A Whisper of Disgrace

chapter ELEVEN


THE INTENSE LIGHT felt hot on her cheeks, but Rosa didn’t mind. The brightness of the studio made some of the other presenters grow overheated, but not her. She was used to the glaring blaze of the Sicilian sun, so a few television lights weren’t going to make her sweat! She flashed a wide smile as she finished her segment, reminding viewers to remember to pack an umbrella ‘if you don’t want your nice Parisian clothes to get wet!’

As always, her final comment made the crew smile, just as it would make the nation smile. In the instantly accessible world of television, Rosa had become a bit of a star, which was something she’d never envisaged.

Her rise to prominence in the national consciousness had all happened so quickly—and her popularity had been picked up by the press, during a quiet summer when there wasn’t very much news. Newspaper analysts had been quick to question ‘Why Rosa?’ because she wasn’t an obvious choice to be a pin-up. France had a recognised template for beauty, and Rosa didn’t fit it. She was curvy and she didn’t wear black. Her clothes were the colours of an exotic bird’s plumage and she wore flowers in her hair. She should have been invisible in a place where thinness reigned supreme and women worshiped at the altar of high fashion. But people liked her. Men liked her because she was the stuff of forbidden fantasy, and their wives liked her because they didn’t perceive her as a threat. French department stores had reported an increased demand for colour-blocked clothes. A glossy magazine had even urged its readers to throw away their diet books and ‘channel your inner Rosa.’

Then had come the discovery that before her marriage to one of the world’s most powerful men, Rosa had been a Corretti—and all hell had broken loose. Suddenly, she had become even more sought-after. The studio bosses asked her to do an extra weather slot on the highly prestigious breakfast show, but she’d said no, because who in their right mind would want to get up at three in the morning? Even farmers slept for longer than that! Requests for interviews began to pour in but she told Arnaud to refuse them all. She knew her family would go ballistic if journalists started to pry into its chequered history. And she knew that any more exposure would make Kulal even angrier than he already was… .

‘Just why are you doing this, Rosa?’ he had demanded one morning, just before he’d stormed off to his office. ‘Pursuing a useless career as a weather announcer? Telling people what they can already read on their cellphones!’

Those had been his actual words—words which had been intended to wound and which had hit their target full-on. Rosa had swallowed down the hurt she’d felt. If only he had given her a few crumbs of praise, then she might have refused the offer of the Friday teatime slot in addition to her regular lunchtime one. If he’d told her that her French accent was flawless—which was what everyone else said—or that she’d managed to make women who felt bad about their bodies feel better about themselves, then she might have cut back or even deferred her fledgling career until after the marriage had ended.

But Kulal wasn’t in the business of praising. He was in the business of making her feel like she had overstepped the mark. As if she had no right to do anything with her life if it dared to interfere with his.

She arrived home late one Friday after a meeting with Arnaud, and when she rushed into the apartment Kulal was standing waiting for her. His gaze ran over her, his black eyes lingering on the rose in her hair, and she saw the almost imperceptible twist of his lips. The fresh flower had become her ‘trademark’ and was provided by the studio before every show, but she’d forgotten she was wearing it and it was now probably wilting.

‘You’re late,’ he observed caustically. ‘And your face is covered in make-up.’

She touched her fingertips to her cheek and they came away the deep bronze colour of the heavy studio foundation. ‘I wanted to get away as quickly as possible.’ She drew in a deep breath and smiled. ‘To get home to you.’

‘That’s very considerate of you, but have you forgotten that we were supposed to have been going out tonight?’

‘Out?’ She looked at him blankly, and then clapped her hand over her mouth in horror. ‘Cocktails at the French Embassy!’ she breathed. ‘Oh, Kulal—it slipped my mind completely. But it’s not too late, is it? We can still go.’

‘It is too late, and the sheikh is never late,’ he snapped. ‘It would be an unspeakable diplomatic breach!’

‘I’m sorry.’

With a growing feeling of frustration, Kulal stared at her, wanting to kiss her and yet wanting to rail against her all at the same time. Did she think that this situation she had manufactured was in any way acceptable to him? That he would ever tolerate being consigned to second place in her life? ‘Obviously you’re having difficulty fitting me into your busy schedule, Rosa.’

‘That’s not fair. My work hardly impacts on your life at all. Why didn’t you remind me this morning?’

