She tried to touch him but he shook his head and rolled away from her, turning to stare at the flicker of shadows on the walls—as if it were a betrayal to even look at her while he was speaking of Alya.
‘What happened?’ she said, from behind him.
He could hear the thunder of his heart as he dragged his mind back to that terrible morning—and, despite his having locked it away in the darkness, the memory seemed as vivid and as painful as ever. ‘I had to leave at dawn,’ he said heavily. ‘For I was due to ride to Qurhah to negotiate with the sultan there, and I wanted to get away before the sun was too high.’ He swallowed. ‘I could have flown—or even driven—but I wanted to visit some of the nomadic tribes along the way and it is better to take a camel or a horse into these regions, for they are still suspicious of modern transport. I remember Alya waking up just before I left, because she always liked to say goodbye to me. She was screwing up her eyes against the morning light, but we had been awake for some of the night and I thought she was just tired.’ His voice cracked. ‘So when she complained that her head ached, I told her to go back to sleep and to see how she felt when the maid came to wake her for breakfast.’
‘Go on,’ she said.
He stared straight ahead. ‘I remember she smiled at me and nodded, looking at me with all the trust in the world as I bent over to kiss her. She told me to take care in the desert. And that was the last time I saw her alive.’ His words ground down to a painful halt, because even now they were hard to say. ‘Because when her maid came to rouse her, she found Alya lying dead.’
‘Dead?’
He heard the shock in her voice and he turned over to see that same shock reflected on her face. ‘Yes, dead. Cold and lifeless—her beautiful eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Struck down by a subarachnoid haemorrhage at the age of nineteen,’ he said, his voice shaking with loss and rage and guilt. ‘Lost to us all and let down by the one man who should have saved her.’
‘Who?’ she questioned. ‘Who could have saved her?’
He shook his head incredulously. ‘Why, me, of course!’
‘And how could you have done that, Saladin? How could you have possibly saved her?’
He clenched his fists together, so that the knuckles turned bone white as they lay against the sheet. ‘If I’d thought about her, instead of being wrapped up in my own ambition. If I hadn’t been so full of triumph about the impending agreement with Qurhah, I might have realised the seve
rity of the situation. I should have delayed my trip and called the doctor, who would have been there by the time she started to vomit copiously. I might have been able to help her, instead of being halfway across the desert when news reached me.’
‘You don’t know that,’ protested Livvy. ‘That’s pure conjecture.’
‘It’s fact,’ he snapped. ‘I could have taken her to hospital.’
‘And all the intervention in the world still might not have helped,’ she said. ‘But you’ll never know—because that’s just the way life is sometimes. We have to accept that we have no control over it. You have to cherish all the beautiful memories you had with Alya and let go of the bitterness and the blame.’
‘Oh, really?’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘So suddenly you’re an expert on relationships, are you, my little virgin horse whisperer?’
She flinched a little as if she had only just registered the harshness of his words. ‘It’s always easier to diagnose someone else’s problems rather than your own,’ she said stiffly. ‘And presumably you told me all this because deep down you wanted my opinion.’
He wasn’t sure why he had told her. He wondered what had possessed him to open up and let her see his dark heart. Was it to warn her off the tenderness that had started to creep into their nightly lovemaking, even though he had warned her against such tenderness at the very beginning? And now he regretted his impetuous disclosure. He wanted to rewind the clock. To take back his words—and his secrets—so that she would become just another anonymous woman in his bed. So what inner demon prompted him to voice his next question? ‘And what is your opinion?’
Livvy sucked in a deep breath, knowing that what she wanted to say required courage, and she wasn’t sure she had enough within her—not in the face of so much sudden hostility. Yet wasn’t it better to live your life courageously? To face facts instead of hiding away from them? Saladin might be a sheikh who ruled this wealthy land, but in this moment he needed the words of someone who wasn’t prepared to be intimidated by his position and his power. Who would tell it the way it was—not the way he wanted to hear it. She drew in a deep breath. ‘You once accused me of allowing the fact that I’d been jilted to affect my life negatively—and you were right. But haven’t you done exactly the same with Alya?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What are you talking about?’
She licked her lips. ‘Aren’t you in danger of using your wife’s death as an excuse to stop you from living properly, in the here and now? She died when you were newlyweds...’ Her voice faltered for a moment as she met the angry glint in his black eyes, but she’d started now. She’d started and she had to finish. ‘She was young and beautiful and time hadn’t tarnished your perfect relationship in any way—’
‘And you’re saying it would have done?’ he demanded hotly. ‘That all relationships are doomed to end in failure or misery? Is that your Western view of marriage?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. Nobody knows what would have happened,’ she said fiercely. ‘Because nobody ever does. All I know is that you seem to be letting your unnecessary guilt hold you back.’
‘And what if I don’t think it’s unnecessary?’ he bit out. ‘What if I feel it is the burden I must carry until the end of my days?’
‘Then, that’s your choice, because nobody can change your mind for you, Saladin. Only you.’ She hesitated because this bit was harder. ‘Though maybe you prefer it this way. Your lovely wife was cut off in her prime and nobody else is ever going to be able to live up to her, are they? She was perfect in every way, and she always will be because you’ve put her on a pedestal. And no living woman can ever compare to Alya.’
His eyes narrowed with sudden perception and slowly he nodded his head. ‘Ah,’ he said tightly. ‘Now I understand.’
She was alerted to the dark note that had entered his voice, and her head jerked back. ‘Understand what?’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Self-regard disguised as advice. Isn’t that what you’re doing?’
‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me now. I was never very good at riddles.’
His mouth hardened into a cynical line. ‘Oh, come on, Livvy. You must know what I’m saying. You seem to have settled very well here in Jazratan. Even my advisors have commented on how well you have fit in. Unobtrusive, modest, yet supremely hard-working—you put to shame our enduring stereotype of the Western woman as a hard-living party animal. Of course, nobody but us knows that our nights have become a feast of sensual delights. And that under cover of darkness you become someone quite different—a creature of pure pleasure.’ His black eyes became hooded as he looked at her. ‘Perhaps you are reluctant to walk away from all that you have found here. Did you look around at my palace and like what you saw—is that it? Did my pure little virgin see herself as the future queen of Jazratan?’