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‘Yes, sir.’ Zaliha bobbed another curtsy and went straight about her business.
‘I was planning to explore a little,’ Chrissie protested in a perturbed undertone as Jaul urged her round a corner and up a stone staircase.
‘Later, perhaps. Right now I have something important to discuss with you,’ he proffered with unexpected gravity. ‘This wing of the palace is entirely ours and private,’ Jaul announced as they reached the second floor.
As he opened the door into a clearly newly furnished and decorated nursery, their nanny stepped forward and grinned with pleasure at her surroundings. Two young women hurried towards them to offer their assistance with the twins.
‘You and Jane will have to beat off helpers with a stick in the palace. It has been too many years since there were royal children below this roof,’ Jaul commented, entwining Chrissie’s fingers in his to guide her further down the wide corridor. She was relieved to see that contemporary furnishings featured in the large rooms she passed. Time might have stopped dead downstairs in what she deemed to be public rooms, but in Jaul’s part of the palace time had mercifully moved on.
He swung open a door into an elegant reception room furnished in fresh shades of smoky blue and cream and stood back for her to precede him. She slid past him, taut with curiosity while the scent of him flared her nostrils, clean warm male laced with an evocative hint of the spicy cologne that was so uniquely him it made her tummy flip like a silly schoolgirl. Her cheeks burnished with colour at the reflection, Chrissie moved away from him as he doffed his jacket and loosened his tie.
‘You said we had something to discuss,’ she prompted with determined cool.
‘My advisers have asked us to consider staging a traditional Marwani wedding to allow our people to celebrate our marriage with us,’ Jaul informed her, knocking Chrissie wildly off balance with that suggestion. ‘There would be a public holiday declared. The ceremony itself would be private...as is our way...but we would release photos of the occasion—’
‘You’re asking me to marry you a-again?’ Chrissie stammered in shock.
‘Yes. I suppose that is what I’m asking.’ Lustrous dark eyes flaring gold and then veiling below black curling lashes, Jaul levelled his gaze on her.
Her frown deepened. ‘You want us to remarry even though we’ve agreed only to stay together until you feel a divorce would be acceptable to your people?’
His stunning bone structure tightened, brilliant eyes narrowing. ‘I don’t want a divorce. I haven’t wanted a divorce from the moment I learned that we had two children.’
Shaken by his proposition, Chrissie sank down onto a sofa before steeling herself to say rather woodenly, ‘I don’t care about what you want. I only care about what you agreed. And you agreed that I could have a divorce if I wanted one.’
‘But our children need both of us. I grew up without a mother—she died the day I was born. Children need mothers and fathers. I want this to be a real marriage and not a pretence,’ he countered without apology.
Chrissie sprang out of her seat, revitalised by that admission. ‘So, you lied to me in London. You just said what you had to say to persuade me to return to Marwan with you but clearly you never had any intention of giving me a divorce.’
Jaul stood his ground, wide shoulders rigid, lean, powerful body tense as he watched her pace. ‘I did not lie. I merely hoped that you would eventually change your mind about wanting a divorce. Hoping is not a lie, nor is it a sin,’ he assured her drily.
A bitter little laugh erupted from Chrissie at that exercise in semantics. ‘But you’re way too good at fooling me, Jaul. You did it two years ago when I first married you and I trusted you then and we both know how that turned out. Doesn’t it occur to you that I could never want to stay with a husband I can’t trust? And that going through a second wedding ceremony would only make a mockery of my feelings of betrayal?’ she demanded emotively, struggling to rein back her agitated emotions. ‘After all, you still haven’t explained why you left me two years ago and never got in touch again...’
