Читать книгу Royal Families Vs. Historicals - Annie West, Rebecca Winters - Страница 85

THERE HAD BEEN many times over the years that Kasim wondered how his father could be such a pitiless, dictatorial bastard. These days, he understood the liberation in such an attitude as he adopted the same demeanor, contemptuous of those around him for being ruled by their emotions. What did the desires of others’ egos and libidos and hearts matter when his own had to be ignored? Everyone made sacrifices.

Don’t think of her.

Were it not for his sister marrying in two days, he would ride into the desert and take some much needed time to regroup. Instead, he was part of a ceaseless revolving door of relatives and dignitaries. One branch of the royal family had no sooner arrived and joined him and his parents for coffee, when a foreign dignitary was in the next room awaiting a chance to express felicitations.

This morning the parade had begun with an ambush. The king had introduced him to the father of the woman he thought would make a fine queen someday—when she grew up. Did his father seriously expect him to marry a child of barely eighteen?

To his prospective father-in-law’s credit, a concern for the age difference was expressed. Kasim smoothly stated he could wait until she completed her degree if that was preferred. It would serve the kingdom better if the future queen was well educated.

The king had correctly interpreted it as an effort to put things off and took him to task the minute they were alone.

“Did you give me your word or not?”

“I cleared the field for her, didn’t I?” Kasim replied in a similar snarl. A glance over the guest list a few days ago had shown that Angelique had sent her regrets. “Surely we can get one wedding over with before we host the next?”

Sadiq’s family were announced, cutting short the clash. Kasim sat down with Sadiq and their fathers to sign off on the marriage contracts, then they joined the queen and Sadiq’s mother.

“Hasna isn’t here?” Sadiq said, morose as he glanced around the room.

“The gown has arrived,” the queen said with a nettled look toward the king. “Fatina has been pestering to see it. Such a nuisance when Hasna has guests. What if she ruins it?”

“The girls will not let that happen,” Sadiq’s mother soothed. “They have been ever so careful this week, watching the unpacking of Hasna’s wardrobe.”

“The Sauveterres were staying with you?” the queen asked in her most benign yet shrewd tone.

“Oh, yes,” Sadiq’s mother said with a smile of pleasure. “The men went into the desert for what the Westerners call…a stag? Is that correct, Sadiq? I had a nice visit with their mother. We are all friends for many years.”

“And they all came with you here?” the king asked, gaze swinging like a scythe to Kasim. “Both girls?”

“Yes, Trella was the one we worried wouldn’t make it, but then Angelique came down with the flu. She recovered, though, and…” Sadiq’s mother lost some of her warm cheer as she sensed the growing tension. “Is there a problem?” She touched the draped folds of her hijab where it covered her throat. “I know we said she was not coming, but she shares a room with her sister so I didn’t think it would be an imposition when she made it after all?”

“It’s no problem,” Kasim said firmly, aiming it at his father.

Get rid of her, he read in the flick of his father’s imperious glance.

* * *

If she had left things as they’d been in Paris, Kasim brooded as he strode down the marbled hall of the palace, he would be resentful, but not furious.

This. This was unacceptable. Now he would be in for it with his father. Threats would be made. His uncle and several cousins were coming to the wedding. Tensions were high. Impulsive autocratic decisions could easily be made in a fit of temper.

Not only was he now courting that disastrous possibility, thanks to Angelique coming here against his orders, but he was raw all over again. Her rejection stung afresh and his intense feeling of being hemmed in by impossible circumstances was renewed.

He had resigned himself to never seeing her again, damn her! Now she was in his home.

He started to ask a passing servant which suite the Sauveterres had been given, but glimpsed a face he knew down near the end of the hall, standing outside the door to his sister’s apartment.

His heart rate spiked as he approached the guard.

“Charles,” he said, ears ringing. Angelique was behind this door.

“Your Highness.”

Kasim knocked.

Female laughter cut off and his youngest half sister cracked the door to peer out at him. Her smile beamed as she recognized him.

“Kasim!”