‘Because it is not my place to remind you!’ he bit out as he found himself longing for the days when she’d always been there, waiting. When he’d needed to do nothing but open the front door before she would be nestling in his arms—a package of curvaceous warmth and eager kisses. He remembered the way they used to sit on the terrace and watch the sun going down, before the lights of the city brought it to vivid life once more. ‘You think I have nothing better to do than to act as your social secretary?’

‘No, Kulal,’ she said tiredly. ‘I don’t think that.’

She went into the bathroom to shower away the heavy make-up, and when she returned she thought that his mood was better. But maybe that was because she was wearing a light summer dress which came to just above the knee. She could see the instinctive gleam of his black eyes as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. One kiss led to another, and then another—and sex always made Kulal feel better. Actually, it usually did the same for her, but today she was left feeling strangely empty as she lay in his arms afterwards.

The weather that weekend was amazing—the sky a clear and vaulted blue and the sunshine bright and golden as it shone down on one of the world’s most beautiful cities. They spent Saturday morning in one of the flea markets, followed by a stroll around the Tuileries after lunch. Most of Sunday took place in bed.

‘Doesn’t this feel fantastic?’ murmured Kulal as he traced lazy circles all over her stomach. ‘And don’t you feel fantastic—all soft and sensual?’

Sensation shivered over her. Yes, it felt fantastic. It always did. Rosa felt her heart clench, knowing that she was going to miss this when the year was up. Could she ever imagine being physically intimate with another man like this? She shuddered. Never in a million years! Could she imagine a life without Kulal full stop? A sudden darkness crept into her heart as she nestled closer to his naked body. ‘Do you ever think about what’s going to happen when we dissolve the marriage?’ she questioned.

‘There’s no point,’ Kulal said, but her question had destroyed the mood and he rolled away from her. He had learnt never to project—even though sometimes he saw the dark wings of the future flapping ominously on the periphery of his vision. ‘We made a decision and we’re sticking to it. What’s to think about?’

Rosa watched as he got out of bed and headed for the door, returning a few minutes later with two glasses of white wine. She took hers and began to sip at it, but her thoughts were troubled and she couldn’t seem to shake them off. She’d told herself right from the beginning that she didn’t believe in love. That she wasn’t looking for love—but wasn’t it peculiar how sometimes love seemed to come looking for you? How it could creep up on you and wrap its velvet fingers around your heart without you realising—even when the man in question could be stubborn, demanding and autocratic? Reason seemed to have no effect on her volatile emotions and she knew why.

She had fallen in love with her sheikh husband even though that was the last thing which either of them wanted.

No further mention was made of the future which meant that by Monday morning the atmosphere between them was serene. The missed party at the embassy was long forgotten and the goodbye kiss they shared as Kulal left for the office was lingering.

‘I wish you didn’t have to go,’ she said.

‘I wish that too.’

She wriggled her body against him. ‘And I promise I won’t ever be late again.’

Kulal gave an odd kind of smile before brushing his lips over hers one final time. ‘Let’s hope not.’

Rosa went to the studios, but as the crew began to mike her up for her segment, she thought that they didn’t seem as chatty as usual. And afterwards, when she went to the dressing room to wipe off her make-up, there was a knock at the door.

It was Arnaud Bertrand and she raised her eyebrows in surprise, because he didn’t usually come to her dressing room.

‘Have you got a minute?’ he said awkwardly. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Talk away.’ She smiled at him in the mirror. ‘Do you mean here, or would you rather go next door and we can get some coffee?’

‘No, here is fine.’ He looked slightly uncomfortable, his hands digging deep into the pockets of his trousers. ‘Rosa, there’s no easy way to say this, but I’m afraid we’re pulling your slot.’

She turned round. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The bosses have decided that it’s no longer working.’

She gazed at him blankly. ‘But … I don’t understand. You told me that everyone loved the feature. You said that you hadn’t had so much fan mail since Johnny Depp gave that interview.’

He didn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘I’m afraid it’s out of my hands.’

Rosa frowned as her heart began to pound loudly in her chest. ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’

Arnaud looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Nothing has happened.’

‘You’re not a very good liar, Arnaud.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Has this got something to do with my husband?’

‘I can’t—’

‘Oh, I think you can. Tell me!’ she said, and then softened her voice. ‘Please.’

There was a moment of silence before he gave a sigh of resignation. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you—but you didn’t hear it from me. It does have something to do with your husband. In fact, it has everything to do with him. He’s threatened to pull out of the documentary if we don’t stop …’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘“Monopolising my wife” was how I think he phrased it.’

