With his thumb he pressed her mouth open slightly, easing her lip away from the worrying force of her teeth. But he had made two mistakes. The first was the worst. He had touched her and now he knew that he would live for ever with this feel of her flesh against his, the warm scent of her breath on his skin. And, this close up, he could see the betraying shimmer of her eyes. His own reflection blurred in that sheen. She couldn’t make this any harder for him—but at least he could make it as easy as possible for her. He could get out of here now, fast, and leave her to get on with her life.
But he couldn’t go without one last kiss.
His first kiss was meant to be firm and fast. Just dropped on to her forehead. An unemotional, uninvolved farewell. But the minute his lips touched her skin he knew that would not be enough. Every male sense he possessed demanded more.
With gentle fingers under her chin, he lifted her face again and bent his head. The last kiss was softer, lingered longer, put all the hunger he felt into its pressure on her mouth. So much so that he felt he was getting dragged into a storm of sensuality that threatened to close over his head and drown him.
With an effort that tore at his being, he wrenched himself away.
‘Goodbye, Clemmie.’
It physically hurt to walk towards the door. His body screamed in angry protest but he forced himself to ignore it. This time he was going. He was not looking back. He was not...
It was only when he was out of the room and in the corridor beyond that he realised he had been holding his breath all the time so that he had to let it go in one great wrenching, gasping, brutal rush. The door closed behind him so that at last he was unobserved, and, taking a moment or two to find a way of breathing again, he forced himself forward. He got himself out of the palace the only way he could. By putting one foot in front of the other and never looking back.
Clemmie watched the door close behind Karim with eyes that burned cruelly, aching and dry. The tears that had been so close had vanished now. She couldn’t let herself cry. She wouldn’t let herself. She had told Karim that she loved him and he had still walked out on her. He had turned and walked out of the door, never once looking back.
And the real problem was that she understood perfectly why he had done that.
She had just let the man she loved walk out of her life. She couldn’t do anything else. He was so right about that. If he had stayed, if he had taken what she offered, then he would not have been the man she had fallen in love with. She had lost her heart to a man of honour, never thinking of having that code of honour turned against her in a way that had ripped the soul from her body.
She loved him but she hated him for being so right about that. She couldn’t fault his reasons for behaving as he had, however much she wished he had never done so. She could argue with anyone, with herself—but she couldn’t argue with him.
She couldn’t argue with Karim.
Her hand crept up to her mouth, her fingers pressing on her lips to hold the memory of his kiss for as long as she could possibly manage. Already the moisture from his mouth was drying, but she could still taste the essence of him on her lips. If she could have found a way to call him back, to see a way out of this, then she would have done.
But the truth was that there was no way out. She could not call him back without destroying the man he was. The man she loved for his integrity. He would not be the man of honour—if he had stayed—and how could she hate him for being such a man, even if it had destroyed her one chance at happiness?
She had thought once before that she had had to face the fate that lay ahead of her with a heavy heart and a sense of dread. But now that future seemed so much darker, so much bleaker because she had had just a taste, just a glimpse of how wonderful the alternative might have been.
An alternative that was now closed to her for ever.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘HE HAS DONE what?’
Karim could not believe what he had just heard. He recognised the words but they just did not make any sense. Or, rather, they did make sense but not one he dared to put his trust in.
‘Nabil has renounced her—revoked the marriage agreement,’ his father stated again, holding out the sheet of paper he had been reading from. Karim snatched it, stared at it, but the words danced before his eyes.
‘It is his right,’ his father said calmly. ‘It was always part of the treaty agreement.’
His right, maybe...but why? The words stilled, settled, and at last he could read...
‘He has renounced her...’ he echoed his father’s words in a very different tone, his voice thick with the implications of this for Clementina, for Rhastaan—for him. ‘But why?’
The rest of the message made things clearer in one way—but so much more confusing in another. His father might not recognise it, but there could be no doubt in Karim’s mind just who was behind this.
