Page 46 of At the Sheikh's Command
“How could you think anything else after everything I’d said to you? I don’t understand why you didn’t wait for me to return, just as we arranged.”
“You know?” Her voice sounded as shattered and broken as her heart. “I probably would have done if it weren’t for losing Azra. It nearly killed me. I tried to explain it in my letter to you.”
“The letter I never received.”
She tried to bite back the tears. She couldn’t believe that her life had pivoted on a missing letter.
“What do you think happened?”
“It could only have been one person,” he said grimly. “The woman with the most to lose if I married you, the woman who’d spent her whole life maneuvering to make sure I became king and Sheikha Gufrana became queen.”
“Your mother.”
“It must have been.” He swore under his breath and dropped his head back with an exasperated sigh, staring at the bright light. “And I let her.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe my mother deceived me. At the time, the throne was under threat. If I didn’t marry Gufrana, my family’s succession wouldn’t have been secure and my mother would have lost everything she’d worked towards.”
“I guess when someone’s livelihood hangs in the balance, they’d do anything to protect themselves, even lie to their son. Even deprive him of love.” She shook her head, still scarcely able to believe it.
“Tell me what happened, Nora. Tell me everything.”
“I was eight months pregnant when I received a visit from your mother.”
“How did she discover you were pregnant?”
“I don’t know. I guess I kind of stand out and the city is small. I couldn’t hide it forever. Someone obviously told her, and she came and told me you’d be married to someone else by the end of the year and tried to bribe me. But, as devastated as I was, I refused, because I still thought there was a chance.”
“You still believed in me.”
“Then, yes.” She shook her head. “But after Azra died, I don’t think I believed in anything. I was numb.”
He held her more tightly. “I can’t bear to think of you alone and dealing with all of this. It breaks my heart.”
She squeezed out a sad smile. “It definitely broke mine,” she said simply. She sucked in a deep breath. She had to go on. She had to tell him everything. “After she was buried, I left. I didn’t want to leave her, but I didn’t believe you wanted me and my visa had expired. Without your help, there was no way I could stay.”
“So you left, leaving only a letter with Ammar, which he delivered to my mother, instead of me.”
“I guess. Your mother was determined to force me away.”
“And it worked.”
“Oh Darrius! You said before that you followed me to England. But how come you didn’t find me?
“Ididfind you.”
She opened her eyes wide. “You did?”
“Yes, I came to Oxford and I tracked you down to a pub. I saw you in the pub's garden. I remember it was a sunny day. Your hair was bright in the sunlight and I remember how my heart leapt. And then someone approached you. A man.” He looked at her with pain in his eyes and she suddenly remembered.
“What happened next?” she asked, knowing, now, what he was going to say.
“He kissed you.”
She tried to smile, tried to shrug, but she knew what he’d seen. She clung to the smallest of hopes.
His phone rang out. He ignored it.
“People kiss people,” she said. “It’s what you do to friends.”
“Not like this. Not on the lips, not with a passion which I thought only we shared.”
