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He nodded sharply. “I hope you have a tolerance for cards.”
She pulled a face. “One handed cards?”
“I can have someone hold yours.”
As if he didn’t have much more important things to do, than deal with the wife he had probably never wanted. “You don’t have to do this.” She said, bleakness taking over her voice.
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“Do what?”
She bit down on her lower lip. “Don’t let some kind of misguided guilt over the Etienne situation change things between us.” She forced herself to say the words she’d been thinking for a week. “Just because you didn’t believe me, doesn’t mean you must now… love me.”
He sobered, his blood rushing angrily through his body. “You are my wife, and I want to care for you while you recover. Must you see an ulterior motive in that?”
“I don’t want your sympathy.” She jutted her chin in an angle of defiance, reminding him instantly of the teenaged Phoebe he’d first met. “I am not a victim.”
“But you are, Phoebe.” He gave up the pretense and let the full strength of his feelings find expression on his tortured face. “Etienne abused you. He died. But he left you to me. And I picked up where he left off.” He stood, feeling sickened to the core.
“Stop.” She shook her head. “You didn’t abuse me. You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?” There was a momentous sadness in his words. “I forced you to marry me. I took away your ability to think and choose. I might not have hit you, physically, but I still sought to control you. To make you do as I wished, rather than listening to your needs.” His face was pale beneath his tan when he turned to look at her. “Worst of all, I actually defended him to you. I judged you for hating him. And I hated you for it, too.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, despising the way tears were so close to the surface these days. “I know.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “And now?”
“And now…” He said slowly, shaking his head. “I simply don’t know how to make it up to you.”
“Don’t you?” She shifted in the bed, trying to find a greater level of comfort. But her ache stemmed from her heart, and no amount of fluffing pillows was going to help it.
“No.” He ran his fingers over his stubbled jaw, staring at her with an intensity that made breathing difficult. “Please tell me, Phoebe. What can I do to begin to fix this? To help you move on?”
Phoebe didn’t need to move on from Etienne. She had dealt with his hurts a long time ago. All she needed was to know that the man she had married loved her. That he had married her out of something other than duty.
“Cards, you said?” She prompted, holding her good hand out.
Hakim scanned her face, all of the words he’d held back burning a path through his tongue. But still, he didn’t say them. “Yes. Let’s start with poker.”
An easy routine was established. In the mornings, Hakim worked, as much as possible from their apartment. Phoebe had physical therapy in these hours, and Hakim tried to watch whenever possible, to see her progress, and to congratulate her for her achievements. Over lunch, they played cards, and in the afternoons, he read to her. Books of Mehran, tales of the desert and the kingdom and the country that he loved and that she had chosen to live in.
“I have to go to the canals, Phoebe,” he said one afternoon several weeks later, as he closed the chapter on the construction of the complex spider web of waterways to the South. “It is an event I am obliged to attend. I will be gone one night only.”
“Okay,” she said, a simple shrug belying the fact that she hated the idea of him leaving. That she wanted him to stay by her side always.
“When I return, there is something I would like to discuss with you.”
Dread formed in Phoebe’s stomach. Did he want a divorce? Did he want to be with someone else? Was that why he was going to the canals? A cold sweat broke out on her brow, later that night, when she imagined what he might be doing, and with whom.
She had seen for herself how virile Hakim was. Out of nowhere, it occurred to her that he might have been indulging his sexual nature with someone else. The idea was anathema to her.
The next day, during physical therapy, Phoebe took her first unaided steps. She was shaking and pink in the face, when she finished the small circuit the physical therapist had laid out, but she was also jubilant.
And determined.
Hakim returned that day, and when he did, Phoebe wanted to greet him on her own two feet. It somehow felt imperative that her husband cease to see her as a victim.
She had her attendants dress her in a beautiful cream dress, and take particular care with her hair and makeup. She had organized for Ramit to advise her the moment Hakim returned. And the second she had heard from her little friend, she made her move. With a small smile, she thought that it might take her an hour to reach his office, anyway. With just the slender cane for support, she moved through the palace, aware now that the staff were back to staring.
She had been absent for a long time. They were simply pleased to see their Sheikha moving about again. She rewarded each of them with a serene smile. Finally, she reached Hakim’s office.
