Society Weddings by Sharon Kendrick, Kate Walker

He moved away from the bed before he was lost in the weakness of that temptation.
    With an aching heart she watched him leave and then lay back down on the divan again, staring sightlessly up at the high ceiling above her.
    It was not as she had hoped it would be—in fact it was a million miles away from how she had hoped it would be. He didn’t talk to her. Or confide in her. Or ask her advice. In six months of marriage he had seemed preoccupied the whole time, and Jenna felt like just a tiny, tiny fragment of his life. Yet deep down she had known and feared that it was going to be like this, for was it not the royal custom? Separate lives. His father had had a marriage which had been very similar, and his father before him—everyone in Quador knew that.
    Her own parents’ marriage had been exceptionally close, but that had been a rarity. High-born Quadorian men usually took mistresses. She knew that, and yet it did not stop her from yearning for that same kind of closeness with Rashid—a closeness he did not seem remotely interested in giving her.
     
    He was gone for five long days, with two crackled and annoyingly brief telephone calls their only communication.
    And then the very thing she had been most dreading happened.
    She was just emerging from a committee she had been chairing which had discussed setting up a hostel for battered wives, when one of her ladies-in-waiting gave her a message from Rashid.
    It was stark and to the point.
    I have to fly straight to Paris on urgent business and will probably be away for the week. I will ring you the moment I get the opportunity.
    Paris?
    Paris? Where Chantal lived and no doubt waited for the dark Sheikh.
    Her face blanched and she crumpled the paper with a whitened knuckle.
    ‘It is bad news, mistress?’ asked the lady-in-waiting anxiously.
    The very worst. Rashid had been given the perfect excuse to meet up with his mistress. Unless that was the real purpose behind his visit—and she had no way of finding out for Abdullah would tell her nothing. She shook her head. ‘No, it’s nothing,’ she lied painfully. ‘I will be—I will be in my office should there be any call from the Sheikh.’
    In her office she paced up and down and her heart pounded with fear and jealousy. It was only what she had expected, and yet the actuality was a million times more disturbing than her fevered imaginings.
    He was a man of relentless sexual appetite with a taste for the exotic. And he was used to variety. His stream of lovers had been legendary—so why on earth should that have changed? His father had taken mistresses—it had been an open secret at court. Six months of marriage had probably left Rashid feeling jaded and bored, no matter how much she tried to please him.
    Her hand trembled. She couldn’t share him! She would not share him! She would sooner be without him than be able to bear the thought of him in another woman’s arms!
    Her fingers still shaking, she picked up the telephone and rang her sister on the other side of the world. ‘Nadia?’
    ‘Jenna, is that you?’
    ‘Of course it’s me.’
    ‘But you sound terrible —what on earth is the matter?’
    ‘R-Rashid has flown to Paris.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Nadia—he has a mistress in Paris.’
    ‘ Had a mistress,’ Nadia corrected gently. ‘He’s married toyou now, remember?’
    As if she could forget! ‘I have to know if he’s seeing her, Nadia,’ she said urgently. ‘I can’t live my life like this—I have to find out!’
    ‘Well, can’t you just fly to Paris and surprise him?’
    Jenna shook her head. ‘Oh, sure—he’s surrounded by minders and aides who would lie through their teeth for him! If I announced that I was taking a plane to Paris he would probably hear about it before the airline did!’ An idea began to take root in her mind. ‘Unless I was arranging to meet you for a holiday in London, of course!’
    ‘London isn’t Paris,’ Nadia pointed out.
    ‘I know it isn’t—but I