Rosa flinched to think that any man could be old-fashioned and chauvinistic enough to march up to a bunch of TV executives and tell them something like that. ‘And you’re willing to just cave in?’ she questioned heatedly. ‘To let this go just because you want to make some damned documentary about his country?’

Arnaud shook his head. ‘It’s not just the documentary!’ he said. ‘It’s everything else. Your husband is a powerful man, Rosa—not just in Paris, but pretty much everywhere else. And you don’t make enemies of men like that.’

The realisation of what Kulal had done suddenly hit her and Rosa felt sick. Her heart was pounding and her chest felt so tight that Arnaud reached out towards her in alarm.

‘Mon dieu!’ he exclaimed. ‘But your face is like chalk! Sit down, and I will fetch you some water.’

But she shook her head. ‘I don’t want anything,’ she said fiercely. But that wasn’t quite true, was it? She wanted to regain her honour and her pride and there was only one way she was going to do that.

She flipped through her address book before going outside, ignoring Kulal’s official limousine which was waiting for her just as it always was. Quickly, she darted down one of the side streets and felt a flash of triumph as she gave her bodyguard the slip, before clicking onto the map section of her phone. Her footsteps were rapid as she walked to the sixteenth arrondissement until she had reached the ornate nineteenth-century building which housed Kulal’s foundation.

She realised that it was the first time she’d ever been inside the building and she saw the receptionist’s look of shock as she walked in.

‘I’m Rosa,’ she said automatically, knowing how hot and dishevelled she must look after her dash across the city.

‘You are the sheikh’s wife,’ breathed the receptionist, her look of shock deepening. ‘And I have seen you on the television.’

‘Where is he?’ Rosa asked quietly. ‘Where is the sheikh?’

‘I’m afraid he is in a meeting, and I’ll have to—’

‘Where is he?’ Rosa repeated, and then spotted the staircase on the opposite side of the lobby. He would be at the top of the building—of course he would—because powerful people always chose their vantage points up high, so that they could look down on the rest of the world. She ran up the stairs, two at a time, until there was nowhere left to go and she passed another receptionist who had clearly been warned that trouble was on the way. The woman shot a horrified glance in the direction of a set of double doors and that look told Rosa everything she needed to know.

She burst in through the doors to see a huge table with lots of men in suits sitting around it and they all looked up as she appeared. But only one man dominated the room with his powerful presence. A man with black eyes and dark skin and the demean-our of a desert warrior, despite the sleek outlines of his Italian suit. He was getting to his feet and all the men were looking up at him in alarm, before staring at her again.

‘Rosa,’ he said in a voice she’d never heard him use before. ‘What an unexpected pleasure.’

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Can’t this wait until later?’ he questioned. ‘Because as you can see, I’m in the middle of a meeting which has taken some time and trouble to organise.’

‘No, it can’t wait!’ she flared, hearing the onlookers draw in a collective shocked breath and she recognised then that people spent their lives appeasing Kulal and giving him exactly what he wanted. And how could that be good for him? ‘So either you get rid of them now, or we’re going to have an audience while I put to you a few very pertinent questions!’

‘Gentlemen, looks like we’re done here,’ said Kulal, but Rosa couldn’t miss the unmistakable glint of anger in his eyes.

They stood in silence while all the men filed out, and when the door had been closed, Kulal looked at her and she saw that the glint had become a quietly smouldering blaze.

‘So, are you going to give me some sort of explanation for this unwarranted intrusion?’

‘Are you?’ she retorted.

‘I’m not in the mood for riddles, Rosa!’

‘Aren’t you? Well then, let me spell this one out for you! Did you …’ She gripped on to the back of a chair to steady herself, aware that her voice sounded all croaky. Kulal gestured towards the water jug on the table but she shook her head furiously, as if he was offering her a beaker of poison. ‘Did you put a stop to my weather slot?’

There was a moment of silence.

‘I want the truth, Kulal! Did you?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m no television executive,’ he said. ‘It’s not within my power to do something like that.’

‘But it’s certainly within your power to threaten to withdraw permission for filming to begin in Zahrastan, isn’t it? And it’s certainly within your power to lean heavily on investors, if that’s what it takes. Is that what you did, Kulal?’

