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Chapter 10
“NOT TOO CLOSE TO the edge,” the words came out gruffer than he intended, but seeing Amelia so close to the ridge’s sharp boundary had something deep inside Zafar clutching. It was far too easy to imagine her step’s faltering, to see her body tumbling over and into the abyss. He closed the distance between them impatiently, taking her hand in his and drawing her back. “Stay with me,” he said with the same tone to his voice.
“I’m fine,” she responded with a curt smile. “I was just taking a look.”
“Look from back here,” he reiterated, his tone inviting no argument.
She expelled an angry breath, so something flared in his belly – an excitement he recognised immediately. His entire life, there had only been one person who’d ever argued with him. Amelia had always spoken her mind to Zafar. Almost always, he amended, remembering that at first, when they’d met, she’d been timid and shy. It had taken a day or two before she’d relaxed, and forgotten, perhaps, that he was destined to become ruler of Abu Qara.
Her hand pulled free of his but she stayed at his side, so that he could almost taste her sweet fragrance – vanilla and coconut. “I wish you’d told me all this before you made the announcement,” she said after a moment.
Surprise almost halted his steps. “Why?’
“Because,” she frowned, stopping walking together, looking up at his face. Moonlight danced on her features and a blade pressed to his side. He felt…a thousand things, none of which he could untangle into any kind of sense.
“That tells me nothing.” On the pretext of curling hair behind Amelia’s ear, he lifted a hand to her face, his eyes probing hers as he gently brushed her flesh.
She shivered, an involuntary response that was echoed deep in the pit of his stomach.
“Because I understand you better now,” she said, eventually, sadness evident in her beautiful, delicate features. “I understand the pieces of you that were always missing – it was like in the past I had only a handful of the information. You would never have let yourself love me, would you?” She didn’t wait for an answer, and he was glad. Zafar was, unusually, uncertain. “Everything is about duty with you. Duty, the need to prove yourself worthy of something you feel you don’t deserve, and now, the duty to not be like your biological father.” Her brows crinkled together. “You married me only because of duty.”
He frowned, with no idea how to answer that. On the one hand, her explanation was right, and yet, there was something else, shifting through him, making him want to analyse it further, to wonder at his knee jerk insistence that they become man and wife, at once.
“I want our child to feel wanted, despite the…accidental…nature of their conception.”
To his chagrin, tears misted her eyes. “I understand that. I just wish I’d known.”
“We were both honest with one another.” Was he assuring her or reassuring himself.
“Perhaps,” she lifted her shoulders then spun away, continuing the walk.
He was relieved when she changed the subject, asking him about the history of the ridge and its strategic importance in the area. He was relieved even when he could hear the flatness in her tone and knew that it was echoed by a sadness in her heart, a sadness he had no means of correcting.
* * *
He would never love her.Millie repeated the words over and over again, just as she’d done the day before, a mantra that she needed to understand on a soul deep level. It was something he’d said in the past, but only now that she knew the truth of his upbringing did she understand how hard-wired that was for Zafar. It wasn’t just that he wouldn’t love her, it was that he couldn’t. He’d known too much rejection, too much blame for other people’s misery. No wonder he’d chosen celibacy after their break up – the idea of Millie being yet another woman whose misery he blamed on himself was almost more than she could bear.
But far worse was their marriage.
Far worse was knowing that they’d taken something that should have been beautiful and meaningful and contrived to shape it around their circumstances, and it was all such a lie!
Zafar slept soundly beside her, but Millie was wide awake, her body thrumming with an unmistakable energy, awash with irritation, regret, sadness, but also love. Love for their unborn baby, the life they’d created, and for the man she’d thought she’d known. Gently, she pushed the sheet from her, standing quietly, casting her eyes around the tent. Just as the tent on the ridge had been, this was furnished more like a rustic yet sumptuous home, with large, bright carpets on the floor, tapestries covering the walls, and furnishings that were a mixture of timber and metal, ornately carved, covered in colourful cushions. Several candles flickered in the corner, casting just enough light for Millie to move around without bumping into any furniture. She slipped on a pair of moccasins and wrapped a lightweight shawl around her shoulders, flicking one last glance towards the bed.
Zafar slept in only shorts, and even those she suspected he was wearing out of deference to her presence. For a moment her eyes lingered on the broad expanse of his chest and her heart fluttered out of a need for something she knew she should be ashamed of. How could she still desire him to the point of breathlessness?
Because she was human, and sex was – as he’d always said – just sex. A physical urge. That hadn’t gone away, no matter what else had happened between them. But she was right to avoid it, and him. It was too complicated.
How easy it would be to go from sleeping with Zafar to craving him and wishing for him, to wanting him to the point she would turn her back on what she knew she needed to do?
For the next few months, she had to be strong. Then, she’d be free, and she could breathe again, and life would, one day, be easier. Wouldn’t it?
As she stepped into the cool night air, Millie sucked in a breath, struck silent by the sheer beauty of the desert night. Stars shone so brightly overhead she could have sworn they were actual gemstones, so bright they were almost tangible. She reached up, her fingertips tracing a pattern across the sky, each breath drawing cool desert air into her lungs. A circle of palm trees surrounded their camp site, and ancient birds made beautiful cries in the middle of the night, like bells whipping through the air. She walked without really having any idea of where she was going. One step in front of the other, just as she’d done after they’d broken up the first time.
Was that what it would be like this time? When they divorced, and she was once again alone, would it be as simple as remembering that she needed to keep moving forward, one foot after the other, until she was on something like steady ground once more?
Uncertainty clapped through Millie, and the spectre of raising their child on her own flooded her with grief. Not because she was afraid of being like her mother, but because everything was so close to what she might have desperately wanted, if only there was true love between them! If only this were a real marriage, and their baby planned for, if only the dreams she’d held as an nineteen year old had been possible, and turned into reality. Instead, they were a hollow impersonation of it, and she could barely stand it.
Millie sat at the base of a palm tree, pressing her back to it, staring at the silhouettes of the tents in the distance, remembering the past, and trying to foresee the future, until her brain was exhausted.
