The Sheikh's Forbidden Virgin. Кейт Хьюит

as if she’d shown him that faded photograph in her lingerie drawer.

      ‘He is a good man,’ Aarif said after a long moment when he’d remained still and silent, his head half turned away from her. ‘A better man than I am. And a good king.’ Kalila started at his admission. A better man than I am. Why? What kind of man are you? She wanted to ask, but she was silent, and Aarif finished, ‘He will do his duty.’

      His duty. Highest praise, no doubt, from a man like Aarif, but to Kalila it had the ring of condemnation. She wanted so much more than duty. Summoning her spirit, she tried for a laugh. ‘Can’t you tell me more than that?’ she asked, keeping her voice light.

      Aarif turned to look at her, his eyes and face carefully expressionless. ‘I fear I cannot tell you the kinds of things a bride would like to know about her groom. And in truth, you will know soon enough.’

      ‘I thought he would have come. To see me.’ Kalila bit her lip, wishing the words back. Then she shrugged, a sudden spark of defiance firing through her. ‘He should have.’

      Aarif stiffened, or at least Kalila felt as if he had. Perhaps he hadn’t moved at all. Yet she knew she’d gone too far; she’d almost insulted King Zakari. Her husband. She closed her eyes, opening them once more when Aarif spoke.

      ‘It was my fault that you were expecting King Zakari,’ he told her flatly. ‘I should have explained the arrangements before my arrival.’

      Kalila glanced at him, curiosity flaring within her. Aarif held himself rigidly now, and although he was still unmoving she felt his tension emanating from him in forceful waves. He was not the kind of man to make such a mistake, she reflected, so what had happened? Why was he taking the blame?

      ‘It is no matter,’ she said after a moment. She could hardly explain how much it had mattered, or why. ‘King Zakari will be waiting for me in Calista. The wedding has already been delayed several times—what is a few more days?’

      ‘It seems,’ Aarif replied, his voice carefully neutral, ‘that it matters to you.’

      Kalila looked away. That afternoon, it had mattered. She had been disappointed, hurt, like the child at a birthday party Aarif had thought her, waiting for a present only to find it empty inside. Yet now she felt worse; she was numb, indifferent. She’d finally realised there had never been a present, or even a façade of a present. There had only been an empty box.

      And there was nothing she could do about it.

      ‘Princess Kalila, I should go.’ Aarif rose from the bench. ‘It is not seemly for us to be like this.’

      ‘Why not? We shall be as brother and sister in a matter of weeks,’ Kalila replied, raising her eyebrows in challenge.

      Aarif paused. ‘True, but you know as well as I do that in countries such as ours men and women who are unattached do not spend time alone together, unchaperoned.’

      ‘Are you unattached?’ The question slipped out without much thought, yet Kalila realised she wanted to know. He wasn’t married, but was there a woman? A girlfriend, a mistress, a lover?

      She shouldn’t ask; she didn’t need to know. Yet she wanted to. Something about that still, considering gaze, the carefully neutral tone, made her want to know the man that must be hidden underneath.

      ‘Yes.’ Aarif made to turn. ‘And now I must bid you goodnight. I trust you can find your way safely back to the palace?’

      ‘Yes—’ Half-turned as he was, the moonlight bathing his cheek in silver, illuminating that livid line from brow to jaw, Kalila found another question slipping out. ‘How did you get that scar?’

      Aarif jerked in surprise, and then he turned slowly to face her. From the surprised—almost trapped—look on his face Kalila realised it was not a question she should have asked. It was not one Aarif wanted to answer. Still, she waited, her breath caught in her throat, her mind a flurry of questions.

      ‘A foolish accident,’ Aarif finally said, stiffly, as if he were not used to explaining. Perhaps he wasn’t.

      ‘It must have been.’ She regarded him solemnly, longing to lighten the moment, to make him smile again—somehow. ‘You look as if someone came at you with a scimitar,’ she added, letting a teasing note enter her voice. ‘Did you win?’ She held her breath, waiting for his reaction.

      After an endless moment Aarif’s mouth curved in a tiny, reluctant smile. That hint of humour caused Kalila’s heart to lurch, her insides to roil in a confused jumble, for suddenly he did not seem like the man he’d been before. Suddenly he seemed like someone else entirely. Someone she wanted to know, the man underneath she’d wondered about coming to the fore.

      ‘Would you believe me,’ he asked, ‘if I told you I took on three camel rustlers by myself?’

      His gaze was steady on hers, his mouth still curved. Kalila smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I would.’

      And suddenly the moment of levity took on a deeper, disquieting meaning; suddenly something was stretching between them, winding around them, drawing them closer though neither of them moved.

      Aarif’s eyes held hers and she didn’t look away. She reached one hand out in farewell, and to her surprise Aarif clasped it, his fingers, dry and cool, wrapping around hers, sending a jolt of startling awareness along her arm and through her whole body.

      Her fingers tightened on his, and as the moment stretched on—too long—neither one of them let go. Neither of them, Kalila felt, wanted to. She should have pulled her hand away. Aarif should have loosened his grip.

      Yet neither of them did, and the moment stretched on suspended and endless, as they remained, linked by their clasped fingers, holding each other’s gaze with a silent, suppressed longing. Kalila felt a clamour of different emotions rise within her: the need to be understood, cherished. Loved. The idea, strange and impossible, that this man could be the one who would.

      Then, as if rousing himself from a dream, Aarif shook his head, the light in his eyes replaced by an even more disquieting bleakness, his mouth returning to its familiar, compressed line. He dropped her hand so suddenly Kalila’s arm swung down helplessly in the darkness, landing in her lap with a thud. She curled her fingers, now burning with the memory of his touch, against her thigh as Aarif turned away.

      ‘Goodnight, Princess,’ he said, and disappeared silently into the darkness of the garden.