“Is Hasna dressed? May I come in?” He fought for a level tone. Distempered as he was, he would never take out his bad mood on a six-year-old.

There was a murmur of female voices, then Hasna called, “Yes, come in.”

He entered, picking up his baby sister as he did, kissing her cheek and using her small frame to cushion the rush of emotion that accosted him as he anticipated seeing Angelique.

Hasna’s suite was half the size of his, yet still one of the most opulent in the palace, decorated in peacock blues and silver, with high ceilings and the same sort of delicate curlicue furniture his mother favored.

She was in her lounge and stood on something because she was a foot taller than normal. He couldn’t see what it was because her wedding gown was belled over it, flaring a meter in each direction. A filmy veil was draped over her dark hair and all of it was covered in more seed pearls than there were in the ocean.

Fatina rose from her chair and came to kiss his hand, tsking as her older daughter charged at him, arms raised in a demand to be lifted and hugged.

Kasim concentrated on setting down his one sister and lifting the eight-year-old so she could squeeze his neck with her skinny little arms and press her lips to his cheek.

“You’re growing too fast,” he told her. “You’ll be wearing one of these soon and then who will draw me pictures? You look very beautiful, Hasna.”

He set down his sister and pretended he was taking in the extravagance of the gown when he was far more focused on the flash of movement behind the flare of her skirt.

The veil rippled slightly and Angelique rose, her attention remaining stubbornly fixed on her creation.

His heart skyrocketed as he took in the graceful drape of her pink dress and the way she’d covered her head in an ivory scarf so she looked like she was a part of his world—

She turned her head to meet his gaze.

The mercury shooting to the top of his head stalled and plummeted.

Trella.

He didn’t know how he knew. The resemblance was remarkable and he couldn’t say that her eyes were set closer or farther apart, or that her face seemed wider or thinner. He just knew this wasn’t Angelique, even though her greenish-hazel eyes stared at him.

Given the antagonism he sensed coming off her in waves, the straight pins poking out of her mouth were unabashedly symbolic.

He knew how she felt. He was ready to spit nails himself. Where the hell was her sister?

“Angelique has done an amazing job, hasn’t she?” Hasna said. He could hear the lilt of trickery in her voice, hoping to fool him.

“I understood this to be a collaboration between the twins. Hello, Trella. It’s nice to meet you. Is your sister here?” He looked around the lounge, returning to a state of tense anticipation.

“Oh! You can’t tell this is Trella!” Hasna accused. “I can’t. I still think this is Angelique and she’s tricking me.”

Trella pinned a place on the veil that she had marked with her fingers, then removed the rest of the pins from her mouth to say lightly, “I showed you my passport.”

Hasna chuckled and Trella glanced at Kasim, smile evaporating.

“She went back to our suite.”

He couldn’t stop staring, feeling as though he was looking at a film of Angelique. She was a faithful image of her sister, but there was a sense of being removed by time or space. She made him long to be in the presence of the real thing.

“Still recovering from her flu?” he said with false lightness. “Perhaps she should have stayed home after all.”

“It was minor. She’s over it.” Trella’s glance hit Kasim with pointed disparagement.

Did she recall that he had done her a favor, hiding her night with the Prince of Elazar? An attitude of deference wouldn’t be amiss here, he told her with a hard look, but he didn’t have time to teach her some manners.

He had to get her sister on the next plane back to Paris.

* * *

Angelique was normally at her most relaxed around her family, but not today. She was wound up about being here, feeling like she was smuggling drugs, that pouch of Jamal’s was so heavy on her conscience.

Ramon was not helping. He was growing restless away from work and began badgering her to play tennis.

“I thought Henri said he would?” She was actually dying to see more of the palace. As they had come in by helicopter with Sadiq’s family, Angelique had been awestruck. And taken down a peg. What had made her think she had any place in Kasim’s life when his home sprawled in opulent glory over more area than a dozen football fields against the stunning backdrop of the Persian Gulf?

