AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His use of her name obviously alerted her to his presence. She stilled, stiffened, but kept her head bent, those silky curtains of hair concealing any sign of her expression.
‘What is it?’ Nabil tried again, testing the water, trying to find out just what her mood might be. ‘Was that a laugh—or are you crying?’
‘Cry—oh—both...’ she responded, breathy and uneven, pushing her hands beneath the fall of her hair to swipe at her cheeks before tossing back the black mane.
‘Both?’
He could see now where there were faint smudges on her face where she had obviously been trying to drive away tears but, impossibly, at the same time there was still a trace of laughter in her voice, a strange brightness in her eyes. But one that had nothing at all to do with real amusement and the break in her voice made her words sound like hiccups of jerky emotion.
‘What the hell...? What is wrong?’
‘Oh, nothing’s wrong,’ she answered him airily, totally implausibly. ‘Nothing for me, that is.’
It got worse. With each word her tone became more unconvincing, more unbelievable. She was hiding something and just that thought set every defensive instinct on to red alert.
‘Damnation, Aziza, what the devil are you talking about? Tell me what is wrong.’
‘It’s Jamalia.’
She gulped in air on the words, turning each of them into a choking sob in the same moment that she picked up a sheet of paper, crumpled by the pressure of her fingers, and waved it wildly in front of her.
‘This letter...’
Meeting his eyes at last, she stopped, swallowed hard, then drew in another deeper breath, forcing a more rigid control on her behaviour.
‘I got a letter... From my father. It’s about Jamalia.’
‘And?’ he prompted when the control she had managed started to slip and she clearly had to swallow hard to get a hold of herself again.
‘Jamalia has run away from home—with a man. Apparently she’s been seeing him for weeks, in spite of my father forbidding her to have anything to do with him. She’s been more than seeing him.’
The brittle mask of composure broke, seeming to shatter into tiny pieces that scattered on to the floor at their feet as she couldn’t control the brittle laughter that escaped.
‘It seems that you married the wrong sister after all, Nabil.’ She gabbled the words out at a ridiculous rate. ‘You married because you needed an heir and chose me—because of my child-bearing hips. But, in spite of everything, I show no sign of giving you an heir while Jamalia—well, she’s pregnant already.’
‘But you are pregnant also. At least that’s what you told me.’
His throat was so dry that he had to force the words out and they cracked in the middle, revealing the dark shadow of dread that was creeping into his soul.
‘No—there you’re wrong.’
Could her voice get any more high-pitched, would her control become so ruthless that her body would actually break under it? Nabil took a step forward, wanting to hold her, but she reacted as if he had made a move to strike her, eyes flaring in such a panic that he froze, feeling her rejection like a wound.
‘Don’t say— Aziza, habibti, are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
It was so obviously a blatant lie that it had him biting down hard on his tongue, using the small physical pain to distract himself from reality.
‘Fine except for cramps—period pains, and a terminal case of stupidity!’ she flung at him. ‘I was never actually pregnant, you see—just late. Oh, yes, I know! I know I should have seen a doctor—that was the obvious way to make things sure—but I thought... I didn’t think, I just felt I knew.’
‘And now.’
It wasn’t a question. He didn’t need to ask a question. It was already answered in the pallor of her face, the dark bruises of her eyes, the way that her hand rested on her body, smoothing gently as if she could wipe away the emptiness there.
‘Now, nothing. I’m sorry, Nabil—more sorry than you could ever imagine. If only I had taken a test, seen a doctor before I told you, then I could have saved you all this.’
‘Saved me what?’
‘Saved you from having to organise a coronation. From—’ Her voice cracked, caught up on itself and tried again. ‘From having to make me your Queen.’
‘I didn’t have to—I wanted to. You are my Queen.’
Did she doubt it? Obviously she did. But how could that be when he had been unable to miss the chance of making her really his Queen and had snatched at it with greedy hands? Like her, he hadn’t even thought of the need to confirm her condition because he hadn’t cared. Even the suspicion of her pregnancy had given him the hope of a new beginning, the chance of making her formally his Queen and he had wanted that so much. He had wanted to show her...
