The Sheikh's Sinful Seduction Read online

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ZAFIR WASN’T USED to feeling anything less than wholly confident. He wanted to take heart from Fern’s willingness to accept his ring, but the way she’d talked about not having any defenses, especially physically... Did she think he would force her? Not in a million years! He hadn’t pressed his first wife—

  But then, he hadn’t felt a need for her like he did for Fern. Was he above seducing her? Clearly not.

  Her balking at agreeing to sleep with him bothered him. Not in an arrogant, entitled way. In a deeply disturbing way. Even before he’d found her and confirmed her pregnancy, he’d been unable to shake the near irresistible urge to fetch her back into his life. Sleep together. Make love to her one more time.

  A storm he’d barely acknowledged had been crashing inside him for months as he fought those urges, only settling when he’d had her in the car beside him. Now a fresh turbulence kicked up, despite the flash of his grandmother’s ring from the hand that gripped his arm as she steadied herself on the shiny oak floor.

  She had reservations about resuming intimacy with him and he supposed he couldn’t blame her. He’d promised he wouldn’t cause her to lose her job or get pregnant and that vow had been thoroughly shattered. If she’d rather have a platonic marriage while she learned to trust him again, he should be prepared to accept it, but he found it wasn’t something he could face easily.

  Glancing pensively at her, he saw only a bundle of cascading red curls held in a blue ribbon.

  “Chin up,” he said, refusing to let her hang her head before his family. “Neither of us will be apologists for making a baby out of wedlock.”

  “More like poster children,” she commented under her breath, surprising him with her levity. “I was looking at the pattern in the parquet. This house is beyond words.”

  It was a country cottage compared to the palace in Q’Amara, not that he said so aloud. The staff would put rat poison in his dinner if they overheard such a remark. But she did make him see things with new eyes.

  “I think you’ll be good for me, Fern,” he told her as they arrived at the music room door. “You remind me not to take things that I value for granted.” He held her gaze with a significant look.

  Whether that reassured her at all, he wasn’t given an opportunity to judge. Peabody opened the door to exit the room with an empty tray and stepped back as he saw them, allowing Zafir to enter with Fern.

  Her grip on him tightened, betraying her nerves. Soft greens and old gold leaped at him. He took in antique furniture and silk area rugs that he did take for granted, along with the cheery fire beneath the white mantel and the green-and-gold drapes that closed out the blustery night. This was, in many ways, the happiest place of his childhood since it was where his family had been whole.

  The two people waiting in tight-lipped silence weren’t happy. His bringing a woman into the house was unusual. His accommodating her in his private quarters was eyebrow-raising. Her pregnancy, well, there was a reason his mother had wanted to speak to him upon his arrival. She was always the first to smell scandal and in spite of her personal history, maybe because of it, she was always the first to try smothering any flames that threatened to disgrace the family again.

  His grandfather sat in his favorite wingback chair. He wore a dark suit that set off the gold chain of his pocket watch. Zafir’s mother wore a long black velvet skirt and a starched white blouse. The flouncy ribbon at her throat was the only bit of softness in her elegantly aged demeanor. She had not broken when Zafir’s father died. She’d hardened like carbon placed under extreme pressure.

  His grandfather betrayed no surprise at seeing either of them, even though Zafir’s arrival at the house had been as unannounced as his guest’s.

  “What is that infamous quote by that American ballplayer?” his grandfather asked rhetorically. “Something about déjà vu all over again?”

  Zafir’s mother snapped a look to her father and brought it round to her son, keeping it as sharp as an ice pick. “It would be nice if I could learn certain news directly from you, rather than through the servants,” she stated.

  “They told you I was engaged? How did they know when Fern only accepted my proposal a few minutes ago? Grandfather, Mother—my fiancée, Fern Davenport.”

