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“Won’t you ever get tired of treating our robes like they’re made of spun gold?” Edna, one of the palace’s station cooks, retorted.
“I just don’t like it when I dirty my robe unnecessarily,” she protested.
“Ha! I don’t believe ‘don’t like’ is an accurate term.” Mila, the chambermaid standing next to Anisah, snorted as she pulled a drawer open and took out a chopping board. “The last time you ended up with a stain on your abaya, you totally freaked out.”
Anisah made a face when everyone nodded profusely, as if reminiscing about some kind of shared nightmare. “So I value our national garment,” she said with stiff dignity. “Is that so horrible?”
“Yes,” a data encoder in Sheikh Rayyan’s finance department affirmed with a grin. “Horribly funny, that is!”
The whole kitchen laughed, but even as she pretended to turn her back on them with a huff, Anisah was more relieved than anything else by their continued teasing. It was their way of letting her know that she was still one of them, in spite of the fact that the sheikh had just last week declared her as his fiancée, only to start womanizing—-
Don’t go there, Anisah.
She quickly reached for her gloves and started cleaning the dishes with singlehanded focus. This was how she had survived the entire week, working on each task one at a time and like her life depended on it. Working so hard prevented her mind from dwelling where it wasn’t supposed to go, her body from feeling what it’s supposed to feel—-
Tory.
Oh no. Anisah scrubbed the bottom of the pan with greater force. This was a first, she thought uneasily, and this was bad.
Tory.
She was now hearing things she was not supposed to hear, literally—-
The chambermaid chopping vegetables beside her stopped. “Umm, Anisah?”
Lowering the pan to the sink, she turned to the other woman reluctantly. “Yes?”
“I think...the sheikh wishes to, umm, talk to you?”
Anisah jerked.
“Tory.”
She looked at Mila. “Did you also hear that?” The other woman nodded, and Anisah slowly peeled off her gloves. The sheikh...was truly here? The gloves slipped off her suddenly nerveless fingers. They fell to the kitchen’s sparkling-clean floor soundlessly, but she flinched all the same, the sight no different from a detonating bomb as it forced her to confront the truth.
I can’t talk to him.
As soon as the words formed in her already-hazy mind, she made a run for it. Or at least she gave it her best shot. She was fast, but the sheikh was faster, and cries of shock rose inside the vast kitchen when the sheikh lunged for her.
His arm shot out, his fingers curling around her arm, and Anisah cried out, “No!” His touch burned, painfully so. It hurt her because it still felt good...when it was not supposed to.
She looked away as soon as he had spun her around to face him, but even so Tarif managed to catch sight of her bright, tear-stained eyes.
Smiles are a luxury to her, and so are her tears.
And since he himself knew how Anisah, the woman who took pride in having only ten pieces of clothing in her wardrobe, felt about luxury –
“I’m sorry.” He felt her stiffen, but still she didn’t look at him, and he did not blame her for it. “I’m sorry, Tory.” He spoke quietly but clearly; he wanted everyone to hear and see him eat humble pie. It was what she deserved – and more.
Chapter Seventeen
“Hyacinth didn’t know what she was talking about when she called you a fanatic.”
They were in the privacy of his office, both of them seated on the couch, albeit on opposite ends, and his first words were completely unexpected. That Hyacinth had the temerity to contact or even confront the sheikh no longer surprised Anisah. Her younger sister was quite the fighter when it came to protecting the ones she loved.
But that bit about the fanatic?
“I’m proud to be committed to our kingdom,” Anisah said without meeting the sheikh’s gaze. And while the cheeky, talkative brat probably hadn’t meant her words to be a compliment, she would take it as so.
