Lynne Graham: Rumours: The Billion-Dollar Brides

Tragically, a car bomb had killed off almost all of Rashad’s family. In the aftermath his uncle had hidden him in the desert to keep him safe. He had only been six years old, a frightened little boy more attached to his English nanny than to the distant parents he rarely saw and in the turmoil following the bomb and the instigation of martial law even his nanny had vanished. The palace had been looted, their loyal staff dispersed and life as Rashad had come to know it had changed out of all recognition.

‘Your Majesty, may I make a suggestion?’ Hakim asked.

Rashad thought for an instant that his adviser was going to suggest that he flung all the photos of potentially suitable brides into a lucky dip and chose blind. It would be a random form of selection and very disrespectful of the candidates, he acknowledged wryly, but he was cynically convinced that his chances of a happy union would be just as good with that method as with any other. Marriage, after all, was a very risky game of chance.

His wide sensual mouth compressed. ‘Please...’ he urged.

Hakim smiled and withdrew the file he carried below his arm to open it and extend it to show off a highly detailed picture of an item of jewellery. ‘I have taken the liberty of asking the royal jeweller if he could reproduce the Hope of Dharia...’

Rashad stared at him in astonishment. ‘But it is lost. How can it be reproduced?’

‘What harm would there be in having a replacement ring created? It is a powerful symbol of the monarchy. It was the family’s most important heirloom but after this long there is very little likelihood that the original ring will ever be found,’ Hakim pointed out seriously. ‘I feel that this is the optimum time to do this. Our people feel safer when old traditions are upheld—’

‘Our people would prefer a fairy tale to the reality that my late father was a rotten ruler, who put together a corrupt and power-hungry government,’ Rashad interposed with the bluntness that was his trademark and which never failed to horrify the more diplomatic Hakim.

While consternation at such frankness froze the older man’s bearded face, Rashad walked over to the window, which overlooked the gardens being industriously watered by the palace’s army of staff.

He was thinking about the ring superstitiously nicknamed the Hope of Dharia by the Dharian people. The ring had been a gorgeous fire opal of fiery hue, always worn by the King at ceremonial events. Set in gold and inscribed with holy words, the ring had acquired an almost mystical aura after being brought into the family by his saintly great-grandmother, whose devotion to charitable enterprises had ensured that she was adored throughout the kingdom. In other countries a king might wear a crown or wield a sceptre but in Dharia the monarchy’s strength and authority had rested historically and emotionally in that ancient ring. It had vanished after the palace had been looted and, in spite of intensive searches, no indication of the opal’s whereabouts had ever been established. No, the ring was gone for good and Rashad could see Hakim’s point: a well-designed replacement would undeniably be better than nothing.

‘Order the ring,’ he instructed ruefully.

A fake ring for a fake king, he reflected with innate cynicism. He could never shake off the knowledge that he had not been born to sit on the throne of Dharia. The youngest of three sons, he had been an afterthought until his brothers died along with his parents. He had been left at home that day because he was an excessively energetic and noisy little boy and that reality had saved his life. Rashad’s massive popularity with the public still shook him even while it persuaded him to bend his own ideals to become the man his country needed him to be.

Once he had wanted to fall in love and then he had got married. Love had been glorious for all of five minutes and then it had died slowly and painfully. No, he wasn’t in the market for that experience again. Yet he had also once believed that lust was wrong until he fell in lust many times over while he was finishing his education at a British university. Whatever, he was still grateful to have enjoyed that fleeting period of sexual freedom before he had to return home to take up his duties. And unfortunately home signified the rigid court protocols that ensured that Rashad was forced to live in a little gilded soap bubble of perceived perfection as a figurehead that inspired the most ridiculous awe. Yes, his people would enjoy the restoration of the ring and all the hoopla of dreams and expectations that went with it...but he would not.

* * *

Polly glanced at her sister, Ellie, and managed a strained smile as a middle-aged blonde woman approached them after their mother’s short funeral, which had taken place in an almost empty church.

Both young women had found the ritual a sad and frustrating event. Ellie, who was two years younger than Polly, had no memory of their mother while Polly had vague memories of an occasional perfumed smiling presence while she was still very young. Their grandmother had raised the two girls and the older woman had passed away only a few months earlier. For more than ten years the Dixon sisters had not even known if their mother was still alive. That was why it had been a considerable shock to be contacted out of the blue by a complete stranger to be told of Annabel Dixon’s passing.

That stranger, a volunteer at the hospice where their mother had died, Vanessa James, was only marginally more comfortable with the situation than they were, having frankly admitted on the phone that she had tried hard to persuade their long-lost parent to contact her daughters and speak to them before her death. At the same time she acknowledged that Annabel had struggled to make herself understood in the later stages of her illness and such a meeting could have been frustrating and upsetting for all of them.

‘I’ve booked us a table at the hotel for lunch,’ Vanessa James announced with a determined smile as she shook hands firmly with both young women. ‘I am so sorry that we are meeting in such unhappy circumstances.’

Polly had never felt less like eating and she made an awkward attempt to admit that.

‘It was your mother’s last wish and she set aside the money to cover the meal,’ the older woman told her gently. ‘It’s her treat, not mine.’

Polly’s pale skin flushed red with embarrassment, her white-blonde hair acting as a foil to accentuate her discomfiture. ‘I didn’t mean to be ungracious—’

‘Well, even if you didn’t you would have every excuse to feel uneasy about this situation,’ Vanessa remarked wryly. ‘Let me tell you a little about your mother’s last years.’

And the sisters listened while the older woman told them about the terminal illness that had begun to deprive their mother of independent life and mobility while she was still only in her forties. She had lived in a nursing home and had died in the hospice where Vanessa had got to know her well.

‘That’s so very sad,’ Ellie lamented, flicking her red hair back off her troubled brow, her green eyes full of compassion. ‘We could have done so much to help her...if only we had known—’

‘But Annabel didn’t want you to know. She was aware that you had already spent years nursing your grandmother through her decline and she was determined not to come into your life and become another burden and responsibility. She was very independent.’

The three women sat down at the table in a quiet corner of the restaurant and rather blankly studied the menus presented to them.

‘I understand you’re studying to be a doctor,’ Vanessa said to Ellie. ‘Annabel was so proud when she heard about that.’

‘How did she find out?’ Ellie pressed. ‘It has been years since she last contacted our grandmother.’