‘Explain? You kidnapped me and I escaped. What is there to explain?’
‘I offered you honourable marriage-’
‘You didn’t offer me, you ordered me, just as you’re ordering now. I refused but you wouldn’t listen.’
‘Because I couldn’t understand how you could prefer your cold-blooded Englishman-’
‘He looks cold-blooded to you because he knows how to behave with some restraint. He doesn’t just grab anything he wants. He respects me.’
‘Respects!’ Ali said scornfully. ‘I despise his kind of respect which is nothing but another name for cowardice. He respects you so much that it was days before he knew you were missing.’
‘Because Howard doesn’t demand an account of every moment of my life. He doesn’t treat me like a possession.’
‘Oh, you westerners! You know nothing. “People aren’t possessions”, “People don’t own each other”, “You can’t belong to someone else”. You see, I know all the standard phrases. But I come from a hot country, with hot- blooded people, and I tell you that if a man really loves a woman he wants her to belong to him in every possible way.
‘It’s not liberal, it’s not fashionable, it’s not correct, but if the love is there he wants everything about her- her heart, her mind, her body, her soul. He wants her thoughts to be of him, her heart to beat for him, and her passion to throb only for him. When she bears children, they must be his children.
‘If she betrays his love his heart breaks. If he turns to find her, and she is not there, he doesn’t wait days and then ask a few mild questions. He goes insane.’
She could almost believe that he had gone insane that moment. His eyes burned with a fierce light and seemed to see right through her.
‘Do you understand?’ he grated. ‘Do you know what you have done?’
‘Yes, I left you,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It was what I had to do. I hoped that I could make you understand, but you can’t understand, can you?’
‘I understand that you belong with me, and this nonsense has to stop-’
‘Stop saying “belong”,’ she insisted desperately. ‘I don’t belong to you. I never will. I can’t love that way.’
‘What is your way of loving?’ he asked savagely. ‘To drive a man to distraction and then abandon him, laugh at him?’
‘I didn’t-’
‘Do you enjoy showing your power? Is that why you did this?’
‘If you think that, we’ll never understand each other,’ she said desperately.
‘Talk!’ he said contemptuously. ‘All this is talk.’ He seized her and tried to pull her into his arms. ‘Come back with me, and I will make you the most envied woman in Kamar. We can forget this and all shall be well between us again. Come back with me, Diamond-’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she cried. ‘Diamond never really existed. She cared for nothing but jewels and having people bow to her. She enjoyed being known as your favourite, and she didn’t mind that it wasn’t going to last, as long as she had her moment of triumph.
‘But that’s not me. My name is Frances and I don’t like being piled high with jewels. They could be made of plastic for all I care. You wanted Diamond, but you weren’t interested in Frances. Ali, have you any idea how wretched we would have made each other?’
It was as though she had struck him. He let his hands fall and stepped back from her.
‘You mean how wretched I would have made you,’ he said in a shocked voice.
‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘I think you would. And I’d have had to live with that wretchedness all my life. But you could have consoled yourself with a succession of favourites.’
His eyes were murderous.
‘You should not have said that to me.’ He wheeled away from her and began to stride the room. ‘You shouldn’t have said it, but perhaps it’s as well you did. It shows how far apart we are. There would have been no other woman but you, no other wife, no favourites. That was how my father treated my mother, and how I would have treated you.
‘Have you forgotten the day I found my cousin bleeding and you standing over him with a knife in your hand? I arrested him because I knew that, however it looked, you must be innocent. That was how much I trusted you. That was how close I thought we were. If you never understood that, then truly our minds never met.’
‘No,’ Fran said, nodding. ‘That’s exactly it. Our minds never met.’
‘And this banker-your mind meets his? Of course you are half a banker yourself.’
‘Luckily for you. How much did a mere woman save you, Ali?’
‘A great deal. I admitted that at the time and thanked you. But I missed the real point-that you have more in common with him than with me. You always did have, and you always will.’
He regarded her strangely. ‘My mother was right, as she is about all things. He is a good marriage for you.’
‘He’s a good banker, if that’s what you mean,’ Fran said stiffly. ‘Henderson & Carver is one of the most highly regarded merchant banks in London, and any day now he’ll be appointed chief executive.’
It felt strange to hear herself talking in that stiff, ‘proper’ way when her heart was breaking at the distance that increased every moment between herself and the man she loved. But she couldn’t bridge that distance, and only pride was left to sustain her.
There were lines of suffering etched on Ali’s face, yet the words that came out belied that suffering. She had hurt him, and that hurt her, yet he would deny his own pain to her, and so keep her at a distance. And that was a denial of love.
‘Chief executive,’ Ali mused. ‘What can I say to the woman who will be the wife of such a powerful man?’
‘Don’t jeer at me. I know he isn’t as powerful as you-’
‘He is nothing like me at all. And that’s why you’ve chosen him, isn’t it?’
‘What’s the point of talking about it?’ she said wearily. ‘Maybe I will marry Howard, maybe I won’t-’
‘Don’t tell me he’s hesitating?’ Ali’s face darkened and he turned away quickly. ‘He’s a fool,’ he said over his shoulder.
‘No, just a very cautious man.’
‘If he was a clever man he would seize you while he had the chance.’
‘Exactly,’ she said in despair. ‘Seize. That will always be the way you think.’
Suddenly she realised what a dangerous thing she’d done in coming here. This was Ali’s territory, where she could simply be taken prisoner again.
At that moment he turned and their eyes met. With a gasp Fran seized up her bag, ran for the door, pulled it open and hurried out into the hall.
The doorman on duty was the same one as last time. He’d learned his lesson by now, and stood in front of the front door, arms folded.
Ali came out behind her. Fran turned to look at him with a face full of accusation.
‘Let her go,’ he said.
The porter stared, not sure he’d heard properly.
The door opened, and the next moment Fran was gone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE buzzer went on Howard Marks’s desk. ‘Someone to see you, Mr Marks,’ came his secretary’s voice.
‘You must forgive my arriving without an appointment,’ said the man in the doorway. ‘But my business is rather urgent.’
‘Your Highness,’ Howard said, rising hastily to his feet. ‘This is an unexpected honour.’
Ali regarded him askance. A voice was running through his head, making an ironic commentary on what was happening. It was unnerving because it was unfamiliar. In fact, it had never happened before he met Fran.