It seemed that under interrogation Adnan—the ex-security man who had been in Ankhara’s pay—had told Nabil of the night that Karim and Clemmie had spent together alone in the cottage. A night that her prospective fiancée and everyone at his court had put a very different—a damning—interpretation on instead of the real one. No names were mentioned in the report his father had received, but Karim knew only too well who was the man involved. His conscience twisted at the thought.
But still things didn’t make sense. No matter what accusations had been thrown at her, all Clemmie had had to do was to tell the truth. That nothing had happened. Why had she not said anything, flung Nabil’s accusations in his face?
‘It was Nabil’s right—Nabil’s decision,’ his father was saying now. The older man’s face had so much more colour now and his strength was improving daily. ‘Our part in this is over. You fulfilled my vow to the boy’s father. Honour is satisfied.’
Honour is satisfied.
The words that should have meant so much now rang hollow in Karim’s thoughts. Honour might be satisfied, but he was not. How could he be when every day since he had come back from Rhastaan seemed shadowed, hollow—empty?
But I love you! Clemmie’s impassioned cry echoed in his thoughts, taking him back to the terrible day in Nabil’s palace when he had felt as if he was being torn in half as he had had to walk away from her.
Because she was Nabil’s promised bride: the prospective Queen of Rhastaan. Which she was no longer.
The sound inside his head was so loud that he was stunned his father hadn’t actually heard it. It was deafening enough to make his head reel, his thoughts spin.
It was the sound of chains dropping away, falling to the floor. The chains that had bound both him and Clemmie. Tying them into a situation where they could have no hope of ever being true to themselves.
Of ever being just a man and a woman.
Once again he was back in Nabil’s palace, recalling how he had looked at Clemmie, decked out in the silken robe, the ornate hairstyle, the elaborate make-up that marked her out as the promised Queen of Rhastaan. The woman who was forbidden to him.
No longer.
All that had been stripped away. She was no longer Princess Clementina, but just Clemmie Savanevski. Then he had wished that she was no princess, but just a woman—as she was now.
And in these circumstances, he was just a man. The man that Clemmie had enchanted from the moment he had first met her, and whose absence had darkened and frustrated his existence ever since.
And as just a man and a woman, was it possible that they could begin again?
* * *
‘Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday to you!’
The chirpy refrain ran through Clemmie’s head over and over, its bright, cheerful sound totally at odds with her mood.
Today was her twenty-third birthday, but there were no festivities, nothing in the world she felt at all like celebrating. Her life was so totally different from the way she had thought it would be. The path she had thought she was to take was now closed to her and she had no real idea of where she would go. She felt lost and unsure, and so cold!
With a shiver she wrapped her arms around herself, pacing around the room in an attempt to warm herself when even the fire she’d lit didn’t seem to have enough heat to take the bite out of the air. Was it just because she had become accustomed to living in the heat of the desert—for a short while at least—so that she felt the cold more than before? Or was it the truth that the chill came more from inside, from her heart, rather than the wintry weather?
It was all so very different from the day just forty-eight hours before, when she had been summoned to the throne room to meet with Nabil at last.
Clemmie sighed and moved aside the curtains at the window, staring out at the icy rain that lashed against the glass. The sun had been high and fierce in Rhastaan then and it was probably still shining down on Nabil and his new princess. The girl he had wanted all the time to take as his bride. The girl he had cast her aside for.
The morning had been like any other since arriving at the palace. Her breakfast tray had been brought to her, clothes laid out for her—a long silken dress in fuchsia pink. Her maid had been as attentive as ever, her eyes down bent, her attitude totally respectful. If there had been anything in the air, something to warn her of what was coming, she hadn’t noticed it. But then she had been so down, her spirits so very low after the way that Karim had walked out on her two nights before, that she had gone through her dressing, the styling of her hair, the application of the ornate make-up, like an automaton. There had to be some way out of this but for the life of her she couldn’t think of one.