‘Indeed, I hear that the Council has a proposal for you that will occupy you a great deal more,’ Kamal said. ‘Is it premature of me to offer my felicitations?’
‘Extremely,’ Azhar said. ‘I have no intentions of taking a wife yet.’
‘And to the best of my knowledge, you have taken no mistress either. Two months of celibacy is not healthy for any red-blooded man, Azhar.’ Kamal’s voice hardened. ‘And two months of pining for an English widow is not good for Qaryma.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
Kamal flinched at Azhar’s tone, but he stood his ground. ‘We were all relieved when you did the right thing and sent that woman packing after your coronation. Her presence here was most improper.’
‘You dare to take the moral high ground with me?’
Kamal had the grace to look shame-faced. ‘I am, I hope, a reformed man,’ he said. ‘But you—Azhar, you must realise that until you take a bride—or at the very least a new mistress—our people will live in fear of that woman returning.’
If only! If only Julia was here. If only she had not gone away. If only there had been some way to legitimately keep her here. The longing for her hit Azhar with some force. The desire for her simple presence, for her smile, for the sound of her voice, was actually painful enough to make him wince. If only she could return. ‘Would it be so very terrible if she did come back?’ he asked.
‘You cannot be serious!’
He had not been, because he had not permitted himself to consider it, but now he did, his yearning for Julia washed over him like one of the waves in the Cornish bay she had painted for him. Two months here without her had seemed like an eternity. He missed her, and every day he missed her more, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life missing her.
Could he be serious? His heart beat faster at the idea. The sluggishness left his body, leaving him tingling with energy. Could he be serious? Yes, he could. Could he do anything about it? That was another question entirely, and one he needed to address in peace.
Kamal was still staring at him in horror. ‘Was there anything further you wished to discuss with me?’ Azhar asked haughtily.
His brother took the hint, rolling up his maps and picking up his papers. ‘The people worship you, you know. They always did, and now you are back—you have made all their dreams come true by delivering them from me. You have it all, Brother, but you act as if you have nothing. It is not good for a man to live without a woman. It is not good for a kingdom to be without an heir. Take my advice, forget that English woman and accept the wife the Council is proposing for you. You will be much happier sleeping in a warm bed.’
* * *
The door of the Audience Chamber closed softly, and Azhar headed towards the rear of the Royal Kiosk and the sanctuary of his private rooms. The paintings had been hung on the wall of his bedchamber. He wondered, as he did every time he looked at them, where Julia was, what she was doing. Had she published her book? Had she managed to persuade the prestigious Royal Society to grant her husband posthumous membership? Was she still living in the little fishing village depicted on the canvas? The sun shone brightly in the painting, where the white cottages tumbled down towards the harbour, though it was subtly different from the bright desert light. He had tried several times to work out how Julia had conveyed a colder sun, but had concluded it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he knew it was colder, that he knew if he stepped into that vivid sea with its silver-crested waves, they would wash over him like a bucket of iced water.
He turned to the seascape. Marazion Bay, where Julia had learned to swim. ‘Salt and sand,’ he remembered her saying that last night they had spent together. ‘In Cornwall, the sand is every bit as golden as it is here, and the air is every bit as salty, and yet the effect is quite different.’
Azhar traced the arc of the beach with his finger. Did she play their conversations over in her head as he did? Did she lie awake at night torturing herself with memories of their lovemaking as he did? Did her body ache for him as his did for hers? Did she still love him as he loved her?
He loved her?
He loved her.
Of course he loved her. He had known he loved her that last night they spent together on the roof, when she had told him that she loved him. He had known then, though he had not allowed himself to admit it because he had also known the limits of his own resolution. If he’d let his feelings loose, he’d never have been able to let her go, and he’d had to let her go for the sake of Qaryma. He had known he loved her when they had put the crown on his head, because he’d needed her to witness that too. To show her that it was final, to prove to himself that it was over. He’d tried to use the power of majesty to extinguish his love.
