‘I— Well you know the “heir and a spare” syndrome? When there is the heir apparent—but a second son will be useful just to make sure? So a second son is only there in case they’re needed—as back-up—well, the spare.’
‘I understand.’ It was clipped and curt. ‘There have been times I might have wished that I’d had a brother—as “back-up” or at least as company—but how does this affect you?’
‘That “spare” situation—well it works for daughters too. Perhaps even more so. My father always wanted a son—he didn’t get one. He had two daughters—the firstborn was special. She might not be a son and heir but she was a beauty who could be married off for a great bride price—bring honour to the family. And Jamalia was exactly that. She’s always had suitors flocking to her. Not me. I was a second daughter—a disappointment.’
‘How could anyone see you as a disappointment?’ Nabil asked softly.
It could have meant so much. Perhaps on their wedding night it would have made all her dreams come true. But there had been that wedding night and that appalling moment when he had first seen her.
‘You did. “Hellfire and damnation—I’ve married the maid!”,’ she quoted hotly when she saw him frown in confusion. The stab of distress at his obvious disappointment was just as brutal—worse—than the first time she had heard it. ‘And you looked so—horrified.’
He had said that he wasn’t disappointed, but how could he have been anything else? He had thought that he was gaining a queen, instead...
‘I suspected there might be a trap. I’ve been caught that way before.’
Aziza wasn’t quite sure exactly how his face had changed. There was a new and disturbing tension that stretched his skin tight over his carved bone structure and a muscle jerked at the edge of his jaw where it was clamped tight against some feeling he was not prepared to admit.
‘There are conspiracies everywhere.’
Could his eyes get any colder, bleaker? And without seeming to be aware of it he had lifted a hand to rub at the place where the scar marked his skin, just for a moment before he snatched his fingers away and shook his head in brusque rejection of his troublesome thoughts.
‘And you thought I might be part of one.’ She didn’t know if the sadness in her voice was for herself and his suspicions of her or for the man who had grown up facing a rebellion against his rule that had been part of his father’s legacy to him, and had obviously never fully recovered from that brutal attempt on his life and its fatal consequences.
No wonder he had been so determined not to let her close. She felt the cold slide of ice down her spine as she recalled the way that he had pulled the knife—a knife he obviously always had hidden about his person. And of course, every day he looked in the mirror, that scar must remind him that someone had hated him so much that they had tried to take his life. Something caught and twisted cruelly in her heart at the thought of him living with the fear and the doubt.
‘Not me,’ she hastened to assure him.
To her astonishment he didn’t argue. Instead he seemed to accept her assurance, nodding slowly.
‘You were not what I expected. But that was not disappointment. I wanted you in my bed from the moment I saw you. If you want to know the truth, it was the thought that you were Jamalia’s maid that meant I had to think again about having her as my Queen.’
‘You were watching us?’
She’d felt that he was there; had sensed the burn of somebody’s gaze coming through the two-way glass—observing them, watching every single move.
‘Do you think I’d have chosen your sister, sight unseen?’
It was when he had seen the sensually feminine form of the woman he’d thought was just Zia that he had known he could not take Jamalia into his bed. Nor was she what he wanted as the mother of his children. He’d been there himself, and still remembered the loneliness, the shadowed world of being the wanted heir but not a wanted child. What was it Aziza had said? The first born could be married off—bring honour to the family. So had she too known what it was like to be a child who was wanted only to be there because of what they were worth in political terms?
‘Seeing that maid reminded me of Jamalia’s sister—of you. Had I but known it...’
And yesterday he’d had the evidence that his thoughts had been on the right track. The woman who hadn’t cared about her clothes, who had let the children swarm all over her and had laughed, was the woman he wanted as mother to his children.