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To be tricked like that.
Played for a fool.
He’d never forgive her. Never.
Zale released her, disgusted with her, him, all of it. “So where is Emmeline now?” he demanded, taking a step away. “Why isn’t she here?”
Hannah shook her head. “I don’t know. She never said.”
He turned his back on her, walked across the room toward the windows. The drapes had not been drawn against the night and the lights of the walled city twinkled below. “I have to call her father. Tell him what’s happened. We’ll need to let our guests know the wedding is off.”
She knotted and unknotted her hands. “Can I do something?”
“Yes. You can go.” He spoke without turning around, keeping his back to her. “I want you gone first thing in the morning, and I never want to see you again.”
Hannah left before daybreak. This time the palace guard allowed her to leave and she walked through the palace gates and out onto the cobbled streets, her footsteps unsteady.
The worst had finally happened. Zale had found out the truth. He knew who she was now, knew Emmeline wasn’t coming, and now she was free to return to her own life, resume her work, see her friends.
This is what she’d wanted. This is what her goal had been. And yes, she was sad now—shattered, actually—but eventually she’d be okay. Hannah knew she was tough. Resilient. And maybe one day if she was lucky, she’d fall in love again.
Reaching the old city center, Hannah went to the train station to purchase a ticket and discovered she didn’t have enough money to get across Raguva much less out of the country as she’d left her credit cards in her hotel room in Palm Beach. She’d need her father to wire her money and get one of the secretaries at the office in Dallas to overnight her passport to her.
Hannah reached into her coat pocket to call her dad but her phone was missing. She searched the rest of her pockets before opening her small suitcase to check there. But no, nothing, which meant she must have left the phone at the palace or dropped it while walking into the city center.
Her heart fell as she imagined returning to the palace, only to be confronted by Zale.
She couldn’t handle seeing him again. Couldn’t handle his disappointment and anger.
Last night she’d felt like Cinderella at the ball—a beautiful princess dancing with the handsome king—and just like the fairy tale, today she was no one. She’d been tossed into the streets.
Exhausted, Hannah closed her suitcase and got to her feet and stood in the middle of the train station, wishing she had a fairy godmother who could come wave a magic wand and make everything good again.
But fairy godmothers didn’t exist, and real life women like Hannah Smith had to sort out their problems and mistakes on their own.
Only her plight hadn’t gone unnoticed. An old gentleman working at the station ticket counter left his booth and approached her, speaking a mixture of broken English and Raguvian. “Do you need help?”
She nodded, hating the lump in her throat. “I need to find a hotel, something cheap, for a night or two until my father can send money.”
He pointed to a building across the street. “Nice and clean,” he said, with a sympathetic smile. “And not too much money. Tell them Alfred sent you.”
She shot him a grateful smile. “I will, thank you.”
He nodded and watched her hurry across the plaza to the small hotel tucked into the stone building on the other side of the cobbled street.
The woman at the front desk seemed to be waiting for Hannah at the front door. She ushered her in and got her registered at the small reception desk in minutes before personally showing Hannah to her room, explaining through gestures and smiles how the small ancient television and room thermostat worked.
When Hannah told her she needed a phone to make a collect call to the United States, the woman handed Hannah her own from her dress pocket.
But the phone operator couldn’t reach Hannah’s father for him to accept the collect call. They tried twice before Hannah gave up.
“You can try again later, as many times as you need,” the front desk clerk assured her. “I will be here all day.”
Hannah did try three more times, but each time she had the operator try to place the collect call, her father’s answering machine picked up.
By the end of the day, Hannah had resigned herself to the fact that she’d be stuck in Raguva at least another day. If not longer.
For the first twenty-four hours after Hannah left, Zale wanted revenge. He fantasized about hunting Hannah down and making her suffer as he was suffering.
He was still angry the second day after she’d left, and plotted her downfall, but now when he imagined doing something to her, he was doing something to her body. Something … pleasurable.