But it hadn’t worked.
You cannot be serious! One short sentence that his brother would never have uttered had he known the consequences, and all of Azhar’s defences crumbled. He could be serious. He was serious, because he loved her.
He stared at the paintings. He imagined Julia hunched over the paper, paintbrush in hand, lips pursed to prevent her chewing the tip of it. He remembered the night of the storm, the way his heart had turned over when he had thought her lying dead on the terrace, struck by lightning. He remembered the way she relished the wildness of the elements that night. It was June now, wasn’t that summer in Cornwall?
He loved her.
He loved her, but what did it change, after all? What did his admitting it do, save make life without her more intolerable? Azhar groaned, running his fingers through his hair. Julia had said she loved him, but it changed nothing even if he did return her love. Which he did, though he had not recognised it. Or would not admit to it. It didn’t matter which. What mattered was that he loved her.
And where did that leave him? His duty was to Qaryma. Ruling his kingdom had been all-consuming, just as Julia had said it would be, just as Azhar had promised it would be. He had sacrificed everything for Qaryma, including his love for Julia. The one sacrifice it was now abundantly clear that he could not live with.
Qaryma or Julia. Must he really choose? Qaryma or Julia. His heart knew the answer, even if his head did not. But even if he let his heart rule his head it wasn’t that simple, it was not his decision alone. Julia had made it crystal clear she would not sacrifice her freedom, even for love.
But he loved her. And she loved him—or she had, two months ago. Would she love him still? What if she had put him, like her past, behind her, relegated him to a pleasant memory? What if she had found someone else? It was possible. She was confident of her allure now, and she had set her passionate nature free. She had left Qaryma certain that they had no future together, but that was no reason for Julia to face her future alone. By the heavens, it was very possible that she had found someone else...that he had thrown away the chance to love and be loved for the sake of a crown.
He couldn’t think that way. He had to believe there was a chance, because already, he was too far down the path of walking away from this life as it was. If she loved him as he loved her, then there had to be a way for them to be together. If he could not cut Julia from his life, then something else had to go. He needed to think.
Outside, the secret garden was in full bloom. Like his father before him, Azhar took solace in this faux-wilderness. There had been many days when ten minutes’ contemplation here had cleared his mind, readied him for the next meeting and the next. He could not abandon Qaryma. To break the vows he had made at his coronation and before that, at his father’s grave, would be to tear out an integral part of himself. For better or worse, he was King of Qaryma until he died. Which meant he would have to find a way of ruling which did not devour his entire life.
Could he turn the impossible into the possible? Instead of thinking of what he could not have, could he turn his mind to working out what he could do to change things?
Space. That was a start. He had to make space. It went against the grain with him, but there were ways he could
delegate, weren’t there? He could grant more powers to his Council. This compulsion he had to make every decision himself, how much of it was really necessary? How much of it was driven by his need to fill his days in order to prevent himself from missing Julia? Was it possible for him to mould his kingdom to his needs rather than to mould himself to the insatiable needs of his kingdom?
Possible. It must be possible if he wanted it enough. And he did. Which left him with the other side of the problem. He would be a far better king with Julia by his side, but how to persuade Julia to be by his side? What could he possibly offer her to compensate for the sacrifice of her freedom?
Love? Julia said it changed nothing, but Julia was wrong. It changed everything—or it would do, if they made it so. He was a king. He had the power to move mountains. Azhar jumped to his feet, filled with excitement and hope. There was no perfect solution. There would have to be compromise and there would be sacrifice and it would therefore be painful, but he was determined upon one thing. He was going to do everything in his considerable powers to persuade Julia to give their love a chance to flourish. He owed that to them both, even if he failed.
But he did not intend to fail.
