‘The people will come to accept it …’
He was kissing her neck now, moving down to her exposed breast. She ached for his mouth there, ached to give in to his mastery, but her mind struggled to understand his words. ‘The people …?’
‘When I take you as my bride.’
‘Bride!’ He might as well have pushed her into the water. She felt the plunge into confusion and struggled to come up for air, felt the horror as history repeated itself. It was happening again.
‘Emir—no!’
‘Yes.’ He thought she was overwhelmed by his offer—did not recognise she was dying in his arms, as his mouth moved back to take her again, to calm her. But when she spoke he froze.
‘I can’t have children.’
She watched the words paralyse him, saw his pupils constrict, and then watched him make an attempt to right his features. To his credit he did not drop her, but his arms stilled at her sides and then his forehead rested on hers as the enormity of her words set in.
‘I had a riding accident and it left me unable to have children.’ Somehow she managed to speak; somehow, before she broke down, she managed to find her voice.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘My fiancé was too.’
With a sob she turned from him, pulled her robe over her naked breasts and did up the buttons as she ran to where the horses were tethered. She didn’t possess any fear as she untied her mare and mounted it, because fear was nothing compared to grief. She kicked her into a canter and when that did not help she galloped. She could hear the sound of Emir’s beast rapidly gaining on her, could hear his shouts for her to halt, and finally she did, turning her pained eyes to him.
‘I lay for five days on a machine that made me breathe and I heard my fiancé speaking with his mother. That was how I found out I couldn’t have children. That was how I heard him say there really was no point marrying me …’ She was breathless from riding, from anger, yet still she shouted. ‘Of course that’s not what he told me when I came round—he said the accident had made him realise that, though he cared, he didn’t love me, that life was too short and he wasn’t ready for commitment.’ Emir said nothing. ‘But I knew the reason he really left.’
‘He’s a fool, then.’
‘So what does that make you?’
‘I am King,’ Emir answered, and it was the only answer he could give.
As soon as the tent was in sight, it was Emir who kicked his horse on, Emir who raced through the desert, and she was grateful to be left alone, to gallop, to sob, to think …
To remember.
The black hole of the accident was filling painfully—each stride from Layyinah was taking her back there again. She was a troubled bride-to-be, a young woman wondering if she wasn’t making the most appalling mistake. The sand and the dunes changed to countryside; she could hear hooves pounding mud and feel the cool of spring as she came to an appalling conclusion.
She had to call the wedding off.
‘I HAVE run you a bath.’
Emir looked up as Amy walked into the tent. He had told Raul to watch her from a distance and, after showering, had run the first bath of his life.
And it was for another.
As he had done so his gut had churned with loathing towards her fiancé—loathing that was immediately reflected in a mirror that shone back to him, for wasn’t he now doing the same?
Yet he was a king.
Again that thought brought no solace.
‘Thank you.’
Her pale smile as she walked into the tent confused him. He had expected anger, bitterness to enter the tent with her, but if anything she seemed calm.
Amy was calm.
Calmer than she had been since the accident.
She unzipped her robe and looked around the bathing area. It was lit by candles in hurricane jars—not, she realised, a romantic gesture from Emir, it was how the whole tent was lit. Yet she was touched all the same.
Amy slid into the fragrant water and closed her eyes, trying and failing not to think of the twins and how they would be coping. Doing her best not to think of Emir and what he had proposed.
Instead she looked at her past—at a time she could now clearly remember. It felt good to have it back.
She washed her hair and climbed out of the water, drying herself with the towel and then wrapping it around her. Aware she was dressed rather inappropriately, she hoped Emir would be in his sleeping area, but he was sitting on cushions as she walked quietly past him, heading to her sleeping area to put on something rather more suitable, before she faced a conversation with him.
He looked up. ‘Better?’
‘Much.’ Amy nodded.
‘You should eat.’
She stared at the food spread before him and shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry,’ she lied.
‘You do not decline when a king invites you to dine at his table.’
‘Oh, but you do when that king has just declined you,’ Amy responded. ‘My rule.’ And the strangest thing was she even managed a small smile as she said it—another smile that caught Emir by surprise.
‘I thought you would be …’ He did not really know. Emir had expected more hurt, but instead there was an air of peace around her that he had never noticed before.
‘I really am fine,’ Amy said. She was aware there was a new fracture he had delivered to her heart, but it was too painful for examination just yet, so instead she explored past hurts. ‘In fact I remembered something when I was riding,’ Amy explained. ‘Something I’d forgotten. I’ve been struggling with my memory—I couldn’t remember the weeks before the accident.’ She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
She went again to head to her room, but again he called her back. ‘You need to eat.’ He held up a plate of lokum and Amy frowned at the pastry, at the selection of food in front of him.
‘I thought it was just fruit that we could eat?’
‘It is the twins who can eat only fruit and drink only water. I thought it better for them if we all did it.’
She saw the tension in his jaw as he spoke of the twins. Sometimes he sounded like a father—sometimes this dark, brooding King was the man she had once known.
‘They will be okay.’ He said it as if he was trying to convince himself.
‘I’m sure they’ll be fine,’ Amy said. Tonight he was worried about his children. Tonight neither of them really wanted to be alone. ‘I’ll get changed and then I’ll have something to eat.’
Was there relief in his eyes when he nodded?
There was not much to choose from—it was either her nightdress and dressing gown or yet another pale blue robe. Amy settled for the latter, brushed her damp hair and tied it back, and then headed out to him.
He was tired of seeing her in that robe. He wanted to see her in other colours—wanted to see her draped in red or emerald, wanted to see her hair loose around her shoulders and those full lips rouged. Or rather, Emir conceded as he caught the fresh, feminine scent of her as she sat down, he wanted to see the