Lynne Graham - Working With Cinderella

‘There were a few days before I fully came round when I could hear conversations. I couldn’t speak because I was on a machine.’

Emir watched her fingers go instinctively to her throat.

‘That was when I heard the doctors discussing the surgery I’d had.’ She was uncomfortable explaining things to him, so she kept it very brief. ‘The horse had trampled me. They took me to surgery and they had to remove my ovaries. They left a small piece of one so that I didn’t go into …’

‘Menopause.’ He said it for her, smiled because she was embarrassed, ‘I do know about these things.’

‘I know.’ She squirmed. ‘It just feels strange, speaking about it with you. Anyway, I lay there unable to speak and heard my fiancé talking to his mother—how he didn’t know what to do, how he’d always wanted children. Later, after I was discharged from the hospital, he told me it was over, that he’d been having doubts for ages, that it wasn’t about the accident. But I knew it was. Or rather I thought I knew it was.’ She looked up at Emir’s frown. ‘When I was riding today I remembered the last time I rode a horse. I don’t remember falling off, or being trampled, but I do remember what I was thinking. I was unhappy, Emir.’ She admitted it out loud for the first time, for even back then she had kept it in. ‘I felt trapped and I was wondering how I could call off the wedding. That was what I was thinking when the accident happened—he was right to end things. It wasn’t working. I just didn’t know it—till now.’

‘You didn’t love him?’ Emir asked, and watched as she shook her head. As she did so a curl escaped the confines of the hair tie. He was jealous of her fingers as they caught it and twisted it as she pondered his question.

‘I did love him,’ she said slowly, for she was still working things out for herself, still piecing her life together. ‘But it wasn’t the kind of love I wanted. We’d been going out together since we were teenagers. Our engagement seemed a natural progression—we both wanted children, we both wanted the same things, or thought we did. I cared for him and, yes, I suppose I loved him. But it wasn’t …’ She couldn’t articulate the word. ‘It wasn’t a passionate love,’ Amy attempted. ‘It was …’ She still couldn’t place the word.

Emir tried for her. ‘Safe?’

But that wasn’t the word she was looking for either.

‘Logical,’ Amy said. ‘It was a sort of logical love. Does that make sense?’

‘I think so,’ Emir said. ‘That is the kind of love we build on here—two people who are chosen, who are considered a suitable match, and then love grows.’

He was quiet for a moment. The conversation was so personal she felt she could ask. ‘Was that the love you had with Hannah?’

‘Very much so,’ Emir said. ‘She was a wonderful wife, and would have been an amazing mother as well as a dignified sheikha queen.’

Amy heard the love in his voice when he spoke of her and they were not jealous tears that she blinked back. ‘Maybe my fiancé and I would have made it.’ Amy gave a tight shrug. ‘I’m quite sure we would have had a good marriage. I think I was chasing the dream—a home and children, doing things differently than my parents.’

‘A grown-up dolls’ house?’ Emir suggested, and she smiled.

‘I guess I just wanted …’ She still didn’t know the word for it.

‘An illogical love?’ Emir offered—and that was it.

‘I did,’ Amy said, and then she stood. ‘I do.’

‘Stay,’ he said. ‘I have not explained.’

‘You don’t need to explain, Emir,’ Amy said. ‘I know we can’t go anywhere. I know it is imperative to your country’s survival that you have a son.’ But there was just a tiny flare of hope. ‘Could you speak to King Rakhal and have the rule revoked?’ Amy didn’t care if she was speaking out of turn. ‘It is a different time now.’

‘Rakhal’s mother died in childbirth,’ Emir said. ‘And, as I told you, for a while her baby was not expected to survive. The King of Alzirz came to my father and asked the same …’ Emir shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Of course my father declined his request. He wanted the countries to be one.’

‘You’ve thought about it, then?’

He looked at her and for the first time revealed to another person just a little of what was on his mind. ‘I have more than thought about it. I approached Rakhal when my wife first became ill. His response was as you might expect.’ He shook his head as he recalled that conversation. Could see again the smirk on Rakhal’s face when he had broached the subject. How he had relished Emir’s rare discomfort. How he had enjoyed watching a proud king reduced to plead.

Emir looked into Amy’s blue eyes and somehow the chill in him thawed slightly. He revealed more of the burden that weighed heavily on his mind. ‘I have thought about many things, and I am trying to make the best decision not just for my country but for my daughters.’ He had said too much. Immediately Emir knew that. For no one must know everything.

She persisted. ‘If you didn’t have a son …’

‘It would be unthinkable,’ Emir said. And yet it was all he thought about. He looked to her pale blue eyes and maybe it was the wind and the sound of the desert, perhaps the dance of the shadows on the walls, but he wanted to tell her—wanted to take her to the dark place in his mind, to share it. But he halted, for he could not. ‘I will have a son.’ Which meant his bride could not be her. ‘Marriage means different things for me. I am sorry if I hurt you—that was never my intention.’

‘I didn’t take it personally …’ But at the last moment her voice broke—because her last words weren’t true. She’d realised it as she said them. It was a very personal hurt, and one to be explored only in private, in the safety of her room. There she could cry at this very new loss. ‘Goodnight, Emir.’

‘Amy?’

She wished he would not call her back, but this time it was not to dissuade her. Instead he warned her what the night would bring.

‘The wind is fierce tonight—she knows that you are new here and will play tricks with your mind.’

‘You talk about the wind as if it’s a person.’

‘Some say she is a collection of souls.’ He saw her instantly dismiss that. ‘Just don’t be alarmed.’

She wasn’t—at first.

Amy lay in the bed and stared at the ceiling—a ceiling that rose and fell with the wind. She missed the girls more than she had ever thought possible and she missed too what might have been.

Not once had she glimpsed what Emir had been considering—not once had she thought herself a potential sheikha queen. She’d thought she might be his mistress—an occasional lover, perhaps, and a proxy mother to the twins.

Emir had been willing to marry her.

It helped that he had.

It killed that he never could.

Amy lay there and fought not to cry—not that he would be able to hear her, for the wind was whipping around the tent and had the walls and roof lifting. The flickering candles made the shadows dance as if the room were moving, so she closed her eyes and willed sleep to come. But the wind shrieked louder, and it sounded at times like the twins. She wept for them.

Later she could hear a woman screaming—the same sound she had heard the night they were born. The shouts had filled the palace a year ago this night, when the twins were being born. These screams sounded like a woman birthing—screams she would never know—and it was torture. She knew the wind played tricks, but the screams and the cries were more than she could bear.

Maybe they’d taunted Emir too, for when she opened her eyes he was standing there, still robed, his sword strapped to his hips. His kafeya was off. He stood watching, a dark shadow in the night, but one that did not terrify.