Cornwall, six weeks later
The folio edition was bound, as Daniel had requested, in fine Morocco leather, tooled with gold leaf. It was a very handsome book indeed, but it had proved extraordinarily expensive to have printed. Julia had been able to afford only five copies, with another twenty in quarto. All of them bore the dedication to Mr Joseph Banks which Daniel had requested, and to which Mr Banks had graciously acceded. Julia felt that Azhar deserved the dedication more, but that would mean breaking her solemn promise to Daniel. Besides, Mr Banks’s dedication played its intended part in Daniel’s successful nomination for posthumous membership of the Royal Society. Membership of the London Horticultural Society quickly followed, again thanks to Mr Banks’s influence. All the quarto editions had been sent out to the designated recipients. The entire process had made a pauper of her, forcing her to move back into her childhood home and to strenuously resist all her father’s attempts to embroil her in his work.
Julia leafed idly through the pages of the edition destined for her father. There was no doubting that her Qaryma illustrations were the very best. Without exception, it had been the desert succulents which had elicited admiring comments from Mr Banks and his fellow experts. What would Daniel think of that? No question, he would have preferred his collection of South American species to underpin his fame, but she had long ago concluded that it was the fame he coveted. She was glad to have achieved it for him.
Those drawings were painful to view, but she could not stop looking at them. They spoke of the unique scent of the desert and the heat. And Azhar.
It was almost four months since she had left him on the day of his coronation. Since she had landed back on Cornish soil, she had worked like a fiend, driven by the need to use action to avoid thinking about what she had lost. Now her quest was complete. Her promises to Daniel had been fulfilled. And instead of feeling liberated, Julia was acutely conscious of the huge gap in her life which she longed for Azhar to fill.
She missed him. She ached for him. Barely a day went by when she did not wonder what he was doing, whether he still thought of her, whether he had taken a wife yet. Most likely he would be married. Marriage was part of his commitment to Qaryma, and Azhar was completely committed to Qaryma.
She really, really missed him. She loved him so much. The freedom which she had so longed for now stretched painfully in front of her like a void. She had been so certain that her love for Azhar changed nothing. Now she wasn’t at all sure that her hard-won freedom would change much either. She was free, but she was not happy. In all honesty, she had never been as happy as when she was with Azhar. She wanted that wild exhilaration that only his company provided. She wanted that heady combination of being able to say anything she chose, knowing that she would be understood. She had confused independence with freedom. Love changed nothing, she had said. She wondered, she was sick of wondering, if she had been wrong.
* * *
The schooner lay at anchor in the bay. She was three-masted. The sleek lines of the hull, so clearly built for speed, were painted glossy black trimmed with gold. Further along the coast at the tin-mining ports, she would still have been an extraordinary sight. Here at Marazion Bay, where the biggest ship afloat was the excise man’s small sloop, almost every person in the village was gathered at the end of the quay to take a look at her.
‘Can’t even read her name,’ a fisherman’s wife told Julia. ‘Odd sort of writing, looks like something my four-year-old would do. Can’t imagine what she’s doing here. Perhaps she’s strayed off course.’
Julia squinted at the ship, which rocked contentedly on the gentle swell. ‘How long has she been here?’
‘Only just dropped anchor. Do you think the King is mad enough now to come to Cornwall?’
‘Maybe it is Napoleon, escaped again,’ one of the other locals ventured.
‘Or Wellington,’ someone else suggested. ‘I hope he’s not intending to put up yet another bloody statue of himself here.’
‘Well it certainly ain’t Prinny. Not even a schooner that size could keep him afloat.’
‘Whoever it is, he’s coming ashore.’
A rowing boat was being lowered over the side. There were four oarsmen, and one other man sitting in the prow. He was dressed in white. White tunic. White cloak. White headdress.
‘He’s wearing some sort of bedsheet.’
‘Hush. Look at him, he’s—he’s a foreigner.’
‘Anyone not from Cornwall is a foreigner in my book.’
‘Well foreigner or no, I’m happy to welcome him,’ another fishwife said. ‘Did you ever see a finer-looking man?’
