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“How do you know?”
“It’s my business to know.”
She pulled a face. “So? You’re leaving again?”
He looked away from her. “No, Sheikha. You’re upholding your end of the bargain. I intend to do the same.”
Chapter Six
“WHAT IS THIS PLACE?” she exhaled on a soft sigh of wonderment, her eyes moving quickly to discover the intricacies of the building to which he’d shown her.
“The Nasin-pithak,” he said the unfamiliar word, and she repeated it, wanting to taste it on her tongue, to feel it in her mouth.
His eyes remained on her face, watching her perfect the accent.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It’s from the ancient dialect,” he confirmed with a nod, moving deeper into the space. It was a shell of a building, but not a ruin. It had been designed with these large openings and the circular hole in the roof giving her, in that moment, a perfect view of the crisp, star-lit sky.
“It was built in the sixth century, a temple then. Over time, it’s become a place for reflection. My great grandfather sat here before going to war with the Imali province. My father spent most days for a year here, after my mother …” he clamped his lips together, the look he sent Chloe cold, despite the raging emotions she felt emanating from him.
Confusion stirred within her. She knew very little of her husband’s mother, except that she’d died in a car accident many years earlier. “After the accident?” She prompted, taking another step into the ancient building. The ground beneath them was mosaics, though she couldn’t make out any discernible image from the tiles. The only light was cast by the moon, and two lamps on opposing sides of the space.
“Yes.” It was a crisp answer that hid a wealth of information, she knew. There were secrets within him – secrets that she wanted to tease out and know, and she couldn’t have said why.
“Apollo once told me that he’d never seen a man as devastated as your father at the funeral,” she murmured softly, goading him to share, willing him to open a small part of himself to her.
A table had been set in the middle of the floor, but it was low to the ground, with bright orange and purple cushions scattered around it, inviting them to lounge comfortably and eat rather than to sit formally at a dining table.
“Did he?” Raffa waited for Chloe to sit and then took the space opposite her, his long legs stretched out in front of him, one ankle crossed over the other.
He was stalling her; dissuading her from continuing. Well, that might have worked with someone else, but not Chloe. Not now. He’d stirred something to life inside of her – an intimate knowledge of his body, and the knowledge that he had made love to her, that he wanted her with such primal abandon, gave her a confidence he couldn’t erode, no matter what he tried.
“They married for love?” She prompted, cutting to the heart of what she wanted to know.
He expelled an angry breath. “Yes. And it was the undoing of them both.”
He poured two glasses of wine, a rich mulberry purple in colour, but didn’t touch his.
“In what way?”
His eyes lingered on her face for so long that goosebumps danced along her spine. “You want to speak of my parents?” He’d left his hair down, after she’d run her fingers through it, and now he pushed it back from his forehead. A gesture that showed his frustration but didn’t deter her for even a moment.
“They would have been my child’s grandparents,” she held his gaze. “If we’re to bring a baby into this world, don’t you think I should know about his heritage?”
He frowned, and she knew why. That same instinctive understanding she had passed through her once more. It was strange for him – as it was her - to think beyond a pregnan
cy – to imagine an actual baby and then, one day, a child. An adult. A being that would bind them for all time, that would form a string in the broad, ancient tapestry of Ras el Kidan royalty and rule.
A frisson of wonder ran the length of her spine. This was an ancient kingdom, and their child would one day take up a place on its throne. The job of carrying, birthing and raising that person fell to her. Having a child under any circumstances must be awe-inspiring, but this?
The enormity of what they were doing filled her now with a deep sense of amazement. The beginning of a pregnancy might already be flourishing inside of her! At the very thought, she pressed a flat palm to her stomach, and a clear image of what their baby might look like flooded her mind.
“They married impetuously and against my grandfather’s will. She was engaged to someone else, but then, she met my father. They fell in love.” He said the final sentence with derision, an indictment of such a foolish notion.
“You think there’s something wrong with that?”
His eyes contained raw cynicism as they lifted to clash with her. “Yes.”
