Читать книгу Rising Stars & It Started With… Collections - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 38

AND so the feast continued.

The birth of the new Prince demanded an extensive celebration, and Amy could see the tiredness in Natasha’s eyes as she greeted the never ending stream of guests.

It was a semi-formal breakfast. There was a long, low table groaning with all the food Amy had come to love in her time there, but she was not here to socialise or to eat, but to make sure that the twins behaved. It was assumed she would have eaten before the Princesses rose.

Of course, she was starving.

Starving, her eyes told him. He watched them linger on the sfiha he reached for. He was at Rakhal’s table, and it would be rude not to indulge, but it tasted of guilt on his tongue.

He was weak for her. Emir knew that.

And weak kings did not make good decisions.

‘Have something!’ Natasha insisted, sitting next to Amy as she fed the girls. ‘For goodness’ sake.’

‘I already ate,’ Amy responded. ‘But thank you.’

‘I insist,’ Natasha said. She saw her husband’s eyes shoot her a warning but she smiled sweetly back, for there was something that Rakhal did not know—something she had not had time to tell him.

When he had gone riding that morning she had taken tea on the balcony—had heard the sound of a family together, had felt the love in the air. She knew only too well the strain of being considered an unsuitable bride, yet things were changing here in Alzirz and they could change too in Alzan.

Amy did her best to forget she was hungry as she fed the twins. Did her best not to give in to the lure of his voice, nor turn her head when he spoke. She tried to treat him with the distant, quiet reverence that any servant would.

The twins were a little too loud, but very funny, smiling at their audience as they entertained, basking in the attention. As the breakfast started to conclude she wiped their faces, ready to take them back to their room and to pack for the journey home.

Not home, she reminded herself. She was returning to the palace.

With the evidence of last night in her case.

Just for a brief moment she lost focus, daydreamed for a second too long, considering the impossible as she recalled last night. Of course Clemira noticed her distraction.

Clemira demanded attention. ‘Ummi!’

Amy snapped her eyes open, prayed for a futile second that no one had heard. But just in case they hadn’t Nakia followed the leader as she always did.

‘Ummi!’

‘Amy!’ She forced out the correction, tried to sound bright and matter of fact, but her eyes were filling with tears, her heart squeezing as still the twins insisted on using the Arabic word for mummy.

‘I’ll go and get them ready for the journey home.’ She picked up Clemira, her hands shaking, grateful when Natasha stood and picked up Nakia.

Natasha was the perfect hostess, instantly realising the faux pas the little girls had made. Doing her best to smooth things over, she followed Amy out of the room with Nakia. But as Amy fled past the table she caught a brief glimpse of Emir. His face was as grey as the incoming storm—and there would be a storm. Amy was certain of it.

The tension chased her from the room. The realisation that continuing on was becoming increasingly impossible surrounded her now. She wished Natasha would leave when they reached the nursery, wished she would not try to make conversation, because Amy was very close to tears.

‘I will go back and explain to them.’ Natasha was practical. ‘I know how difficult things can be at times, but once I explain how similar the words are …’ She tried to make things better and, perhaps selfishly, yearned for Amy to confide in her. The only thing missing in her life was a girlfriend—someone from home to chat to, to compare the country’s ways with. ‘Anyway, it’s surely natural that they would think of you in that way.’

‘I’m not their mother.’

‘I know.’ Natasha misinterpreted Amy’s tears as she cuddled Clemira into her—or perhaps she didn’t. Her words were the truth. After all, she had heard them as a family that morning. ‘It must be so hard for you—to detach, I mean, you’ve known them since the day they were born.’

‘Why would it be hard for me to detach?’ Amy met the Queen’s eyes and frowned, her guard suddenly up. Natasha sounded as if she really did know how hard it was for her, and she must never know—no one must ever know. But Amy was suddenly certain that Natasha did, and her attempt to refute it was desperate. ‘I’m a royal nanny—as Kuma is.’

Natasha knew she had meddled too far, but she stepped back a little too late. ‘Of course you have to keep a professional detachment.’ Natasha nodded. Amy was not going to confide in her, she realised, so she tried to salvage the conversation as best she could. ‘After all, you will have your own babies one day.’

Amy was tired—so tired of women who assumed, who thought it was so straightforward, that parenthood was a God-given right. Maybe, too, she was tired of covering up, tired of saying the right thing, tired of putting others at ease as they stomped right over her heart.

She looked up at Natasha. ‘Actually, I can’t have children.’ She watched the blush flood Natasha’s cheeks and then fade till her skin was pale. She knew then that somehow Natasha knew about herself and Emir—perhaps they had given themselves away last night at the celebration? Perhaps they’d ignored each other just a touch too much? Or was their love simply visible to all?

Yes, love, Amy thought with a sob of bitterness—a bitterness that carried through to her words. ‘So, yes, while it might have been a touch awkward for everyone at breakfast to hear the twins call me Ummi, for me it hurts like hell. Now …’ She wanted her tears to fall in private, for Natasha was not her friend. ‘If you’ll excuse me …?’

‘Amy—’

‘Please!’ Amy didn’t care if it was the Queen she was dismissing, didn’t care if this was Natasha’s home. She just wanted some privacy, some space. ‘Can you please just leave it?’

Had she looked up she would have seen tears in Natasha’s eyes too as she nodded and left her. And Natasha’s eyes filled again when she took her place back at the table and saw Emir sit tall and proud, but removed.

Natasha had seen that expression before. It was the same as it had been when he had lost Hannah. Grey and strained, his features etched in grief.

As Emir looked up, as he saw the sympathy in Natasha’s expression, he knew she had been told—that Amy must have somehow confided the truth.

That it was impossible for her to be Queen.