wash out this awful brown hair color, answer her mail, check her email, start dating again…
She swallowed hard, hating the lump that filled her throat. She’d miss Malik. She liked looking at him, liked listening to him, just liked him period.
Nic showered, dressed, wondered where breakfast was. Leaving her room she noticed a small congregation of servants in the hall. The gathering of servants troubled her. She hung back in the shadows watching the servants speak. She knew enough of palace life to know that the small groups of guards and servants meeting, murmuring, parting, only to assemble again further down the hall was not normal palace protocol.
Something was definitely wrong, and from the hushed tones of the guards and servants the problem had to be serious.
Had Fatima been sick before, and Nic didn’t know?
Guilt assailed Nicolette. What if Fatima had been recovering from something…in remission from cancer or leukemia?
Nicolette returned to her room, quietly shut the door, worrying about Fatima without really knowing what Fatima was facing.
Alea arrived a little later with coffee and a message from the sultan. Nicolette opened the folded sheet of paper. He’d written a note, letting her know that due to Fatima’s poor health, the morning’s language lesson had been cancelled.
CHAPTER NINE
MALIK sat in a chair next to Fatima’s bed, his hands folded together, his expression grim. His thoughts raced, confusion and anger. ‘‘I don’t understand.’’
Fatima’s dark head turned away. ‘‘I can’t talk about it.’’
‘‘You have to,’’ he shot back, his deep voice curt, tense. How could she do this? What on earth had she been thinking?
Fatima wouldn’t answer. She continued staring at the wall and Malik felt a welling of helpless rage. He rose from the chair, towered over the bed. ‘‘They wanted to keep you overnight at the hospital. Maybe I was wrong to bring you home. Maybe I should take you back—’’
‘‘No.’’ She rolled over, looked up at him, tears in her eyes. ‘‘I won’t do it again.’’
She looked so small, so defenseless and his anger melted. He loved Fatima like a sister. They’d grown up together. He trusted her. ‘‘But why would you try something like that in the first place? What if help hadn’t come in time?’’ He shook his head, exhausted, worn out from the night spent at the side of her bed. ‘‘Is your life really so unbearable?’’
She covered her face with her hands, unable to bear his censure. ‘‘Forgive me.’’
‘‘Help me understand.’’
She cried harder. Malik felt sick at heart. ‘‘I’ve sent for your mother,’’ he said after a long moment. ‘‘She and your sister are coming from New York.’’
‘‘No, Malik!’’ She scrubbed her face dry, struggled to sit up, grimacing at a wave of nausea. They’d pumped her stomach at the hospital and she was obviously still sore. ‘‘Mother will be furious. She’ll be so upset.’’
‘‘And I’m not?’’ he demanded, not knowing whether to shake her or put his arms around her. ‘‘Fatima, you could have died.’’
She shuddered. ‘‘It was a mistake. I knew it was a mistake the moment I did it. That’s why I called for help.’’
‘‘But why?’’ He couldn’t let it drop. He couldn’t let it go. You didn’t swallow a bottle of pills without good reason. What had pushed her over the edge? ‘‘Fatima, you must be honest with me. I insist.’’
She looked at him, then past him, her dark gaze going vacant. ‘‘You were supposed to marry me.’’
He froze, air bottled in his lungs. What?
Staring down into Fatima’s averted face, he could see her agony. Her face was still pale, her mouth pinched, her eyes glassy, and he felt her tremor of fear and anger, hurt and confusion. Her agony was real. ‘‘Explain this to me,’’ he said more gently, trying for a calm he didn’t feel.
She wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘‘Father said you were to be my husband. He said I was to wait for you.’’
His heart fell.
For a long moment he felt horribly destructive—look what he’d done to Fatima? And then reason set in. He hadn’t done anything to her but treat her as a member of his own family.
And now he wracked his brain, trying to think of a time when marriage with Fatima might have been discussed, but he could remember no such conversation. It was common practice in Baraka for cousins to marry, for family to intermarry. Cousins were considered favorable marriage partners as it consolidated a family’s power.
Fatima filled the silence with her slow, painful words. ‘‘It’d been widely assumed that we would marry—’’
‘‘By whom?’’
‘‘My family. Your family.’’
‘‘I’ve never heard this before.’’
She shrugged wearily. ‘‘My father said your father had agreed. It would keep the wealth in the family, simplify inheritance.’’ Her body slumped, no energy left. ‘‘Ever since I was small, I’d been raised to think that you…and I…’’ Her voice drifted away, she bit her lip, trying to hold back the tears.
You and I rang in his head. You and I…‘‘So you took an overdose of sleeping pills?’’
She shrugged yet again, her slender spine bent beneath the weight of it all. ‘‘I didn’t understand why you’d decided to go elsewhere for your bride when you have me here single, waiting.’’
And suddenly he understood. Not just her pain, but also her shame.
In the West, Fatima was still considered young; she was just in her mid-twenties, but in Baraka that was old for women who remained unmarried. Men didn’t believe a woman couldn’t remain pure—untouched—for that many years and a bride’s purity was as important as her dowry. Indeed, a great part of the wedding celebration was the confirmation of the bride’s virginity.
Malik sat down in the chair next to her bed, reached for her hands, held them between his own. She felt so cold, her skin chilled. ‘‘I didn’t realize—’’ He broke off, heartsick. Or did he?
He’d known she’d always hoped to make a royal marriage. But he hadn’t realized she’d always hoped to marry him…or had he?
He clasped her cold hands in his, trying to warm her. His thoughts were broken, disjointed. He’d confronted her this morning wanting to make sure she understood the shame she’d brought on the family by her actions, and yet now he saw the shame she’d been enduring for years.
People would have been wondering, whispering, why a wealthy royal like Fatima Nuri was still single. They would have wondered why her cousin went outside Baraka for a wife…they would have gossiped about Fatima’s reputation, and her shame. Shame. Hshuma,