  Zafir provided their titles, but as his mother offered her hand for a reserved handshake, she said stiffly, “William and Patricia, please,” and found her Lady-of-the-Manor smile. “I see my daughter has replied to my call with a message after all. I was told she was indisposed.” Her gaze slid down the dress Fern was wearing. “I remember now where I heard the name Davenport,” she added condescendingly.

  “Your granddaughters spoke of me?” Fern said, pink beneath the layer of powder on her skin, but earnest, which was appealing in its particular way. “I’ve missed them. I hope they’re well?”

  His mother’s expression flickered with indecision, as she tried to determine if she should soften or not. “I didn’t talk to them long. I was distracted, but yes, they’re quite well. Taking some sort of dance lessons.”

  “You know the girls?” his grandfather asked. “Forgive me for not rising. Gout.”

  “Fern,” Zafir offered as he turned a chair from its place near the fire so she could sit.

  She thanked him with a smile and lowered into it, then answered his grandfather. “Amineh hired me last year to tutor the girls in English. I lived with them for about six months.”

  “Really, Zafir,” Patricia said in an undertone meant only for him. “The governess?”

  “It’s a bit late for snobbery about who we make our children with, isn’t it, Mother?” Zafir replied in a conversational tone loud enough to make Fern pinch her lips together.

  “Are we speaking openly then?” his mother asked, metaphorically dropping her gloves. “Because I have to wonder if you did make this one.”

  “Don’t take offense to that, Fern,” Zafir said without breaking eye contact with his mother. “It’s a family tradition. My grandfather said the same thing to my father.”

  Fern might have gasped. His mother definitely did.

  His grandfather leaned forward to admit to Fern, “It’s true. I did.” Ice rattled in his glass as he lifted it with a palsied hand and tilted it at Zafir’s mother. “All three of my girls were highly sexed. Zafir’s father wasn’t her first.”

  “No, your solicitor was,” Zafir’s mother declared with a very fake, very tart smile.

  “We’ll have a paternity test when the baby is born if it will set your mind at ease, but I’m quite confident it’s mine,” Zafir said. With false geniality aimed at his mother, he added, “You’ll have another grandchild. I thought you’d be delighted.”

  His grandfather snorted. “Heard that one before, too. I hope you’re proud of yourself,” he said to his daughter, raising her ire even further.

  “How is this my fault?” she demanded, elegant and composed, yet indignant. “I didn’t get her pregnant.”

  “No, but you were after Amineh about schooling the girls in English.”

  “Here. I wanted her to put them in school here. Not hire someone—” She glared at Fern.

  Fern sat very still, body language braced and watchful, hands a tight knot in her lap.

  Zafir was sorry to put her through this, especially when his mother was lobbing some heavy artillery and Fern was already sensitive to being blamed, but he wouldn’t have the strong personality he did possess if he hadn’t grown up holding his own against the ones who’d raised him.

  “She did it to please you,” his grandfather pointed out before Zafir could interject, indicating Fern with his half-empty glass. “This girl never would have been under his nose if you hadn’t interfered.”

  “That’s funny,” Zafir said with a snort.

  “It is not,” she retorted fro
stily. “And even if I do bear some responsibility for her hiring someone, you ought to know better than to let an opportunist—”

  “Talk to Ra’id before you decide who took advantage of whom, Mother,” Zafir interrupted, leaning a hand on the back of Fern’s chair. “Fern’s virtue was his responsibility while she was under his roof and he failed to preserve it. He’s barely speaking to me right now.”

  Fern looked up at Zafir, her brows tugged into an anxious crinkle. “Really? He’s not upset with me for being a terrible example for his daughters?”

  “Their grandmother is a terrible example for them,” he stated, enjoying it. “But no, partly he’s taking advantage of the chance to get back at me for all the years I was so protective of Amineh, but he knew exactly how worldly you were. He is genuinely offended with me and remorseful toward you. Expect a sincere apology when you see him next.”

  “That’s not necessary!” she insisted, chin crinkling as she tried to hold a wobbly smile. “I’m just glad they’re not cross with me. I’d love to see Amineh and the girls again.”

