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As she paused to absently stroke the back of a carved wooden brush on a dresser, Raif’s phone buzzed and he checked it with a frown.
‘I must return to the ground floor,’ he said simply. ‘There are people awaiting my reappearance. I should make the effort to speak to them.’
Claire connected with his brilliant dark golden eyes and a tingle ran over her entire skin surface. That was the effect Raif always had on her. Sometimes it felt like touching a live wire, an electric surge of energy that flared through her whole body, awakening every intimate nerve cell. Her breasts felt full, the core of her pulsing, sending colour to flare over her cheekbones.
Raif studied her with flaring intensity and paced forward. ‘I do not want to leave you here alone.’
‘I will be fine,’ Claire told him more calmly than she felt, reckoning that their future would be full of such moments. He would always be carrying the burden of large expectations. She was an adjunct as his queen, not a leading light. She couldn’t step in for him, she could only offer the support of understanding.
‘I’ll order tea for you,’ he told her. ‘The room next door is a sitting room and furnished...’ A groan escaped him and he drove his fingers through his thick black hair in a gesture of frustration and embarrassment. ‘That I should tell you that it isfurnishedas though that were some kind of consolation.’
‘Raif...’ Claire lifted her hand and stretched up to tidy his hair again. ‘Stop worrying about me. I’m good at managing and at being independent.’
‘Yes,but—’
‘No buts,’ she declared cheerfully. ‘You didn’t marry a woman who needs you hovering over her every minute of the day. I’m not helpless.’
And then he was gone, and she swallowed back the thickness in her throat and walked to the room next door. A few minutes later an older woman arrived with a tray, and she was in the act of pouring a cup of tea when a knock sounded on the ajar door.
‘Yes?’ she called.
Nahla appeared on the threshold. ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, Your Majesty,’ she murmured tautly. ‘But I wanted to apologise for my uncle’s behaviour.’
‘Please come in and sit down,’ Claire suggested, seeing the brightness of tears in the delicate brunette’s eyes and marvelling that she could look so sad without losing an atom of her soulful beauty. ‘Prince Umar didn’t say anything which could have caused offence,’ she declared calmly.
Nahla sat down awkwardly opposite. ‘But he is downstairs now cornering your husband. He will list my recent...er misfortunes and attempt to push Raif into hiring me onto the household staff. It is very trying, and I can assure you that I amnotexpecting you to employ me. I have no special skills to offer. I have only been a wife and a mother since I left school. I know little about the world beyond our borders. But now I’m a widow, even worse, the widow of a bankrupt, and those facts are a social embarrassment to my uncle and aunt.’
‘And you and your children live with them,’ Claire recalled quietly. ‘That must be awkward.’
Nahla flushed. ‘They have been very good to me. Please believe that I am not complaining. But my uncle can be too insistent in his requests without meaning to be and once he gets an idea in his head, he is very stubborn.’
Claire offered her tea and let her talk, recognising that she was distressed. Nahla had gone through depression and a nervous breakdown after losing the husband she described as her soulmate and the loss of the business that had supported her family had been an additional blow.
‘You speak terrific English,’ Claire remarked.
Nahla smiled. ‘I attended an English school up until my parents died.’
‘And you speak the language here and know the culture and presumably many of Quristan’s VIPs,’ Claire commented as Nahla nodded in understated confirmation. ‘Well, then, I would like to offer you a job. I need someone to interpret Quristani life for me. Raif will be too busy to help me much.’
It took quite a bit of convincing for Nahla to be persuaded that she could be of help. The other woman had a low estimate of her own abilities and clearly felt both uneducated and insufficiently well-travelled to suit such a role. But Claire had taken a liking to her and knew that she would much prefer someone sincere and unassuming like Nahla to some polished court official who might well makeherfeel inadequate.
An hour later as Raif returned to his private wing of the palace he was inwardly celebrating the fact that he had successfully and with great tact derailed his uncle’s hope of palming Nahla off on the royal household. The very last thing he needed was daily exposure to the woman he had fallen in love with as a teenager, and it would be horribly inappropriate for her to work for his wife. His loyalties had changed, he recognised with wry acceptance. Once he would have done anything to aid Nahla, and, indeed, she had his full sympathies in her current plight. However, Claire was his wife and the future mother of his son and his strongest loyalty now belonged to her...
CHAPTER NINE
CLAIREWASFEELINGmightily pleased with herself by the time evening fell. She had been very busy, and she loved being busy.
She had got on with Nahla like a house on fire. Only Nahla would have stepped straight into the job of acting as Claire’s guide and interpreter the same day that she accepted the position. Claire had fully explored the section of the palace that was to be their home and decided where she wanted certain things and, there being no shortage of either rooms or space, it had been a most enjoyable enterprise. Of course, over dinner she would have to run her ideas past Raif first and gauge his reaction.
After reaching those decisions, she had asked Nahla to escort her down to the palace kitchen and conditions down there in the string of basement rooms that acted as the palace kitchens had horrified her. Shahbaz, the head of household, had joined them and waxed lyrical in his agreement that something had to be done to renovate those dark medieval caves.
Nahla had contrived to find them a table and chairs for a room that could act as a dining room for her and Raif in the short term. Thanks to Nahla’s presence, she had even been able to tell the chef in the basement what sort of food Raif liked to eat. Who knew better than his former assistant chef on board his yacht?
Raif was emerging from the shower, wrapped in a towel, when she arrived equally bare to take advantage of the same facility. ‘Thrills on top of thrills, wife,’ he teased, catching her straight into his arms.
‘I’m all hot and sweaty,’ she lamented.
‘I’m not that choosy after so many days without you,’ he admitted thickly.
