The Sheikh's Prize(27)

'I've phoned Hayat's obstetrician.'

'Why the heck did you do that?'

'You're sick. You need medical attention,' Zahir informed her with a stubborn angle to his jaw line.

'Being sick in early pregnancy is very common and not something to make a fuss about,' Saffy countered steadily.                       
       
           



       

'I shouldn't have tired you out last night,' Zahir responded   tight-mouthed, his beautiful eyes shaded by his outrageously lush black   lashes.

Saffy thrust her hands down onto the mattress to lift herself up into   sitting position. 'That's got nothing to do with this-this is only my   body struggling to adapt to being newly pregnant and it's normal.'

'I will stop worrying only when the doctor tells me to do so. I'm   responsible for looking after you,' Zahir asserted, unimpressed by her   argument. 'And while I realise that you're not feeling like it, you must   make an effort to eat some breakfast to keep your strength up.'

And the boss has spoken, Saffy tagged on in silence to that speech as   Zahir stalked out of the door again. He did care that she wasn't feeling   well, she assured herself ruefully. It wasn't love but it was concern,   but for how long would she even retain that hold on him if she  continued  to keep her secrets? Naturally he was curious, naturally  sooner or  later he would need to know the truth about her past. For the  first time  she accepted that telling Zahir the truth was unavoidable  and a bridge  she would eventually have to cross.

Zahir's sister, Hayat, accompanied the consultant, who had tended her   through her pregnancies. A well-built older man with a studious manner,   he was calm and practical and exactly what Saffy needed to reinforce  her  belief that a little nausea was not serious cause for concern.

'The baby's father is very worried about your health,' the doctor   declared. 'It is a challenge of civility to tell a king he must not   worry unduly.'

Hayat was waiting outside to ask Saffy to join her for tea. Dressed in a   light summer dress in shades of blue, Saffy accompanied her   sister-in-law to the rear of the palace complex where she and her   husband and children lived. Her husband, Rahim, was a senior doctor at   the city hospital and their three little girls occupied much of Hayat   and Saffy's conversation until a maid arrived to take the children out   to the gardens to play.

Tea with tiny sweet cakes was served on a shaded balcony.

'My brother needs to learn to say no,' Hayat told Saffy firmly. 'The   same day he brings you home a bride he was immediately dragged into some   government squabble about security concerns and forced to abandon you.   You will quickly discover that Zahir doesn't know how to say no to the   demands made on his time.'

Saffy simply smiled, warmed by the frank tongue that Hayat appeared to   share with her brother. 'Zahir was always very conscientious. Thank you   for being so welcoming, Hayat. I appreciate it.'

'I know how much you and Zahir went through when you were married five   years ago and our people now have a very good idea as well,' Hayat   commented, her brown eyes level and serious. 'Zahir was wise when he   chose to issue a public statement, admitting that he was remarrying the   woman whom his father once forced him to divorce.'

Saffy stiffened in surprise at that revelation. 'I had no idea there had   been any statement made about our marriage!' she exclaimed.

'Or that now my brother, the king, is forced to tell lies in public to   protect you?' another louder voice interposed from the doorway behind   them and both women's heads whipped around in astonishment at the   interruption.

'Akram!' Hayat snapped in a warning tone at her youngest brother before   turning back to Saffy with her face flushed and her expression uneasy  to  say, 'Please excuse me for a moment.'

But Zahir's volatile kid brother had worked up too much of a head of   steam to be denied the confrontation with his brother's wife that his   temper clearly craved. He concentrated his attention on Saffy, who was   already starting to rise from her chair in dismay. 'You walked out on my   brother-you deserted him after all he had endured to keep you as a  wife  against our father's wishes!' he accused with loathing. 'Zahir was   imprisoned, tortured and beaten for your benefit and then you threw  your  marriage away by divorcing him when he needed your loyalty most!'

Her expression distraught, Hayat was pleading with her angry brother to   keep quiet while simultaneously yanking on his arm in an unsuccessful   effort to physically drag him away.

Saffy could barely part her numb lips. She was in serious shock from   Akram's ringing condemnation of her behaviour. And what on earth was he   talking about? Imprisoned, tortured, beaten? Zahir?

'I will deal with this...' and another more familiar voice intervened,   cutting across the row going on between Hayat and Akram with commanding   force.                       
       
           



       

Trembling, Saffy focused on Zahir where he stood like a bronzed statue   in the centre of the light, airy reception room, coldly surveying his   squabbling siblings. He spoke in his own language at length to Akram and   Hayat backed off, dropping her head apologetically. Whatever Zahir  told  his brother, Akram turned his head in consternation to stare back  at  Saffy with frowning disbelief. He took a half-step towards her and   muttered uncomfortably, 'I am very sorry. It seems I got everything   wrong.'

'Yes, Zahir divorced me,' Saffy pointed out ruefully.

'Even so, I should never have spoken to you in that way or approached   you in a temper. It was not my business,' Akram mumbled, his face very   flushed, his discomfiture in Zahir's thunderous presence pronounced.   'Over the years it seems I reached the wrong conclusions and, as my   brother has reminded me, I was never party to the true facts of what   happened between you.'

An uneasy silence fell. Zahir was still glaring angrily at his kid brother.

'No harm done,' Saffy said awkwardly, keen to dispel the tension. 'I   assume that Zahir has told you what really happened and that you no   longer think so badly of me. Now, if you would all excuse me...'

'Where are you going?' Zahir demanded.

'Only for a walk. I'd like to be alone for a while,' she muttered tightly.

'I will accompany you,' Zahir pronounced.

'No...I only want a minute alone,' Saffy whispered pleadingly, because   she was thinking about what Akram had hurled at her and reaching the   worst possible conclusions. Zahir had been punished by his father for   defying him by marrying her? Why had that possibility never occurred to   her before? Why had she been so wrapped up in her own misery that it  had  never occurred to her that Zahir might be dealing with bad things  too?  But, imprisoned, tortured, beaten...surely not? Was that possible?  Would  his father have subjected his son to such brutal intimidation?   According to his reputation, King Fareed had been responsible for many   atrocities. She thought of Zahir's appallingly scarred back and a sense   of cold fear of the unknown and of such cruelty infiltrated her. But if   Zahir had suffered like that, why hadn't he told her?

When Saffy actually focused enough to recognise where her wandering feet   had carried her, she realised that she was back in the old part of the   palace where she had once lived. She walked down a dim corridor and  cast  open the door of the room that had once been theirs. It shook her  that  it was still furnished the same, untouched by time or alteration,  and  she walked in with a compulsive shiver of remembrance of the past.

A thousand images engulfed her all at once and she reeled from memories   of Zahir watching her with wary eyes, his silences, sudden absences and   his refusal to answer questions. Had he been hiding stuff from her  that  she should have guessed? Was Akram telling the truth? She couldn't  bear  that suspicion, wasn't sure she could ever live with any  discovery that  painful...

'I should have had this place cleared...' Zahir murmured from behind her. 'But I used to come here to think about you.'

Saffy turned round, her face pale as milk, her eyes nakedly vulnerable.   'When? After the divorce? I think you need to start talking,  Zahir...and  maybe I do too,' she acknowledged unevenly.

'After I married you, my brother Omar asked me if I was insane to   challenge our father to that extent,' Zahir admitted with curt   reluctance. 'But at first I genuinely had no idea what I was dealing   with: Omar had protected me too much. He kept a lot of secrets. I was   the younger son, the junior army officer, and I wasn't part of the inner   circle of people who knew what a monster my father had become on a  diet  of unfettered power.'