  “She’s anxious to see you, too,” he assured her, moving his hand so his knuckles felt the tickle of her curls as he brushed them back from her shoulder. “I should have explained when I said that we come here a few times a year, Amineh and I try to overlap our visits. If she doesn’t come to us in Q’Amara first, we’ll—”

  “Zafir,” his mother said sharply. “You are not actually marrying her. What happened to the marriage you were arranging with that troublemaker’s daughter?”

  “Ra’id has suggested his cousin would be a better match for the girl,” Zafir said, straightening. “As a personal favor to his family, I have stepped out of the running. My real motives will be obvious after our marriage is announced,” he told Fern. “But it’s a very good alliance for both sides, he’s closer to her age, and it still provides the girl’s father some of the influence he craves. By facilitating it, I hope to defuse some of his animosity. My hope is that it will turn out well.”

  “You hope!” his mother repeated. “That doesn’t mean it will. That doesn’t mean you should marry—I’m not being a snob,” she remarked to Fern. “My sister married a male nurse, of all things, so I understand that spouses come in all vocations.”

  “At least she married him,” Zafir’s grandfather said in an aside, proving that pretentiousness came in all sizes in this household.

  “Well, I couldn’t marry, could I?” his mother snapped with such vehemence it took the temperature to arctic levels. “Everything we worried could happen, did. Do I wish I could go back and marry him? Yes! But we’d all be dead now if I had. So no, Zafir, you may not marry this English woman. You won’t stir it all up again and leave me sleepless here, terrified every time the telephone rings. You’ll live here, Fern,” she said firmly. “I realize I’ve said some things that might have put you off, but you’re a mother. You understand our instincts to protect our children. That doesn’t go away no matter how old or pigheaded they get.” She tossed that last statement at Zafir. “And you’ve seen how private the southeast unit is. We won’t be in each other’s way. I would enjoy finally having one of my grandchildren so close.”

  Zafir half stepped so his leg was right up against Fern’s chair. He had expected resistance to his marriage because Fern didn’t have a pedigree dating back to Elizabeth I. Not this.

  “I’m not here to ask permission, Mother.”

  “It’s denied regardless.” His grandfather finished the last of his drink and set it on the table with a decisive clack. “Your mother will be worried sick, Zafir. How can you even consider doing that to her again? And the baby? You can’t put it in harm’s way. Amineh’s situation is different. No. Marry this girl, I agree you should do that much, but leave her here.”

  “No. Don’t marry her. It makes you a target—” Patricia said, voice rising, but Zafir spoke over her, even louder.

  “You two are not keeping my wife and child away from me.” His hand went to Fern’s shoulder. He felt her start at his touch and firmed his grip on her, dimly aware he wasn’t being reassuring but snarlingly possessive. His mother’s anxiety could frighten Fern off.

  “We’re not keeping anyone away from anyone,” his mother said crossly. “I wish you and your sister would stop acting like your father and I were denying each other access when it was a necessary arrangement that worked—”

  “It didn’t work for me!” Zafir boomed so ferociously his sharp words echoed into the silence it created.

  His mother went white and she looked away, chin thrust out.

  Zafir realized his body was primed for a physical altercation, blood racing, muscles twitching with readiness. It wasn’t just the split in his psyche that had prompted his outburst. His broken family was an old fight, but Fern and his baby were his.

  His grandfather hitched forward on his chair, obviously finding it a struggle, but his voice was strong. “Zafir. Your father and I didn’t see eye-to-eye on much, but I never doubted his love for your mother. He wanted to take her to Q’Amara with him. It wasn’t safe. He had to leave her here and he couldn’t even marry her. It was too much for your people to take. He had to keep her like a damned mistress. You were meant to be with him when he was killed. I won’t let you put us through that again. She—” he pointed at Fern “—stays here.” Then he pointed at the floor, his tone that of a man still confident in his position of power despite his physical decline.

