Prince Nadir's Secret Heir(70)

                He regarded her from beneath his long lashes, a look of self-disgust etched across his face. ‘You don’t want to know what I did?’

                The quietly spoken question was savage and underscored by deep pain. Imogen swallowed heavily. She wanted to go to him and offer comfort but she had no idea how he’d respond to that kind of overture other than to disconnect from her again and it pained her to feel so awkward at a time when she felt he needed her the most. ‘Only if you want to tell me,’ she said, deciding that the decision had to be his alone without any real prompting from her.

                He scrubbed a hand across his face in a gesture she knew meant that he was stressed and her heart went out to him.

                ‘If we stay here for any length of time you’ll find out anyway.’ The words were toneless, as if he’d locked all emotion about what he was about to reveal in a place he could no longer access. ‘When I was fifteen my mother and twin sister were killed in a car accident because my father’s soldiers were chasing after them.’

                His twin sister?

                ‘Oh, Nadir, that’s horrible.’ She knew words were inadequate in the face of losing someone special because she still remembered how it had felt to lose her mother but she said it anyway because she wanted him to know that she was there for him. ‘Why would they do that?’

                ‘My sister suffered from Tourette’s syndrome and my father never accepted her condition.’ His tone was layered with resentment and contempt. ‘As she got older my mother saw how detrimental life was for her in Bakaan and she wanted to move to somewhere in Europe.’ His expression hardened. ‘My father refused her request even though they were divorced and so she decided to do it in secret. I was supposed to go with them but I knew my father would be angry and I didn’t trust what he would do once he found out.’

                Almost afraid to ask the obvious question, she did anyway. ‘And did you? Go with them?’

                He walked away from her towards the windows and leant his arms against the frame as he gazed out at the darkness. ‘No.’

                If Imogen had ever heard a more bleak word she couldn’t remember it and she waited for him to continue, suspecting that whatever he revealed next cut right to the core of who he was as a man. ‘Selfishly, I didn’t want them to leave either and so I told my father the plan.’ He gave a brittle laugh. ‘He set his men onto them; my mother panicked during the chase and rolled the car down a steep incline. They died instantly, so I was told. A small comfort, wouldn’t you say?’

                Imogen sat so perfectly still she wasn’t even breathing—she didn’t know what to say. It was clear that he blamed himself for their accident and she wasn’t sure words alone would be sufficient to ever relieve his guilt. And in a way she understood how he felt because she was sure if their situations were reversed she’d feel just as awful as he did about it. But she also knew that he had to deal with his guilt and let it go because it really hadn’t been his fault.

                She remembered what he’d said to her on her first night at the palace about how his parents had dragged him and his sister through their marital problems and suddenly she saw him as the eldest child who had been torn between his love and loyalty to both parents and who was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. At least in her own situation she’d had her mother’s unconditional love. Nadir had only had his brother...and his sister, who he no doubt felt he had to protect and whose life he felt he had cut short, and she could only imagine how horrible he must feel.

                Wanting to at least close the physical distance between them, she went to stand beside him. She stared at his austere profile and she knew she had tears in her eyes because she just felt for him so much and wanted to rip the pain from his body with her bare hands.