Game on....
* * *
Rashid had just settled in for lunch after a long morning spent in meetings with his council when Mostafa hurried into his office, a wide-eyed look on his face. The man dropped into a deep bow before rising again.
“Speak,” Rashid said, knowing Mostafa would not do so until told.
“Majesty, it’s the woman.”
Rashid went still, his hand hovering over a dish of rice and chicken. He set the spoon down. The woman was such an inadequate description for Sheridan Sloane, but if he tried to point that out to Mostafa, the man would think him cracked in the head.
“What about her, Mostafa?”
“She has, er, broken a window. And she is asking to see you.”
A prickle of alarm slid through him. “Is she hurt?”
“A few small cuts.”
Rashid was on his feet in a second. Steely anger hardened in his veins as he strode out the door and down the corridors of the palace toward the women’s quarters. He’d placed her there because it was supposed to be safe—and also because he didn’t quite know what to do with her now that he had her here. He’d sent his father’s remaining two wives to homes of their own, ostensibly in preparation for taking his own wife—or wives—but in truth he’d wanted to rid the palace of their presence.
They were women his father had married later in life, and so they were much younger than King Zaid had been. Rashid had no idea what kind of relationship his father had had with either of them, but they made him think too often of his father’s tempestuous relationship with his own mother. Rashid would not live with women who reminded him of those dark days.
Palace workers dropped to their knees as he passed, a giant wave of obeisance that he hardly noticed. He kept going until he reached the women’s suite and the mountainous form of Daoud, the guard he’d placed here.
Daoud fell to his knees and pressed his forehead to the floor. “Forgive me, Your Majesty.”
“What happened?”
Daoud looked up from the floor and Rashid made an impatient motion. The man had been with him for years now, long before Rashid became king. Daoud stood. “The woman tried to leave. I prevented her.”
“Did you harm her?” His voice was a whip and Daoud paled.
“No, Your Majesty. I took her by the arm, placed her inside the room and closed the door. A few minutes later, I heard the crash.”
Rashid brushed past him and went into the room. One tall window was open to the outside. Hot air and fine grains of sand rushed inside along with the sounds of activity on the palace grounds below. Two men worked to clean up the glass that had blown across the floor.
Sheridan sat on cushions in the middle of the room, looking small and dejected. There were a couple of small red lines on her arms and his heart clenched tight. But the ice he lived with on a daily basis didn’t fail him. It rushed in, filled all the dark corners of his soul and hardened any sympathetic feelings he may have had for her.
Sheridan looked up then. “And the mighty king has come to call.”
“Out,” Rashid said to the room in general. The servants who were busy picking up the glass rose and hurried out the door. A woman appeared from the direction of the bath. She dropped a small bowl and cloth on the side table and then she left, as well.