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“Oh, yes sir.”
The waiter moved away quickly, leaving Syed, Sarah and a swirling cyclone of their past.
“I started to care too much for you,” he confessed finally, popping the bottle but muting the sound with the palm of his hand.
“You started to care too much for me?”
“I was falling in love with you,” he said seriously. “I hadn’t thought that likely, and yet I felt myself growing addicted to you.” He reached for Sarah’s glass first and tipped enough champagne in to fill it half way.
“I began to worry that I’d never be able to leave you; so I thought I’d test myself.”
Of all the answers she’d expected, this blasé explanation was, perhaps, the worst. “Seriously?” She muttered, reaching for the champagne and sipping it just to blot some of the screaming thoughts tearing through her mind. “Well, congratulations. You did very well.”
“Not exactly.” He shifted in his seat, and when she didn’t look at him, he reached over and squeezed her hand. “I have thought of you every day; that wasn’t an exaggeration. I have wondered about you and I have told myself that eventually I will forget you, that no one woman can be so perfectly designed for a man, and yet here I am. As lost to you as I was five years ago, only now I have regrets for all that we’ve lost.”
His words swirled inside of her, and her heart wanted to grab them and hold them close, but Sarah had been burned by his words before. She kept them at arm’s length, refusing to let them soften her – too much.
“Your family …”
His eyes narrowed, a muscle jerking in his jaw. “What about them?”
“Doesn’t it bother you that they’re going to be really angry about this?”
He laughed, a soft sound that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. “Why do you think they’ll be angry?”
“Because,” she shrugged her slender shoulders. “I’m not the woman you were supposed to marry. Because I have not a royal bone in my body and because you married me without their knowledge or permission.” Something occurred to her and, stricken, she forced her eyes to meet his. “It’s why you rushed through our wedding tonight, isn’t it?”
Her frown deepened. “Why you didn’t want to wait? Because you have servants, and servants talk.” She closed her eyes, on a roll now. “Your ambassador already knew about Lexi because you stole Sasha,” she murmured, nodding to herself. “And you didn’t want your family to know you were living with me but not married… you wanted to stitch all this up.” Her eyes were enormous in her face, so wide that her hurt was a visible tide. “You’re going to present them with a fait accompli.”
“You might not have a royal bone in that delectable body of yours, but you’re a political mastermind,” he said, in an attempt to make light of her appraisal.
“Am I right?”
He toyed with the champagne flute and
then clashed his eyes to hers. “Do you think I would care what anyone said, once I’d made my mind up?”
“So five years ago you made your mind up to leave me, and I couldn’t have changed your mind even if I’d begged you to stay? And now you were determined to marry me and so there was no point forewarning your father.”
“Damn it, Najin, they’ll be pleased when they’ve had a chance to know you.”
She made a small sound, a cross between a snort and a sob. “Sure. That sounds likely.”
“When my mother died, you made me feel like myself again.” He reached for her hand and laced his fingers through them. “Have I ever told you about the Scrolls of Thammhora?”
Sarah shook her head, and with her free hand she sipped her champagne. She didn’t know which way was up but she liked the feel of his hand on hers and the way he was looking at her as though she was an item of sacred value to equal the scrolls of … whatever he’d just said.
“They’re ancient stories of my people. Thousands of years old. In one of them, the tale of Masteffa, he loses his son. A young boy, only six, I think, on the river. He drowns, and for six days and six nights the town searches for his body. They do not grieve nor weep because until his bones and flesh are laid to peace it is believed they do not have the right.” He cleared his throat. “On the seventh morning, as the sun rose, an old woman wandered into the town. She didn’t speak our language and no one knew who she was or from where she’d come. She took a boat and it was she who discovered the young boy’s body. When it was pulled from the water, it was as perfect as it had been in life.”
Sarah frowned. Though the story was interesting and Syed reading the encyclopaedia to her would have driven shivers up her spine, she didn’t quite see why he was relaying it.
“Did he come back to life?” She asked after a moment.
“No. The father buried his son, and he was a broken man. He stood to lose everything – he was a fisherman who could no longer face going out onto the water. He was full of resentment. Each night, the woman would prepare his meal and wash his feet, and he would drink and curse at her. He’d regret it in the morning, but she’d still appear the next night, not saying a word, simply cooking for him and soothing him.”
“You’re saying you want me to cook for you and massage your feet every night?” She asked, a brow arched, her voice mocking. She smiled to show him she was joking.
“My people believe that when someone dies, they send angels down to earth to look after the grieving loved ones. This woman was the first earth angel my people bear witness to.” He squeezed her hand. “You are my earth angel.”
