“Then who did?”
“Lilly,” she hissed. “I told Lilly’s servant to find you. To explain! At no time did I intend for you to believe that I was the architect of this plan.”
His mistakes were a dark liquid; he was sinking into it, incapable of pulling himself to dry land. “Lilly?” He repeated with obvious disbelief.
Violet collapsed back into her seat, angling her body away from his, her eyes staring out the window. “We argued yesterday,” she murmured. “As you know. She was upset. She ran away.”
“Lilly,” he repeated and Violet nodded tersely.
“I went to speak to her early this morning and discovered her missing. And the note.”
“The note which you had sent to me.”
“With clear instructions that I was going to the airport for Lilly. I thought you would call and block her flight. That’s all.”
He swore darkly in his own tongue and moved away from Violet, further to the other side of the limousine. His mind was absorbed with rewriting that morning from each of their perspectives, of making sense of every thought and deed, of every word he’d spoken.
But by the time they arrived at the palace, he was no closer to understanding any of it. “Violet,” he murmured as the car drew to a stop. “I was handed a note and told you had left for the airport.”
She nodded, her eyes meeting his for only a very brief moment. “I understand. Your conclusion was a natural one to draw.”
The weak smile she shaped her lips into was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He groaned and moved across the seat, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her to his chest.
“Please don’t,” she cried into his chest, shaking her head.
“Don’t what?” He asked, his tone gravelled as he ran his hand over her hair.
“Don’t toy with me.” She lifted a hand and pressed it against his rock hard abdominals, forcibly separating them. “You need to leave me alone now. Just leave me be. Please.”
Her heartbreak speared right through his soul. He nodded, his eyes showing the depth of his remorse. “I will. I will, Violet.”
“Thank you.” She wiped her cheeks and then pinched them, bringing colour back to their pale curves. She sucked in a deep breath and almost looked like her normal self. She stepped out of the car and he watched her walk stoically towards Lilly with a sense of deepening confusion.
All this time he had believed her malleable, and that she didn’t know her own mind, and yet surely the same could now be said of him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Zahir was watching her like a hawk.
Violet pretended not to notice, but she could feel his eyes resting on her as she moved through his suite of rooms. She picked up a book she’d been reading days earlier – before Lilly’s attempted runaway – and tried to recollect the threads of the chapter. But the words swam in front of her eyes like fuzzy little bugs, none of them imparting even a hint of sense.
“You have not been to the Old City yet?” Zahir asked, and now she was forced to look at him. She put a finger halfway down the page and lifted her eyes. Then dropped them again almost instantly, as the full force of her feelings slammed into her.
“No.”
She was so pale. Even her hair looked different. It had been almost a week since their argument at the airport and life had returned to normal, on the surface. But Violet was not the same. She was fading before his eyes. He hadn’t seen her smile in the longest time.
And it was his fault.
She flicked the page over and curled her legs up beneath her on the sofa. Her eyes moved as she read, her lips parted as she breathed rhythmically.
“Would you like to?”
She didn’t look at him. It frustrated him. Didn’t she know how badly he needed to speak to her? To have her meet his gaze and challenge him in that unique way she had?
“Some day,” she shrugged as though the very idea hadn’t filled her with a rush of excitement.
“Why not today?”
With a sigh, she placed the book down and looked in his general direction. “Because it’s almost night time.”
“So?” He said with a smile. “The Old City is at its best at dawn and dusk, when the colours of the sky paint the white buildings.”
Goose bumps marked her flesh. “Some other time.”
“Violet?” He stood and her eyes jolted towards him. “Let me show you the city. You will be glad.”
A refusal was on the tip of her tongue, but it was churlishness for the sake of churlishness.
“I suppose so,” she said quietly, standing with great care not to move too close to him. She had been longing to see the ancient streets she’d heard so much about.
“Meet me at the limousine in an hour. I have to finish up some business first.”
“Fine,” she said with no interest in the logistics.
He suppressed the kernel of worry and moved quickly through the palace. He had two tasks to complete before they could leave, and he did so with a growing sense of apprehension that she might not be at the limousine at the appointed time.
Indeed, he arrived and no one was visible except the driver who stood with the back door open. But as Zahir moved closer he saw her feet. Then the bottom of her dress. And finally, her face, pinched and still not ready to meet his.
“Qalil,” he said softly as he stepped into the car.
Her answer was a tight smile.
“What’s that?” She nodded towards the bag he carried.
“Ah. Dinner.”
Her face seemed to contort with panic at the very idea. Guilt throbbed inside of him. But he knew instinctively that he needed to keep her calm or she might bolt. Not physically, but emotionally. There was more than one way to run away, and Violet had done just that. She might as well have been on the other side of the earth to him.
The car covered the distance quickly, a sleek black machine that ate the miles between the palace and the Old City.