He looked at her for a long moment and then he gave a curt nod, as if he had just come to a decision. ‘Yes, I did it—and you want to know why? Because I don’t think it’s such a heinous crime for a husband to want to see more of his wife. A wife who is only mine for a year! Why should I wish to share her with millions of viewers and the people who read those dreadful magazines?’

Rosa’s throat was so tight that it felt as if it had an invisible cord clenched around it and it took a moment or two before she could respond with any degree of clarity. ‘So you just stormed in and took control? You decided that because you didn’t like it, that you would change it. Because even if it is only for a year, you don’t really want a wife, do you, Kulal? What you want is a doll—a doll you can play with whenever you want. Someone that you can dress and undress and put to bed. Something you can walk away from in the morning, knowing exactly where your little doll has been all day, because one of your damned bodyguards has been tracking her.’

At this moment, an urgent-sounding buzzer on his desk began to go off and Kulal leaned over to press his finger on it. ‘Yes …?’

Rosa recognised the frantic tones of the bodyguard who had been assigned to her that day. ‘Boss, I’ve lost the princess.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ve found her.’

‘You see!’ She glared at him as he clicked off the connection. ‘You even make me sound like a doll—or a package which has inadvertently gone missing.’

‘As my wife you require a security issue!’ he flared. ‘You cannot deny that, Rosa!’

‘I’m not here to talk about my security!’ she flared back. ‘I’m here to talk about the fact that you heavy-handedly put an end to my burgeoning TV career and you didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me!’

His mouth tightened. ‘And is this television slot really so important to you?’

She shook her head as hot, infuriating tears began to spring to her eyes. ‘You’re missing the point,’ she said. ‘I left one life because people expected me to behave a certain way. I was trapped and controlled and told what to do every minute of the day. And you’re doing exactly the same thing! You promised me freedom and independence and you’ve given me the opposite.’

‘You’ll get your freedom and independence when the marriage is over,’ he said, his hands clenching into tight fists.

‘And it’ll be too late by then,’ she said, and now her voice was trembling. ‘Kulal, you’re making this very difficult for me. You don’t want a wife with a career, but neither do you want a wife who you’ll let close enough to love you. Can’t you see that I’m between a rock and a hard place here?’

His eyes flicked over her and he steeled himself against the tears which were sparking so brightly in her eyes. He remembered the night of their honeymoon when she’d sobbed against his bare chest as she’d told him about her mother’s betrayal and a shiver of something dark and empathetic had whispered over his skin. But the intensity of those feelings had made him feel raw and vulnerable—and hadn’t he vowed that he would never allow himself to feel that way again? He drew a deep breath as he stared at the flyaway mess of her dark hair and the flushed sheen of her face. ‘Can we discuss this later?’ he said. ‘When you’ve calmed down a little, and maybe had a chance to brush your hair?’

Rosa almost choked with frustration, until she realised that maybe this was exactly what she needed—to hear him utter the truth in all its stark brutality. Get out of his life, she told herself. Get out now while you still can—before he sees just how much he has hurt you. She sucked in a deep breath. ‘I’d like that drink now, if you don’t mind.’

He poured her a glass of water. ‘I can ring for some ice, if you like.’

‘No, thanks.’ Her smile was wan as she gulped down the tepid liquid. ‘Tell me, Kulal, do you always get exactly what it is you want?’

Her words took him back. He thought about what they used to say about him in Zahrastan. What Kulal wants, Kulal gets. But not always. Not the one time when it really mattered, when his heart had been shattered into a thousand little pieces—and he was damned if he was going to risk that happening again. ‘You’re talking in riddles again,’ he said.

‘Am I? Yet you’re a highly intelligent man. I’m sure you can understand exactly what I’m talking about, if only you’d let yourself. But there’s no need to look so worried. The discussion’s over and I’m going now.’

‘And we’ll talk about it some more tonight.’

‘Of course we will.’ The lie came easily to her lips, just as it had come to his. Because Kulal had no intention of talking about this any more. She knew that. The decision had been made—his decision—and he would just expect her to get used to it. To go along with it, like a good little girl. She could imagine the scene which would enfold tonight. The hungry kiss, heightened by all the tension, and then a session of lovemaking powerful enough to push any nagging doubts from her mind. Well, not any more. Because Rosa Corretti was through with being manipulated. She was going to start taking control of her life, as of now.

She looked up at him, but it felt as if her face might split in two with the effort it took to smile. ‘I’ll see you later.’