‘With me?’ Her voice trembled on the question and her eyes were deep, dark pools of gold.
‘With you I’ve known more peace than ever before.’
It was the truth. It was more than he had ever expected. She was his peace and he valued that peace so much that he dreaded the thought that Aziza might get caught up in Sharmila’s toxic legacy. He would give the world to protect her from that. But the way that she had shifted restlessly under the covers, the way that her eyes had slid away from him, her hand pulling free from his, offered their own warning. Since she had become so restless and unsettled he had been on edge, unsure in a way he had never known before.
‘What is it, Aziza?’ he asked softly. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Wrong? It’s not wrong,’ she returned in a tone that somehow failed to convince. ‘In fact it’s just what you want—I’m pregnant,’ she said baldly, but with a touch of pride that lit a flame in his heart.
She didn’t sound as joyful as he might have expected, but then this was all new to her, and it came on top of everything else she had had to learn about being Queen. It didn’t matter; he had enough delight for both of them.
‘Pregnant,’ he said, his voice thick and rough with satisfaction. ‘Oh, thank heaven.’
Leaning forward, he planted a kiss on those parted lips, taking them hard and fierce with all the joy, the pride, that was in him. Now at last he really would be the King Rhastaan needed; and with Aziza at his side he could make up for all his wild and foolish days.
His doubts had been unnecessary. She would stay with him now. All right, so she would stay because of the child, not because of him, but he’d take that for now if that was what was on offer. After all, their marriage had been a political one, carefully arranged to establish the strongest treaty possible. She had little reason to stay for him, but this was enough. Better to keep her with him just for the baby than not at all.
‘That is the best news ever,’ he told her, taking both her hands in his and holding them tight. ‘For the country—for you...’
‘And for you. You must have doubted that I could give you a child.’ Her voice was tight, hurt—accusing, even. ‘After all, there can’t be any problem with your side of things, can there? I mean, Sharmila was pregnant within weeks. You must have worried when it wasn’t like that for us.’
Now what had she said? His black eyes narrowed, his mouth clamping tight over some violent curse.
‘You don’t want to take that as any sort of example,’ he muttered darkly. ‘Sharmila was pregnant on our wedding day. With a baby that wasn’t even mine.’
‘What?’ The shock was so great that her eyes actually blurred, unable to see his face properly, but his voice had been so strong, so bitterly sure. ‘What are you saying?’
‘That Sharmila’s child was not mine. I thought it was—she told me it was—but the post mortem...’
He pushed both his hands through the jet darkness of his hair, ruffling it wildly.
‘Sharmila was part of the conspiracy all along. She was Ankhara’s niece.’ His voice darkened over the name of the leader of the planned rebellion. ‘They made sure I would turn away from Clementina, and then the assassination was supposed to kill me and leave Sharmila, supposedly carrying the heir to the throne, but... The whole thing went wrong.’
Aziza could find no words. There was nothing she could say. And when suddenly Nabil’s clouded eyes were fixed on her face she found that all possible thought had fled from her mind. Her heart ached cruelly for the young man—scarcely more than a boy—who had found that everything he had hoped for, believed in, had been just a lie. His parents’ emotional neglect had been bad enough—she knew what that felt like—but this...
All she could do was to reach for his hands, hold them, try to communicate her understanding by touch when she couldn’t find the words. Nabil’s eyes were just deep, black jet as they held hers in a moment of silent communication.
‘I have never told anyone that before,’ he stated flatly. ‘Not even Clementina.’
The honour he was paying her was more than she could ever imagine. He had kept silence over this for a decade but now he was sharing it with her.
‘Wh-why me?’
Nabil’s mouth quirked up at one corner into a wry, twisted smile and he spread out his hands in a gesture of resignation and surrender.
‘There is no one else I could trust with it, other than my Queen.’