“I want to believe that if this...marriage...is not good for me, if you are not good for me, you will set me free.”
He said nothing. She could tell she’d surprised him. Caught him off guard.
“I cannot spend my life here in Saidia an unhappy hostage. I can’t imagine you’d want such a woman for your wife, either. For that matter, I can’t imagine your mother would want you to make your wife so terribly unhappy.”
“Do you know anything of my mother?” he asked, his voice sharp.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Then maybe it’s time you learned who I am, and where I’ve come from. Follow me.”
Jemma trailed after Mikael as he exited the courtyard. They traveled through a maze of hallways. Every time she was sure he’d turn right, he turned left. When she anticipated him turning left, he went right. The Kasbah halls seemed to be circular. It made no sense to her.
Finally he stopped in a spacious hall topped with a skylight and opened the tall door. “This is my personal wing,” he said. “It includes a bedroom, office and living room, so I can work when here, should I need to.”
She followed him through the tall door into a handsome living room. Wooden panels had been pulled back from the trio of windows and sunlight flooded the room, making the pair of low sapphire velvet couches glow and the gold painted walls shimmer.
They continued through the living room into another room, this one also bright with natural light as one entire wall was made of glass doors.
The room itself was sparsely furnished, the buff stone walls unpainted, and the plush carpet beneath her feet intricately woven of pale gold, faded blue, and a coral pink.
A low couch was on one side of the room while an enormous dark wood desk inlaid with pearl dominated the other side, positioned to face glass doors with the view of a spacious, but Spartan courtyard.
He crossed the floor to the desk, opened a drawer, and drew out a small jeweled picture frame. He held the frame out to her. “This is my mother at twenty-three, just two years younger than you are now.”
She took the frame from him. The woman was young and blonde and very beautiful. She had straight bangs and high, elegant cheekbones. Her long hair hid one shoulder and her blue eyes were smiling, laughing, up at the camera.
“She’s...so fair,” Jemma said, brows tugging as she studied the laughing beautiful girl with straight white-blonde hair.
“She was American.”
Jemma’s head jerked up. Her gaze met his.
He nodded once. “Your mother was descended from a Mayflower family. So was my mother. She was American as apple pie.”
Jemma felt a lump grow in her throat. She looked back down at the photo, noting the girl’s swimsuit and cover up and the blue of the sea behind her. “Where was this taken?”
“The Cote d’Azur. My father met her when she was on holiday with friends in Nice. My father swept her off her feet. They were married within months of meeting.”
“She’s so beautiful.”
“She was young and romantic and in love with my father...as well as in love with the idea of becoming Saidia’s queen.”