Page 45 of At the Sheikh's Command
“No. I was pregnant withyourchild.”
His eyes opened wide with a brief flash of joy before darkening again as he absorbed the implications of what she said. He hadn’t imagined this. Hadn’t imagined that she would keep something like this from him. She didn’t blame him. She could hardly believe it herself now. But then, emotional trauma could force you into making mistakes. She could see that now.
“My child? But…” He shook his head, at a loss. “Mine?” He shook his head again. “But… Where…”
“Is she?”
He nodded.
She bit her lip. Now came the even harder part. “She died.” The last syllable was robbed from her mouth as a wave of grief swept her. She closed her eyes, so she didn’t see his pain and so she could continue with her story. “She died a few days after she was born. There was nothing anyone could do. I buried her in the cemetery above the hospital.”
He swore under his breath, turned his back to her, and looked in the city's direction, as if to locate the daughter he’d never known existed. She didn’t say anything. After all, what was there to say? Besides, he needed time. She’d had eight years to live with this, and he’d only had minutes.
Eventually he turned to her, his face still showing the signs of shock.
“And this was when I was in the US? When I was graduating before my return?”
“Yes.”
“So when I left you, did you know you were pregnant?”
She nodded.
He searched her face. “But why didn’t you tell me?”
“At first I didn’t say anything because you only needed a few more months to complete your degree, and I knew that if I told you, you’d change your plans and return to me immediately. Because I knew children were so important to you.”
“You seem to believe you knew so much about me, and yet you knew nothing.”
“Darrius! It was important for you to complete your work in the US.”
“And my child wasn’t important?”
“Of course she was. But it was only a matter of months and then you’d return and everything would be all right. Or so I thought.”
“So why didn’t you tell meafterI completed my degree? Why not then?”
“Because you stayed on in the US.”
“Only because I had business to attend to.”
“Business your father and mother insisted on.”
“Yes, but…” He trailed off. “Ah,” he said at last. “They knew.”
“Yes, they discovered I was pregnant and told me about your engagement to marry someone else. You hadn’t told me that.”
He grimaced. “I didn’t think it relevant.”
“Not relevant?” she burst out. “How was having a fiancée not relevant to me, your girlfriend, your lover?”
“Because it was an arrangement my parents had made which I intended to break as soon as I returned.”
“But… how could you? When I found out, I asked around. It sounded as if everything was settled. That it was a fait accompli. You would marry Sheikha Gufrana, the woman who became your wife, on your return from the US.”
“It’s true. But I was determined to cancel it, no matter the cost. You must believe that from the first moment I saw you, I knew there was only ever going to be one woman for me. And that was you. I wasn’t going to let anything stand in my way, not an engagement, not my family, not my kingdom. Nothing.”
She clamped her hands over her ears, not wanting to hear that what she’d longed for so much had been true. Not wanting to know that they’d both wasted eight long years of pain and heartache for nothing. He pulled her hands away from her ears.
