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‘It’s never felt like that, though,’ Chrissie confided, willing to n of revulsion in his gaze and relieved to see only concern etched there ‘Now tellyou’re asha further questions

Not checking out his father’s story about her once he was fit to do so

But Jaul didn’t want to rake up that divisive past and instead presented her with another less than stellar h-class hooker in Dubai,’ he told her grie where it was past time I found out what sex was like’

‘Why was that?’ she asked curiously

‘The first real freedom I had ever had hen I went to university in the UK,’ Jaul confided with a grimace ‘I had no experience whatsoever of normal life’

Chrissie rested her head down on his shoulder and studied hi of how badly she had misunderstood him when she’d first met him and assumed he was the quintessential Arab playboy In truth he had spent his youthful years of supposed irresponsibility in boarding school and the ar father If he had gone a little hen he’d first slipped that leash, she was sure only a saint could blame him for it

It dismayed her to appreciate how little they had actually known about each other when they had first married, but it soothed her that she understood him better now and could accept that in possession of his faculties and the true facts he would never have abandoned her

Bandar greeted Jaul over his

His aide gave hies before pausing to extend an envelope ‘This arrived in the diplo yesterday It’s from Yusuf and apparently it’s personal and confidential’ Bandar raised his brows at that surprising label being applied to any item sent by as aloof a personality as his former boss

Jaul stiffened and lost colour before grasping the envelope As soon as he was alone, he tore it open Soing tunelessly in the shower but, for once, he failed to s what his father’s fory one sentence stood out clearer than any other

Bearing in o, it would have been an offence for me to enter the same room as your queen and offer

And there it was in a handful of words: what Jaul hadChrissie had told him because it was obvious that Yusuf had felt too ashamed of his treat That confirmation struck Jaul like a body blow His sto to his feet, too unsettled to sit still Evidently, everything Chrissie had told him was the truth She had been thrown out of his Oxford apartone to the Marwani E husband, only for those visits to be mocked and hushed up She had not accepted money from his father

Jaul had nourished a secret hope that Chrissie could be exaggerating her experiences after his disappearance, that perhaps what she had endured was not quite as traumatic as she had made it sound, but Yusuf’s reaction to Chrissie’s reappearance in Jaul’s life as his queen was uniquely revealing Jaul still wanted to hear the details of Yusuf’s dealings with his wife on King Lut’s behalf but he would wait until the older man returned to Marwan to receive them After all, he already knew the most crucial facts, he reminded himself heavily His wife had told him how she had suffered and he had doubted her every word, had literally prayed that her lively ied her to embellish her story And wasn’t this his due reward for his lack of faith in his wife and his all-consu loyalty to his father’s memory? What had happened to his loyalty to the woman he had married?

Self-evidently, his father had lied to hiain Lut clearly hadn’t cared what he’d had to say or do to destroy his son’s e Jaul was appalled that the one to such brutally selfish lengths to deprive his son of the woman he loved