LITMIR.BIZ

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turn smoky and your mouth grow tense.’

      And not just his mouth, Hassan thought wryly, shifting his position slightly. He studied the sweeping movements of her hand and remembered the sketches he’d seen of her sister back in her house in London. The subject matter may have been a little outré for his taste, but there was no doubt that she had talent. ‘You’ve never had any formal training?’ he questioned.

      ‘Nope.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because money was too tight to send me to art school.’

      ‘I thought your father made a fortune.’

      ‘He made several fortunes, and then lost them again. Plus, there were his many alimony payments.’

      ‘He is known for his liking of women,’ he observed.

      ‘Understatement of the century,’ she answered acidly. ‘He is also known for his love of grand schemes and the temptation to make a quick buck, which is why there’s never been any real money in our family. Everything we owned was only ever temporary.’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘I see.’

      ‘I wonder if you do,’ she said as she put a finger to her lips to indicate that he should stop talking. He’d certainly never known what it was like to worry about paying the gas bill, or to hunt in the cupboard to find nothing but a long-forgotten tin of caviar and to wonder whether slimy fish eggs could possibly fill you up.

      For a while she worked in silence and once again Hassan used the opportunity to watch her. Her movements were economical and the studio was completely quiet apart from the scrape of the charcoal and the occasional song of a bird outside. Yet beneath the calm surface of their life, he was aware of a dark kind of uncertainty. A time bomb which was ticking away inexorably. Both of them waiting for something which had the potential to change their lives in ways he couldn’t quite imagine. And didn’t want to imagine.

      He had seen her patting her growing bump, her face growing almost dreamy as she did so. He’d watched her drawing little circles on the tight drum of her belly, as if she was playing some secret game with the child inside her, and his heart had given a painful wrench. He felt jealous, he realised—because his own mother could never have felt a bond like that if she’d been able to just walk away from him and his brother …?

      ‘Hassan, stop frowning.’

      ‘I wasn’t.’

      ‘Yes, you were.’ She stopped drawing, wondering what had caused that terrible bleakness to enter his eyes. ‘What is it, Hassan?’ she questioned softly. ‘What on earth was making you look that way?’

      He saw the understanding on her face and instinct made him want to push her away. She wanted to probe into his past, as all women did. But with Ella he wasn’t in a position to terminate the discussion and then make a cool exit. With Ella there was no escape; the fact that she carried his child had made her a constant in his life. So why not tell her the truth and wipe all that sweet understanding from her face? Why not make her understand where he was coming from, so she’d learn why he could never really love a woman, nor she him?

      ‘I was remembering my mother,’ he said.

      Something about the silky venom in his voice made the hairs on the back of Ella’s neck prickle with apprehension. ‘You never talk about her.’

      ‘No. Haven’t you ever stopped to wonder why?’

      ‘Of course I have.’

      His mouth flattened into a grim line. He’d never told anyone, he realised suddenly. Even he and his brother had never discussed it. They’d locked the memory away in a dark place which was never allowed to see the light of day. As if such a rejection had been too painful to acknowledge, even to themselves. ‘Maybe you should know, Ella. Maybe it will help explain properly the man that I am.’

      Something in his voice was alarming her, and the cold, dark look on his face was scaring her even more.

      ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to,’ she whispered, but his face looked so frozen and forbidding that she wondered if he’d actually heard her.

      He shook his head as the dark memories bubbled up from the deepest recesses of his mind. ‘My mother was a princess from the neighbouring country of Bakamurat,’ he said. ‘And she was betrothed to my father from an early age—as was the custom at the time. They married when she was just eighteen, and not long after that, I was born. Two years later, Kamal came along.’

      ‘But the marriage wasn’t happy?’ Ella saw the clenching of his jaw and bit her lip, appalled at her own naivety. ‘I’m sorry. That’s a stupid question. It can’t have been happy if she … left.’

      ‘In those days there was not such a realistic expectation of happiness as there is today,’ he bit out. ‘But, for a while at least, we had a contented family life, the four of us. Or at least, that’s how it seemed to me.’

      She heard some odd, metallic quality enter his tone. ‘But something happened?’ she guessed.

      ‘Something most certainly did,’ he agreed, his voice bitter. ‘My mother went home to visit her sister in Bakamurat, leaving Kamal and me behind. She was gone longer than my father had anticipated, and when she returned, she was … different.’

      ‘How do you mean, different?’

      For a moment he didn’t speak. He had buried this as deeply as he could, but even now he could vividly recall the distracted air which had made it seem as if his mother barely noticed him. The way she’d looked right through him and Kamal as if they hadn’t been there. She’d gone off her food, so that the weight had dropped away from her and her beautiful face had seemed to be all large, confused dark eyes. In a way, she had never looked more lovely, and yet even at that early age, Hassan had sensed his father’s increasing concern. He remembered the sound of their raised voices when he and Kamal lay in bed at night and the terrible silences at breakfast in the mornings.

      ‘She had fallen in love with a nobleman from Bakamurat.’ He heard the distorted sound of his own voice. ‘She said she could not live without him. That he was the only man she’d ever loved. My father was as patient as I had ever seen him but eventually his patience wore thin. He told her she must choose between them.’

      Ella broke the awful silence with a question she already knew the answer to. ‘And she chose him?’

      ‘Yes. She chose her lover over her husband and she left behind her two little boys while she went off to find what she described as the only man who had ever really understood her.’

      ‘Who told you that?’

      ‘My father.’

      Ella nodded, her heart going out to him, cursing the loose tongues of broken-hearted adults. ‘Sometimes parents tell their children too much,’ she said falteringly. ‘I remember my own mother sobbing and telling me things about my father I wish she hadn’t said. I think she forgot who was the parent and who was the child. Sometimes people act inappropriately when their emotions get the better of them.’

      ‘Exactly! Which is why I don’t do emotion—or “love.”’ His lips curved into a cynical half-smile, thinking that she couldn’t have given him a better platform for the truth if she’d tried. ‘Why embrace something which makes people act shamefully?’ he demanded. ‘Which eats into what is good and what is true. And it changes—that’s the truth of it. Love is as inconstant as the wind. My mother vowed to spend her life with my father and she broke that vow. So how can anyone ever put their trust in it?’

      Ella put the charcoal down, afraid that he would see the sudden trembling of her fingers. The warning in his voice was implicit; she heard it loud and clear. But she wanted to know the ending. Whether any happiness had been squeezed from the sour story he was telling her.

      ‘What happened to your mother?’ she questioned softly.

      He

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