CAROL MARINELLI - Midnight in the Harem - For Duty's Sake / Banished to the Harem / The Tarnished Jewel of Jazaar

HIS body beneath his robes of state rigid with shock, Zahir stared at his father. Replaying the words Faruq had spoken in his mind did not aid in making sense of them.

Angele would not have done this. She could not have done this. Not after their very successful night together.

“You did not expect this,” Faruq said with some censure.

No, Zahir had bloody well not expected anything like this. Not after last night. Especially after last night. But betrayal and shock were choking him, anger their close bedfellow, so he merely shook his head.

“Her leave taking, these letters …” Faruq wasn’t sounding like a father, but a disappointed king. “It all implies forethought and planning.”

“It’s one of her talents.” Zahir allowed with heavy irony to mask his growing fury.

His gazed jumped from his father’s grave expression to matching looks on the two other men in the king’s private study. King Malik’s frown was two parts anger, one part confusion. Cemal appeared resigned, though clearly not happy.

That attitude of resignation bothered Zahir more than he wanted to admit, feeding the anger he was doing his best to keep under control. “Did you know about this?” he asked the older man.

“No.” Cemal did not elaborate, but King Malik was more than willing to fill in the gaps. “She called him on her way to the airport.”

“And we were unable to stop her flight?” Zahir asked, knowing full well how feudal he sounded and really, not caring.

“She cut the timing too fine and left on the private jet owned by one of the wedding guests.” Zahir cursed.

“She outwitted us,” King Malik said with some admiration.

Zahir did not comment, but reached out in a silent demand to see the letter his father still held. He was not so impressed right now by Angele’s superb attention to detail.

Faruq passed the papers over. “She included a copy of her press release as well—it denies rumors of your possible betrothal.”

“You’re serious?” Zahir asked in an angry disbelief he was unable to entirely quash.

There was being thorough and there was being outrageously stubborn.

Faruq nodded grimly. “According to her letter, it won’t go live for a few hours.”

“She did not want us blindsided by the announcement,” King Malik said.

Blindsided? After the night they had spent in his bed, how could Zahir be anything but? He scanned the pages in his hand. “Like hell she does not wish to live in Zohra. She loves it here.”

Both kings nodded their agreement, though it was King Malik that spoke. “That has always been my understanding.”

“She chose the excuse most likely to lose her favor with the people of Zohra and Jawhar while increasing Zahir’s sympathy with them.” It was the first time since Zahir had entered his father’s study that Cemal had offered anything more than a monosyllabic answer to a question. “It is the equivalent of her falling on her sword.”

The words conjured up Angele’s claims she would not allow herself or Zahir to be railroaded into marriage, and her subsequent promise to take the blame in the media and with the royal families. He’d convinced himself she didn’t mean it. Clearly he’d been spectacularly wrong regarding her motives for their “wedding night.”

Not in the least comfortable with an image of himself as being so weak he needed such protections, the fury inside Zahir went from simmer to full boil. He was not that man. That she could not see that truth infuriated him, but like always, he kept his emotions under tight control.

“The fact she broke the engagement was enough of a sympathy vote for me,” Zahir said with cold sarcasm.

Cemal shook his head. “Not if she gave her true reason for doing so, which I’ve no doubt she did to you.”

Zahir remembered the conversation he’d had with his intended only three nights ago, words he had dismissed as nerves. “You believe she spoke to me of this?” He shook the papers in his hand, his grip so tight they wrinkled.

He wasn’t denying it, but he wasn’t admitting anything, either.

“I know my daughter. She does not take the easy way out.”

“That is why she called our engagement off with a letter,” Zahir mocked.

How had she considered it unnecessary to speak to him personally? Had she thought her illogical claims in his study that night to be sufficient final word on their future?

If she did, it only showed how very little she truly understood the man who she would one day marry.

Cemal wasn’t buying it. “She called me and I’m confident she spoke directly to you.”

“Did she?” Faruq demanded of his son.

Zahir gave a jerk of his head. Regardless of whether he accepted that conversation as definitive word on the subject, obviously Angele had seen things differently. He ignored a curiously sharp pain in the vicinity of his heart at her easy dismissal.

“And you did not feel it politic to warn me, or her uncle?” Zahir’s father demanded, his own anger blatant and no distant relation to the emotionless facade he had always demanded of Zahir.

“Adopted uncle,” Cemal stressed, once again entering the discussion. “And it’s not an engagement. Their relationship was never formalized. Not in ten years.”

“We all know the reasons behind that,” Zahir said.

“Camel dung.” Cemal made no attempt to hide his disgust. “You could have announced the formal engagement anytime, but you chose not to and my daughter got tired of waiting.”

“So, she thought to force my son’s hand with this?” Faruq asked in a deadly quiet voice.

Zahir’s father had taught him to negotiate, to manipulate and to retaliate. The man hated being on the receiving end of circumstances and manipulations out of his control.

Cemal’s expression turned even stonier than it had been as he’d voiced his accusation of Zahir’s neglect over his duty. No, he hadn’t labeled it as such, but each man in this room knew who was responsible for the ten-year-long “understanding.”

“On the contrary,” Cemal said, his voice just as cold as Zahir’s father’s had been. “This is my daughter making sure nothing can force her into honoring a contract she believes would sow nothing but unhappiness for her future.”

“That is ridiculous, my brother,” King Malik said, laying his own stress on the family claim along with a conciliatory hand on Cemal’s shoulder. “The girl is in love with Zahir and always has been. It’s as easy to read every time she is near him as the most basic of primary books.”

Zahir grimaced. “A woman in love does not break off an engage—” At Cemal’s narrowed eyes, Zahir amended his words to, “a contractual promise for future marriage.”

“She does if she believes her love will never be returned.”

Zahir wasn’t going there. “She is no starry-eyed teenager to expect flowers and poetry from a marriage such as ours.”

“I think you are missing the point here,” Cemal said. “There isn’t going to be any marriage.”

“And this pleases you?” Zahir accused, stunned by the possibility. He was no man’s idea of a poor son-in-law choice.

“Not at all, but I know my daughter well enough to know that once she sets a course of action, she sticks to it.”

Zahir didn’t disagree. Cemal and Lou-Belia had wanted Angele to attend finishing school in Paris rather than university in the States. Angele had gotten her degree from Cornell. Neither had approved her decision to get her own apartment, but Angele had lived on her own since her sophomore year at university.

Zahir had never given much thought to what he considered Angele’s minor rebellions, particularly when he had approved her choices both times. He had not wanted her to marry him without having had a chance to live at least something of a normal life.