Duty, Desire and the Desert King

Days. He wouldn’t be back for days. What did that mean?

After a half hour and much frustration and endless soul-searching, Rou decided she’d speak to him herself, and as her cell phone didn’t get coverage here in Cala, she’d just have to use the palace phone. Leaving her room, she went in search of the crusty old butler to ask for a house phone.

The butler said he’d place the call for her. Rou stiffened at the rebuke in his voice. “If you’ll just point me to a phone, I can call.”

“Do you have his number?”

“His cell, yes.”

“The royal family does not use wireless phones in the palace. They only use select palace numbers. Now if you’d like me to place the call—”

“No.” Rou’s voice shook with emotion. “He’s my husband. I want to call him. I need to be able to call him without butlers and valets and staff running interference.”

The butler’s expression hardened with reproach. “I am not interfering, Your Highness, merely trying to help.” And then he turned and walked away, narrow back ramrod straight.

He didn’t understand. She hadn’t said he was interfering but what did she expect? English wasn’t his first language, and she realized he wasn’t accustomed to dealing with Western women, and Western women’s expectations.

Rou took a breath, and then another, to calm herself. Nothing was simple here. She couldn’t do the smallest of tasks without needing assistance. She hated the lack of independence, hated asking for help, but at this point she wanted to talk to Zayed more than anything, and if she needed the butler’s help, she’d take his help.

Rou set off after him, and with a brief but sincere apology, she told him she was sorry and yes, she’d please like him to help her place the call to King Fehr.

The butler nodded and gestured for her to follow. Rou sat in a chair waiting while he dialed the palace in Isi and made a request with one of the Isi palace staff that they put him in touch with His Highness, King Zayed, as the king’s wife was wanting to speak to him.

Several minutes passed while different palace staff relayed messages and then relayed them back to the butler in Cala. In the end, the butler hung up the phone without Rou being able to speak to Zayed.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness. The king is in meetings, but his staff has promised to leave him a message that you phoned.”

She smiled brightly, but as she turned away, the disappointment tore through her, making a mockery of all her good intentions. She didn’t want to be difficult, didn’t want to be demanding, but she also didn’t want to feel so insignificant, and worse, so very alone.

But she was alone.

And she was beginning to worry that everything she feared about marriage, everything she feared about becoming dependent and losing her individuality, losing her very sense of self, was happening.

While Zayed took care of business in Isi, she drifted around the Cala palace waiting for him to acknowledge her. Every thought these past few days had been about Zayed, for Zayed. Every breath was bated, waiting, waiting, just as she’d waited for her parents, waited for her mother to stop crying, waited for her father to stop drinking, waited for someone to come for her, someone to remember her.

This is why she’d never wanted to marry. This is why she’d been afraid to love.

This is why waiting left her feeling terrifyingly close to despair.

A full week passed before the helicopter buzzed the summer palace, and Rou went to the window, knowing it was Zayed’s helicopter, knowing it meant he’d returned. After ten days’ absence he’d returned.

She was glad, and yet scared and didn’t know what to think, or feel. She waited in her room for an hour after the helicopter’s arrival, waited for him to come see her, or at least send for her, but the minutes crawled by without a sign of him.

Disappointed, but determined to stay positive, she forced herself to stop pacing, forced herself to pick up a book and try to distract herself until Zayed did come. He would come. He hadn’t seen her in ten days. He must miss her a little.

She certainly missed him. And she hadn’t been really lonely until the last few days, when it hit her how isolated she’d become. Her cell phone didn’t work and her e-mail was sporadic. She was beginning to miss her life, and the work she did, and the activity that had kept her from thinking too much about things she couldn’t change.

And the hours kept ticking by without Zayed.

She squeezed her eyes shut when hot, salty tears stung her eyes. You can’t cry, she told herself. He’s just busy. He doesn’t realize how excited you are, or how much you want to see him. If he knew, he’d be here. If he knew, he’d come.

But her words of comfort failed to comfort. They had a painfully familiar ring to them. And it was with a lurch she realized she’d told herself the same thing as a girl when she’d waited for her father to come see her on his appointed days. She’d wait in her mother’s hallway in a little chair, her doll in her arms, her coat buttoned up. She’d wait and wait and tell herself her handsome, dashing father was on his way. He hadn’t forgotten her. He was just busy….

Rou covered her face with her hands and began to cry, silent, agonizing tears that were torn from the deepest, darkest corner of her heart.

She, who’d never wanted to marry, had married a man just like her absent, self-absorbed, beautiful father.

Late that afternoon, Rou’s housemaid brought her a note on a silver tray. Rou waited for the maid to leave before she opened the small, heavy envelope.

You will join me for dinner at nine. Zayed

Her upper lip curled as she read the note through, twice. She read the note again, making sure it was indeed his handwriting, and his choice of words.

It wasn’t an invitation, it was a command. She would join him.

This is what she’d waited for. This is the man she’d missed so terribly these past ten days.

Rou tore the note card in half and threw it away.

She would join her husband, but she wouldn’t wait until nine tonight. She’d join him now. This wasn’t the homecoming she’d wanted. It wasn’t the marriage she’d hoped for. The fragile dream inside her had already died. All that remained was the burning need to salvage her self-respect.

Rou changed into white slacks, an emerald-green sweater with tassels and embroidery and leather flats. She brushed her hair until it shone and then pulled it back into a sleek, low ponytail. Dressed, she added just a hint of makeup, enough for polish, enough for courage, and then

she marched toward Zayed’s office in the palace, the one area she never went, but it was her destination now.

Rounding the corner of the stairs, Rou ignored the security detail outside Zayed’s office. They didn’t want her to enter. She wasn’t supposed to enter without his permission. They all knew when he’d granted permission, and this wasn’t one of the occasions, but this afternoon she didn’t care. She’d had it. She was done waiting for a turn, waiting to be seen, waiting to be heard.

Barging into his office, she ignored the startled glances of Zayed’s staff as she marched toward his desk. She ignored Zayed’s expression—surprise giving way to disapproval. She didn’t care if he disapproved. Didn’t care if the entire palace knew he disapproved, too. She wasn’t of his culture, wasn’t accustomed to being treated as second-class or subservient.

“I have meetings in Zurich in two days,” she said crisply, “and I’m already packed. I don’t need to use your jet as I have a ticket reserved on Sarq Air, but I do need my passport back. I believe you have it for safekeeping.”

For a moment no one spoke or moved and then every staff member quickly and silently disappeared, leaving Rou and Zayed alone.

The meeting part was true, she thought, heart pounding like mad, but the having packed part wasn’t. She’d said she was packed to make her plans sound fixed, firm, but they weren’t set yet; they hinged on Zayed. Everything now revolved around him.

It wasn’t a new realization but it still made her sick. She’d fallen in love and lost herself. She’d become her mom.

“You’re leaving,” he said after the last staff member had walked out.

She drank him in, thinking he was even more handsome if such a thing were possible, his hair a little longer, his jaw a little harder, his eyes a little colder. Just looking at him made her heart hurt and her resolve weaken. But no, she couldn’t do this, couldn’t become this helpless dependent woman, a woman who couldn’t function without a man.