Louise Fuller - Indian Prince's Hidden Son / Craving His Forbidden Innocent

‘No. My family’s story began at the fortress in the fourteenth century. Look out of the window,’ Jai urged. ‘See the fort on the crags above the city…’

Willow looked up in wonder at the vast red sandstone fortress sprawling across the cliffs above the city. ‘My ancestor first invaded Chandrapur in the thirteenth century. It took his family a hundred and forty years of assaults and sieges but eventually they conquered the fort. We will visit it next week,’ he promised. ‘At present it’s full of tourists…we would have no privacy.’

‘Then, where are we going now?’

‘The Lake Palace,’ Jai told her lazily. ‘It’s surrounded by water and a private wildlife reserve and immensely private. It is where I make my home.’

‘So you like…have a choice of palaces to use?’ Willow was gobsmacked by the concept of having a selection.

‘The third one is half palace, half hotel, built by my great-grandfather in high deco style in the twenties. We will visit there too,’ Jai assured her calmly.

‘ Three? And that’s it…here?’ Willow checked.

‘There is also the Monsoon Palace. A very much loved and spoilt wife in the sixteenth century accounts for that one,’ Jai proffered almost apologetically. ‘I leave it to the tourists.’

‘You own an awful lot of property,’ Willow remarked numbly.

‘And now you own it too…as Sher reminded me, I didn’t ask you to sign a pre-nuptial agreement,’ Jai parried, shocking and startling her with that comment.

‘We did get married in a hurry,’ Willow conceded ruefully.

‘Let us hope that neither of us live to regret that omission,’ Jai murmured without expression.

‘I’m not greedy. If we ever split up,’ Willow told him in a rush, rising above the sinking sensation in her stomach at that concept, ‘I won’t ever try to take what’s not mine. I’m very conscious that I entered this marriage with nothing and all I would ask for is enough to keep Hari and I somewhere secure and comfortable.’

‘My biggest fear would be losing daily access to my son,’ Jai confided with a harsh edge to his dark, deep voice.

Willow suppressed a shiver. ‘Let’s not even talk about it,’ she muttered, turning to look at a quartet of women, their beautiful veils floating in the breeze as they carried giant metal water containers on their heads.

On both sides of the road stretched the desert, where only groves of acacia bushes, milk thistle and spiky grass grew in the sand. It was a hard, unforgiving land where water was of vital importance and only a couple of miles further on, where irrigation had been made possible, lay an oasis of small fields of crops and greenery, which utterly transformed the landscape.

His hand covered her tense fingers. ‘We won’t let anything split us up,’ Jai told her. ‘Hari’s happiness depends on us staying together.’

‘Did you miss your mother so much?’ Willow heard herself ask without even thinking.

‘I was a baby when she deserted my father and I have no memory of her,’ Jai admitted flatly as he removed his hand from hers. ‘I met her only once as an adult. I don’t talk about my mother… ever .’

Willow swallowed painfully hard as her cheeks burned in receipt of that snub and she knew that she wouldn’t be raising that thorny topic again.

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