as a heroine coming to the aid of her family. Furthermore, the tantalising prospect of increased wealth and status had soothed an ego crushed by George’s refusal to commit to a future with her. Sadly, now that reality had set in, Ana was ready to run for the hills.
For a split second, Tati felt rather sorry for the bridegroom, whoever he might be, for he had no presence whatsoever on social media. Alharia seemed to be decades behind in the technology stakes—decades behind in most things, if she was honest, Tati had reflected after their drive through the desert wastes to the remote palace, which was an ancient fortress with mainly Victorian furnishings.
‘All that money and no idea how to spend it or what to spend it on,’ her aunt Elizabeth had bemoaned in envious anguish, soon after their arrival. And it was true: the Basara royal family might be oil billionaires, but there was little visible sign of that tremendous wealth.
Ana had met someone who had sworn blind that Prince Saif was ‘absolutely gorgeous’ but, as even Ana had said, how much faith could she place in that when people tended to be more generous when it came to describing rich, titled young men? Even if the poor chap were as ugly as sin, most would find something positive to say about him.
Tati knew all about that approach and the accompanying unkind comparisons, having grown up labelled a plain Jane beside her much prettier and thinner cousin. Of course, Tati was the family ‘mistake’ being illegitimate, something which might not matter to others, but which had seriously mattered to the uptight Hamilton family and had embarrassed them.
Both girls were blonde, but Tati had blue eyes and Ana had brown and Ana was a tall, slim beauty while Tati rejoiced rather more simply in good skin, a mane of healthy hair and curves. Well, she had never exactly rejoiced in her body, she conceded ruefully, particularly not after her only serious boyfriend had taken one look at her cousin and had fallen in love with her to the extent that he had made an embarrassing nuisance of himself, even though Ana had not had the smallest interest in him.
‘Have you even thought of how you’re going to get back to the airport?’ Tati asked her cousin when she returned to the bedroom they were sharing.
‘Already sorted,’ Ana said smugly. ‘You don’t need the lingo to get by here. I flashed the cash, pointed to a car and it’s downstairs waiting for me already.’
‘Oh...’ Tati whispered in shock as she watched her cousin scooping up her belongings and cramming them back into the suitcase she had refused to allow the maid to unpack. ‘You’re definitely doing this, then?’
‘Of course, I am.’
‘Don’t you think it would be better to face the music and tell your parents that you’re leaving?’ Tati pressed hopefully.
‘Are you joking?’ Ana exclaimed. ‘Have you any idea of the fuss they would make and how bad they would make me feel?’
Tati nodded in silence because, of course, she knew.
‘Well, I’m not putting myself through that for anybody!’ Ana asserted. ‘Now, you be careful. Don’t let them realise that you’re not the bride for a few hours...that’s all I’m asking you to do, no big deal, Tati! Come on, give me a hug and wish me well with George!’
Tati rose stiffly and hugged her, because she knew how headstrong Ana was and that nothing short of a nuclear bomb would alter her plans once she had made her mind up. ‘Be happy, Ana,’ she urged with damp eyes and a sense of dread she couldn’t shake.
Tati hated it when people got angry and started shouting and she knew that the moment her aunt and uncle realised that their daughter had departed there would be a huge scene and furious raised voices. They would blame her for not telling them in advance. At the same time, though, she understood her cousin’s fears. Ana’s parents were so set on the marriage taking place that they were quite capable of following her to the airport and trying to force her to return to the palace. How could she subject Ana to that situation when she no longer wanted to marry the wretched man? After all, nobody should be forced to marry anyone they didn’t want to marry.
Ana departed with the utmost casualness, a gormless servant even carting her luggage for her without a clue that he was assisting the Prince’s bride to stage a vanishing act. Tati sat on the edge of a seat in the corner of the bedroom, panicking at the very thought of allowing people to credit that she was her cousin and the bride-to-be. She supposed that that meant she was a coward and she felt ashamed of herself for being so weak. Deception of any kind was usually a complete no-no for Tati, whose birth father had gone to prison for financial fraud. Her mother, Mariana, ashamed of the character of the man who had fathered her daughter, had raised her to be honest and decent in all situations. And what was she doing now?
