by Lucy King
Despite the increased wailing that occurred then, Tarek dismissed the older man before he was tempted to indulge his own sense of insult further.
“You must take the part of the kingdom,” his father had always cautioned him. “Your own feelings cannot matter when the country hangs in the balance.”
He reminded himself of that as he looked at the photograph before him of the blandly smiling girl, a stranger to him, who had so disliked the notion of marrying him that she had thrown herself on the mercy of a foreign government. What was he to make of that?
Then, with a single barked command, he summoned Ahmed before him.
“Why have I not been made aware that the woman who was to become my bride has sought, and apparently received, political asylum in a foreign country?”
Ahmed did not dissemble. It was one reason Tarek trusted him. “It was a developing situation we hoped to solve, Sire. Preferably before you knew of it.”
“Am I such an ineffectual monarch that I am to be kept in the dark about my own kingdom?” Tarek asked, his voice quiet.
Lethal.
“We hoped to resolve the situation,” Ahmed said calmly. No wailing. No shaking. “There was no wish to deceive and, if you do not mind my saying so, you had matters of far greater importance weighing upon you this last year. What was a tantrum of a spoiled girl next to an attempted coup?”
Tarek could see the truth in that. His sense of insult faded. “And can you explain to me, as her father could not, why it is that the girl would be granted political asylum in the first place? She was allowed to leave the kingdom to pursue her studies. Supported entirely by me and my government. She would face no reprisals of any kind were she to return. How does she qualify?”
Ahmed straightened, which was not a good sign. “I believe that there are some factions in the West who feel that you have...violated certain laws.”
Tarek arched a brow. “I make the laws and therefore, by definition, cannot violate them.”
“Not your laws, Sire.” Ahmed bowed slightly, another warning. “There are allegations of human rights abuses.”
“Against me?” Tarek was genuinely surprised. “They must mean my brother, surely.”
He did try not to speak his brother’s name. Not thinking it was more difficult.
“No, the complaint is against you. Your government, not his attempt at one.”
“I had the option for capital punishment,” Tarek argued. “I chose instead to demonstrate benevolence. Was this not clear?”
“It does not concern your brother or his treatment.” Ahmed met Tarek’s gaze, and held it. “It is about the doctors.”
He might as well have said, the unicorns.
Tarek blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“The doctors, Sire. They were picked up eight months ago after an illegal border crossing in the north.”
“What sort of doctors?” But even as Tarek asked, a vague memory reasserted itself. “Wait. I remember now. It is that aid organization, isn’t it? Traveling doctors, moving about from one war zone to another.”
“They are viewed as heroes.”
Tarek sighed. “Release these heroes, then. Why is this an issue?”
“The male doctors were released once you reclaimed your throne,” Ahmed said without inflection, another one of his strengths. “As were all the political prisoners, according to your orders at the time. But there was one female doctor in the group. And because she was a Western woman, and because there are no facilities for female prisoners in the capital city, she was placed in the dungeon.”
Tarek found himself sitting forward. “The dungeon. My dungeon? Here in the palace?”
“Yes, sire.” Ahmed inclined his head. “And as you are aware, I am sure, prisoners cannot be released from the palace dungeons except by your personal decree.”
Tarek slowly climbed to his feet, his blood pumping through him as if he found himself in another battle. Much like the ones he had fought in his own halls on that bloody night Rafiq and his men had come. The ones he wore still on his body and always would.
“Ahmed.” The lash of his voice would have felled a lesser man, but Ahmed stood tall. “Am I to understand that after the lengths I went to, to show the world that I am a merciful and just ruler of this kingdom...this whole time, there has been not merely a Western woman locked beneath my feet, but a doctor? A do-gooder who roams the planet, healing others as she goes?”
Ahmed nodded. “I am afraid so.”
“I might as well have locked up a saint. No wonder an otherwise pointless girl, who should have considered herself lucky to be chosen as my bride, has instead thrown herself on the tender mercies of the Canadians. I am tempted to do the same.”
“It was an oversight, Sire. Nothing more. There was so much upheaval. And then the trial. And then, I think, it was assumed that you were pleased to keep things as they were.”
The worst part was that Tarek could blame no one but himself, much as he might have liked to. This was his kingdom. His palace, his prisoners. He might not have ordered the woman jailed, but he hadn’t asked after the status of any state prisoners, had he?