“Syed’s palace is on the outskirts of the city,” Zahir murmured as they entered beneath the enormous marble gate that heralded the walls of the ancient precinct.
“Yes, he’s mentioned that.”
Zahir compressed his lips and waited. Just a few more moments. He leaned forward and tapped on the glass and then reached over and unclasped Violet’s seatbelt. She seemed to flinch away from him.
More guilt chewed at him.
They stepped into the city and instantly he saw a flicker of the light in her eyes – the light that had always been there until recently.
He dismissed their bodyguards and put a hand in the small of her back. While she stiffened, she didn’t move away. That was something.
Violet’s eyes were skimming the buildings, taking in the details. They were low and squat with holes instead of windows in some, and all the doors were painted different colours. Some blue, some black, some yellow, some green. Above the doors there were frescos, some well preserved, others almost completely destroyed.
“They are the markers of a store or office,” he said, following her gaze. “People used to display these mosaics when they were deemed to be at a senior level in their trade or profession. It was to help visitors.”
“An early form of advertising?” She asked, almost completely like her old self. Zahir’s heart soared.
“Yes, you could say that.” His smile was teasing and it scared Violet back into herself. She was distant and cold again.
He led them down an alley. She couldn’t help but feel the warmth from the narrow lane as they went. Tiny, leaning houses crowded over them and it was dark and cool. Flowers sprung up from between the unevenly laid cobbles.
She reached down and plucked one without realising that it might have been perceived as odd and twirled it between her fingers.
“Violet?” He stopped walking near the end of the road. “I have wanted to speak to you for days and not known how to express myself. May we talk now? As we walk?”
Warin
ess crept around her. She shook her head, her eyes huge. “We could have talked at the palace,” she pointed out.
“No, I didn’t want that.”
“Why not?” She was weary. “If you’ve been wanting to talk to me for days, why wait until now?”
“Because I want to speak to you as a man to a woman, not as a Prince or a King. I want to speak to my wife.”
“I’m still your wife in the palace,” she said with a stony stillness.
“It is important,” he said gently, wanting to reach down and grab her hand in his. To touch her and feel her. But he didn’t.
“Fine,” she said, turning away from him and beginning to walk through yet another little laneway. “Let’s walk and talk though. I want to see this place.”
He nodded. “How is your sister?”
Violet smiled unconsciously. “Much, much better.”
“I am pleased. How did you achieve that?”
“I listened to what she wanted and I worked with her.” She reached out and ran a hand over the uneven bricks of a house as they passed. The Fiyalshar diamond glistened in the light, catching Zahir’s attention.
“What did she want?”
“I think just to know she was being heard. I told her a trip back to London is something we can look at. So long as she takes bodyguards and adheres to some rules.” Violet shrugged. “And now it’s like she doesn’t even want to go. She just needed to know she has the option and that’s enough for her.”
He nodded darkly, his mind thick with every realisation he’d been carrying for days. “When you told me you loved me, I felt like that. Like I didn’t love you but I needed to know you felt it for me.”
Violet made a sound as though she’d been slapped and stopped walking. The change of subject appeared to have come out of nowhere and she was ill-prepared for it.
“Now why would I care so much how you felt, Violet? Why would this matter to me so much? It is not something I could fathom until I felt you withdraw your love.”
Violet was gasping for air but it was hot and she was panicked. Zahir saw her distress but he couldn’t pull away from the conversation now he’d started it.
“I thought I was saving you when I married Anna. I thought I was disgusted by the idea of our marriage. But I was disgusted in myself. I have never wanted anything as much as I did to marry you. You! A teenager when we met!” He grimaced. “And now? I see I was saving myself. Nothing is more terrifying to a man like me than realising he would give up his life for a woman. And I would, Violet. I would give up all that I am to be your husband.”
She reached behind her, feeling for the wall, and pressed her back against it, grateful for the support.
“Don’t say this,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
“You have faded away from me since that morning at the airport. You have been living with me but nowhere to be seen. I had come to depend on your smiles, your questions, your love. Your love is what sustains me, and I did not realise until you no longer offered it.”
“Why are you saying this? I don’t believe you.”
“Do you remember when I told you that I have more experience in these matters than you? That I understand love? I don’t. I didn’t. I was so desperate to know how you felt that I never really listened to my own feelings. I have no experience in this. None. And I am a coward. You are the brave one. You fought for what we are even when I gave you no hope.”
“I have no hope now,” she said quietly. “I can’t believe that you really feel this way. Not after everything that’s happened.”
“I am not a man to …”
“You have never loved me,” she interrupted, keeping her eyes shut. “I know that to be true.”
“Violet? Look at me.”
She kept her eyes shut and he squeezed her hands.
“Look at me.”
Finally, Violet blinked her eyes open to see Zahir kneeling at her feet. He held a ring in his hands.
