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Her ladies’ maids didn’t share her sense of emotional ambiguity. When they entered her suite shortly after a light breakfast of fruit and sweet pastry had been served, they brought with them an air of unmistakable exuberance.
All traditions were strictly adhered to at the palace; far more so than had been the case in the city. There, she had been free to dress in casual clothes if she’d wanted to, so long as she wasn’t taking part in any official duties. Her maids dressed her in one of the gowns that was required – an emerald green with diamonds at the collar and cuff – and then excused themselves with low bows that almost hid their twitching smiles.
“Okay, Aysha,” she asked her chief lady in waiting, once they were alone. “What is it? What are you all smiling about?”
Aysha didn’t bother to obfuscate.
“They are happy to be home, your highness.”
Chloe was thunderstruck. “Home? This is their home?”
“Well, yes. Naturally.”
“Not, ‘naturally’!” Chloe disputed with a shake of her head. “You mean the palace is where they lived? And then I made everyone move to the city just because I didn’t want to be here?”
“Our job is to be where you are,” Aysha pointed out kindly. “If you choose to take part in the Mars program, I’m afraid we would have to take our positions on the rocket alongside you.”
Chloe laughed but it was a noise of brittle exhaustion. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know you were interested in Mars,” Aysha teased.
“You know what I mean.” Chloe toyed with her wedding ring – an enormous solitaire diamond – out of habit. She often spun it around her finger when she was thinking, pushing it to the knuckle joint and back to the webbing of her slim fingers. “If you all wanted to be at the palace, you should have said so.”
“We are your servants,” Aysha chided, softening the rebuke with a gentle smile. “Our job is to serve you. Why should our desires matter?”
“How can you speak like that! You know they matter to me. We’ve worked together closely since I arrived in Ras el Kida. Have I ever seemed like a despot to you?”
“No. But you are a princess, a Sheikha, and your husband is the ruler of this country. No one in Ras el Kida is stupid enough to risk displeasing him.”
A shiver
of apprehension ran down Chloe’s spine. Aysha was right, but she couldn’t have said that a desire to risk displeasing her husband was the sole motivation for her agreement with his plan. Out of nowhere, she imagined their child, she pictured a chubby little baby with dimpled cheeks and sparkling eyes and a mess of curling, bouncing hair, and a kick of maternal need anchored her to the spot.
Despite the fact she knew so little of her husband, despite the fact there were many things about him she did know and didn’t like, she found the idea of bearing his child unimaginably seductive. And just a little bit crazy.
Chapter Three
WAITING WAS LIKE BEING on tenterhooks.
Being at the palace once more was like being transplanted into a whole other world. She’d forgotten the grandeur of this place, not to mention the sheer size of it.
She’d forgotten the protocols she was expected to observe, such as having all six of her maids in attendance at all time. It was a company she found cloying, and an expectation she most certainly intended to rail against.
If they were to have a child together, then Chloe was going to spend the rest of her life in the palace. It was a far greater commitment than marriage alone, surely, to bond themselves with a new life. That person deserved two parents who were committed to acting in his or her best interests irrespective of their own personal gripes. Besides, maybe once they got to know one another, this coldness and repressive distance would disappear?
No. Chloe stopped walking, so sharp was her determination to push that thought aside.
She was done expecting unavailable men to start valuing her! She’d wasted her whole life feeling meaningless and purposeless only because her father hadn’t valued her. She’d spent years waiting for any little crumbs of praise that he wanted to pass her way… there was no way she’d go through that miserable maze of rejection again. Not even for the man she’d married!
Raffa would never give her what she wanted – there was no hope that they’d be more than civil to one another. Civil co-parents, and co-rulers. There were other silver linings to her marriage, though. For one, the charity work she’d been free to undertake since moving to the city would continue regardless of where she lived. She loved her work – that gave her all the validation her father, and now husband, had withheld.
As for love? Malik loved her, and she loved him. After her father’s death, he’d been the only one who’d understood.
‘He failed you, child, except in one way. This marriage is the best thing he could have done for you. Here, you will be happy at last. You’ve always belonged here, even that first summer when you were little more than a fairy.’ And he’d hugged her in a rough embrace, his body – once strong and big – now a smaller version, his fingers trembling a little in that way they did now. He’d understood that she had been unloved and in small ways, he’d made sure she felt secure in her life in Ras El Kida.
He, alone, had welcomed her.
‘Do you remember when you came here, as a child? You would run the halls, singing, and I knew you belonged here. That you were a part of this Kingdom, even with your white hair and your pale skin.’