While Tati was struggling with her loyalty to her cousin, her anxiety about her mother’s continuing care and her troubled conscience, someone knocked on the door and entered, a brightly smiling young woman, who greeted her warmly in English. ‘Tatiana? I am the Prince’s cousin, Daliya. I am a student in England, and I have been asked to act as your interpreter.’
‘Everyone calls me Tati,’ Tati told her apprehensively, thinking how silly it was that she didn’t even have to lie about her name because she and her cousin were both officially Tatiana Hamilton, thanks to her rebellious mother’s obstinacy. Tati’s mother and uncle had never got along as siblings. When Mariana’s brother, Rupert, had named his child after his mother, his sister had seen no reason why he should claim that privilege and she should not. Of course, back then, her mother could never have foreseen that she would end up living back at her birthplace and that there would be two little girls rejoicing in the same name.
‘I am sure you are wondering about the importance my people put on the bridal preparations,’ Daliya assumed. ‘Let me explain. This is not typical of weddings in Alharia because it is no longer fashionable. But you are different because this is a royal wedding. All the women who will attend you here today consider this a great honour. Most of them are from the older generation and this is how they demonstrate their respect, loyalty and love for the Basara family and the throne.’
‘I shall feel privileged,’ Tati squeezed out between clenched teeth, the guilt of being an impostor on such a solemn occasion cutting her deep. The pretty brunette’s explanation had made her want to die of shame where she sat. The very least she could do was be polite and respectful...until the dreadful moment when people realised that she was not the right Tatiana Hamilton. Inwardly she was already recoiling in horror from the thought of that dramatic unveiling.
‘All the same, I’m sure the unfamiliar will feel strange, and it may possibly intrude on your privacy to accept these diverse customs,’ Daliya suggested, her intelligent brown eyes locked to Tati’s face. ‘You are very pale. Are you feeling all right? Is it the heat?’
‘Oh, it’s just nerves!’ Tati exclaimed shakily as the other woman showed her out of the room and down a corridor. ‘I’m very robust in the health stakes.’
Daliya laughed. ‘The elderly women obsessed with your fertility will be delighted to hear that.’
‘My f-fertility?’ Tati stammered helplessly in her incomprehension.
‘Of course. Some day you will be a queen and the natural hope is that you will provide the next generation to the throne.’ Daliya frowned in surprise as Tati stumbled in receipt of that explanation.
For a split second, Tati had almost divulged the truth that she was not the right Tatiana, because it seemed so wrong to deceive people at such an important event. But they were already entering a very large room crammed with older women, some of whom wore the traditional dress but most of whom sported western fashion like her young companion.
Aware of being the centre of attention and ill accustomed to that sensation, Tati flushed just the way she used to do at school when the bullies had christened her ‘Tatty Tato,’ mocking her for her shabby second-hand uniforms and worn shoes. Her uncle’s generosity in paying her school fees had not extended to such extras, and why should it have? she reflected, scolding herself for that moment of ingratitude. Tati had adored her loving mother growing up, but sometimes she had been embarrassed by her parent as well. Mariana Hamilton had never stood on her own feet and had never done anything other than casual work when it suited her. Relying on other people to pay her bills had come naturally to Tati’s mother and that had made Tati both proud and independent. Or as proud and independent as one could be when forced to live in her uncle and aunt’s country house and be at the family’s beck and call while working for barely minimum wage.
All those thoughts teemed in Tati’s busy brain while she calculated how many hours she would need to play the bridal role to allow Ana to make her getaway, and that introspection got her through the hideous public bathing rite she endured. Herbs and oils were stirred through a steaming bath and then she was wrapped in a modesty sheet, just as if she were entering a medieval convent, and settled into the water to have her hair washed. Keeping up an air of good cheer was hard. Daliya lightened the experience with explanations of the superstitions that had formed such rituals and cracking the occasional discreet joke.
‘You are a very good sport,’ Daliya whispered in quiet approbation. ‘It is a good quality for a member of the royal family. I think all the women were afraid that you would refuse their attentions.’
Tati contrived to smile despite her discomfiture because she knew for a fact that nobody would have got to roll Ana in a sheet and steep her in a hot herbal bath that smelled like stewed weeds. Ana would have flatly refused any such ritual, too attached to her own regimented beauty routine and too afraid that her hair would be ruined. Unfamiliar with such routines, Tati had told herself that she was having a treat, a rather exotic treat admittedly but pretty much a treat for a young woman who generally washed, cut and styled her own hair. What little she earned only kept her in clothes and small gifts for her mother when she was able to visit her.
