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‘I won’t,’ he said simply and his voice sounded strange, as if the words had cracked in the middle. ‘I can’t. I can’t go down there and say anything to anyone as their King.’
Abruptly he moved, coming close as he had done on that first night in this same place, right here on the balcony. But in contrast to that first time, when she had felt the power and the hostility coming off him in waves, now it seemed as if he had his heart in his eyes. But did she dare to trust what she thought she read there?
‘I can’t do that because I can’t be a king without my Queen at my side.’
Those deep black eyes held hers, and he slowly sank down on to one knee before her, making her gasp in stunned disbelief.
‘Aziza—my beautiful one—you are my Queen.’
‘Because...’ she began but he lifted his hand, placed his fingers across her mouth to silence her.
‘Don’t say it. Don’t ever say that I want you for the child you can bring. That might have been so at the start—when I knew I had to have a bride. I thought it was the only way. Clementina told me to find someone to make me happy but I’d given up on happiness—stopped believing in love. So an arranged marriage seemed to provide the only things I needed. But by then...’
Nabil paused, looked around at the balcony, and she knew that he was recalling that first night, their meeting in just this same place.
‘By then I’d met a beautiful woman—a maid, I thought, called Zia, and she woke something in me that I hadn’t known for years. Something I’d never known, if I’m honest. When the arranged marriage was planned, and I saw the two of you, I knew I could never marry your sister. Before I even recognised who you were, that night here on this balcony had stirred up memories I thought were long buried, of the first times we met. I realised then that I’d never fully been able to forget you—that you had crept into my mind and stayed there, making me measure every other female against you.’
‘Nabil...’ Aziza tried but he shook his head again.
‘Let me say this,’ he said, softly but firmly. ‘Let me tell you and then—if you still want to leave—I will have to let you go. If you really don’t want to be my Queen then I must set you free. But I will never be able to be the sort of king I want to be without you by my side.’
‘But what if I can’t have a child?’ she had to ask. Had to know.
A wave of his hand dismissed the question, pushed it aside as something that no longer mattered.
‘I have cousins—the throne can pass to them. I think it will have to anyway,’ Nabil stunned her by declaring. ‘Because the truth is that if you don’t want to be my Queen, if you really want to leave, then I will have to renounce the throne. I will have to come with you.’
‘You can’t!’ Aziza stared at him in disbelief, but if she was searching for the truth then surely it was there in those deep, dark, steadfast eyes?
‘I can,’ he assured her, his voice ringing with an unquestionable sincerity. ‘I’d have to. Because wherever you are is where I’ll be a king—with you as the Queen of my heart. But I can’t be any sort of king without the woman I love in my life.’
The woman I love. Could she ask for anything more than those four simple words? Words that had no connection with a crown or a kingdom, with royalty or thrones, but only with a man and a woman and the love that they shared together. That was the crown she had looked for all her life.
She took a step towards Nabil, holding out her hand to him so that he could take it and they could go forward together from now on.
‘And I can be anything—do anything—with the man I love at my side,’ she declared in a voice that was strong and sure, no trace of hesitation in it.
She would have said more but he gave her no time or breathing space. Instead he rushed to his feet, gathering her up into his arms and pressing his lips against hers in a kiss that swept all her doubts, her fears, away on a burning tide of devotion. A silent, ardent declaration of how he felt in a way that was more eloquent than any words.
‘My love,’ he murmured against her mouth as he crushed her to him. ‘My life—my wife. My only true Queen.’
