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“This way.” He guided her deeper into the room, to a space near one of the many windows. They were tinted dark, so as to help preserve the books, but this one had been thrown open, so that a slice of afternoon sunshine perforated the room. And set to gain full advantage of it was an easel.
“Have a look.” The heat that had started in Amit’s cheeks spread through his whole face now, and Chloe frowned, wond
ering what she’d see on his art stand.
When she rounded the easel, she understood the reason for his embarrassment. He’d drawn Chloe. It was a very good likeness of her face, her eyes staring straight ahead, her lips slightly parted, as if she’d been caught in a moment of surprise. Her hair was down, falling loose over her shoulders, so she knew Amit had used his imagination to supply the detail, as she was sure she’d never had her hair loose around him.
“It’s excellent,” she said truthfully. “It looks just like me.”
Amit’s smile was rich with the pleasure that such unqualified praise could give. “I intend to frame it and give it the Sheikh. I know it’s nothing compared to the formal portrait you’ll have done, but I thought…”
“He’ll love it,” Chloe said, wishing with all her heart that was true. Though the artwork was excellent, the picture striking for its perfect likeness to her, she doubted Raffa would ever spare it more than a passing glance. And she wished, with all that she was, for that not to be the case.
“I did others,” Amit said, and now, he was an artist, not an awkward twelve-year-old boy. He lifted the page and gently laid it on a side table, revealing another picture of Chloe. In this one, she was smiling, and her hair was up, though tendrils fell around her face.
“These really are very good,” Chloe murmured, lifting the piece herself now, looking beneath it to find a page covered with dozens of small Chloes. Then just eyes and noses, lips, fingers.
“Practice,” he said with an apologetic shrug.
“Amazing.”
She replaced the top piece of paper and then turned to him. “Thank you, Amit. I think you’re very talented.”
“It’s nothing,” he demurred.
“Not at all. I couldn’t draw to save my life. When did you learn?”
“I don’t know if I ever learned, so to speak. It’s just something I worked out I could do one day.” He studied the picture of her with a critical eye, then lifted his attention to Chloe’s face. When he looked at her, it was as a craftsman might appraise a block of marble, searching it for crenulations and ridges, for the unique marks that made it distinguishable. “I must get it from my mother,” he said with a wry smile, moving away from her to pull the window closed, darkening the room once more. “My father hasn’t an artistic bone in his body.”
Chloe nodded in agreement, but inside, something churned. Raffa mightn’t be an artist, but he was a work of art. All six and a half feet of him, broadly muscled, so wonderfully framed, his long hair, his intelligent eyes.
Chloe and Amit spent several more hours together, wandering the palace, and Amit told her lots of facts she hadn’t known. The history of various wings, the hallway, the paintings that hung. On the subject of the native flowers he was particularly knowledgeable. He knew their botanical names as well as their ordinary, and from where each came. Each had been gathered from different parts of Ras El Kida, selected for their beauty but also for their significance.
“Peace is still relatively new to our people, Your Highness,” he said, as they approached her suite of rooms. “My grandfather would remember a time when each corner of this kingdom was at war, brutally murdering, stealing, violence erupting over the smallest of matters. The tradition of this family is part of the symbolism of unification.”
“Strange then that your grandfather would insist on me becoming Sheikha.”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “I mean, not when you consider the alternatives.”
“What were the alternatives?”
“Two brides from powerful families that hated one another. Both had been … of interest… to the Sheikh. He could marry neither without causing extreme offence to the other, and thus risking a return to hostilities.” Amit’s smile showed he had no idea that Chloe hadn’t known this fact. “Lucky I will never have to think of such things, eh?”
Chloe returned his smile but it felt heavy on her face. “Lucky indeed.”
She was distracted over dinner. Raffa didn’t join her, and left to her own devices and thoughts, her mind shifted this new piece of information. It was something she wished she’d known earlier. It wouldn’t have changed how she felt. But it might have answered questions that had been weighing heavily inside of her. Both of their fathers had wanted this marriage; she had agreed because she’d wanted to honour her father, who had never even cared that she was alive. And she’d agreed because she’d loved Malik. She’d hoped he had loved her too. That at least one of the men who was instrumental in her instalment as Sheikha of this great kingdom had brought her into this marriage because of love and affection.
And maybe that was true.
Maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t matter – because either way, Chloe’s marriage existed to stop a potential war. And their baby would cement that.
What had she thought? That there was no one else in Raffa’s life? No other bridal contender? How foolish. Of course there had been. Of course there had been many!
He had a child, for goodness sake.
It wasn’t that which hurt her.
It was the purely mercenary justification for their marriage. It was the certainty that he hadn’t married her for his father, for love of anyone; it had been love of his country, just as he’d said.
