Rising Stars & It Started With… Collections. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ saw the tension in his jaw as he spoke of the twins. Sometimes he sounded like a father—sometimes this dark, brooding King was the man she had once known.

      ‘They will be okay.’ He said it as if he was trying to convince himself.

      ‘I’m sure they’ll be fine,’ Amy said. Tonight he was worried about his children. Tonight neither of them really wanted to be alone. ‘I’ll get changed and then I’ll have something to eat.’

      Was there relief in his eyes when he nodded?

      There was not much to choose from—it was either her nightdress and dressing gown or yet another pale blue robe. Amy settled for the latter, brushed her damp hair and tied it back, and then headed out to him.

      He was tired of seeing her in that robe. He wanted to see her in other colours—wanted to see her draped in red or emerald, wanted to see her hair loose around her shoulders and those full lips rouged. Or rather, Emir conceded as he caught the fresh, feminine scent of her as she sat down, he wanted to see the shoulders he had glimpsed moments earlier, wanted only the colour of her skin and her naked on the bed beneath him. But her revelation had denied them that chance.

      ‘I apologise.’ He came right out and said it. ‘To have it happen to you twice …’

      ‘Honestly …’ Amy ate sweet pastry between words—she really was hungry. Perhaps for the first time in a year she knew what starving was. She’d been numb for so long and now it felt as if all her senses were returning. ‘I’m okay.’ She wondered how she might best explain what she was only just discovering herself. ‘Since the accident I’ve felt like a victim.’ It was terribly hard to express it! ‘I didn’t like feeling that way. It didn’t feel like me. I didn’t like my anger towards him.’

      ‘You had every reason to be angry.’

      ‘No,’ Amy said. ‘As it turns out, I didn’t.’

      ‘I don’t understand.’

      ‘There were a few days before I fully came round when I could hear conversations. I couldn’t speak because I was on a machine.’

      Emir watched her fingers go instinctively to her throat.

      ‘That was when I heard the doctors discussing the surgery I’d had.’ She was uncomfortable explaining things to him, so she kept it very brief. ‘The horse had trampled me. They took me to surgery and they had to remove my ovaries. They left a small piece of one so that I didn’t go into …’

      ‘Menopause.’ He said it for her, smiled because she was embarrassed, ‘I do know about these things.’

      ‘I know.’ She squirmed. ‘It just feels strange, speaking about it with you. Anyway, I lay there unable to speak and heard my fiancé talking to his mother—how he didn’t know what to do, how he’d always wanted children. Later, after I was discharged from the hospital, he told me it was over, that he’d been having doubts for ages, that it wasn’t about the accident. But I knew it was. Or rather I thought I knew it was.’ She looked up at Emir’s frown. ‘When I was riding today I remembered the last time I rode a horse. I don’t remember falling off, or being trampled, but I do remember what I was thinking. I was unhappy, Emir.’ She admitted it out loud for the first time, for even back then she had kept it in. ‘I felt trapped and I was wondering how I could call off the wedding. That was what I was thinking when the accident happened—he was right to end things. It wasn’t working. I just didn’t know it—till now.’

      ‘You didn’t love him?’ Emir asked, and watched as she shook her head. As she did so a curl escaped the confines of the hair tie. He was jealous of her fingers as they caught it and twisted it as she pondered his question.

      ‘I did love him,’ she said slowly, for she was still working things out for herself, still piecing her life together. ‘But it wasn’t the kind of love I wanted. We’d been going out together since we were teenagers. Our engagement seemed a natural progression—we both wanted children, we both wanted the same things, or thought we did. I cared for him and, yes, I suppose I loved him. But it wasn’t …’ She couldn’t articulate the word. ‘It wasn’t a passionate love,’ Amy attempted. ‘It was …’ She still couldn’t place the word.

      Emir tried for her. ‘Safe?’

      But that wasn’t the word she was looking for either.

      ‘Logical,’ Amy said. ‘It was a sort of logical love. Does that make sense?’

      ‘I think so,’ Emir said. ‘That is the kind of love we build on here—two people who are chosen, who are considered a suitable match, and then love grows.’

      He was quiet for a moment. The conversation was so personal she felt she could ask. ‘Was that the love you had with Hannah?’

      ‘Very much so,’ Emir said. ‘She was a wonderful wife, and would have been an amazing mother as well as a dignified sheikha queen.’

      Amy heard the love in his voice when he spoke of her and they were not jealous tears that she blinked back. ‘Maybe my fiancé and I would have made it.’ Amy gave a tight shrug. ‘I’m quite sure we would have had a good marriage. I think I was chasing the dream—a home and children, doing things differently than my parents.’

      ‘A grown-up dolls’ house?’ Emir suggested, and she smiled.

      ‘I guess I just wanted …’ She still didn’t know the word for it.

      ‘An illogical love?’ Emir offered—and that was it.

      ‘I did,’ Amy said, and then she stood. ‘I do.’

      ‘Stay,’ he said. ‘I have not explained.’

      ‘You don’t need to explain, Emir,’ Amy said. ‘I know we can’t go anywhere. I know it is imperative to your country’s survival that you have a son.’ But there was just a tiny flare of hope. ‘Could you speak to King Rakhal and have the rule revoked?’ Amy didn’t care if she was speaking out of turn. ‘It is a different time now.’

      ‘Rakhal’s mother died in childbirth,’ Emir said. ‘And, as I told you, for a while her baby was not expected to survive. The King of Alzirz came to my father and asked the same …’ Emir shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Of course my father declined his request. He wanted the countries to be one.’

      ‘You’ve thought about it, then?’

      He looked at her and for the first time revealed to another person just a little of what was on his mind. ‘I have more than thought about it. I approached Rakhal when my wife first became ill. His response was as you might expect.’ He shook his head as he recalled that conversation. Could see again the smirk on Rakhal’s face when he had broached the subject. How he had relished Emir’s rare discomfort. How he had enjoyed watching a proud king reduced to plead.

      Emir looked into Amy’s blue eyes and somehow the chill in him thawed slightly. He revealed more of the burden that weighed heavily on his mind. ‘I have thought about many things, and I am trying to make the best decision not just for my country but for my daughters.’ He had said too much. Immediately Emir knew that. For no one must know everything.

      She persisted. ‘If you didn’t have a son …’

      ‘It СКАЧАТЬ