She told herself that it was the heat of the desert sun that caused her to sweat as they were taken by golf cart along a palm-lined path overlooking a water feature. It was actually anxiety. Kasim was here. Somewhere behind those columns and tall windows, beneath the domes and flags, he was carrying on with his life, perhaps already having moved on to another lover, completely unaware she had defied him and come to Zhamair after all.

She searched across the gardens, noting small gatherings in gazebos and colorful tents, trying to see if he was among any of the groups. Guilty and eager at once for a glimpse of him.

Maybe she wouldn’t see him until the wedding. She’d been trying to decide whether to contact him outright and request a meeting prior to the wedding—and probably be asked to leave—or just hope she came across him and was able to say her piece before he deported her.

Being special guests of the groom and traveling with the groom’s parents, her family was given a luxurious suite of four rooms with a stunning stained glass window set high on the exterior wall of the lounge. It poured colored light onto the white tablecloth of the dining table, where fruit, cordial, sweets and flowers had been waiting on their arrival.

“Gili!” Ramon said. “Are you listening?”

“Are you? I said you and Henri should play. I have to hem these for Hasna’s sisters.” She lifted the silk dresses she’d brought back from Hasna’s suite.

Fatina had cried when Hasna revealed that her daughters hadn’t been overlooked in the wedding preparations.

Now that Angelique had met Jamal and had an even broader understanding of the family’s painful dynamic, she was thrilled to be part of including Fatina’s children in the wedding. And, as much as it pained her, she had accepted payment from Fatina for them. Fatina had insisted, worried what the queen would say if she didn’t. Angelique had kept it very nominal, doing what she could to keep the peace.

Ramon sighed.

“You have to come with us so we can talk to any women we meet.” He spoke like he was explaining it to a child. “I don’t know how Sadiq survived these restrictions,” he muttered, resuming his pacing.

Ah. It wasn’t work he was missing so much as his extracurricular activities.

“Ask Mama to go with you,” she suggested drily.

“Siesta or I would,” he shot back. “Desperate times.”

She shook her head at him.

Henri emerged from his room. He had changed into light gray sweatpants and a white long-sleeved tunic. He made a small noise of disgust as he saw that was exactly what Ramon already wore. They didn’t try to dress alike, but it happened constantly. Even their panama hats had been purchased on two different continents, but their tastes were so in sync, they had each brought one to Zhamair.

When they set them on their heads, they did so facing each other, moving like mirror images—because that’s what they were. She and Trella were stamps, both right-handed, both wearing their hair parted on the left because that’s where their crowns were.

The boys were left and right, but were still difficult to tell apart for most people. They wore their hair in the same short, spiked cut, favored the same clothes and had such even features they easily passed for the other, not that they played that game.

Well, Ramon had tried with Cinnia a couple of times, because he was a tease, but she had always caught him. Her ability to tell both sets of twins apart from the get-go was one of the reasons Angelique had been so sure Cinnia was right for Henri.

Her brothers left and she sat down to work.

A knock sounded a few minutes later.

Most of Trella’s security detail were women so they’d been given much-deserved vacation time, rather than coming to work where they would have been hampered in performing their regular duties. When the family was together like this, in a secure location, they needed fewer guards anyway.

Maurice was outside this door and she paused to listen, expecting him to ask for identification.

Nothing.

Weird. Unless he already knew the person knocking?

Angelique faltered, suddenly paralyzed with nerves, then forced herself to rise and open the door.

She caught her breath.

He looked so exotic in his bisht and gutra.

She had studied menswear to design her brother’s wedding cloaks, but even though she’d taken great care with them, Kasim’s was obviously of royal quality and tailored by hands that were intimately familiar with the engineering of such garments. His robe fit his shoulders perfectly. It was stark black with its V opening trimmed in gold, his white gutra framing his face and secured with a cord of matching gold.

He had let his beard grow in, but it was trimmed to a sexy frame that accentuated his mouth and the hollows of his cheeks. The contrast of white and black and gold made his eyes look all the more like melted dark chocolate.

