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‘No, I don’t doubt you.’ And she didn’t.
Something shifted in his eyes. She wanted to tell herself that her words had touched him, but his lashes veiled his expression, his profile veering from her a second later, stopping her from verifying that thought.
And because she couldn’t let it go, because some vital place inside her seemed hell-bent on satisfying that peculiar curiosity, she continued. ‘Your people love you.’
His gaze snapped back to her, his brooding eyes narrowed. Searching. Assessing.
He’d warned her against playing him. Against attempting to soften him up for her own and for Matt’s advantage. It stood to reason he would be sceptical of her unsanctioned observation.
‘It’s true,’ she pressed on steadily. ‘I’ve only been in Jukrat a handful of days, but I’ve heard the way they talk about you, the way they respect your rule. I’m not trying to kiss your ass. It’s just an honest observation. You have a lot to be proud of.’
‘They didn’t always feel that way,’ he offered after a handful of minutes had passed when she’d thought he would ignore her.
She waited for the hard look in his eyes to soften. For his clenched jaw to ease. Because she suspected that she was culpable for it.
‘I didn’t always live up to my father’s expectations.’
Guilt was a living flame searing her insides. ‘Because of what happened?’
His lips thinned but then, surprisingly, he shook his head. ‘That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were.’ He glanced down briefly at his camel, his mouth twitching when the creature turned its head to fix him with a censorious gaze. He clicked his tongue and the animal faced forward again.
‘He was a hard taskmaster, probably because he had large shoes to fill after my grandfather’s rule and felt he needed to be overly stringent with me. I lived with the threat of letting him down from infancy until he passed.’ There was an uncommon bleakness to his tone that sent a wave of sympathy through her.
She lived with that threat every day too, but she wasn’t a powerful ruler, much adored by her kingdom. ‘But...you’re accomplished in many ways. Even twelve years ago you were more or less the person you are now.’
He slanted her another assessing look. ‘You don’t think I faked it till I made it?’ he asked, thick sardonicism in his tone.
‘No,’ she answered truthfully. ‘I believe you’d boil yourself in hot oil before you faked a single thing.’
He stiffened in his saddle, but a glimmer appeared in his eyes, his chest moving as he sharply exhaled.
‘How well you think you know me,’ he murmured, again after a handful of minutes, his words infused with charged emotions.
‘Am I wrong?’ she asked, despite sternly berating herself for her runaway tongue.
‘No. I abhor subterfuge of any kind,’ he confirmed, implacable power in his tone.
She swallowed. She considered laying it all bare, telling him why she was caught between a rock and a hard place, but wasn’t it twelve years too late? Pushing the disquieting thought away, she refocused on their discussion.
‘So your life was an endless series of hoop-jumping, but surely there was some sort of balance?’
He sent her a droll look. ‘You’re wondering if the stick was mitigated by the occasional carrot?’
‘Wasn’t it?’
She didn’t see it this time, only sensed the bleakness tingeing the air.
‘He reserved his affections for others. One person in particular. A person who didn’t particularly welcome it.’
Having been a subject of blatant favouritism, Lauren could hazard a guess. ‘Your brother?’
‘No.’ The terse response came without further clarification.
‘Who, then?’
A firmer flattening of his lips, then, ‘My mother,’ he rasped.
She frowned, recalling that while he’d spoken of his brother and father, he’d rarely mentioned his mother. In fact, was it only yesterday he’d spoken of her? She felt as if she’d lived a year since they’d met in his office.