  “Do you think I would risk my wife and child if I thought that same danger existed?” Zafir demanded aggressively, but the word love gave him pause. Love had made his father weak enough to take up with a woman that his country had never accepted. It had weakened him in the eyes of the people he governed and had weakened him as a man, prompting him to take ridiculous chances and make bad decisions.

  What was he doing if he took Fern back to Q’Amara? Was it a wise decision? Or a selfish one? Why was he so determined? Lust? Or something else? If you cared about someone, you put their interests, their lives, above your own.

  His mother rose to pull a tissue from a box on a side table. “Was it so horrible to live in two places?” she challenged in a choked voice, keeping her back to them as she dabbed at her eyes.

  Tortured by his inability to grasp his own motivation, Zafir did what any child did under stress. He went to his mother. Taking hold of her shoulders, he set his chin alongside her hair, sorry he’d caused her to cry, but... “If you had thought there was a chance you could have lived together, wouldn’t you have tried?”

  They would have, he knew they would. They had loved each other very deeply, which had formed the trade-off for the difficult decisions they’d had to make. He wasn’t prepared to make those same decisions. He needed Fern with him. Now that he’d seen it as possible, no other option was good enough.

  “Oh, I hate when you sound like him sounding like he knows he’s right,” she said as she brushed his hands off her shoulders and swiped impatiently at her face.

  Disturbed, feeling as though he didn’t quite know himself, Zafir gave her time to compose herself by moving to help his grandfather to his feet. When he offered a hand to Fern, she kept her eyes downcast.

  That shook him. If she refused to come with him, he didn’t know what he would do. Seduce her? Talk her around? Demand?

  Leave her here after all?

  Gently tilting her chin up so she had to show him the reflective silver of her eyes, he said, “I would not take you anywhere that I thought would risk your life, Fern. I hope you trust me in that.”

  “Childbirth notwithstanding?” she said with an ironic quirk of a smile.

  He didn’t laugh. Couldn’t. What had he done to this woman?

  “That was a joke,” she said.

  “It was a rebuke for being careless with you and I deserved it,” he said, dismayed. Furious with himself. He
brooded through the entire meal.

  * * *

  Much to Fern’s relief, Zafir ended the meal by stating they would take after-dinner coffee in his suite. The minute the door was closed behind them, she asked, “Did you do that on my behalf? Do I look as exhausted as I feel?”

  “I’m exhausted,” he countered, eyeing her pensively. “Jet lag is catching up to me. But my grandfather tires easily these days and you have had a long day.” His mouth twisted with self-disgust. “I’m sorry to have put you through all that.”

  “I had a nap earlier,” she reminded him. “I’m tired, but it’s more social fatigue. I feel like I was in the longest job interview of my life. Would you mind?” she asked, showing him where the zipper of the lace sheathe closed at the top of her spine.

  “My grandfather liked you,” Zafir said as though trying to offer a comfort.

  “Who is Esme?” The old man had accidentally called Fern that for the second time right before Zafir had cut short their post-meal chatter.

  “My grandmother. You don’t look anything like her. She was quite short, had black hair and eyes like mine, so I thought for a minute he’d had one too many whiskeys, but I think it’s your manner that made him think of her. She was quiet and thoughtful the way you are. The rest of us are scrappers, determined to jump in ahead of everyone else and take control. She was always an influence of calm, taking time to think about things before she reacted.” He released the zip on her dress and his light touch sent a ripple of pleasure through her.

  “I’m not calm, I’m terrified,” she admitted.

  “About coming with me to Q’Amara?” He touched her shoulder, urging her to turn to face him.

  “I meant in general, but...” His mother’s anxiety had been contagious. The whole time she’d been answering questions about where she grew up and who she knew through Miss Ivy and when she was due, she’d been thinking about where Zafir expected her to sleep and what her future with him might hold.

  A firm kick nudged her from her absorption into a light gasp and a touch on the spot where the baby was insisting more space was needed.