LITMIR.BIZ

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      Inside the package was a handwritten letter from her father. His letter would no doubt be a reminder of how she should conduct herself and how angry she had made him, Sophia reflected. She was tempted not to read it but she had been brought up with an observance to duty that prevented her from doing that.

      Sitting down she opened the letter and began to read it. To her astonishment, rather than being critical of her and angry, her father’s words were relatively warm and approving.

      ‘My dear daughter,’ he had written, ‘I write to tell you how delighted I am by your marriage. It is an excellent marriage and one that pleases me a great deal. To have the ties first established via the friendship Alessandro and Ash shared as schoolboys further cemented by your marriage to him can only strengthen the bond between our two states. Such bonds play an important role in the minds of rulers, which is why I have always stressed to all of my children the importance of the right kind of marriages.

      ‘If I have been overstrict with you then it is because I have been concerned for you. However, I know that in Ash’s care you will be well protected.

      ‘I know, too, that our two states can look forward to forging even stronger bonds via their shared business, as well as their shared personal interests.’

      The letter was signed with her father’s familiar bold and flourishing signature.

      The words blurred in front of her as she read them again through the tears she couldn’t hold back. My dear daughter, her father had called her, even if his letter had turned quickly to the more material advantages he hoped her marriage would bring to Santina.

      Such small things really, a kind letter from her father, and an acknowledgement earlier in the day from Ash that he trusted her enough to give her a personal role to play with his people. Neither of them could compare with the great love that had once been her goal, but in their way both of them offered her some comfort and some hope for the future.

      A young maid arrived with her tea and biscuits. Smiling at the girl as she quietly left the room, Sophia sat down to drink the tea she had poured for her. When she’d finished, she put down her cup and then stood, ready to sort through the boxes of clothes that had been sent to her from her home.

      Two hours later, she and Parveen had opened all but three of them and filled virtually all her wardrobes and cupboard space with the exception of the small row of wardrobes along the dressing room’s shortest wall.

      ‘What’s left in these last three boxes can go in there, Parveen,’ Sophia told the maid, indicating the remaining wardrobes.

      Immediately her maid looked apprehensive and uncomfortable as she, too, looked at the narrow run of wardrobes, but made no attempt to go and open them.

      ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ she asked her. After a brief struggle where it seemed to Sophia that Parveen wasn’t going to answer her, eventually she managed to blurt out quickly, her head down as though she didn’t want to look directly at Sophia, ‘So sorry, Maharani Sophia, but the clothes of the Maharani Nasreen are in there.’

      Nasreen’s clothes were still here all these years after her death. Shock, anger, distaste—Sophia felt them all. A cold shiver ran over her skin, soon followed by an overwhelming feeling she didn’t want to name.

      Ash obviously loved his first wife so much that he couldn’t even bear to dispose of her clothes. They were still stored here in the room that was now hers. Nasreen still had Ash’s love; she had his devotion, his loyalty. She had probably been inside his head on their wedding night, and it was probably because of his love for her that he had not been able to bring himself to return to that bed. Well, she might have to put up with all of that, but she was not going to put up with Nasreen’s clothes in what were now her wardrobes, Sophia decided wrathfully.

      ‘Very well, Parveen,’ she told the maid, adding, ‘you can go now, I will deal with the rest of my own clothes myself.’

      The girl looked relieved to be dismissed, Sophia saw.

      As soon as Parveen had gone and she was alone in the dressing room, Sophia went over to the short length of wardrobe doors. Standing in front of them, she took a deep breath and then before she could change her mind she yanked open one of the two pairs of double doors. The draft of air caused by the speed with which she had opened the doors caused the delicate silks inside the wardrobe to move sinuously together almost as though someone was actually wearing them. Sophia closed her eyes. The heavy scent escaping from the wardrobe was making her feel slightly sick and dizzy but as desperately as she wanted to close them and to shut away the sight of the delicate garments so different to her own clothes, once worn by the wife Ash had loved, she couldn’t.

      Her mood suddenly changed, her earlier fierce, righteous wrath giving way to something more self-destructive and painful. Just seeing the clothes of the woman Ash loved touched those scars within her she knew she must not allow to be reopened. But it was too late. Like serpents escaping from a carelessly sealed basket, the old pain was back.

      Reaching out she touched the clothes—red and gold ceremonial saris, sugar-almond-coloured salwar kameez in soft pinks, blues and turquoises. What would she look like dressed in these clothes of another woman? The woman Ash loved. It was as though a terrible compulsion that she couldn’t resist had possessed her.

      Unable to stop herself she reached into the wardrobe and removed a pale blue salwar kameez set. Like someone in the grip of a dream—or under hypnosis—she walked into the bedroom with it. She was shaking from head to foot. She knew that what she was doing was wrong—for Nasreen, for Ash and for herself—but somehow she just couldn’t stop herself, and it made her feel sickened and ashamed of her need to see how Nasreen would have looked. Because Ash had wanted Nasreen, desired her as he did not desire Sophia?

      No. She did not care about that, but she had her pride and she and Ash must have a child, a son who would one day continue the royal line. That was how it was for them. And besides … Besides, didn’t she herself long for the promise of a new life to love, a child—children—to whom she could give the love she already knew instinctively she would have for them? Quickly she started to undress, despising herself for what she was doing and yet unable to stop herself.

      Walking in the private gardens into which his apartment opened, Ash asked himself why the surroundings which normally gave him so much pleasure and solace, this evening made him feel so alone. Was it because their enjoyment, like the enjoyment of the act of love, should be a shared pleasure? His muscles tightened, his body heavy with desire. Sophia. Just thinking about her was enough to send that desire spilling urgently through him.

      Every night since their first as a married couple the memory of the way she had looked at his body had tormented him as he tried to find sleep. He wanted to see that look in her eyes again. He wanted to touch her, hold her, lose himself in her as he blotted out the past while together they created their own shared future in the shape of their child. He wanted. He wanted her…. A tormented groan broke from the rigid tension of his throat. He turned back towards the palace, his stride quickening with impatience, just as his body was quickening with his need.

      In her bedroom Sophia stared at the stranger looking back at her from the full-length mirror, a stranger wearing another woman’s clothes and smelling of another woman’s scent…. The salwar kameez was slightly loose on her own narrow waist and Nasreen must have been a shade taller than her because the fabric was pooling slightly on the floor around her bare feet. The fine silk shimmered as she walked, subtly hinting at the body that lay beneath it, the diamante beading decorating the scarf with which she had covered her head shimmering as she moved.

      Experimentally, Sophia draped the scarf over her lower face, and watched her image in the full-length mirror in front of her. Was this what Ash longed for whenever he had to look at her? Another woman, the woman he truly loved?

      He shouldn’t be doing this but he couldn’t help or stop himself, Ash admitted, too impatient to use the public twisting labyrinth of corridors that led to Sophia’s apartments, using instead the passage that his great-grandfather had had installed when the royal apartments had been remodelled

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