When would her period come?
After dinner, when Trinity had excused herself to go to her room, Zahid asked to speak with Layla. It was not an easy conversation to have.
‘I asked Father if he could postpone the dinners so that I could spend more time with Trinity.’
‘You love her?’ Layla frowned, for she could not imagine her stern older brother falling in love, as his focus had always been his country.
‘You too!’ Zahid rolled his eyes. ‘I am supposed to give an immediate answer when I am trying to make up my mind what is for the best, not just by my people but by Trinity, by you too...’
‘Of course you love her,’ Layla challenged, ‘or you would not have brought her here and be asking to postpone dinners.’
‘Away from here, people date, they get to know each other, they see if their differences will work better together, or if they should be apart...’
‘You think I feel sorry for you?’ Layla sneered. ‘Well, I don’t. You are going to be king, of course you must marry a suitable bride, but at least you have known love in your lifetime, at least you got to be free for a while before you started your family.’ Layla started to cry. ‘So don’t ask me to understand how difficult things are for you when the man I will marry and spend all my life with is Hassain.’
She ran crying to her room and Zahid walked in the grounds, but it did not relax him because the day replayed over in his head.
He turned and looked as a noise disturbed him. He saw shutters open but he looked away when he realised it was Trinity’s suite.
Perhaps she couldn’t sleep either, Zahid thought; perhaps the air in her room was as stifling as it was out here, for there was no escape from his thoughts.
His eyes moved back to her window and he could only sigh as he watched her peek out and then turn.
One foot, followed by the other.
Zahid walked over quietly as Trinity shimmied down the short drop from her window.
‘Are you averse to using doors?’
When she heard Zahid, Trinity jumped.
‘I wanted to go for a walk.’
‘So why use the window?’
‘I didn’t know if I could.’
‘It is not a prison.’
‘You told me this morning that I should not be wandering the palace at night.’
‘I meant you should not be near my room.’
‘Oh, please...’ Trinity started, then halted, for last night the temptation had been great to creep in. Not that she would tell him that. ‘There are so many rules, I’m never sure if I’m breaking one or not.’
‘Just be yourself.’
‘You’re not, though,’ Trinity pointed out. ‘I barely recognised you when you told Layla off this morning.’
‘Layla was upset. It was the only way to calm her down.’
‘Perhaps, but I don’t really know you at all, Zahid.’ He didn’t respond. ‘Does anyone?’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘You. What you think about things, how you feel, or are you going to tell me again that feelings are beneath you?’
‘I have not been fair to you,’ Zahid said, and stopped walking. ‘Perhaps it was easier to blame your past and your ways on the fact that we cannot have a future but it is more complicated than that.’
‘It is,’ Trinity said, ‘because even if I didn’t have a past I’m not sure I’d want...’ She gave a shrug and Zahid waited but Trinity didn’t say any more. Instead, it was Zahid who spoke on and told her a little of his family’s history.
‘My father was to choose Raina as his bride, a princess from a neighbouring land who is now Queen. The marriage would have profited our people, ensured swift progress. Instead, progress has been painfully slow.’
‘Why didn’t he choose her?’
‘My father walked into the room and saw my mother. She had been crying because she did not want a loveless marriage and to be chosen by the future king, but then their eyes met and she changed her mind. My father says she smiled at him and in that moment his choice was made.’
‘Did it cause problems?’
‘Many,’ Zahid said. ‘It caused division and even today relations are strained. That can be rectified now, though, if I choose Raina’s daughter, Sameena.’
‘Oh, so you do lie, Zahid!’ Trinity said. ‘You told me that you hadn’t chosen.’
‘I haven’t,’ Zahid said. ‘I would prefer not to go with the elders’ choice because one of the other potential brides comes from a country with a very organised army—’
‘I don’t want to hear,’ Trinity said, for she did not want to hear about any future wife, but she did want to know about the marriage of his parents and all the trouble that it had caused. ‘Were your parents happy?’
