Society Weddings by Sharon Kendrick, Kate Walker Page A

could catch a train from London straight to Paris.’
    ‘And what about your bodyguards? Can you really see them letting you do that?’
    Jenna gave a small tight smile at her strained reflection. ‘You know how people always say how similar we look?’ she queried softly. ‘Why, if you were wearing my clothes and I was wearing yours—well, anyone could easily mistake us for one another!’
    ‘Jenna—you aren’t suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, are you? Are you going to pretend to be me ?’
    ‘How long have I covered up for you and Brad?’
    ‘That’s blackmail,’ her sister objected jokingly.
    ‘Or you could say that one good turn deserves another.’ There was a pause. ‘So how soon can you fly to London?’ Jenna asked crisply.
    Her plans proved almost ridiculously easy to execute. She arrived in London accompanied by a lady-in-waiting and two bodyguards and went straight to the large penthouse suite at the Granchester hotel, which Nadia had booked.
    She hadn’t seen her sister since the wedding, and the two of them embraced tearfully.
    ‘Jenna, what on earth are you going to say to Rashid?’ asked Nadia worriedly. ‘Won’t he go mad if he finds out you’vebeen checking up on him? And won’t someone tell him that you’ve left Quador?’
    ‘I don’t care. I have to find out the truth,’ said Jenna urgently. ‘The man I married is like a stranger to me.’
    ‘Already?’ asked Nadia sadly.
    ‘Except during our honeymoon, when we seemed as close as a couple could be.’
    ‘But you love him? You do still love him, don’t you?’
    ‘As life itself,’ answered Jenna simply. ‘That much has not changed. But I can’t live a lie, Nadia—and my love for him will be eaten away if he intends to be free with other women. I would sooner divorce him than have that happen.’
    ‘He would never allow it, Jenna—you know that.’
    ‘We shall see. We’re in the twenty-first century now, not the Dark Ages—he cannot keep me a prisoner to his will!’
     
    Jenna sent one of the bodyguards out with her lady-in-waiting to pick up a coat she had ordered from one of London’s most exclusive department stores and then she dressed in some of Nadia’s unashamedly American clothes.
    And by nine o’clock that evening she found herself safely alone in Paris, speeding along in a taxi towards the Splendide, where Rashid always stayed when he was in the city.
    Unless he was at Chantal’s, she thought, with a painful lurch of her heart.
    She went straight up to his suite and the door was opened by Abdullah, his look of confusion quickly becoming one of wariness as he registered just who it was standing there, in blue jeans and a black leather jacket.
    ‘Mistress,’ he said slowly, and bowed his head.
    ‘I have come to see the Sheikh.’
    There was a pause. ‘The Sheikh is not expecting you.’
    It was unmistakably a reprimand, but Jenna forced a smile onto lips which felt as though they had been carved from ice. ‘I want to surprise him.’
    ‘The Sheikh is not here, mistress.’
    ‘And I suppose you’re not going to tell me where he is, Abdullah?’
    ‘You know that I cannot do that, mistress.’
    Her skin prickled and her smile faded as she marched past him. ‘Then I shall wait.’
    She didn’t have to wait long. She had only been slumped in an armchair for less than ten minutes, watching a French soap opera in a vain attempt to try to keep her heart-rending thoughts at bay, when Rashid entered the luxury suite.
    She heard him before she saw him. Heard the urgent words spoken to him in an undertone by Abdullah. And then suddenly he was there, filling the room with his magnificent and rather daunting presence. She searched his impassive face for any tell-tale signs of betrayal. Where had he been? Had his naked limbs been entwined with Chantal’s? Where had he been ?
    He stood looking at her, his face as dark and as unforgiving as thunder, but she was too angry to care.
    ‘Would you care to