LITMIR.BIZ

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the doors to the courtyard behind him, he made for his own quarters with a sinking heart. He did not like the sound of this. There was going to be trouble ahead or his name wasn’t Halim Mohammed Zarahh Akbar el-Akkrah.

      At that moment in the kingdom of A’Qadiz, in another sunny courtyard in another royal palace, Ladies Celia and Cassandra were taking tea, sitting on mountainous heaps of cushions under the shade of a lemon tree. Beside them, lying contentedly in a basket, Celia’s baby daughter made a snuffling noise, which had the sisters laughing with delight, for surely little Bashirah was the cleverest and most charming child in all of Arabia.

      Cassie put her tea glass back on the heavy silver tray beside the samovar. ‘May I hold her?’

      ‘Of course you may.’ Celia lifted the precious bundle out of the basket and handed her to Cassie, who balanced her niece confidently on her lap, smiling down at her besottedly.

      ‘Bashirah,’ Cassie said, stroking the baby’s downy cheek with her finger, ‘Such a lovely name. What does it mean?’

      ‘Bringer of joy.’

      Cassie smiled. ‘How apt.’

      ‘She likes you,’ Celia replied with a tender smile, quite taken by the charming image her sister and her daughter presented. In the weeks since Cassie had arrived in A’Qadiz she seemed to have recovered some of her former sunny disposition, but it saddened Celia to see the stricken look that still made a regular appearance in her sister’s big cornflower-blue eyes on occasions when she thought herself unobserved. The shadows that were testimony to the many sleepless nights since that thing had happened had faded now, and her skin had lost its unnatural pallor. In fact, to everyone else, Cassandra was the radiant beauty she had always been, with her dark golden crown of hair, and her lush curves, so different from Celia’s own slim figure.

      But Celia was not everyone else, she was Cassie’s oldest sister, and she loved her dearly. It was a bond forged in adversity, for they had lost their mother when young, and though the gap between Cassie and their next sister, Cressida, was just a little more than three years, it was sufficient to split the family into two distinct camps, the two older ones who struggled to take Mama’s place, and the three younger ones, who needed to be cared for.

      ‘Poor Cassie,’ Celia said now, leaning over to give her sister a quick hug, ‘you’ve had such a hard time of it these last three months—are you sure you’re ready for this challenge?’

      ‘Don’t pity me, Celia,’ Cassie replied with a frown. ‘Most of what I’ve been forced to endure has been of my own doing.’

      ‘How can you say that! He as good as left you at the altar.’

      Cassie bit her lip hard. ‘You exaggerate a little. The wedding was still two weeks away.’

      ‘The betrothal had been formally announced, people were sending gifts—we sent one ourselves—and the guests had been invited to the breakfast. I know you think you loved him, Cassie, but how you can defend him after that …’

      ‘I’m not defending him.’ Cassie opened her eyes wide to stop the tears from falling. ‘I’m just saying that I’m as much to blame as Augustus.’

      ‘How so?’ Until now, Cassie had refused to discuss her broken betrothal, for she wanted only to forget it had ever happened, and Celia, who could see that the wound to her sister’s pride was as deep as that to her heart, had tactfully refrained from questioning her. Now, it seemed, her patience was about to pay off, and she could not help but be curious. She leaned over to lift Bashirah from Cassie, for she was making that little impatient noise that preceded an aggressive demand for sustenance. Celia thought of Ramiz and smiled as she settled the baby at her breast. The child had clearly inherited her demanding temperament from her father. ‘Won’t you tell me, Cassie?’ she said gently. ‘Sometimes talking about things, however painful, helps, and I’ve been so worried about you.’

      ‘I’m perfectly all right,’ Cassie replied with a sniff.

      She looked so patently not ‘all right’ that Celia laughed. ‘Liar.’

      Cassie managed a weak smile in return. ‘Well, I may not be all right at the moment, but I will be, I promise. I just need to prove myself, make a success of something for a change, give everyone, myself included, something to be proud of.’

      ‘Cassie, we all love you, no matter what. You know that.’

      ‘Yes. But there’s no getting away from it, Celia, I’ve behaved very foolishly indeed, and Papa is still furious with me. I can’t go back to England, not until I’ve proved I’m not a complete nincompoop.’

      ‘Cassie, Augustus failed you, not the other way round.’

      ‘He was my choice.’

      ‘You can’t choose who you fall in love with, Cass.’

      ‘I’ll tell you something, Celia, I’m going to make very sure I choose not to fall in love ever again.’

      ‘Oh, Cassie, you say the silliest things.’ Celia patted her sister’s knee. ‘Of course you will fall in love again. The surprising thing is that you have not fallen in love before, for you are such a romantic.’

      ‘Which is precisely the problem. So I’m not going to be, not anymore. I’ve learned a hard lesson, and I’m determined not to have to learn it again. If I tell you how it was, maybe then you’ll understand.’

      ‘Only if you’re sure you want to.’

      ‘Why not? You can’t think worse of me than I already do. No, don’t look like that, Celia, I don’t deserve your pity.’ Cassie toyed with the cerulean-blue ribbons that were laced up the full sleeves of her delicate-figured muslin dress. ‘Augustus said these ribbons were the same colour as my eyes,’ she said with a wistful smile. ‘Then again, he also told me that my eyes were the colour of the sky at midnight, and that they put a field of lavender to shame. He brought me a posy of violets in a silver filigree holder and told me they were a hymn to my eyes, too, now I come to think about it. I didn’t even question the veracity of it, though I know perfectly well what colour of blue my own eyes are. That should give you an idea of how deeply in love I thought I was.’

      A pink flush stole up the elegant line of Cassie’s throat. Even now, three months after it had all come to such a horrible end, the shame could still overwhelm her. Hindsight, as Aunt Sophia said, was a wonderful thing, but every time Cassie examined the course of events—and she examined them in minute detail most frequently—it was not Augustus’s shockingly caddish behaviour, but her own singular lack of judgement that mortified her most.

      ‘Augustus St John Marne.’ The name, once so precious, felt bitter on her tongue. Cassie made a moue of distaste. ‘I first met him at Almack’s, where I was fresh from another run-in with Bella.’

      ‘Bella Frobisher!’ Celia exclaimed. ‘Who would have believed Papa could stoop so low? I still can’t believe she’s taken Mama’s place. I doubt I will ever be able to bring myself to address her as Lady Armstrong.’

      ‘No, even Aunt Sophia stops short of that, and she has been pretty much won over since James was born. I have to say though, Celia, our half-brother is quite adorable.’

      ‘A son and heir for Papa. So the auspicious event has mollified even our terrifying aunt?’

      Cassie giggled. ‘Bella Frobisher may be a witless flibberty-gibbet,’ she said in a fair imitation of their formidable Aunt Sophia’s austere tone, ‘but her breeding is sound, and she’s come up trumps with young James. A fine lusty boy to secure the title and the line, just what the family needs. And honestly, Celia, you should see Papa. He actually visits James in the nursery, which is far more than he did with any of us, I’m sure. He has him signed up for Harrow already. Bella thinks I’m jealous, of course.’ Cassie frowned. ‘I don’t know, maybe I am, a little. Papa has only ever been interested in us girls as pawns in his diplomatic games—he and Bella had drawn up a short list of suitors for me, you know. I

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