“You didn’t want to wear the Fiyalshar diamond. And now that I know you, I agree. It is not right for you. We are not darkness and light. You are light, and you turn me to light. How can I feel darkness when you are in my life?”
She shook her head but her heart was listening; it was opening up and letting him breathe his sweet words into its core.
“If I had met you for the first time two months ago, that day in London, I would be proposing to you now. Not as a Prince who needs a wife, but as a man needs a woman. I am asking you now to let me love you. To believe that I have fallen as much in love with you as you are with me. My darling qalil, my other half, I have hurt you and for that I offer not just an apology but my eternal devotion.”
Tears sparkled on her lashes and she shook her head again. Not out of disbelief so much as bewilderment.
“If you do not believe me, then let me show you. Let me show you how you have become the centre of all that I am. Let me love you and our baby so fiercely that you never again weep or doubt. Will you be my wife, Violet, from this moment on, knowing that I have chosen you? Not for Adin, not for Efani, not for any reason except that you are my perfect match in every way.”
And now she nodded, her hands shaking in his. He slid the ring onto her finger, nestling it beside the Fiyalshar diamond for the time being. Then he stood and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling Violet to his chest as he kissed her with all of the love and passion inside of him.
“I love you,” he said into her mouth and she nodded.
“I always knew that,” she laughed.
“You are so much smarter than I.”
“At least when it comes to our hearts,” she agreed, dropping her head to his chest. “And I understood yours especially well.” She pressed her palm against his chest. “It is a good heart, Zahir.”
“A heart that is, and always will be, entirely yours.”
THE END
Book Two in THE SHEIKHS’ BRIDES series is THE SHEIKH’S STOLEN BRIDE – Ashad’s story. Following is an excerpt.
And don’t forget, reviews make the world go ‘round for Independent Writers so please take a moment to rate or review THE SHEIKH’S CONTRACT BRIDE. Thanks! CC.x
THE SHEIKH’S STOLEN BRIDE
Clare Connelly
All the characters in this book are fictitious and have no existence outside the author’s imagination. They have no relation to anyone bearing the same name or names and are pure invention.
All rights reserved. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reprinted by any means without permission of the Author.
The illustration on the cover of this book features model/s and bears no relation to the characters described within.
First published 2017
(c) Clare Connelly
Photo Credit: dollarphotoclub.com/
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PROLOGUE
“I have no intention of marrying her.”
Ash stared at his cousin Syed long and hard. Only four months separated them in age – they were more like twins than cousins. But in some ways they were at odds.
“Your father wishes it,” Ash pointed out, sipping his coffee and taking in the view of the Old City. It spread in all directions; beautiful, ancient, glorious. Beyond it were the desert plains that surrounded Kalastan, and in the far distance, the ocean. Across that sea was the Kingdom of Falina and Syed’s intended bride.
“My father wishes peace with Falina. Falina wishes peace with us. The marriage is unnecessary where both rulers are minded for harmony.”
Ash placed his cup down slowly. “How long have you been preparing that little speech?”
Syed made a sound. “Come
on! You know I’m right.”
Ash grinned. “What I know is that I have the betrothal papers here. I’m expected in Falina tonight. Do you want me to cancel? To avoid going?”
“No, that won’t work,” Syed shook his head. “I am sick of delays. I want this matter settled once and for all.”
“So? What do you suggest?”
Syed’s smile showed that he’d given the matter a lot of thought. “I don’t know much of Charlotte. I’ve met her only once.”
“And you didn’t like her?” Ash prompted curiously.
“Whether I liked her or not is besides the point. I do not want to enter into a marriage just because my father would like the question of Falina and Kalastan nicely stitched up.” Before he dies.
The end of the sentence hung in the air between them, like a heavy foreshadowing of a grief neither knew how to process.
“There’s someone else?” Ash prompted.
“No.” Syed compressed his lips. Images of Sarah came to him out of nowhere. He would not let himself think of her. She was a distraction he didn’t need.
“So? Why not marry Charlotte? I have seen photographs of her. She’s stunning.”
“Is she?”
Ash nodded, remembering the dark hair, red lips, brown eyes, pale skin. “I don’t think her beauty subjective.”
“We are talking about marriage! A woman I tie myself to for life. Bring to my bed! I would like some damned say in the matter.”
Ash laughed. “You are a Sheikh, as am I. There is a long precedent of our marriages being organised for political gain. Why do you not go to Falina yourself? Meet with Charlotte, see if you can imagine her as your wife?”
“And if I don’t? Rejecting her having spent time courting her is an insult that could lead to war. No, Ash. There is only one way to put this marriage off. And I need your help.”
“You know I would do anything for you,” Ash said, though he was dubious that Syed’s scheme would have any merit. “What do you suggest?”
The Sheikh's Contract Bride: Theirs was an ancient debt, and the time had come to settle it... (The Sheikhs' Brides Book 1) Page 15