‘Yes, they were happy, while their people bore the cost of a decision made in a rash moment.’ Zahid shrugged. ‘And then, when my mother died, their king fell apart. That is what love does to a man. When I saw how my father crumbled on my mother’s death I decided I wanted no part in a marriage that made one so weak. My father could barely move from his bed. What if there had been trouble with neighbouring countries, what if there had been an emergency and decisions had been needed to be made? He was incapable.’
‘I doubt that could ever happen to you.’
‘I never thought it would happen to my father, yet it did,’ Zahid said. ‘I want no part in a love that renders you incapable.’
It was a very backhanded way of revealing his feelings but Trinity just shrugged and started walking, thinking over his words. They actually made a lot of sense to her.
‘So you want your own Dianne?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Your own Dianne, standing smiling and plastic by your side and agreeing, without question, to whatever you decide.’
‘Do not compare me...’ He caught her arm and swung her round. It was rather a difficult conversation because to reveal the absolute insult that was meant that he had to criticise Trinity’s parents, but another Dianne was the very last thing he wanted from his wife. ‘I do not want that from a wife.’
‘You told me so yourself. You want a wife who will obey and serve without question,’ Trinity challenged. ‘That’s what my mother does, she stands idly by.’
‘Your father has made many mistakes.’
‘Oh, and you’re exempt from making them?’ Trinity checked. ‘I’m sure my father would insist he was only doing the best for his family and constituents, that my mother doesn’t understand what it takes to do the job he does. I’m quite sure if he loved her he wouldn’t have had those affairs and I’m quite sure he blames her for what happened to me. It was her side of the family after all.’
Zahid stood there a touch breathless, furious at her challenge, reluctantly acknowledging her words.
‘I don’t want my past pardoned in some grandiose gesture,’ Trinity said, ‘only to be thrown back at me, and, no, I would never stand with a plastic smile, meekly accepting that you know best.’ She gave him a bright smile. ‘See, we’re completely incompatible, but it works both ways, Zahid. I don’t want your idea of a marriage. I want a love that burns and sometimes hurts, one that challenges me at every turn. I want a father for my children who does not hold onto his emotions, whatever the cost.’ The absence of her period had Trinity for once thinking ahead and what she saw was not pretty. ‘I don’t want a family tucked away in the second palace, with their father an occasional guest, till they come of age and can move to the main one...’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘I don’t, Zahid.’ She smiled a plastic smile that infuriated him. ‘But that’s okay—clearly, I don’t have to. I just have to agree to your ways.’
‘I would always do the right thing by my family but there are rules in place and those rules mean I must do the right things by my people.’
‘Yes, Zahid.’
‘And I would never cheat on my wife.’
‘Yes, Zahid.’
‘Stop agreeing with me.’
‘Oh, sorry, I thought that was what you wanted.’ Then she smiled a very slow smile and his face was rigid as she made him examine a truth. ‘Why did we have to sever contact?’
‘You know why.’
‘Are you worried that you couldn’t keep your hands off me, even with a wife by your side?’
‘No!’
‘Oh, just those pesky inappropriate thoughts, then.’ Trinity winked. ‘Well, that’s okay, then,’ she said, and ran off towards the palace.
Never, not once, had anyone challenged him so; never once had he questioned his own integrity so much; never had he wanted to chase someone so much, to catch her and turn her round, to press her to the jewelled palace wall and demand she retract her words.
And Zahid did just that. In a moment he had caught up with her and, yes, he pushed her to the wall but in the way that lovers did and he demanded then that she take back what she’d said.
That she retract.
‘Retract what?’ Trinity asked.
The truth.
She looked deep into his eyes, could feel his erection pressed into her, and she just stared and challenged him to kiss her, to break the strange rules of this beautiful land. And then she did the unforgivable. She smiled, the plastic smile of her mother, and Zahid pulled back, staring into the tempting pool of her mouth and trying to shift decades of thinking as his mouth moved towards her, but Trinity turned her head.