“The Sauveterres were staying with you?” the queen asked in her most benign yet shrewd tone.
“Oh, yes,” Sadiq’s mother said with a smile of pleasure. “The men went into the desert for what the Westerners call…a stag? Is that correct, Sadiq? I had a nice visit with their mother. We are all friends for many years.”
“And they all came with you here?” the king asked, gaze swinging like a scythe to Kasim. “Both girls?”
“Yes, Trella was the one we worried wouldn’t make it, but then Angelique came down with the flu. She recovered, though, and…” Sadiq’s mother lost some of her warm cheer as she sensed the growing tension. “Is there a problem?” She touched the draped folds of her hijab where it covered her throat. “I know we said she was not coming, but she shares a room with her sister so I didn’t think it would be an imposition when she made it after all?”
“It’s no problem,” Kasim said firmly, aiming it at his father.
Get rid of her, he read in the flick of his father’s imperious glance.
* * *
If she had left things as they’d been in Paris, Kasim brooded as he strode down the marbled hall of the palace, he would be resentful, but not furious.
This. This was unacceptable. Now he would be in for it with his father. Threats would be made. His uncle and several cousins were coming to the wedding. Tensions were high. Impulsive autocratic decisions could easily be made in a fit of temper.
Not only was he now courting that disastrous possibility, thanks to Angelique coming here against his orders, but he was raw all over again. Her rejection stung afresh and his intense feeling of being hemmed in by impossible circumstances was renewed.
He had resigned himself to never seeing her again, damn her! Now she was in his home.
He started to ask a passing servant which suite the Sauveterres had been given, but glimpsed a face he knew down near the end of the hall, standing outside the door to his sister’s apartment.
His heart rate spiked as he approached the guard.
“Charles,” he said, ears ringing. Angelique was behind this door.
“Your Highness.”
Kasim knocked.
Female laughter cut off and his youngest half sister cracked the door to peer out at him. Her smile beamed as she recognized him.
“Kasim!”
“Is Hasna dressed? May I come in?” He fought for a level tone. Distempered as he was, he would never take out his bad mood on a six-year-old.
There was a murmur of female voices, then Hasna called, “Yes, come in.”
He entered, picking up his baby sister as he did, kissing her cheek and using her small frame to cushion the rush of emotion that accosted him as he anticipated seeing Angelique.
Hasna’s suite was half the size of his, yet still one of the most opulent in the palace, decorated in peacock blues and silver, with high ceilings and the same sort of delicate curlicue furniture his mother favored.
She was in her lounge and stood on something because she was a foot taller than normal. He couldn’t see what it was because her wedding gown was belled over it, flaring a meter in each direction. A filmy veil was draped over her dark hair and all of it was covered in more seed pearls than there were in the ocean.
Fatina rose from her chair and came to kiss his hand, tsking as her older daughter charged at him, arms raised in a demand to be lifted and hugged.
Kasim concentrated on setting down his one sister and lifting the eight-year-old so she could squeeze his neck with her skinny little arms and press her lips to his cheek.
“You’re growing too fast,” he told her. “You’ll be wearing one of these soon and then who will draw me pictures? You look very beautiful, Hasna.”
He set down his sister and pretended he was taking in the extravagance of the gown when he was far more focused on the flash of movement behind the flare of her skirt.
The veil rippled slightly and Angelique rose, her attention remaining stubbornly fixed on her creation.
His heart skyrocketed as he took in the graceful drape of her pink dress and the way she’d covered her head in an ivory scarf so she looked like she was a part of his world—
She turned her head to meet his gaze.
The mercury shooting to the top of his head stalled and plummeted.
Trella.
He didn’t know how he knew. The resemblance was remarkable and he couldn’t say that her eyes were set closer or farther apart, or that her face seemed wider or thinner. He just knew this wasn’t Angelique, even though her greenish-hazel eyes stared at him.
Given the antagonism he sensed coming off her in waves, the straight pins poking out of her mouth were unabashedly symbolic.
He knew how she felt. He was ready to spit nails himself. Where the hell was her sister?
“Angelique has done an amazing job, hasn’t she?” Hasna said. He could hear the lilt of trickery in her voice, hoping to fool him.
“I understood this to be a collaboration between the twins. Hello, Trella. It’s nice to meet you. Is your sister here?” He looked around the lounge, returning to a state of tense anticipation.
“Oh! You can’t tell this is Trella!” Hasna accused. “I can’t. I still think this is Angelique and she’s tricking me.”
Trella pinned a place on the veil that she had marked with her fingers, then removed the rest of the pins from her mouth to say lightly, “I showed you my passport.”
Hasna chuckled and Trella glanced at Kasim, smile evaporating.
“She went back to our suite.”
He couldn’t stop staring, feeling as though he was looking at a film of Angelique. She was a faithful image of her sister, but there was a sense of being removed by time or space. She made him long to be in the presence of the real thing.
“Still recovering from her flu?” he said with false lightness. “Perhaps she should have stayed home after all.”
“It was minor. She’s over it.” Trella’s glance hit Kasim with pointed disparagement.
Did she recall that he had done her a favor, hiding her night with the Prince of Elazar? An attitude of deference wouldn’t be amiss here, he told her with a hard look, but he didn’t have time to teach her some manners.
He had to get her sister on the next plane back to Paris.
* * *
Angelique was normally at her most relaxed around her family, but not today. She was wound up about being here, feeling like she was smuggling drugs, that pouch of Jamal’s was so heavy on her conscience.
Ramon was not helping. He was growing restless away from work and began badgering her to play tennis.
“I thought Henri said he would?” She was actually dying to see more of the palace. As they had come in by helicopter with Sadiq’s family, Angelique had been awestruck. And taken down a peg. What had made her think she had any place in Kasim’s life when his home sprawled in opulent glory over more area than a dozen football fields against the stunning backdrop of the Persian Gulf?
She told herself that it was the heat of the desert sun that caused her to sweat as they were taken by golf cart along a palm-lined path overlooking a water feature. It was actually anxiety. Kasim was here. Somewhere behind those columns and tall windows, beneath the domes and flags, he was carrying on with his life, perhaps already having moved on to another lover, completely unaware she had defied him and come to Zhamair after all.