‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ Amy said—there seemed no point having a mini makeover when you were about to be fired.
She looked around the nursery to the twins, who were now hungrily eating the grapes Fatima was passing to them, counting them out in Arabic as she did so.
They would be okay, Amy told herself as she took the long walk through the palace.
The guards opened the door as she approached, and reminded her to bow her head until the King spoke.
She discarded that advice.
Amy walked in with her head held high, determined she would leave with grace. Except the sight of him, standing tall but so remote, made her want to be his lover again, to salvage what little they had. She opened her mouth to plead her case, but his eyes forbade her to speak and it was Emir who spoke first.
‘You will leave late this afternoon. I have arranged all transport. That gives you some time to spend with the girls. I have a new nanny starting. She will assist Fatima.’
Yes, she’d wanted to do this with grace, but at the final hurdle she faltered—could not stand the thought of yet another woman taking care of her girls. ‘No! You know the girls are better off with me—you said it yourself.’
‘I did not realise then that they were learning only to speak in English, that they knew nothing of our ways …’
‘They would know a whole lot more if you spent more time with them. They don’t need another nanny!’
‘She will be more suitable. We must hold on to the ways of old.’
‘What about London? What about their education and all Queen Hannah wanted for them?’
‘This is their land.’
She really would never see them. Amy knew this was a goodbye for ever, and she forgot to be brave and strong. ‘What you said before … about me being your lover …’ She could not bear to leave—would give anything, even her pride, if it meant that she could stay. Because it was three times her heart was being broken here. She was losing three of the people she most loved. ‘What you said about me raising the girls in London …’
‘It is the type of thing men say when they want a woman in their bed. It is the type of thing a man says when his thoughts are not clear.’ Completely devoid of emotion, he threw the most hurtful words at her, a round of bullets shot rapidly straight to her heart. He didn’t stop firing. ‘You really think I would choose you for that role?’ He let out an incredulous laugh at the very thought. ‘Here a mistress is a man’s respite—a woman he can go to to relax and not be bombarded with everyday trivialities. You would be most unsuitable.’
He was right.
Amy felt the colour flood back to her cheeks, and she felt the fire in her soul return too—a fire that had been doused by the accident, that had flared only on occasion in recent times. But it was back now, and burning even more brightly, fuelling her to stand up to him.
‘I would be a most unsuitable mistress.’ She gathered her dignity and held on to it tightly, determined that she would never let it go again. She could hardly believe the offer she had made him just a few moments before and she told him why. ‘I’d be a terrible mistress, in fact. I’d bombard you with news about your daughters. Every achievement, every tear I would share with you. I would busy your distinguished brain with my voice and my opinions, and …’ She walked over to him—right over to where he stood. He lifted his jaw, did not look at her as she spoke, but it did not stop her. Her words told him all he would be missing. ‘And there would be no relaxing.’
‘Go!’ Emir said, and still he could not look at her.
Amy knew why. He was resisting his need for her, refusing the comfort that was within his grasp.
‘Go and spend time with the twins.’
‘I’m going now to pack,’ Amy said. ‘I’ll spend the afternoon at the airport.’
There was nothing left to say to him, no point pleading with him, nothing she could do for the twins. She was an employee, that was all.
But she had been his lover.
‘We both know why you need me out of here today, Emir. We both know you’d be in my bed tonight, and heaven forbid you might show emotion—might tell me what’s going on in the forbidden zone of your mind. You can stop worrying about that now—I’ll be gone within the hour,’ Amy said. ‘All temptation will be removed.’
‘You flatter yourself.’
‘Actually, I haven’t for a while. But I will from now on.’
Amy had once read that people who had been shot sometimes didn’t even know, that they could carry on, fuelled by adrenaline, without realising they had been wounded. She hadn’t believed it at the time, but she knew it to be true now.
She packed her belongings and rang down to arrange a car to take her to the airport. There wasn’t an awful lot to pack. She’d arrived with hardly anything and left with little more—save a heart so broken she didn’t dare feel it.
And because it was a royal nanny leaving, because in this land there were certain ways that had to be adhered to, Emir came out and held Clemira while Fatima held Nakia.
Amy did the hardest thing she had ever done, but it was necessary, she realised, the right thing to do. She kissed the little girls goodbye and managed to smile and not scare them. She should probably curtsy to him, but Amy chose not to. Instead she climbed into the car, and after a wave to the twins she deliberately didn’t look back.
Never again would she let him see her cry.
HE HEARD the twins wail and sob late into the night. He need not have—his suite was far from the nursery—but he walked down there several times and knew Fatima could not quieten them.
‘They will cry themselves out soon,’ Fatima said, putting down her sewing and standing as he approached once again. She had put a chair in the hallway while she waited for the twins to give in to sleep.
Still they refused to.
He could not comfort them. They did not seem to want his comfort, and he did not know what to do.
He walked from the nursery not towards his suite but to Amy’s quarters. It was a route he took in his head perhaps a thousand times each night. It was a door he fought not to open again and again. Now that he did, it was empty—the French doors had been left open to air it, so he didn’t even get the brief hit of her scent. The bed had been stripped and the wardrobes, when he looked, were bare, so too the drawers. The bathroom had been thoroughly cleaned. Like a mad man, he went through the bathroom cupboards, and then back out to the bedroom, but there was nothing of her left.
He walked back to the nursery where the babies were still screaming as Fatima sewed. When she rose as he approached he told her to sit and walked into the nursery. He turned on the lights and picked up his screaming girls.
He scanned the pinboard of photos and children’s paintings. There he was, and so too Hannah, and there were hundreds of pictures of the girls. But there was not a single one of Amy—not even a handprint bore her name. Emir realised fully then that she was gone from the palace and gone from these rooms—gone from his life and from his daughters’ lives too.
The twins’ screams grew louder, even though he held them in his arms, and Emir envied their lack of restraint and inhibition—they could sob and beat their fists on his chest, yell with indignant rage, that she was gone.
He looked out of the window to the sky that was carrying her home now. If he called for his jet possibly he could beat her, could meet her at the