In her hospital bed, Natalia stared anxiously up at the consultant.
‘My husband—how is he?’ she asked him, realising even now when she was still in shock that, as Niroli’s Crown Prince, Kadir’s safety was paramount for his people and she surely must remember that.
‘The Crown Prince is fine apart from a small flesh wound,’ the consultant assured her. ‘He is waiting outside to see you now.’
Natalia nodded her head, and then looked at him. ‘You are sure…about…about the baby?’ she pleaded with him, tears filling her eyes. They had already removed the drip they had used to replace fluids and she’d also been mildly sedated to keep her calm whilst they fought to prevent her from losing her child. ‘There’s no mistake…?’ she begged him.
‘No, there is no mistake,’ the consultant confirmed tiredly. It had been a long night and they had been anxious to save the Crown Prince, the Princess and their baby.
The door to her room was opening. The consultant gave Kadir a small bow, before leaving them alone together.
‘Thank you for…for saving my life.’
Kadir grimaced. He looked tired and drained. The blood-soaked shirt he’d been wearing had been replaced by a clean one; the wound Zahra had inflicted was now cleaned and dressed.
‘If I saved you, then it was only right that I should have done so since I was the one who put you both at risk in the first place. I had no idea about Zahra…she never showed any signs…When I told her that there was no point in her trying to remain here on Niroli, and reinforced that by reminding her that you are my wife and that you were to have a child, I never imagined for one moment…’
Something in the obvious sincerity of his shocked and earnest demeanour broke through Natalia’s protective distance. She wanted to reach out and touch him, tell him, but how could she now when she knew what he must be thinking about the baby? He probably would have wanted her to lose it, even if he was not prepared to admit as much to her. She knew that. How could she not after the way he had refused to accept that the baby was his? ‘You weren’t to know. I expect she wasn’t even aware that she was suffering from a mental illness herself. It’s sad really…poor woman…’ Natalia told him emotionlessly. ‘But there’s no reason for you to blame yourself.’
‘On the contrary, there is every reason. You are my wife, it is my duty to protect you, I should have realised…’
‘Have they told you yet about…about the baby?’ Natalia asked him in a low voice.
Kadir nodded his head.
‘I expect you think that it would also have been for the best if I had lost it, as they feared I would.’
She could not bring herself to look at him. Throughout the long hours when she had lain sedated whilst her baby had fought so hard to hold onto life she had known that Kadir must have been hoping equally hard that it would not. That hurt her far more than anything that Zahra had done to her.
‘Natalia…’
The door to her room opened and an aide stood there. ‘Your Highness,’ he began, obviously flustered. ‘The king…King Giorgio is here. He will not accept that you are alive and well until he has seen you for himself…’
The king was here? The king who never left his palace and who expected others always to dance to his will? Natalia’s eyes widened. She had seen for herself the way in which his love for Kadir had softened the king’s arrogance and warmed his heart, but this was evidence indeed of how much Kadir had come to mean to him.
‘You must go to him,’ she told Kadir quickly, reminding him, ‘He is an old man, Kadir, and he must have been badly frightened.’
Kadir inclined his head. ‘Very well,’ he told her, ‘but I shall return as soon as I can.’
No sooner had Kadir gone than the consultant returned carrying an envelope.
‘These are copies of the scans we did of the baby,’ he told her with a small smile. ‘As you know, we do not advocate the use of our wonderful new scanner merely as a means of detecting a child’s sex before its birth so that the parents can know what colour to decorate the nursery, but, since we had to do these scans to check that the baby was okay, I wondered if you might wish to have them?’
Smiling through the sudden emotion of her tears, Natalia took them from him.
‘I did ask the Crown Prince if he would like to see them but he refused…’
‘Yes,’ Natalia agreed quietly. ‘He would.’
‘He said that you should be the first to see them,’ the consultant told her, oblivious to the true meaning of her quiet and very sad words. ‘You might not want to see them if you don’t want to find out the sex of the baby—it is quite clear from these images.’
‘No, that’s okay, I’d love to know.’
‘But, either way, it is good to know that the future King of Niroli values a daughter as much as a son. When I offered him the chance to discover the sex of the child you are carrying he said that its sex did not matter, only that it should live.’
Natalia stiffened in disbelief. ‘I can’t imagine…that is…he didn’t really want…’
As though he had guessed some of what she was feeling and could not say, the consultant told her gently, ‘The whole of Niroli knows that your marriage is a matter of state, but no one seeing the Crown Prince with you during these last worrying hours could doubt that, whatever might have been, he is now a man very much in love with and devoted to his wife. You were his first concern when you were all brought here. He begged us to attend to you first and he has remained here outside your room throughout the night. In fact at one time my nurse was forced to report to me that he had disobeyed my instructions and that she had found him sitting here with you watching over you whilst you were unconscious. Now, please promise me that you will accept that you need have no more fears for the safety of your baby. I do assure you that all is well and the crisis safely past.’