Modern Box Set 1-4 Apr 2021 by Carol Marinelli
Author:Carol Marinelli
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mills & Boon Modern
Published: 2021-03-05T14:50:31+00:00
One week ago, Taraq
âWhy should I let you take your sisterâs place for this marriage?â asked the King.
Aaliyah Binte Rashad Mansour did her best to stay calm, but she was gritty-eyed from lack of sleep after the frantic journey sheâd just taken from England back to her desert home in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula, after an hysterical phone call from her beloved younger half-sister Samara.
âBecause Iâm your eldest daughter. Samara is only nineteen.â
And she was in love with the son of the Kingâs chief aide.
Liyahâs father said nothing more for a moment, and she pressed on while she had a chance. âSamara hasnât even met this man you want her to marry. Clearly theyâre strangers. What does it matter if itâs me and not her?â
Her sister had told her, âHe just wants a wife. He doesnât care who that is, as long as itâs someone from this family.â
Her father made an indistinct sound. He wasnât a very tall man. Liyah was almost taller, at five foot ten. Sheâd always felt that he disapproved of her less than delicate proportions. Among the myriad other things that sheâd never understood.
Her mother had been his first wife, and she had died when Liyah was a toddler. Liyah had only the vaguest memories of being rocked, and a lullaby being sung, but sheâd long since convinced herself that was just a weak fantasy to make up for the fact that when her father had married again and had his other children, Liyah had been effectively sidelined and forgotten about. Neglected.
The only family member Liyah had ever allowed close was Samara who, since she was tiny, had followed Liyah around like a faithful shadow, crashing through all of Liyahâs barriers.
As soon as sheâd known Samara was in distress, and why, Liyah hadnât thought twice about coming home and offering herself in her sisterâs place. But now that she was here in front of her father a sense of panic gripped her.
âWho is he, anyway? And why is he happy to marry a woman he doesnât even know? I thought weâd moved on from arranged marriages.â
âDonât be naive, Aaliyah. The best marriages are still primarily the ones that are arranged for the benefit of two partiesâin this instance two neighbouring kingdoms that have a long history of enmity.â
âBut itâs been years since anythingââ
Her father interrupted. âHeâs the cousin of the King of Al-Murja and heâs honouring a decades-old diplomatic agreement by marrying into this family and providing a dowry. His mother was meant to marry your uncle, but she took off to Europe and married an Italian playboy instead, giving him her dowry. That marriage fell apart and she came home in disgrace with a baby son. She died when he was still young and his father brought him up.â
That story rang a few vague bells in Liyahâs head. But her father had stopped pacing and now looked at her. There was a gleam in his dark eyesâvery unlike Liyahâs green ones.
âHis mother ran off to Europe just as you did.
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