‘You are very brave,’ Daliya told her as her hair was being combed out.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘You are marrying a man you have never seen, never spoken to...or have you and the Prince met up in secret?’ she prompted with unconcealed curiosity.
‘No, we haven’t. Isn’t that the custom here? The sight-unseen thing?’ Tati queried.
Daliya laughed out loud. ‘Not in Alharia now for generations. We meet, we date. It is all very discreet, of course. Only the Emir follows old cultural traditions, but with the Prince you need have no fear of disappointment. Had His Royal Highness desired to marry any sooner, he would have been snatched up by any number of women.’
‘Yes, I believe he’s quite a catch,’ Tati remarked politely.
‘Saif is of a thoughtful, serious nature,’ Daliya murmured quietly. ‘He is very much admired in our country.’
Tati had to bite her tongue on the flood of curious questions that she wanted to fire at the brunette. It was none of her business. Even the Hamiltons knew next to nothing about the Crown Prince, for none of them had cared about the details. That the marriage should take place and the dowry be given had pretty much encompassed the extent of her relatives’ interest and that awareness shamed Tati, because everything that her present companions took so seriously had been treated with scornful indifference by Ana and her parents.
At that point, Daliya contrived to persuade their chattering companions that the waxing technician could take Tati into the giant bathroom with its waiting treatment couch alone. Tati had never been so grateful for that small piece of mercy in the proceedings. Discovering that she was only an hour and a bit into the lengthy bridal preparations, she heaved a heavy sigh, knowing that her cousin needed longer to make good her escape from Alharia. She felt worse than ever about her deception.
After the waxing, the preparations moved on to a massage with scented oils. Her nails were painted and then henna patterns were drawn on her hands. Mentally exhausted, Tati drifted off into sleep and when she was wakened gently by Daliya, she sat up and was immediately served with a cold drink and a tasty little snack while all the women hummed some song around her. Her watch had disappeared, and she had no idea what time it was. Daliya was now telling her that she had to leave for a little while but would be back with her soon.
That announcement plunged Tati into an even deeper dilemma. She had originally planned to share her true status and the reality that the bride had fled with the chatty brunette, but she was painfully aware that Daliya had been very kind to her. As the only English speaker she might well receive considerable blame for not having registered the fact that the bride was not who she was supposed to be. After all, everybody was likely to get very worked up once the truth emerged. Tempers would be fraught, angry accusations would be made. Uneasily, Tati decided to wait for a less personal, more official messenger before confessing that she was a complete fraud in the bride stakes.
A long silk chemise garment was displayed for her benefit and it was evidently time for her to get dressed. She would be making her big reveal very soon, Tati acknowledged, sick at the prospect, her tummy hollowing out. But she had to be clothed to do anything, she reflected wretchedly, and she stood in silence while she was engulfed like an Egyptian mummy in layers of tunics and petticoats and her hair was combed out and a cosmetic technician every bit as slick as the type Ana used at home arrived to do her work. By the time Daliya reappeared beaming, Tati was ready to nibble her nails down to the quick, only she couldn’t because they too had been embellished and she didn’t want to offend anyone. And even that thought struck her as ridiculous, considering how offended everyone would be when the awful truth came out.
‘It’s time,’ Daliya informed her cheerfully.
Tati feared she might throw up, so knotted were her insides by that stage, and the brunette’s reappearance didn’t help because she honestly didn’t want to involve Daliya in her disaster. And it would be a disaster, she thought wretchedly. However, her aunt and uncle were the proper people to be told first that their daughter had fled. As they were to be witnesses to what Ana had described with a sniff of disappointment as a very private ceremony, she was sure to see Ana’s parents very soon in the flesh.
A posse of chattering women walked her through the palace, down stone staircases, across inner courtyards, through endless halls and corridors until finally they reached a set of giant ornate double doors set with silver and glittering gems and guarded by two large men in traditional dress brandishing weapons.
‘We must leave you here...but we will see you soon,’ Daliya smilingly told her, exchanging a brief word with the guards that had them springing into action and throwing wide the double doors...
