Kate Walker - One Desert Night

‘He should be proud of you. I was proud of you tonight. And yesterday.’

‘You were?’

Aziza dropped the pastry she had picked up back down on to the plate uneaten. Her throat suddenly felt thick and clogged and she had no wish to choke on her food.

Nabil’s eyes met her shocked ones, still calm, but so intent that she felt they might burn deep into her soul.

‘I would have told you that last night but you vanished into your room so fast and, by the time I looked in on you, you were fast asleep.’

‘You looked in on me?’

It was a disturbing thought that he had caught her asleep and so vulnerable. She could only pray that nothing of her dreams, those wild desolate dreams into which she had tumbled when tiredness had finally ended her uneasy restlessness, had shown on her face.

‘I wanted to talk to you. And the maid needed your dress to clean.’

‘Oh, but I would have done that...’

Aziza’s protest died away as she saw the glance he slanted her. A mixture of reproof and disbelief. Fiery colour rushed into her face as she recalled just why her dress had needed cleaning. They had visited a children’s hospital and she hadn’t been able to resist getting close to the young patients.

‘I do know how to do it.’

‘And so does the maid. It’s her job.’

‘And mine is to be—what?’ When he didn’t answer, she tried another approach, hoping to get him to answer her. ‘I don’t know how to be a queen.’

And there she’d touched on the reason he had wanted to talk to her last night, Nabil acknowledged.

‘There was no one who could have done things any better.’

She’d had a natural, easy approach with everyone she met. The people she’d talked to had positively glowed in the warmth of her attention. And the children in the hospital they’d visited yesterday had made straight for her like needles drawn to a magnet. They had climbed all over her, pushed their hands into hers. Her elegant blue dress had come back smeared with sticky little fingerprints and a smattering of baby sick on one shoulder.

And she’d laughed at it! Laughed and gone back for more.

‘I saw you before each event; you were nervous...’

‘Terrified,’ Aziza slipped in jerkily. ‘I was never trained to be a potential queen—or married to anyone important. Not like Jamalia. So I tried to imagine what your mother would do—she was so elegant...’

Nabil hastily caught back the cynical laugh that almost escaped him. But he’d obviously not been quick enough to hide his response as it drew Aziza’s eyes, wide with shock, to his face.

‘You obviously didn’t know my mother. She expected to be given attention—not to give it to others. And she would have hated to have children mess up her clothes. She would have made sure to keep a careful distance.’

‘But surely with you—with her son?’

This time he wasn’t so successful at hiding his cynicism.

‘As I said, you didn’t know my mother. Oh, she had style, elegance— she definitely looked good on the stamps. The person who most reminds me of her is your sister.’

‘And that’s not a good thing?’

Her eyes were like molten gold, fixed on his face. He couldn’t look away.

‘My mother wanted to be Queen much more than she ever wanted to be a mother. Once I arrived, she’d done her duty to the crown. One heir to the throne—check! Mission accomplished. With me safely under the care of my nurse she could go back to enjoying being the foremost lady in the land.’

‘Enjoying it?’ Aziza gave a small shudder. ‘Is it possible to enjoy being the focus of every eye? Knowing that people are watching your every move?’

She looked so horrified that he wanted to wipe that distress from her face. If she had felt so disturbed by the past few days then she hadn’t shown it when they were in public. After just a few short minutes he had known that he could leave her to cope, to talk to people whatever their age or status, though he had been aware of the way that every now and then she had glanced at him for support, encouragement.

‘It’s possible to grow accustomed to it at least. Believe me, Zia, it won’t always be this bad.’

‘Don’t call me that!’ Aziza couldn’t hold back. She hated hearing that version of her name on his lips.

‘Don’t call you—what?’ A dark frown pulled his black brows together. ‘Zia?’

The sudden inclination of his head showed how he had caught the small flinch that was her reaction.

‘It’s how you introduced yourself to me.’

‘When I didn’t want you to know who I was.’

He was too aware, too sharp. She knew that when she saw his eyes narrow swiftly. And his response only confirmed it.

‘So you don’t want me to know Zia—but who is Aziza ? Your father’s daughter.’

‘My father’s second daughter.’

She’d intrigued him now. She saw the change in his expression, the tightening of the bronzed skin over the high, fierce cheekbones, then suddenly he was leaning forward with his arms resting along his thighs, hands clasped on his knees.

‘Go on. Aziza, I said, go on,’ he repeated when she hesitated and the note of command that came so naturally to him left her in no doubt that if she did not obey then the consequences would not be pretty.

‘I— Well you know the “heir and a spare” syndrome? When there is the heir apparent—but a second son will be useful just to make sure? So a second son is only there in case they’re needed—as back-up—well, the spare.’

‘I understand.’ It was clipped and curt. ‘There have been times I might have wished that I’d had a brother—as “back-up” or at least as company—but how does this affect you?’

‘That “spare” situation—well it works for daughters too. Perhaps even more so. My father always wanted a son—he didn’t get one. He had two daughters—the firstborn was special. She might not be a son and heir but she was a beauty who could be married off for a great bride price—bring honour to the family. And Jamalia was exactly that. She’s always had suitors flocking to her. Not me. I was a second daughter—a disappointment.’

‘How could anyone see you as a disappointment?’ Nabil asked softly.

It could have meant so much. Perhaps on their wedding night it would have made all her dreams come true. But there had been that wedding night and that appalling moment when he had first seen her.

‘You did. “Hellfire and damnation—I’ve married the maid!” ,’ she quoted hotly when she saw him frown in confusion. The stab of distress at his obvious disappointment was just as brutal—worse—than the first time she had heard it. ‘And you looked so—horrified.’

He had said that he wasn’t disappointed, but how could he have been anything else? He had thought that he was gaining a queen, instead...

‘I suspected there might be a trap. I’ve been caught that way before.’

Aziza wasn’t quite sure exactly how his face had changed. There was a new and disturbing tension that stretched his skin tight over his carved bone structure and a muscle jerked at the edge of his jaw where it was clamped tight against some feeling he was not prepared to admit.

‘There are conspiracies everywhere.’

Could his eyes get any colder, bleaker? And without seeming to be aware of it he had lifted a hand to rub at the place where the scar marked his skin, just for a moment before he snatched his fingers away and shook his head in brusque rejection of his troublesome thoughts.

‘And you thought I might be part of one.’ She didn’t know if the sadness in her voice was for herself and his suspicions of her or for the man who had grown up facing a rebellion against his rule that had been part of his father’s legacy to him, and had obviously never fully recovered from that brutal attempt on his life and its fatal consequences.