The Desert Prince's Mistress (16 page)

E
VERYONE
in the village said there had never been an event like it, and they were quite right. The wedding of the youngest Black girl took place in a tiny village church in the middle of the English countryside and was attended by the leading members of the Maraban royal family!

‘Won’t people ask questions?’ Lara had asked Darian anxiously one morning, when she was trying to get out of bed.

He pulled her back into his arms. ‘Ask what?’ he said, his voice muffled, but then it was very difficult to talk at the same time as you were kissing somebody’s neck.

‘About…’ Lara closed her eyes. This was hopeless. She couldn’t think straight—but then, in his arms she always felt like that. ‘About why Khalim and Rose and the children will be there.’

‘Rose is your friend,’ he said simply. ‘That’s all anyone needs to know.’

For, after much thought and discussion with Rose and Khalim, they had decided to keep Darian’s ancestry a secret. Nothing would be gained by him acknowledging a title which he had no intention of claiming, and neither of them wanted the intrusion that media interest would bring, nor the risk of Maraban dissidents knowing where they lived.

But Darian had fallen more than a little bit in love with the country, and his latest career direction had taken that fact into account. He was now establishing new trade links between Maraban and the West, becoming a sympathetic and enthusiastic advisor to Khalim, his brother.

Lara’s family had welcomed him with open arms—he had won them over that first day, each and every one of them—and Lara’s mother had taken her aside just before they’d left to go back to London.

‘You’re a lucky girl,’ she had said wistfully. ‘He loves you very much.’

She didn’t need to be told that. Sometimes Lara felt that she had to pinch herself, to see whether it really could be true—but it was. And with love had come other changes. She had taken a new career path, discovering that she no longer wanted to chase bit parts in stupid commercials or play a minor character in a show which seemed to close almost as soon as it had opened. Nor put herself up for rejection every time she went on a ‘go-see’. She felt she had been given so much that now she wanted to put something back.

Soon after she moved into Darian’s apartment she had enrolled on a course to learn how to teach drama, and that was how she saw her working future. At least until the babies came. Lots and lots of them. She wanted that, and so did Darian. He would find them a house somewhere and they would build a home together, fill it with noise and warmth and, she hoped, children.

She wanted to give him what he had never had. What she had seen on his face that snowy winter day as he had embraced her little nephews and nieces—the joy of being part of a whole big family. He had found part of his family in Khalim and now it would just grow and grow.

Even Jake had come round to accepting him. The two men had gone out for a ‘quick’ drink one evening, and had rolled in at midnight, both rather tight. Lara had scolded them for not letting her know, bursting into laughter when she returned with a tray of strong coffee to find them both slumped together in companionable sleep.

In front of a video of one of
her
old plays!

It had taken a year before he had asked her to marry him. He had wanted to ask her that day at her parents’, but had held off, recognising that they needed something of which they had had precious little.

Time.

But time was a funny thing. It only echoed what you were feeling inside. When you were waiting for a train an hour could seem like an eternity, and when you were sitting an exam that same hour could seem like a minute.

And so it had been with him and Lara. The first time he’d seen her something had touched him, only he had been too stubborn and pig-headed to acknowledge it. Theirs had not been a smooth and easy journey to get to where they were today, but maybe that was what made it so very good. You had to experience pain to appreciate pleasure, and the pleasure she gave him was immeasurable.

Darian turned his head as the organist began to play and Lara began to walk towards him, a vision in a sheath of slippery white satin, her arms full of snowdrops and lily-of-the-valley.

His eyes were on her the whole time, and when she reached him she gave him a loving smile. He smiled back, and the warmth inside his heart increased so that it felt as if he had a small furnace burning away inside him.

After a lifetime of resistance Darian was learning to articulate his feelings, but with Lara that was easy.

He had never known it could be so easy.