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‘My sister suffered from Tourette’s syndrome and my father never accepted her condition.’ His tone was layered with resentment and contempt. ‘As she got older my mother saw how detrimental life was for her in Bakaan and she wanted to move to somewhere in Europe.’ His expression hardened. ‘My father refused her request even though they were divorced and so she decided to do it in secret. I was supposed to go with them but I knew my father would be angry and I didn’t trust what he would do once he found out.’
Almost afraid to ask the obvious question, she did anyway. ‘And did you? Go with them?’
He walked away from her towards the windows and leant his arms against the frame as he gazed out at the darkness. ‘No.’
If Imogen had ever heard a more bleak word she couldn’t remember it and she waited for him to continue, suspecting that whatever he revealed next cut right to the core of who he was as a man. ‘Selfishly, I didn’t want them to leave either and so I told my father the plan.’ He gave a brittle laugh. ‘He set his men onto them; my mother panicked during the chase and rolled the car down a steep incline. They died instantly, so I was told. A small comfort, wouldn’t you say?’
Imogen sat so perfectly still she wasn’t even breathing—she didn’t know what to say. It was clear that he blamed himself for their accident and she wasn’t sure words alone would be sufficient to ever relieve his guilt. And in a way she understood how he felt because she was sure if their situations were reversed she’d feel just as awful as he did about it. But she also knew that he had to deal with his guilt and let it go because it really hadn’t been his fault.
She remembered what he’d said to her on her first night at the palace about how his parents had dragged him and his sister through their marital problems and suddenly she saw him as the eldest child who had been torn between his love and loyalty to both parents and who was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. At least in her own situation she’d had her mother’s unconditional love. Nadir had only had his brother...and his sister, who he no doubt felt he had to protect and whose life he felt he had cut short, and she could only imagine how horrible he must feel.
Wanting to at least close the physical distance between them, she went to stand beside him. She stared at his austere profile and she knew she had tears in her eyes because she just felt for him so much and wanted to rip the pain from his body with her bare hands.
‘Afterwards my father refused to give either one of them an honourable funeral.’
Imogen’s brow scrunched as she absorbed that piece of information. She shook her head. ‘Why not?’
Nadir sucked in a deep breath and she knew he was containing his emotions and locking them down tight. ‘He said that they had dishonoured and disrespected him and so to this day they don’t have headstones on their graves.’
Without thinking, she reached out and covered the hand he rested on the windowsill with her own. His was much larger than hers and sprinkled with dark hair that stroked across her senses. It also felt cold. ‘Was that why you left Bakaan when you were fifteen?’
‘Yes.’ He watched her fingers lightly stroke over the back of his knuckles. ‘We argued about it and because I had challenged him once too often he disowned me so I left.’
And closed himself off from everyone ever since. ‘Nadir, you know you can’t blame yourself for what happened. You were only a child.’
He carefully shifted his hand out from underneath hers. ‘I was fifteen. Old enough to know better,’ he said bitterly.
‘No, not old enough to know better,’ she denied hotly and she knew that first-hand because at fifteen she had witnessed her father’s affair with another woman and she’d had no idea what to do about it. In the end she hadn’t told her mother because she’d known it would break her heart but her father assumed that she had and it had led to him leaving anyway.
He moved away from her and she heard the give of the cushions as he dropped back onto the sofa.
‘I don’t even know why I told you any of that so please if you’re going to patronise me by trying to make me feel better then don’t. Nothing will ever do that.’
Imogen crossed to stand behind the opposite sofa and gripped the backrest. ‘I’m not being patronising, Nadir, but it’s not rational to think that you caused their deaths.’
‘I was a selfish idiot.’
‘You were a normal teenager who was trying to keep his world intact.’
‘Imogen—’