He stole her breath.

His expression flashed something that might have been exaltation as he looked at her, but it was quickly schooled into the stern, confrontational look he’d worn the day she had met him.

“You can’t be here,” he said.

She searched for the woman she’d been in her office that first day, the one who had stood up to this man, but it was far harder to find her backbone when he looked right through her and saw all her weaknesses.

Her weakness for him.

Somehow she managed to speak despite the earthquake gripping her.

“You’ll feel differently when I tell you what brought me here.”

Instantly alert, he stepped in, crowding her into stumbling backward. His expression was grave as he firmly closed the door behind him and left his hand flat on the carved panel. His lips barely moved as he said in an undertone, “Pregnant?”

“What? No!” Her heart fishtailed, then did it again as his mouth tightened.

Disappointment? Don’t be stupid, Angelique.

He smoothed his expression into something aloof and pitiless, sweeping his gaze around the empty lounge. He tensed and swore under his breath.

“Are you alone?”

As his gaze slammed back into hers, practically knocking her onto her back, her skin tightened with anticipation and a rush of heat hit her loins.

“My m-m—” How was she supposed to speak when he looked at her like that? “Mama is asleep in her room,” she blurted, pointing to the one closed door. “Trella will be back any minute.” Quit making me think you still want me.

His nostrils flared and he swung away, moving into her lounge like he owned it, which he did. He cast a glance around to take in the litter of tablets and purses, her open mending kit and his young sisters’ dresses in vivid green and yellow.

“Damn you for coming,” he said, pitching his voice low, but it was still overflowing with restless emotion. “What do you think you’re accomplishing?”

Angelique moved to her purse and dug for the velvet pouch, hand shaking as she offered it to him.

* * *

Kasim hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how they’d ended things, the bitterness of it. He hated that the acrimony would be even deeper after this. He had lived in that sort of thorny forest all his life and knew how unpleasant it was.

That Angelique had forced his hand and was making him reject her outright, forcing her to leave his country, seemed cruel on her part—which was the last word he would use to describe her. He hadn’t expected this of her and that made it doubly hard to accept and behave as he knew he must.

Yet there was only the anticipation of pain as he stood here. Duty and reputation hung like anvils and pianos over his head, but in this moment, the bleak anger that had consumed him had become radiant light in her presence.

Angelique turned, expression solemn, and stood where the stained glass poured colors over her golden skin and pale blue dress.

He drank in the picture she made. Memorizing it.

Then she offered something to him and her expression was so grave, so filled with deep compassion, it made his heart lurch. All the hairs on his body stood up as he took the pouch and poured its contents into his hands.

He recognized the workmanship if not the piece. New. Better than anything else he’d made yet. His brother had definitely found his calling in this.

The piano landed.

She knew.

“Your family knows this is why you came?” His mind raced while cold sweat lifted in his palms. He tried to imagine how he would contain this, but his mind was as empty as the shifting dunes in the desert. Old protectiveness warred with fresh, fierce aggression while betrayal washed through him.

“No,” she dismissed, barely speaking above a whisper. Her eyes stayed that soft, mossy green. “They think I decided to brave the wedding. That’s all.”

“How did you find him?”

“He came to me. Asked me to bring that to you for Hasna.”

Trella walked in, making both of them start guiltily. Kasim let his arm fall so his sleeve fell over his fist where he clutched the pendant. He slipped it into the side pocket of his robe.

Trella’s gaze flicked between them, sticking upon her sister’s pale face. “Shall I come back?”

“No,” Kasim said on impulse, probably a self-destructive one. “You can tell your family that she’s with me.” He clasped Angelique’s hand in an implacable grip.

“Kasim—”

“We have to talk.” He had to ensure Jamal would stay dead. That’s what he told himself, even though he knew at a cell-deep level that he could trust Angelique with this secret. She hadn’t told her family, had she?

“Gili, your phone,” Trella urged, handing it to Angelique as Kasim tugged her toward the door.

There’s no point, he thought, as he decided on the fly where they were going.