He took a look around. Mirrors interspersed with life-size portraits lined one side, tall windows the other. It made the room look twice as big as it really was, although it was big enough to play flag football in. Not that anyone would, because the furnishings were priceless antiques.
He wandered down one side, casually glancing at the portraits of long-dead rulers of Zakhar until his attention was riveted by a relatively recent family portrait of a man, a woman and a baby. The man he recognized as the previous king of Zakhar—Mara’s father. And the woman, the woman could have been Mara, but he knew it must have been her mother.
I didn’t realize the princess resembles her mother so closely, he thought. But the more he studied the portrait the more he realized there were noticeable differences. The woman in the portrait had hair that was more golden than Mara’s honey-brown color, and there was an expression on her face he’d never seen on Mara’s—a haughty superiority that matched the expression on her husband’s face. On occasion the princess had been haughty, even peremptory at times, but never superior.
And the beauty of the woman in the painting owed a lot to artifice. Her face was meticulously made up to enhance her beauty, but it was a cold, impersonal look, like a fashion model in a glossy magazine. There was none of the soft, natural warmth Mara exuded.
The vast, marble-tiled room was empty of people save for himself, but not for long. A side door opened and a man walked through, closing the door firmly behind him. He was tall and well built, and he carried himself like a soldier, but there was something else about him that Trace couldn’t put a finger on. Then it came to him. This man had that same regal air Mara did.
He stopped a few feet away from Trace. His eyes flickered to the family portrait that had held Trace’s interest. “Yes,” he said without preamble. “Mara resembles our mother. That only complicated things for her where my father was concerned, especially as she grew older.”
He turned his attention back to Trace. “I apologize for the necessity of kidnapping you,” he said in the same precise English his sister used, the precision a dead giveaway it wasn’t his first language. “I needed to talk to you and it was impossible for me to leave Zakhar at this time.”
Trace shifted his stance belligerently. Being kidnapped still rankled. “You couldn’t just do it over the phone?”
“No.” Nothing more, just that no.
The silence stretched out as each man assessed the other. Trace saw a man a shade taller than his own nearly six feet two, just as fit, a few years younger. He could see the family resemblance in their coloring and their eyes, but whereas the princess was feminine down to her fingertips, the king was very much a man’s man. There was also a sense of physical power held in check, and Trace remembered how Mara had once described her brother—he is a man who will always be stronger than anyone who goes against him.
Now Trace knew she hadn’t been exaggerating. Zakhar’s king was a man first, and a king second. He waited for the king to say something, but the silence between them remained unbroken until Trace finally said, “So what did you want to talk to me about?”
Without warning the king asked, “Is my sister pregnant?”
It took a second for the question to sink in. Then Trace swore and hit him. The king had an iron jaw, and though he was staggered by the blow, it didn’t knock him down. Trace expected a return punch and readied himself for it, but the king just stood there rubbing his jaw with one powerful hand, a faint smile on his face.
When it was clear he had no intention of starting—or finishing—a brawl, Trace relaxed slightly and flexed his fingers, pain that had been blocked out in the heat of the moment suddenly making itself known. It hurt like hell, but he didn’t regret it.
He raised his gaze from his throbbing knuckles to the man in front of him. “I never touched your sister,” he told the king in a harsh tone. His innate honesty made him add, “Not that way. You slander her by insinuating—” Only then did he realize the original question hadn’t been asked in English, and his vehement response had been the same. Only then did he realize the king had used a crude Zakharan term for pregnancy, one that only a native Zakharian would know. He’d been baited deliberately for exactly the response he’d given.
“That is why I could not ask you over the phone,” the king said, in English this time, still with that faint smile. “Your reaction tells me three things.” He ticked them off. “One, you understand and speak Zakharan. Unless I am mistaken—and I rarely am—you probably speak it like a native.” He didn’t wait for Trace to either confirm or deny this statement before continuing.