‘Can’t you feel it in the beating of my heart?’ He placed her palm over his chest, where the rapid thundering of his life-blood made her eyes widen in dawning realisation. ‘It is no good, Sienna—for I have tried. By the mountains and the rivers, I have tried! I have attempted the impossible and have failed. To forget you. To imagine life without you. And I cannot. I will not.’
‘But love?’ she whispered.
‘Yes, love.’ He smiled. ‘More powerful than the eagle—a force as powerful as life itself—can you not feel it gathering strength, Sienna—as the bird itself does just before flight?’
He waited.
But Sienna felt tongue-tied and strangely humble—and scared too, in these imposing surroundings. A declaration she had longed for and never thought to hear—and now that it had been made she was shaken. It was as if dust had turned to gold before her eyes, and she was terrified that it would change back to dust again.
Yet he was right. She could feel the strength emanating from him—waves of it washing over her barely believing self. She touched her fingertips to the charm at her neck, as if it could give her the courage to say the words to him. Words she had once had tossed back in her face. Words she had grown inside her for so long, all the while trying to deny them.
‘I love you too,’ Hashim,’ she said brokenly. ‘I have done right from the very start, and it never changed—never dimmed—even when I prayed that it would.’ She stared into the black eyes which had softened now. ‘But you knew that, didn’t you? You could read it in my eyes.’
‘Yes.’
‘And it doesn’t actually change anything, does it? Not practically. You’re still a sheikh and I’m still a—’
‘No!’ He cut her words off with brutal force. ‘Do not say it! You are more and then much more—but you are not that! A youthful folly does not define a person for the rest of their lives!’
‘But that is how I will be perceived.’
‘And that,’ he said grimly, ‘that is why I am making the broadcast. They are setting up cameras in the small Throne Room.’ He tilted his h
ead—handsome and irresistible. ‘Will you come in with me?’
‘What are you going to say?’
‘Will you come in with me?’ he repeated inexorably.
‘Yes.’
‘And I must ask you something else, Sienna—and this is important. The life you live in England is incompatible with mine. My home is here. My place is here—increasingly more so. Could you renounce much of the freedom you enjoy in England? Is your love for me strong enough to embrace my life here? For if you decide to, you must do so without reservation. There can be no trial period, no waiting to see whether or not you can adapt. It must be a leap of faith and nothing less. You must decide whether your love for me is strong enough to commit to me, and to commit for the rest of your life. When you marry me,’ he finished deliberately, his gaze fixed firmly on her face.
‘Marry you?’ she echoed, genuinely shocked.
Wry amusement vied with outrage in his black eyes. ‘You think that I would contemplate any alternative to marriage?’ he demanded. ‘That I should not want you as my wife? Assuming,’ he added arrogantly, ‘that you wish to be my wife? But if you do then you will be taking on more than most women do, and you must be certain in your heart that your destiny is beside me.’
Sienna licked her lips. She thought of the eagle which hung around her neck—powerful and fearless—the symbol of his country. This strange land with a tongue that was foreign to her. A place so very different from all that she had known—and yet it contained the only thing which was important to her.
Hashim.
Was she fearless enough in her love to grasp it tightly and never let it go? To make her vows to him and mean them? Never to leave his side? To promise to be true, no matter what life threw in their path? But wasn’t that what all marriages were supposed to mean?
‘Oh, yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, yes, and a million times yes.’ There was an odd kind of lump in her throat. ‘But will your people accept me?’
‘If they want me as their Ruler, then they will have to.’
‘Do you want to take that chance?’
‘I can’t not,’ he said simply. But he knew that he could never rule—nor would be fit to rule—if he allowed his people to prevent him from seizing his heart’s desire. Because any man who turned away from one of life’s greatest mysteries could never be a complete man.
‘But…’ Sienna bit her lip, not wanting to destroy the beautiful magic his words of love had created, but knowing that she must not hide behind her fears, must face them head-on—even if expressing them might put paid to all her future happiness.
‘But what, my beautiful Sienna?’ he prompted softly as he saw the hurt and the pain in her eyes.
‘The photos.’ It came out in a bitter sigh. ‘What if your people see that calendar—how on earth would they ever accept me then?’
‘They shall not see it,’ he breathed. ‘Not now and not ever.’