His look of bemusement filled her stomach with butterflies. Did he really know her so little?
“What about the other tents?”
“One is for servants, one is for security guards, and another is for meetings.”
Disappointment was immediate and she felt like a fool for not having realised. Of course he’d have meetings here. That was the purpose of this trip, not some sightseeing weekend with his new, temporary wife. She spun away from him before he could perceive her unwilling reaction, focussing on a mosaic tabletop.
“Are you hungry?” His voice was quiet, tinged with his accent, and her eyes swept shut. The problem was the past. She knew the truth of their situation but it was so easy to forget. Or perhaps it was easy to remember? To remember the way it had felt to stare across at him over dinner, to smile at him first thing in the morning, to lift onto her tip toes and kiss him as though it were the most natural thing in the world. For a few months, she’d been happy for the first time in her life, and yet it had all been an illusion. Just as this was fake.
“A little,” she said, without really knowing if that were the case.
“Then come, let us eat together.”
“Don’t you have meetings?” She prompted.
“No. Not today.”
“Oh. But I thought you said…?”
“These tents are semi-permanent,” he explained. “It is a good halfway point for these regions. If I wish to see community leaders from these parts, we often use these facilities.”
Millie was unspeakably glad. Not because she wanted more time with Zafar, but because something about his upbringing was irking her and she needed to get to the bottom of it. For their baby’s sake. After all, wasn’t it important to be on the same page as her co-parent?
He led the way to another table, this one set in an alcove of the tent. As she stepped into it, she saw that there were separate doors on this side. Curious, she peeked through them and gasped. “The cliff edge is just here.”
“Not right there,” he responded with a teasing tone that sent little arrows of nostalgia and familiarity through her body. For a moment she was reminded of the man she thought she’d fallen in love with, and she felt…sad. A wave of grief for what they’d had – or what she’d thought they’d had – and lost, had her pulling her head back into the tent and showing him a grim smile.
“There’s a few metres between us and the cliff’s edge, but don’t go sleep walking, will you?”
“I don’t sleep walk,” she murmured, numbly.
“No, I know.”
And even if she did, he had always slept with a vice-like arm clamped around her waist. Back then, she’d told herself it was an unconscious expression of love – a desire to keep her close. Fool, fool, fool.
“Did your father ever address the matter of your stepmother?”
His lips compressed in an expression of impatience. “There was nothing to ‘discuss’. What exactly would you have had him say?”
Millie felt a rush of sympathy of Zafar, but she focussed on other reasons for her line of enquiry. “Something,” she said firmly. “What will you say if our child finds themselves in that situation?”
“They won’t.”
“How do you know, Zafar? You may marry someone down the track. What if she doesn’t treat our child well? What if she doesn’t love him or her? Will you simply accept her ‘cordial’ treatment? Or will you intervene on our child’s behalf? Will you defend them with all that you are?” She demanded fiercely, glaring at him as though the situation weren’t simply a hypothetical.
He met her stare for several seconds before exhaling a short, sharp breath. “Sit, eat,” he gestured to the table. “And do not say you are no longer hungry,” he warned. “You must eat. For the sake of our baby, if nothing else.”
As it turned out, the food smelled delicious. He lifted the lid off several platters, each boasting a different curry or rice dish.
“Don’t you understand?” Millie pushed, as she heaped some rice onto her place. “I don’t want history to repeat itself.”
He took the seat opposite, his eyes holding hers. “It won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you are the only wife I ever intend to have. This will be my only child. And I will make sure he or she knows, with every cell in their body, that they were wanted. I will make sure they know that their two parents fought for them, fought to give him or her the best life imaginable. Does this assuage your concerns, habibi?”
The passionate intensity of his speech did so much more than that. While it did alleviate her worries for their child, it sparked more certainty and concern for his own upbringing. She had no doubt now that he carried wounds from his childhood, and that those wounds had directly impacted her. I will never marry, Amelia. You must accept that.