Fatima pressed a finger to her cheek. “Are you so sure about that?”
He thought of the vitriol she’d sprayed him with on the flight. “Yes.” He ground his teeth. “For many reasons, this marriage is her worst nightmare, and I know that in forcing her to go through with it, I’ll be making her hate me. And yet, we must marry. There is no alternative. She must understand that.”
Fatima frowned. “Samir, you are too old to need my advice…”
“Am I?” He gave her a pointed look. “What is it?”
“Don’t bully her into marrying you. She’s not likely to forgive you, and you won’t forgive yourself for it, either.”
He expelled an angry sigh. “Forgiveness is beside the point. I have to do what’s right.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Fatima’s eyes shone with wisdom. “Do what’s right, for everyone concerned, and all will be well.”
He shook his head with exasperation. “And if what’s right for me and the country isn’t right for her?”
Fatima considered that. “You are smart and resourceful, and persuasive as well.” She put a hand on his forearm. “Use your gifts. Convince her.” Fatima stood up onto her tiptoes then to press a kiss against Samir’s cheek. “I look forward to meeting this woman.”
Samir barely heard. He was too focused on how to persuade Cora that this was their only course of action.
13
IT WAS A FEAST unlike anything Cora had seen before. Tray after tray after tray after tray, laden with sumptuous foods, were brought into her suite and placed on a long table against the wall, creating an enormous buffet.
“This is way too much,” she murmured, to herself, given that none of the staff were acknowledging her with more than a brief glance.
“I wasn’t sure what you would feel like.” His voice wrapped around her, warm like sun-heated honey and she startled. She turned to see Samir leaning nonchalantly against a doorframe, dressed as he had been after the memorial service, in traditionalthobes, looking so impossibly handsome and powerful that her breath hitched in her throat.
“I don’t usually eat breakfast,” she mumbled.
“It’s important. Especially now.”
He was thinking of the pregnancy, not her. His concern was for their baby.Their baby.The words trembled inside her and a rush of emotions made her lips tremble and her throat sting with salty tears. She turned away quickly, as the last tray was placed on the counter and the servants exited the room in a single procession, leaving only two, but Samir was quick to dismiss them as well.
“We will be fine, thank you.”
His civility wasn’t unexpected, but it was reassuring. She wasn’t sure what he would be like here, in Al Medina, if he would act as though people were born to do his bidding. But he was still Samir, still her brothers’ and cousins’ friend, the man she’d been getting to know for the last few months. Getting to know? That was such an insipid way to describe the way he’d burrowed into her soul.
Alone, he moved to the buffet table, something different in his bearing. He gestured to the trays and began to describe the meals, but Cora was barely listening. She could only stare at him, drink in the sight of him. The last time she was in this palace, he’d told her she had to leave, and never come back. He’d told her they could never see one another again.
Now, he was proposing marriage.
Her mouth felt dry, her fingertips tingling.
“And a fruit bake with honey and yoghurt.”
She nodded, as if she’d paid attention, but something in Samir’s eyes showed he understood.
“I know I’m asking a lot of you,” he said quietly, turning his back on the groaning table and moving slowly towards Cora. “This marriage isn’t what you’d have chosen—,”
She looked away from him, pressing a hand to her chest. He was wrong. She would have chosen this marriage, a thousand times over, if he’d chosen it first. If he’d chosen it willingly, out of love, not because she’d fallen pregnant with his heir. This marriage—a real marriage to Samir—was all Cora wanted in life, but the alternative, what he was proposing in actuality, terrified her.
To live her life with Samir, loving him as she did, knowing he didn’t love her back? Having to fake it for all the world?
She blinked her eyes quickly.
“The baby changes everything.”
She groaned. “I know.”