‘I thought I’d lost you,’ her father cried. ‘They have the death penalty in Quagani, Hannah. It was the only way we could get you out. They wanted to make an example of you, and without the King’s personal intervention they would have. Kamel is a good man.’
It seemed to be a universally held opinion. Hannah didn’t believe it. Nonetheless, it was clear that he had not just freed her, he had saved her life.
‘I know, Dad. I’m fine about this,’ she lied.
‘Really?’
She nodded. ‘It’s about time I finally made it down the aisle, don’t you think?’
‘He’ll take care of you.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘You’ll take care of each other. You know your mother was the love of my life...’
Hannah felt a heart-squeezing clutch of sadness. ‘Yes, Dad.’
‘She didn’t love me when we got married. She was pregnant, and I persuaded her... What I’m trying to say is that it’s possible to grow to love someone. She did.’
Incredibly moved by his confidences, she nodded, her throat aching with unshed tears. There was no point telling him the cases were totally dissimilar. Her father had loved the woman he had married, whereas Hannah was marrying a man who despised her.
A man who had saved her life.
Any moment she would wake up.
But it wasn’t a dream. However surreal it felt, she really was standing there with her hand on her father’s arm, about to walk down the aisle to be married to a stranger.
‘Ready?’ her father asked.
She struggled to relearn the forgotten skill of smiling for his benefit and nodded. Ahead of her the elegant Raini spoke to someone outside Hannah’s line of vision and the big doors swung open.
Hannah had anticipated more of the same magnificence she had encountered so far, but she had the impression of a space that was relatively small, almost intimate...peaceful. The tranquillity was a dramatic contrast to the emotional storm that raged just below her calm surface.
If you discounted the priest and choir there were only four people present: two robed rulers in the pews, and the two men who stood waiting, one tall and fair, the other...the other tall and very dark. She closed her eyes and willed herself to relax, to breathe, to do this... She opened them again and smiled at her father. He felt bad enough about this without her falling apart.
* * *
‘Nervous?’
Kamel glanced at his best man. ‘No.’ Resigned would be a more accurate description of his mindset. There had only ever been one woman he had imagined walking down the aisle towards him and he had watched her make that walk to someone else. He would never forget the expression on her face—she had been incandescent with joy. Yet now when he did think of it he found another face superimposing itself over Amira’s. A face framed by blonde hair.
‘I suppose you could call this a version of a shotgun wedding,’ the other man mused, glancing at the two royal personages who occupied the empty front pews. ‘She’s not...?’
He tried to imagine those blue eyes soft as she held a child. ‘No, she is not.’
‘There’s going to be a hell of a lot of pressure for you to change that. I hope she knows what she’s letting herself in for.’
‘Did you?’ Kamel countered, genuinely curious.
‘No, but then I didn’t marry the heir apparent...which is maybe just as well. Raini and I have decided not to go for another round of IVF. It’s been eight years now and there has to be a cut-off point. There is a limit to how many times she can put herself through this.’
Kamel clasped the other man’s shoulder. ‘Sorry.’
The word had never sounded less adequate. Kamel never lost sight of the fact that life was unfair, but if he had this would have reminded him. The world was filled with children who were unloved and unwanted and here were two people who had all the love in the world to give a child and it wasn’t going to happen for them.
One of life’s cruelties.
‘Thanks.’ Steven looked towards a security guy who nodded and spoke into his earpiece. ‘Looks like she’s arrived on time. You’re a lucky man.’
Kamel glanced at Steven and followed the direction of his gaze. The breath caught in his throat. Bedraggled, she had been a beautiful woman, but this tall, slender creature was a dream vision in white—hair falling like a golden cloud down her back, the diamonds glittering on her lacy veil fading beside the brilliance of her wide blue eyes.
‘That remains to be seen.’
Kamel’s murmured comment drew a quizzical look from his best man but no response that could be heard above the strains of ‘Ave Maria’ sung by the choir as the bride on her father’s arm, preceded by her matron of honour, began her progression.
A weird sense of calm settled on Hannah as she stood facing her bridegroom. It did not cross her mind until afterwards that the whole thing resembled an out-of-body experience: she was floating somewhere above the heads of the people gathered to witness this parody, watching herself give her responses in a voice that didn’t even hold a tremor.
The tremor came at the end when they were pronounced man and wife and Kamel looked directly at her for the first time. His dark eyes held hers as he brushed a fold of gossamer lace from her cheek and stared down at her with a soul-stripping intensity.
In her emotionally heightened state she had no idea who leaned in to whom; Hannah just knew she experienced the weirdest sensation, as though she were being pulled by an invisible thread towards him.
Her eyes were wide open as he covered her lips with his, then as the warm pressure deepened her eyelids lowered and her lips parted without any coercion and she kissed him back.
It was Kamel who broke the contact. Without it, her head was no longer filled with the taste, the texture and the smell of him, and reality came flooding back with a vengeance. She’d just kissed her husband and she’d enjoyed it—more than a little. That was wrong, so very wrong on every level. It was as if he had flicked a switch she didn’t know she had. She shivered, unable to control the fresh wave of heat that washed over her skin.
He took her hand and raised it to his lips, watching the rapt glow of sensual invitation in her velvet eyes be replaced by something close to panic. He was not shocked but he was surprised by the strength of the physical response she had shown.
‘Smile. You’re the radiant bride, ma belle,’ he warned.
Hannah smiled until her jaw ached. She smiled all the way through the formality of signatures, and all she could think about was that kiss. The memory felt like a hot prickle under her skin. For the first time in her life she understood the power of sex and how a person could forget who they were under the influence of that particular drug.
She was kissed on both cheeks by the leaders of two countries, and then rather more robustly by her father, who held her hand tightly.
‘You know that I am always there for you, Hannah.’
‘I know, Dad. I’m fine.’ She blinked away emotional tears but couldn’t dislodge the massive lump in her throat.
‘I will take care of her, Charles.’
His sincerity made her teeth ache. You couldn’t trust a man who could lie so well, not that Hannah had any intention of trusting him. Aware that her father was watching, she let it lie when Kamel took her hand in his, not snatching it away until they were out of sight.