“No more so than I.”
“Your mother and I were betrothed in the cradle.”
“I know.”
“But I was in love with her before our wedding ever took place.”
“You were?” Sayed could not stifle his shock. “You married so young.”
“From the moment I began to notice the opposite sex, Durrah was the one I wanted. Discovering on our wedding night that she shared my affection was the happiest moment of my life to that point.”
“You were very lucky.”
“Blessed by fate,” his father agreed with a rare genuine smile. “Yes, we were.”
“Mother was everything that you could want in your queen.” With nothing in her background for the media to feast on.
Not like Aaliyah, who not only came from the masses but whose mother had not been married to her father. Sayed did not care, but some would and she could be hurt deeply by the viciousness the media was capable of.
“Yes, she was and is.”
“I barely know Aaliyah,” Sayed claimed, though he wasn’t sure he spoke the truth.
He felt like he already knew the important parts of her too well to forget easily.
“You knew Tahira your entire life.”
Sayed wasn’t sure what point his father was trying to make. “And I had no idea she was having an affair.”
“You cannot be sure she was.”
“She ran off with him.”
“For love, if her note to her father is to be believed. I raised you better than to simply assume the worst on the basis of circumstantial evidence.”
“Yes, you did.”
“And I raised you better than to hurt someone the way you did Miss Amari arguing with your mother about spending time with her.” His father frowned. “Didn’t you tell me you promised to show her the country of her mother’s birth?”
“It was a foolish promise to make.”
“But a commitment nonetheless.” The implacability of his father’s tone and expression said this was not an argument Sayed had a hope of winning.
Especially when it meant fighting his own deepest desires.
As he went to leave his mother’s receiving room, his father’s voice stayed him at the door. “It may help to remember a salient truth, Sayed.”
“Yes?”
“Both your mother and I have already committed to accepting and helping Aaliyah succeed in her role should she be pregnant.”
“And if she’s not.”
“You know us well enough to answer that.”
Sayed wasn’t so sure. He’d only come to realize very recently how mistaken he’d been about himself. He’d thought he would have been content to marry Tahira and only now realized how miserable he would have been.