‘I... I’m sorry to report that Her Highness believed she felt the baby kick for the first time while I was performing the ultrasound.’
‘What do you mean she believed? Are you calling my wife a liar?’ Rahim grated.
‘No! Never, Your Highness. But in most cases, it’s too early to feel any kicking yet. But she was quite adamant.’
A vice tightened around Rahim’s chest and his vision blurred. ‘Was she pleased?’ he whispered.
‘I thought she was, but then she burst into tears. She was quite inconsolable.’
‘When is her next check-up?’
‘In two weeks, Your High...’
Rahim hung up and dropped to the ground, his skin scraping along the raw concrete floor. The phone clattered away, but he barely heard it.
The thought of the strong, capable woman he’d married reduced to crying alone in her private clinic tore at him in ways Rahim would’ve given anything not to feel.
But he felt each tear like a knife slashing across his skin, the pain engulfing him, drowning him. Panic flared through him, wild and unfettered. Ruthlessly he reminded himself that this was why he’d left Shar-el-Aman. So he could endure the pain.
He would withstand the pain. And he would stay away from Allegra and the baby.
He had to. The alternative was unthinkable.
* * *
‘What’s next on the agenda?’ Allegra looked around the conference room, trying to keep her smile pinned in place. But these days when breathing felt like an extracurricular activity, smiling featured even lower on the unending to-do list that came with being queen.
‘The Hamdi sisters have petitioned for help again,’ Yasmina informed the group.
‘Have we had any success locating their errant husbands?’
‘No, our investigators believe they’ve fled the country with their company’s embezzled funds. Oh, and His Highness wants to sit in on any further meetings regarding the Hamdi sisters.’
Allegra tensed at the mention of her husband’s name. ‘Why?’ she snapped.
Yasmina looked up warily. ‘He went to university with the younger sister’s husband. I think he feels responsible...’
Allegra couldn’t stop the bitter laugh from escaping. ‘He feels responsible for a situation he had no hand in creating?’
Yasmina shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, those are his instructions.’
‘Well, he’s not here to enforce them, is he?’ Her snap cracked a little this time, and her throat tightened in warning of tears.
Two of the women seated at the table exchanged wary glances.
‘Is that all?’ Allegra asked.
At the affirmative answer, she rose, pinned a smile on her face again and walked out with the ten businesswomen comprising the newly formed Dar-Aman Women’s Foundation.
The moment she reached the hallway leading to the royal wing, she fled, desperate to get away before the floodgates opened. Lately, they’d taken to bursting wide open when she least expected it. Like this morning, when she’d spotted a bird with feathers the same colour as Rahim’s eyes. She’d cried for an hour straight in the royal suite she’d slept in alone for the past three and a half weeks.
All because she’d lost her heart on her wedding night to a husband who had no use for it.
At first Allegra had thought Rahim had been worried about the baby. Even after the doctor had reassured them that her condition was nothing more than a little spotting since her wedding night had fallen on the same day her period normally came, Rahim had been adamant that she be admitted to hospital and monitored for another forty-eight hours. She’d lain there in blissful ignorance of the fact that her husband was laying tracks to absent himself from her life.
Her phone call to him once she’d returned and he’d still kept away after a week, to ask when he was coming home, had been the most humiliating ten minutes of her life. The only saving grace had been biting her tongue before she made the folly of telling him she needed him home because she’d fallen in love with him. That was a secret she intended to take to her grave. Or channel into the already overflowing love for her baby.
Allegra stopped in the doorway to her bedroom, and gasped as the fluttering the doctor had blatantly disbelieved she was experiencing beat its tiny wings in her belly.
The wonder of it never got old. Kicking off her navy shoes and matching jacket, she got into bed and lay on her back, her hands cradling her small bump. As if waiting for just that act, the fluttering came again.
‘Oh.’ And just like that, tears filled her eyes. She allowed herself a short cry this time, then rolled over and picked up the bedside phone.
Punching in the number she knew by heart despite having used it only twice, she gripped the handset and waited.
‘Hello?’ Rahim’s voice was harshly gruff, dripping with impatience.
‘Rahim...it’s me... Allegra.’
‘You think I wouldn’t recognise the voice of my queen?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t seem to know much these days.’
‘What do you want, Allegra?’
She laughed, the sound scraping her throat. ‘Are you sure you want an answer to that?’
His tense silence spoke volumes.
‘I guess I should get to the point. Will you be attending the fundraiser for the schools in the northern district tomorrow night as you promised last month, or am I expected to attend another event alone and make your excuses, again?’
‘Harun will let you know.’
Her throat threatened to close up. ‘You know what? Don’t bother. I’ll go on the premise that I’ll be attending alone. If you turn up, it’ll be a happy surprise for your adoring subjects, I’m sure.’
She slammed the phone down a second before the tears came. Clutching the pillow, she cried until her temples ached and her heart bled. After dragging herself to the shower, she slid into bed, thankful when she grew drowsy immediately. But of course, like clockwork, she dreamed of Rahim, and their night in the Bedouin tent, before the fleeting happiness she’d known had been snatched.
And when she woke with tears in her eyes, she determinedly brushed them away and prepared for the day ahead.
Making sure to take lengthy breaks and conducting her meetings from the office set up in the palace, she returned to her suite at five, conferring with her stylist over what to wear to the fundraiser before heading for the shower.
An hour later, dressed in a blood-red silk gown with criss-crossing shoulder straps, with a clutch and shoes to match, she slid into the back of the royal limo.
Her first hint that she wasn’t alone was the heart-wrenchingly familiar scent that hit her nostrils before she turned to find her husband lounging in the far corner.
‘Rahim!’ She couldn’t help but drink him in, her senses jumping to high alert as they absorbed the long-denied visual of her husband. His hair had grown at the back, almost covering his nape. His cheeks were shrunken and his body was a sleeker version of the man she’d married. But he was still impossibly handsome, so breathtakingly masculine, he aroused every cell in her body. ‘What... You came...’
‘As you said, I made a promise. Put your seat belt on, Allegra.’