Where was she? Why was his heart in his mouth and his pulse racing with something that might have been described as fear, had he been any other man? Had he any other blood than Farrehed warrior ancestry coursing through his veins?
He caught Malik’s eye. He pointed in the direction of the balcony.
The moment his eyes rested on Eloise’s slim shoulders, flashing through the night like a beacon, he felt his pulse finally slow and he took his first breath. He drank in the sight of her, hair and skirts swirling around her thin frame.
When he had first caught sight of her in the stables, two years before, he had thought her slender. He had thought her beautiful. When his father had unknowingly re-introduced her to him later that day he’d been surprised. His father thought this slip of a girl could be his wife? He’d doubted at the time that she’d last even a month in the Farrehed heat.
Perhaps, had he paid attention to her surprising survival skills back then, he might have been better prepared for his wife.
Though looking at her now, he thought Eloise seemed lost. There was no other way to describe it. And just like that his conscience poked and prodded. There was a part of him that cursed the past—cursed all the steps that had brought them here. That had made him form those words around a ridiculous lie that would bind Eloise to him in a way her acceptance of his offer would not.
Malik appeared at his side.
‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ his old friend asked again. As if he too realised the precipice they stood on.
No. Everything in him wanted to reject the path he had set in motion just five minutes earlier. But he didn’t have a choice. He only had nine hours until the press conference, and if she wasn’t by his side when it happened then fate would not be kind. He’d needed to force the issue and he’d done just that.
‘See to it that we are not disturbed.’
Malik bowed, and retreated behind the glass door.
Odir stepped towards her, momentarily blocked by the wind as if even the elements were working in her favour, trying to keep him from reaching her, touching her. But that desire, that need, was a weakness he couldn’t afford—had never been able to afford.
So he said words that he knew would keep her at bay. ‘Hardly the dutiful wife—running off just after my speech, habibti.’
Eloise whirled round, hair flying, skirts billowing in the wind. Odir hadn’t realised how close he had come to her and he should have. Because she shoved at him with both her hands and only the surprise of it allowed her enough force to push him back.
He felt Malik move behind him. Did he really think that his slip of a wife was enough of a threat to justify her removal? He raised his arm to ward Malik off, even as almost laughably light blows rained down on his chest.
‘In all the time I have known you I have never known you to lie,’ she hurled at him.
‘No, that was your department.’
‘Well, the world will be bitterly disappointed when instead of news of the next heir for Farrehed they’ll be receiving news of the Prince’s divorce.’
* * *
Eloise gave no heed to the fact that she was shouting. And that was something she never did.
‘Never raise your voice, never cause a scene.’
Her father’s directives were lost on her now, in the sheer fury of what had been done to her in the last ten hours.
She saw Malik shift on his feet behind Odir and it brought her back to the present immediately. Instantly she stepped away from her husband.
‘Leave us, Malik,’ her husband ordered with a familiar ruthlessness.
‘But My—’
‘Stop right there, Malik. I’ve told you. Leave.’
‘It doesn’t change a thing, you know. What you just said,’ Eloise claimed desperately. ‘I’ll still leave.’
‘I think you underestimate the sheer power of social media. Right now there are over a hundred of society’s best-placed individuals drinking to our health and that of our unborn child. The news will spread quickly, and before the sun rises over the palace walls in Farrehed there will be a celebration the like of which has never been seen by my countrymen.’
With each word he stepped closer and closer to her, pushing her back further towards the rail of the balcony, building a wall around her from which she couldn’t escape.
‘And what happens when I fail to produce this immaculately conceived child? What happens in a few months’ time when I’m not showing any signs of pregnancy? Are you going to tell another lie to cover it up? Will you expect me and your whole country to mourn the death of a lie?’
The horror of it was all too much for Eloise.
‘You’re an utter bastard, Odir.’
And that, it seemed, was what it took to push her husband over the edge.
‘You think I wanted this?’
Now it was he who was shouting—and she had never heard her husband shout. Not even that fateful night when he’d ordered her from his sight and his palace.
‘Do you think that I enjoyed telling that lie?’
‘It doesn’t really matter to me whether or not you got some perverse enjoyment out of it. I will not agree to this. It’s the twenty-first century, Odir. You can’t expect to lie, bribe and cheat me back to your side.’
‘You really think that after this you’d be able to leave and live some kind of normal life? Go back to whatever man you have holed up in Switzerland?’
‘What man? Seriously? You think I’ve been living with someone in Zurich? Tell me, Odir, is there anyone that I haven’t slept with other than yourself?’
He glared at her in the light of the moon.
‘And when this immaculately conceived child does make an appearance will you be
