AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He thought back to his spartan childhood. Of the loneliness of his life in the palace and of the powerful father who had never been there for him, nor for any of his family. Any snatched hours spent with his son had been spent teaching him weaponry and horsemanship, and drumming into him that women could weaken a man and sap his essential strength.
But Murat could never remember being shown affection by the man who had sired him. Even his mother’s love had been diluted by her long, depressive illness, when she would sit staring at the blank wall of her sitting room, rather than engaging with Murat or his sister.
And wasn’t that the truth about human emotion—that you could never rely on it? He thought of his friend Suleiman, the person to whom he had once been closer than to anyone in the world, and the man Murat had relied upon to give his sovereign one hundred per cent unswerving loyalty.
Yet Suleiman had let the wiles of a woman twist him away from that loyalty and devotion, hadn’t he? He had taken the woman destined to be Murat’s bride and had made her his own. And although Murat had now forgiven his oldest friend, he still felt the bitter twist of pain when he remembered how his blood brother had betrayed him.
And that was why he had always kept his heart steeled against an emotion which some men called love, but which Murat saw as nothing but trouble. Human hearts could not be trusted, nor relied upon—and ‘love’ was the most unreliable emotion of all. Far better to stay clear of the clutches of something which had the power to destroy much of what it touched.
‘Hadn’t you better tell me about this meeting?’ Catrin said, her voice breaking his thoughts as she crossed one leg over the other.
It was difficult to concentrate on anything other than the toned gleam of her ankles, but Murat did his best. ‘Well, Niccolo you have, of course, already met.’
‘Yes.’ There was a pause. ‘And is he bringing the lovely Lise with him?’
‘He didn’t say.’ His gaze slid over her. ‘Will you have a problem with that, if he does?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s not my place to have a problem with it. And anyway, she was only telling the truth. If it hadn’t been for Lise, I might still be stumbling around in the dark. Maybe I should be grateful to her, for making me face up to the truth and to see our relationship for what it really is...was,’ she corrected hastily. ‘Who else is coming?’
‘Alekto Sarantos,’ he said. ‘We met him once in Paris, if you remember?’
Memory was a road Catrin didn’t want to take, but sometimes someone planted you on that super-fast highway and there wasn’t a thing you could do about it. She recalled a man with ebony hair and extraordinary blue eyes. Alekto had been surrounded by women, looking more like a rock star than a businessman. But he had seemed almost bored by the adoration of the women surrounding him, as if he would rather be anywhere else than at the city’s most glitzy party.
Unlike her, who had been revelling in every glorious moment. It had been like a dream come true. The most romantic city in the world. With Murat.
Her heart gave a painful wrench as she remembered tick
ertape cascading from the ceiling at midnight, and the Sultan laughing as he brushed the streams of paper from her face, before bending his head to kiss her.
‘I remember,’ she said, swallowing down the lump in her throat.
She bent her head to stare at her hands, because anything was better than having to look into his hard, hawk-like face and meet the black gleam of his eyes. Every time she looked at him she wanted to touch him. And every time she touched him, it would just make their inevitable parting all the harder. That was a certainty which had been growing all day.
She had realised her mistake in agreeing to come here from the moment she’d stepped onto the plane, discovering that it was all too easy to slip back into the role of being Murat’s consort. It had suddenly dawned on her that she needed to put some kind of distance between the two of them in order to protect herself, which was why she had pulled back a little during the flight. But it hadn’t been easy to remain neutral—not when the Sultan was behaving with such attentiveness towards her.
‘Look up there,’ he said suddenly. ‘We are approaching the Gardinello estate.’
She looked out of the window to where an elaborate pair of wrought-iron gates was opening to let them through. Their car moved slowly up a steep incline, before coming to a halt outside an ochre-tinted farmhouse. Catrin stepped out into a sunny courtyard filled with pots of tumbling white flowers, where a cat lay sleeping peacefully beneath the shade of an olive tree. Tiered gardens were planted with cypress and cherry trees and she breathed in the heady scent of sun-warmed herbs, and flowers.
‘Look behind you,’ said Murat softly.
She turned round to see olive groves and vineyards and a sprawling orchard of fruit trees. There was the glimmer of an infinity pool and, beyond that, the mirrored expanse of Lake Trasimeno. Suddenly, she found herself filled with a powerful sense of yearning, fuelled by the beauty of her surroundings and by the strength of her feelings for the man who stood beside her.
Sliding on her sunglasses, she tried desperately to regain some of her lost equilibrium—trying to focus on the mundane rather than the impossible. Everywhere she looked she could see activity. Their cases were being removed from the car by people whose names she would probably never know and inside the house there would be yet more people preparing food and ensuring that all the Sultan’s needs would be met. Bodyguards were moving swiftly towards the forested area which bordered the top of the estate, presumably to check that the fences were secure. She saw them muttering into their cell phones as they scaled the green bank. With something of a shock, she realised she’d grown used to this life of being guarded and protected—and in a funny kind of way she was even going to miss that.
‘Where are the others?’ she asked.
‘They’re arriving later.’
Her eyes met his. ‘How much later?’
‘Does it matter? I want some more time alone with you, Cat. And ultimately, I want you to change your mind about leaving me.’
‘That isn’t going to happen.’ She bit her lip. ‘And you’re not making this very easy for me.’
‘That was never my intention.’ His black eyes gleamed. ‘Did you really think it would be?’
She gave a short laugh. Of course she hadn’t. She’d watched him enough in the past during countless dinners with business colleagues, when he’d been at his manipulative best. Murat would always use whatever method was best suited to make sure he always got exactly what he wanted. ‘No. If I’d stopped to think about it, I should have guessed that you would do exactly this.’
