“Get what over with, exactly, Your Highness?”
“My engagement. My wedding.” My life.
After they returned to the palace, his chief of staff and bodyguards went their separate ways, as each man’s duty required. And so did Sharif.
He walked slowly down the hallway, back toward the dining room. But with every step farther away from Irene, the strength seemed to leave his body. He felt like an old man. No. He felt as if he’d already died.
He stopped.
Irene. Her name was like a prayer in his heart. He pressed his fists hard against his eyes. She would have everything he could not give her. A man who would love her, marry her, have children with her. All her dreams would come true, even without him. He had to believe he’d done the right thing. Loving her, remembering the brief moments they’d shared, would have to be enough to sustain him for the rest of his life. The memory of her, and the knowledge that she’d someday be happy with someone else...
Bleakly, he went back to the dining room. It was empty. His sister had left. His servants had cleared the table.
Only one person remained, standing by the open window, smoking a cigarette. She turned to face him.
“So you tossed her out,” Kalila said. “I confess you surprised me. I did not expect you to let this one go so easily.”
“What do you want, Kalila?” he said wearily.
She gave him a hard smile. “Your assurance that, after we are wed and I give you your heir, you will leave me alone, with all the same rights to play that you have.”
Sharif stared at his future bride in the shadows of the empty dining hall. “We are not yet wed, and you are planning how you wish to be unfaithful?”
She gave a cold laugh. “Don’t take that outraged tone with me. I’m not one of your doe-eyed little virgins.” She took another elegant drag off her cigarette. “Not like her.”
He jolted. “You knew we were never lovers?”
“Of course, I could tell. Stupid little virgin, hanging on your every word, staring up at you with those big needy eyes.” She took another puff. Her fingers were almost as thin and white as the cigarette. “Have her, if you want. And I intend to have my own fun. I don’t care if you hate me. Our marriage is about power, not love.”
She made the word a sneer. Just as he once had.
“When you are my queen,” Sharif said tightly, “I expect you to rule with respect and dignity for our customs and laws.”
She shrugged her skinny shoulders. “I’m no fool. I’ll be discreet.”
“This I doubt.”
She snorted. “More than you have been,” she said pointedly, “sneaking around with your sister’s companion. Even if you weren’t lovers, I heard whispers about your—relationship—all the way to New York. My father was the one who called me.”
Sharif’s lips twisted sardonically. “So that is why you raced here? Because you feared I wouldn’t keep my word—that I would marry her?”
Kalila looked away abruptly, then lifted the cigarette to her lips with trembling fingers. “I should have nailed this down a long time ago.” Looking out the window, she said in a low voice, “I won’t let one mistake keep me from everything that should be mine.”
Sharif’s eyes narrowed. “She wasn’t a mistake.”
“What? Oh. Yes. Miss Taylor. But she’s gone now. And we understand each other, do we not?” She jerked her chin with glittering eyes. “We’ll be wed next week in your sister’s place. Then we will consummate the marriage...as often and frequently as we must...”
He tried not to flinch.
“Once you get me pregnant, I do not care what you do. Bring your precious Miss Taylor back. Install her in your bed, for all I care.” Kalila abruptly put out her cigarette on the windowsill, leaving a burn mark before she dropped the cigarette carelessly to the floor. He watched the lingering ashes fall against his tile floor like gray snowflakes. “It means nothing to me.”
Staring at her, Sharif had a sudden flashback to shining brown eyes. When I marry, it will only be for love. And our wedding night will be truly about making love. The kind that will last forever. He remembered the tremble of Irene’s voice just an hour before, when she’d told him she loved him.
“Our marriage is nothing but a means to an end,” Kalila said. “Something to endure, and ignore, until we both are dead.”
He abruptly focused on her face, on those black eyes with fake black lashes, beautiful, yes, but so cold, with an almost reptilian stare. So different from loving, warm brown eyes that glowed at you with the heat of summer, like the warmth of an embrace. He looked at his fiancée’s hollow cheekbones, so different from the healthy rose-dusted cheeks that blushed with modesty or shyness or even anger.