I don’t want to marry you,’ Lucy said flatly. ‘I don’t want to live in Biryal as your—your queen, I suppose, and give up my job, my life, my whole identity.’
‘Did I say it had to be like that?’ Khaled’s voice was mild, but his eyes flashed. So did Lucy’s.
‘You didn’t need to.’
‘More assumptions,’ Khaled said with the hint of a sneer. ‘Everything is so obvious.’
Lucy glared at him. ‘Sometimes it is, Khaled. Sometimes it’s very obvious. And, anyway, we don’t need to argue about it because I don’t love you. You don’t love me. Full stop.’ Why did it hurt to say that?
‘Is that obvious as well?’ His voice was no more than a whisper, a hiss of breath, a lilt of suggestion, yet it stole around Lucy’s heart and squeezed it. Painfully. Suddenly she couldn’t answer, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even think.
Yes. Yes, it was. It had to be.
Khaled rose from the sofa. He walked towards her with careful, calculated steps. ‘You told me you thought you loved me,’ he said, his voice still that entrancing whisper. ‘Do you think you could love me again?’ He stood in front of her, close enough to see his chest move as he drew a breath, and her eyes fastened on the bit of brown skin bared by the neck of his shirt.
Why couldn’t she stop looking at that little bit of skin? Stop imagining, remembering, how it felt against her fingers, her lips…
‘I don’t want to love you again,’ Lucy said. She leaned back against the sofa, not wanting Khaled to come closer—for if he reached out just one hand, one finger, and touched her…
She didn’t know what would happen. She didn’t know what she’d say yes to. And Khaled knew that, knew his power over her, always had.
He lifted a hand and Lucy flinched, bracing herself for the softly cruel invasion that the merest caress could cause. But he didn’t touch her; the threat, the promise hovered in the air between them, made her both yearn and fear.
‘Don’t,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘Don’t, please.’
For a moment Khaled’s hand hovered, his fingers outstretched, his face made harsh with—what?—desire or desperation. Then he shook his head, as if clearing it, and dropped his hand.
‘No, you’re right. I shouldn’t. We can’t…’ He stopped, swallowed. ‘We can’t love each other, can we?’ He turned away, and Lucy was gripped with the desperate urge to run to him, comfort him. To admit the truth: I loved you then…and I’m afraid I could fall in love with you now.
Somehow she managed to resist that devastating urge and stay silent, motionless. His back to her, his shoulders stiff with tension, Khaled resumed speaking in a brisk, neutral voice.
‘But we can still be sensible.’
‘Sensible?’ Lucy repeated, laughing without humour, memory giving rise to rage. ‘I’ll tell you what’s sensible.’ Khaled’s eyes narrowed, darkened, and, empowered by her own memory and anger, Lucy continued.
‘I trust you not to hurt Sam, because he means something to you. Because you care. But I don’t trust you not to hurt me, Khaled.’ Khaled’s mouth tightened, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Lucy didn’t care. No, she realised distantly, she did care—and she wanted him to be angry. She wanted him to hurt. She wanted him to hurt like she had done four years ago, like she’d always wished he had. Yet then she hadn’t been worth enough to cause him a moment’s anxiety or pain.
Was that obvious as well?
Yes, it was. He could hint now, he could act misunderstood and hard done by, but she knew the truth. The truth was in the blank, unending silence she’d been faced with four years ago.
No miss. I’m sorry.
She half rose from the sofa, a vengeful fury come to life, given wings. ‘I don’t care what secret reasons you had to leave four years ago. Nothing—nothing—excuses what you did. Not in my mind. Not in anyone’s. Not if you loved me, like you hint now that you did. You didn’t.’
Khaled’s face remained expressionless, yet it felt as if he’d flinched. Lucy drew a breath, determined to continue. ‘And that one little mistake, Khaled? It was big. The kind of man who does that doesn’t deserve a second chance in my mind. He doesn’t get one.’ Her breath came in tearing gasps, as if she’d been running, and pure adrenaline surged through her, fuelling her fury. When it was gone, what would be left? She didn’t want to know. She certainly didn’t want to feel it.
‘I see.’ Khaled’s voice was cool; everything about him, from his hard eyes to his thin-lipped mouth, was remote. Had she hurt him? Lucy couldn’t tell. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. ‘In that case, if there can be no second chances for us, perhaps you can at least think of a first one for Sam.’
‘What?’
‘The stigma of bastardy,’ Khaled informed her coolly, ‘can stick, even to a king.’
Lucy’s mouth was dry, and she strove to keep her voice even. ‘But surely you knew that when you decided to make Sam your heir?’ To disrupt his life. Ruin it, even. ‘You didn’t have to.’
Another shrug; such an uncaring little gesture. It made Lucy want to scream and stamp her feet, to shake him and make him feel as twisted and racked with pain as she was, as he had been the night she’d seen him in his bedroom, bent over his damaged knee.
Why did that man seem so different from this one? How could they be the same?
Which one was real?
‘As I said, marriage would be a sensible option for both of us,’ Khaled said. He sounded as if he were summing up a business report. ‘As well as for Sam. Love need not be involved. It usually isn’t in these kinds of marriages.’
Lucy blinked. ‘And why should I even think of it?’ she demanded. ‘What’s in it for me?’
Khaled subjected her to a long, level look. ‘Perhaps nothing, since you seem determined for it to be so. It’s what’s in it for Sam that should make you reconsider the flat refusal you just gave me.’ He stepped away from her, the movement stiff, awkward, even. Lucy wondered if his knee hurt him again. Now was not the time to ask. She didn’t even want to care about the answer. ‘Tomorrow we will spend some time together, with Sam, as a family. Perhaps that will help you in your…deliberations.’
He walked with that stiff, uneasy gait to the door, and Lucy thought he meant to leave her without a backward glance, like a haughty parent leaving a chastised child.
Then he turned round. He smiled; it was barely more than a flicker across his face, yet somehow it changed his whole countenance. It changed everything.
There was something tender, sweet and vulnerable about that tiny smile, something that made Lucy wonder about everything she’d assumed—everything that had seemed obvious. Something that even made her want to be wrong.
‘Goodnight, Lucy,’ Khaled said softly, and then he really was gone.
His
