“I deserve all you say. But you misunderstand Neelam. Of course she knows. And she thinks none the worse of me for it. Her father has three wives. She wouldn’t expect me to marry more than once, but neither would she expect fidelity.”
Lucy shook her head. “I don’t believe that. All women want fidelity. No woman wants to share her man with anyone else.”
“Is that how you feel?”
“Your twisting my words. I—”
“I want you to attend dinner.” She watched as his face hardened, as he became the King once more. “You will be at dinner. You will dine with us and you will see Neelam. Perhaps then you will understand.”
She gasped. “No, I will not.”
“You will be there. If you’re not there at eight, I will come to you, throw you over my shoulder and take you there like the primitive man you appear to think I am.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.” He raised his eyebrows in an unsmiling question that she didn’t answer. The air between them sizzled with anger and something else she dare not contemplate.
She turned and left the room without a further word.
Lucy slipped into the seat reserved for her in a corner of the huge dining room. Only a few people looked at her knowingly. She’d been positioned where she could watch and listen to Neelam easily and, more disconcertingly, Razeen could watch Lucy easily. She sensed Razeen had noted her arrival but he didn’t meet her eyes. For the hundredth time that evening she wondered if she should have come. It wasn’t Razeen’s threat that made her turn up. She’d be gone in a few days and she needed to know, needed to see with her own eyes the woman Razeen would be marrying.
And Aakifah was right. Neelam was beautiful. Large, wide eyes and a perfect oval face framed by lustrous dark hair. Lucy bit her lip and concentrated on her food. What the hell had she been thinking? Why would Razeen ever want her when he could have someone like Neelam: beautiful, well connected and wealthy.
Lucy sipped a spoonful of soup and glanced around. There were no burkhas, abayas, scarves or hijabs tonight: only expensive Parisian and London fashions that showcased their wealth. The colors and cut stones sparkled in the light. It made Lucy sick inside thinking of Aakifah and her family needing essential medicine while Razeen was sucked into this world of remote luxury. It wasn’t him. She knew that and yet he’d been persuaded that was what was required.
She looked at Neelam once more. She was looking down, listening to the young women who sat beside her, talking of the latest fashions. Lucy felt her resentment mount at the inane chatter and then Neelam glanced up and caught her gaze. Instantly Lucy could see that Neelam knew who she was. But there was no anger, no jealousy in her eyes. Instead she nodded briefly and smiled hesitantly. Neelam’s eyes were kind and they were also intelligent. Lucy returned the smile, awkwardly and turned away first. She felt awful, as if she’d betrayed Neelam. But, more than that, she was angry with Razeen for putting her in this position.
Suddenly she was aware of Razeen’s eyes upon her. She didn’t meet them but focused on her dinner and toyed with her food. She’d never been less hungry and yet the food was sumptuous. Luckily the person she sat next to was more interested in her other companions and she was left to her own devices. She had no option but to listen to Neelam’s friends’ chatter, while Neelam herself remained silent.
By the end of the first course, Lucy just hoped Neelam wasn’t like her friends because if she was, there would be no help for those people of Sitra who needed it. She glanced angrily at Razeen. He sipped his water and met her gaze levelly. It was as if he read her thoughts. In which case why the hell didn’t he understand that Neelam might be of the correct elite to satisfy his traditional advisors but she was too young, too distant and, if her friends were anything to go by, too shallow to help him bring his country into the modern day?
Lucy couldn’t take any more and, despite a warning glance from Razeen, she rose and quickly slipped away.
Lucy lay awake listening to the silence that had hung over the old, domestic wing of the palace all evening. She listened to the water running through the rills and channels outside in the garden and wondered how the hell her world had shattered quite so spectacularly in the space of one week.
It was as if the winds of the khamseen had whisked through her life disabling first the fixed compass point of Maia, from whom she’d always been able to work out her bearings. And, second, cracking open the strength on which she’d always relied, to reveal a vulnerability, a heart, that had been trampled on by a man who’d proclaimed himself to be someone she could trust. He may have been right about trusting him with her life, with anything, other than her heart that he’d taken and crushed.