‘Hush now, Peggy, you’re spoken for. What would your Tom make of such talk?’
‘We’d have to drag him kicking and screaming out of the tavern to find out!’
The crowd continued to laugh and to speculate, pushing and jostling on the jetty for a better view. Julia stood stock still. It could not possibly be him. She must be hallucinating. She could hear the splash of the oars now. The rowing boat, at least, was real. She couldn’t see through the crowd. It simply couldn’t be him. Her heart could stop thumping because it definitely wasn’t him. No cause for her palms to sweat, or for her face to flush, because without question of a doubt it could not be...
The crowd fell back. Some of the women dropped into curtsies. Most of the men simply stared. Azhar stood on the end of the jetty. The breeze whipped at his thin clothes, outlining the lines of his body, as sleek and as exotic as the lines of the schooner from which he had just emerged. Julia’s mouth went dry. Her knees threatened to buckle.
He had not seen her.
He was speaking to one of the fishermen.
Who was pointing over at her father’s house until someone grabbed his arm and pointed straight at Julia.
Their eyes met. She saw it there on his face, exactly what must be written on her face, for he strode towards her and she fell towards him and there was nothing else, no one else, save the two of them, as their lips met, and his arms went around her, holding her in an embrace that stole away what very little breath she had left.
* * *
‘You’re here.’ Azhar stared down at her in wonder. ‘I had no idea if you would still be in Cornwall, and yet here you are, waiting on the jetty for me. I can’t believe you are here.’
Julia seemed as dazed as he. ‘I wasn’t waiting. I was admiring your ship.’
‘She’s not mine. I borrowed her from my friend Kadar.’
‘Was your magic carpet out of commission?’
‘I would have flown here if I could. Kadar’s ship is the fastest on the Red Sea, but no ship on earth could be fast enough for my purposes.’
Julia’s expression became serious. ‘Azhar, why are you here?’
He had had several weeks at
sea to prepare a speech. Several weeks to rehearse every possible argument, to perfect the words with which to persuade her that she could still love him. He had swung from certainty to doubt, from determination to despair. Looking into her eyes, holding her close, he spoke the most important words of all, which came unbidden. ‘I love you,’ he said simply.
Julia paled. Azhar’s stomach plummeted. ‘I love you, Julia,’ he said more urgently. Forgetting all his carefully planned stratagems, carefully weighted arguments, he simply spoke from the heart. ‘I came here because—because—do you remember? Do you remember that you told me on that last night that you were not offering me your heart? Well I came here to offer you mine instead, Julia. I came because you were wrong when you said love didn’t change everything. I came knowing that there was a possibility we may still not be able to find a way to share our love, knowing that our lives may yet be destined to be lived apart, but wanting and hoping that we could find a way, because my love for you is the one thing I cannot compromise. That is why I came.’
Tears were streaming down her face.
‘I love you,’ Azhar said tenderly. ‘I love you so much. All I ask is that you listen. If you do love me. Or if you think you could love me again. Please, Julia...’
‘I love you.’ She threw her arms around his neck. ‘I love you so much, but I don’t know what to do about it. If there is any way, any way, then, yes. Please. Let us find it.’
* * *
Julia barely remembered the short trip out to the schooner. She sat in the rowing boat in a complete daze clutching Azhar’s hand, clinging to him as if he were a mirage that might disappear at any moment. On board the ship, she followed him down past the wheelhouse below decks. It was surprisingly spacious down there. They passed through the galley. Along a narrow passageway where doors were fitted on either side, towards the prow. A bigger door opened on to a luxurious sitting room which took up the width of the ship. Through a curtain, she glimpsed a smaller room, equally luxuriously kitted out as a bedchamber.
Azhar closed the door behind them, and hesitated. ‘We have much to discuss,’ he said.
The Widow And The Sheikh (Hot Arabian Nights, Book 1) Page 22