Rebecca Winters: Royal Families Vs. Historicals

Ramon sighed.

“You have to come with us so we can talk to any women we meet.” He spoke like he was explaining it to a child. “I don’t know how Sadiq survived these restrictions,” he muttered, resuming his pacing.

Ah. It wasn’t work he was missing so much as his extracurricular activities.

“Ask Mama to go with you,” she suggested drily.

“Siesta or I would,” he shot back. “Desperate times.”

She shook her head at him.

Henri emerged from his room. He had changed into light gray sweatpants and a white long-sleeved tunic. He made a small noise of disgust as he saw that was exactly what Ramon already wore. They didn’t try to dress alike, but it happened constantly. Even their panama hats had been purchased on two different continents, but their tastes were so in sync, they had each brought one to Zhamair.

When they set them on their heads, they did so facing each other, moving like mirror images—because that’s what they were. She and Trella were stamps, both right-handed, both wearing their hair parted on the left because that’s where their crowns were.

The boys were left and right, but were still difficult to tell apart for most people. They wore their hair in the same short, spiked cut, favored the same clothes and had such even features they easily passed for the other, not that they played that game.

Well, Ramon had tried with Cinnia a couple of times, because he was a tease, but she had always caught him. Her ability to tell both sets of twins apart from the get-go was one of the reasons Angelique had been so sure Cinnia was right for Henri.

Her brothers left and she sat down to work.

A knock sounded a few minutes later.

Most of Trella’s security detail were women so they’d been given much-deserved vacation time, rather than coming to work where they would have been hampered in performing their regular duties. When the family was together like this, in a secure location, they needed fewer guards anyway.

Maurice was outside this door and she paused to listen, expecting him to ask for identification.

Nothing.

Weird. Unless he already knew the person knocking?

Angelique faltered, suddenly paralyzed with nerves, then forced herself to rise and open the door.

She caught her breath.

He looked so exotic in his bisht and gutra.

She had studied menswear to design her brother’s wedding cloaks, but even though she’d taken great care with them, Kasim’s was obviously of royal quality and tailored by hands that were intimately familiar with the engineering of such garments. His robe fit his shoulders perfectly. It was stark black with its V opening trimmed in gold, his white gutra framing his face and secured with a cord of matching gold.

He had let his beard grow in, but it was trimmed to a sexy frame that accentuated his mouth and the hollows of his cheeks. The contrast of white and black and gold made his eyes look all the more like melted dark chocolate.

He stole her breath.

His expression flashed something that might have been exaltation as he looked at her, but it was quickly schooled into the stern, confrontational look he’d worn the day she had met him.

“You can’t be here,” he said.

She searched for the woman she’d been in her office that first day, the one who had stood up to this man, but it was far harder to find her backbone when he looked right through her and saw all her weaknesses.

Her weakness for him.

Somehow she managed to speak despite the earthquake gripping her.

“You’ll feel differently when I tell you what brought me here.”

Instantly alert, he stepped in, crowding her into stumbling backward. His expression was grave as he firmly closed the door behind him and left his hand flat on the carved panel. His lips barely moved as he said in an undertone, “Pregnant?”

“What? No!” Her heart fishtailed, then did it again as his mouth tightened.

Disappointment? Don’t be stupid, Angelique.

He smoothed his expression into something aloof and pitiless, sweeping his gaze around the empty lounge. He tensed and swore under his breath.

“Are you alone?”

As his gaze slammed back into hers, practically knocking her onto her back, her skin tightened with anticipation and a rush of heat hit her loins.

“My m-m—” How was she supposed to speak when he looked at her like that? “Mama is asleep in her room,” she blurted, pointing to the one closed door. “Trella will be back any minute.” Quit making me think you still want me.

His nostrils flared and he swung away, moving into her lounge like he owned it, which he did. He cast a glance around to take in the litter of tablets and purses, her open mending kit and his young sisters’ dresses in vivid green and yellow.

“Damn you for coming,” he said, pitching his voice low, but it was still overflowing with restless emotion. “What do you think you’re accomplishing?”

Angelique moved to her purse and dug for the velvet pouch, hand shaking as she offered it to him.

* * *

Kasim hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how they’d ended things, the bitterness of it. He hated that the acrimony would be even deeper after this. He had lived in that sort of thorny forest all his life and knew how unpleasant it was.

That Angelique had forced his hand and was making him reject her outright, forcing her to leave his country, seemed cruel on her part—which was the last word he would use to describe her. He hadn’t expected this of her and that made it doubly hard to accept and behave as he knew he must.

Yet there was only the anticipation of pain as he stood here. Duty and reputation hung like anvils and pianos over his head, but in this moment, the bleak anger that had consumed him had become radiant light in her presence.

Angelique turned, expression solemn, and stood where the stained glass poured colors over her golden skin and pale blue dress.

He drank in the picture she made. Memorizing it.

Then she offered something to him and her expression was so grave, so filled with deep compassion, it made his heart lurch. All the hairs on his body stood up as he took the pouch and poured its contents into his hands.

He recognized the workmanship if not the piece. New. Better than anything else he’d made yet. His brother had definitely found his calling in this.

The piano landed.

She knew.

“Your family knows this is why you came?” His mind raced while cold sweat lifted in his palms. He tried to imagine how he would contain this, but his mind was as empty as the shifting dunes in the desert. Old protectiveness warred with fresh, fierce aggression while betrayal washed through him.

“No,” she dismissed, barely speaking above a whisper. Her eyes stayed that soft, mossy green. “They think I decided to brave the wedding. That’s all.”

“How did you find him?”

“He came to me. Asked me to bring that to you for Hasna.”

Trella walked in, making both of them start guiltily. Kasim let his arm fall so his sleeve fell over his fist where he clutched the pendant. He slipped it into the side pocket of his robe.

Trella’s gaze flicked between them, sticking upon her sister’s pale face. “Shall I come back?”

“No,” Kasim said on impulse, probably a self-destructive one. “You can tell your family that she’s with me.” He clasped Angelique’s hand in an implacable grip.

“Kasim—”

“We have to talk.” He had to ensure Jamal would stay dead. That’s what he told himself, even though he knew at a cell-deep level that he could trust Angelique with this secret. She hadn’t told her family, had she?

“Gili, your phone,” Trella urged, handing it to Angelique as Kasim tugged her toward the door.