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Because she could very well be carrying his child. The reality rushed at her like a tsunami. She had been able to cope with the ghost of Sharmila lingering in their marriage until now because the other woman was in Nabil’s past. But now she could be the one carrying Nabil’s heir. She could give her husband everything he wanted. Except for the one thing she wanted to share with him.
She could have his passion, throne, his child—but she could never have his love.
‘Aziza?’
Nabil’s voice broke into her thoughts as she saw that he was sitting up, his eyes slightly hazed, a frown drawing the black straight brows together.
‘I stayed...’ He sounded confused, disbelieving. ‘You are the first woman with whom I have managed to stay with the whole night since...’
He couldn’t quite believe it, Nabil admitted. He had never been able to stay the night because in the depth of sleep would come the memories. The sound of the gunshot, the sting of the wound on his face, the way that the woman at his side had fallen to the ground. In the past, he had always seen Sharmila’s face when he had lifted her. But these days the face he saw in his nightmares was Aziza’s, and that took him down into a pit of horror from which it had been impossible to escape. The thought of being left alone again, and this time so totally alone, meant that he had had to leave the bed, walk, to rid himself of the darkness.
‘You said—you spoke of your wife.’
‘Sharmila.’ He couldn’t put any life into his voice. ‘Yes, she was there.’
‘I suppose it was inevitable on an anniversary like today. She must have been in your thoughts all day.’
Aziza’s voice was soft, low, like a soothing balm on a barely healed wound. It was as if she knew, and truly understood, just how difficult it was to rid himself of the shadows of his past mistakes. This was what he had married her for. This was what he had seen in his memories of the young Aziza, and hoped to find in the adult woman. It was what he would have said that he wanted for his children—but right now, it was what he needed himself. The peace she brought to the darkness of his restless soul.
‘You remembered?’
He took her hand, drawing it to his lips, and she reached out and touched a fingertip to the scar that marked his cheek.
‘You must miss her.’
‘Miss her?’ His rejection was instant. ‘Hell, no—’
Her start, the way that her head went back, told him that was not what she had expected. Of course, she had talked of it on the balcony, but not in the way he had wanted her to remember it.
She thought he had endured so much to keep the peace. It was true he had kept quiet about so much, hidden things away in order to ensure the uprising that had been threatening had not broken out all over again. Ankhara, the leader of the rebellion, had been such a threat, his plans carefully laid, and he had very nearly succeeded. But now he needed Aziza, if no one else, to know the real truth. He didn’t want her thinking of him as some great hero when really he had been a weak, easily blinded fool.
‘But you loved her.’
‘Loved?’ Nabil shook his head in rejection. ‘I told you, I don’t have that to give. Oh, I wanted her—hell, I was nineteen; my hormones were raging—I wanted her like crazy and she wanted me. Or so I believed.’
Aziza was uncomfortable with the way this was going, that was obvious. Her eyes had dropped to his hand where it held hers, to the gold band of her wedding ring, then flew back up again, to focus on his face. But something new and very different in that clear gaze scraped over his skin, making him shift uncomfortably.
‘You wouldn’t have liked me then, Aziza,’ he told her frankly. ‘I didn’t like myself. I was young, foolish and totally selfish. I knew what I wanted but I didn’t know what I valued. I didn’t know how to find what was truly important, truly valuable. I was suddenly the King of Rhastaan, and I never wanted to be—not then, not yet. I wanted my freedom—to enjoy life. I certainly didn’t want to be tied down. Married. Particularly not to a bride my father had selected for me.’
‘Clementina...’
‘Yes, Clementina. I wanted freedom and I cast aside a pearl of a woman as a result.’
It was only when Aziza moved to place her hand over his, to still it, that he realised he was tugging at a loose thread in the blanket, twisting it until it broke.
‘And Clemmie deserved so much better than me. She deserved a man like Karim—a man of honour. I was empty, hollow. I existed only because my parents needed an heir, not because they wanted a child. I wasn’t any real part of their relationship. So when I met Sharmila, and she made it plain that she was interested in me, I thought I’d found a home. But I was wrong; life soon taught me that but I didn’t know how wrong until with you...’
