He gazed down at her with a complex expression that still held reserve but which now also held sympathy. “I don’t know where she is now. As I said, I was in Paris with a group of friends. She joined us and we all came to Sitra. That’s the last I saw of her, at the palace. I had one of my assistants arrange travel for them wherever they wished to go. They returned by private boat after a week. I did not check up to see who returned, who stayed. I am not a border official. I had work to do. That, is the truth.”
“Tell me, I have to know. Did you…did she…”
“Were we lovers?” His dark eyes searched her face as if he were asking something more than a confirmation of her question. She nodded uncertainly. His lips compressed into a heavy line. “No. She was beautiful and fun but I had other things on my mind at the time. I can’t speak for others in the party.”
“You know something; you must know something. Did she seem close to anyone else?”
He shrugged. “Possibly. She’s very lovely and a number of my friends were interested.”
“Razeen.” She reached into her pocket and withdrew the bookmark. “I found something at the Lodge this morning.” She held it up.
“A cheap souvenir?” He looped it around his finger and brought it closer to him.
“That’s right. A cheap souvenir from my hometown. A cheap souvenir that belonged to Maia, that I paid for her with money saved from my job. It was tacky, it was cheap and it meant the world to Maia. What the hell was it doing in your Lodge?”
He let it drop from his hands. “In truth, Lucy, I don’t know. But I’ll find out.”
Lucy watched as Razeen called to his advisers and they came running. She watched as he sent them out to their computers and phones with specific requests, barked out in a language Lucy couldn’t understand and that had lost its softness. She watched as he turned back to face her, his expression stern.
“Come.” When she didn’t move he took her hand and pulled her outside. “Come!” He said more loudly.
Lucy still wasn’t sure if she trusted Razeen. Her body screamed she could; her mind turned one way and then another as it examined and re-examined his words, his attitude, his meaning, expressed and unexpressed. But it was as if the past half hour had built a wall between them. All she knew was that he was angry.
“I want to know—”
“Leave it to my staff. They’ll find out all there is to know.” He took her hand and pulled her away from the office.
“But—”
“We need to talk and not here.”
She looked around helplessly as people busily keyed information into computers and spoke on phones. Her shoulders slumped. There was nothing she could do now. Rightly or wrongly, she’d handed over control to Razeen.
Still with her hand in his she followed him out of the office. They walked through lengthy corridors until they came to the gardens outside her suite of rooms. She sat down and he paced up and down in front of her.
“You lied to me, Lucy. Everything was a pretense, wasn’t it? All of it. Because you thought me capable of seducing your sister, and worse.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that, I—”
“Don’t give me that,” he shouted angrily. “You slept with me, you made love to me, all the while knowing you didn’t trust me an inch.” He shook his head. “You’re incredible.”
“It wasn’t like that. I believed you when you said no one had stayed with you at the Lodge before me. I believed that. It was only then that I allowed myself to relax with you, to allow my feelings, my body, to take over.”
He stood over her. “I don’t believe you. How can I believe anything you say again? If you came all this way to check me out, why would a few words from me alleviate your fears? You’re lying again.”
She shook her head, unable to frame the words that would convince him.
“Trust, Lucy, has been in short supply in my life. Therefore I value it. It’s basic economics: supply and demand.”
Lucy rose slowly, feeling anger mount with every unjust word. “You can’t demand trust—it’s earned.”
“No, you’re wrong. It goes deeper than that. It reflects your own insecurities, just as it reflected my father’s.” His mouth twisted with uncharacteristic uncertainty, as if he’d said more than he intended to. “I don’t take responsibility for other people’s distrust any longer.” His cold gaze held hers. “I judge them by it. I judge you by it.”
She swallowed, suddenly afraid, not for herself physically but for what she might have just lost. He began to walk away. “Razeen,” she reached out for him. “What the hell was I meant to think? You were the only link to Maia.”