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Karim,
I know you’re super-busy at the moment, but I just wanted to tell you however you need to handle our ‘situation’ today, I’m good with it.
BTW, I’m also a great listener. I know ours is not a conventional engagement, but sometimes grief can surprise us and we need a friend.
Orla x
Karim stared at the note. The simple compassion in the words made the hollow ache that had dogged him ever since he had learned of his father’s sudden death turn into a gaping hole in the pit of his stomach.
How did Orla know that he needed her?
He tensed—suddenly feeling more transparent, more vulnerable than he had since he was a boy. And he’d sat in the cold church, staring at the wicket casket covered in flowers, the heavy perfume of the late summer blooms masking the musty smell of old hymnals, his legs dangling from the pew, as tears stung his eyes and he tried to figure out why his mother had left him, when he’d tried so hard to make her happy.
‘Your Majesty, do you have a reply I can give Ameera?’
He looked up to find the young man watching him expectantly. The brutal heat flared into his cheeks as he recognised the hollow ache for what it was. A weakness he could not afford to indulge. And could not allow anyone to see.
He crushed the note in his fist. Leaning on Orla was not an option.
He shouldn’t want her care or her compassion. He couldn’t accept it. Because it would turn him into that defenceless child again—frightened and alone.
‘Yes,’ he said, the grim determination in his words not helping to fill the hole in his stomach. Returning to his desk, he jotted down a note on a piece of paper and folded it, sealed it in an envelope and handed it to the servant.
‘Tell Ameera to give this to Miss Calhoun.’
As Hakim nodded and left, Karim picked up the phone and asked to have his call connected to Carstairs in London.
He needed to arrange to have Orla returned to Kildare as soon as possible after the ceremony. He could then have the marriage annulled discreetly in a few months’ time. There would be questions at first about the Queen’s absence, but his course was clear. He was being forced to go through with this ceremony, but that was all he could go through with. He couldn’t risk making this relationship any more real than it already was. She’d slipped under his guard somehow. And he had to minimise the damage.
She had come to mean too much to him.
Perhaps it was just sexual frustration, the rare chemistry that he had struggled to control, the strange circumstances of their situation, or simply the stress of being forced to assume a legacy he had always believed he would be able to avoid—and the nightmares that had assailed him ever since his return to his father’s home. But whatever the reason, Orla was not the solution to controlling emotions he had thought dead and buried a lifetime ago.
He explained the situation to Carstairs and listened to the man’s stunned surprise at his decision to end his contract with Orla—‘Damn, that’s a shame, Karim, you two looked so good together.’
But the hollow ache, and the inconvenient heat, refused to subside, convincing him that tonight was going to be the longest, most agonising night of his life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
‘YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL, ORLA,’ Ameera murmured as she rolled the veil over Orla’s face.
Orla breathed out a nervous sigh, far too aware of the butterflies going berserk in her stomach as the sound of the waiting guests and dignitaries could be heard in the courtyard beyond. Night had fallen a few minutes before, casting a golden glow over the large antechamber where she had spent several hours being dressed and primped and perfumed and styled to within an inch of her life by a small army of hair and make-up professionals.
‘Thanks, Ameera,’ she said, catching a glimpse of herself in the silver standing mirror near the door.
Her gaze stared through the veil at the stunning red and gold silk dress embroidered with a thousand tiny gems that draped over her figure like a whisper, to reveal the fitted bodice and skirt beneath of traditional Zafari royal wedding attire. Her usually mad hair had somehow been tamed into a cascade of curls, while her eyes had been made up with black kohl to look huge. The make-up artist might as well not have bothered, because her eyes widened to the size of saucers all on their own when she heard the crowd being quietened in the courtyard beyond. A crowd packed with kings and queens, princes and princesses, heads of state and dignitaries from Zafar and its neighbouring countries—all people she didn’t know, and who didn’t know her.
She could hear the announcement of the wedding being made in Zafari and then English by the man who had come to speak to her in detail about the ceremony a few hours ago—right after Karim’s note had arrived, the contents of which continued to whirl round and round in her head.
Orla,
I’m afraid we will have to go through with this farce of a wedding, but I have already made arrangements for your return to Kildare.
In the circumstances, I think it best we don’t share a chamber after the ceremony, so that we may obtain an annulment quickly.
K
The butterflies turned into dive-bombers in her stomach as she forced herself to draw several steadying breaths and ignore the foolish well of disappointment and sadness.