He would not make that mistake again. He could feel the scars on his body, throbbing as if they were new. This was on him.
Tarek did not waste any more time talking. He set off through the palace again, grimly this time. He bypassed graceful halls of marble and delicate, filigreed details enhancing each and every archway. He crossed the main courtyard and then the smaller, more private one. This one a pageant of flowers, the next symphony of fountains.
He marched through to the oldest part of the palace, the medieval keep. And the ancient dungeons that had been built beneath it by men long dead and gone.
The guards standing at the huge main door did double takes that would have been comical had Tarek been in a lighter mood. They leaped aside, flinging open the iron doors, and Tarek strode within. He was aware that not only Ahmed, but a parade of staff scurried behind him, as if clinging to the hem of his robes that towed them all along with the force of his displeasure.
He had played in these dungeons as a child, though it had been expressly forbidden by his various tutors. But there had never been any actual prisoners here in his lifetime. The dungeons were a threat, nothing more. The bogeyman the adults in his life had trotted out to convince a headstrong child to behave.
Tarek expected to find them dark and grim, like something out of an old movie.
But it turned out there were lights. An upgrade from torches set in the thick walls, but it was still a place of grim stone and despair. His temper pounded through him as he walked ancient halls he hadn’t visited since he was a child. He tried to look at this from all angles, determined to figure out a way to play this public relations disaster to his advantage.
Before he worried about that, however, he would have to tend to the prisoner herself. See her pampered, cared for, made well again. And he had no idea what he would find.
It occurred to him to wonder, for the first time, what it was his guards did in his name.
“Where is she?” he growled at the man in uniform who rushed to bow before him, clearly the head of this dungeon guard he hadn’t known he possessed.
“She is in the Queen’s Cell,” the man replied.
The Queen’s Cell. So named for the treacherous wife of an ancient king who had been too prominent to execute. The King she had betrayed had built her a cell of her very own down here in these cold, dark stones. Tarek’s memory of it was the same stone walls and iron bars as any other cell, but fitted with a great many tightly barred windows, too.
So she could look out and mourn the world she would never be a part of again.
This was where he—for it was his responsibility and no matter that he hadn’t known—had locked away a Western doctor, God help him.
But Tar
ek had been fighting more dangerous battles for a year. He did not waste time girding his loins. He dove in. He rounded the last corner and marched himself up to the mouth of the cell.
And then stopped dead.
Because the human misery he had been expecting...wasn’t on display.
The cell was no longer bare and imposing, the way it was in Tarek’s memory. There was a rug on the floor. Books on shelves that newly-lined the walls. And the bed—a cot in place of a pallet on the stone floor—was piled high with linens. Perhaps not the finest linens he’d ever beheld, but clearly there with an eye toward comfort.
And curled up on the bed—neither in chains nor in a broken heap on the floor—was a woman.
She wore a long tunic and pants, a typical outfit for a local woman, and the garments did not look ragged or torn. They were loose, but clean. Her dark hair was long and fell about her shoulders, but it too looked perfectly clean and even brushed. She was lean, but not the sort of skinny that would indicate she’d been in any way malnourished. And try as he might, Tarek could not see a single bruise or injury.
He assessed the whole of her, twice, then found her eyes.
They were dark and clever. A bit astonished, he thought, but the longer she stared back at him, the less he was tempted to imagine it was the awe he usually inspired. And the longer he gazed at her, the more he noticed more things about her than simply the welfare of her body.
Like the fact she was young. Much younger than he’d imagined, he realized. He’d expected to find an older woman who suited the image of a doctor in his head. Gray-haired, lined cheeks... But this doctor not only showed no obvious signs of mistreatment, she was...
Pretty.
“You look important,” the woman said, shocking Tarek by using his native tongue.
“I expected you to speak English,” he replied, in the same language, though Ahmed had only said she was Western, not English speaking. She could have been French. German. Spanish.
“We can do that,” she replied. And she was still lounging there on the bed, whatever book she’d been reading still open before her as if he was an annoyance, nothing more. It took Tarek a moment, once he got past the insolent tone, to realize she’d switched languages. And was American. “You don’t really look like a prison guard. Too shiny.”
Tarek knew that his staff had filed in behind him at the shocked sounds they all made. He lifted a finger, and there was silence.
And he watched as the woman tracked that, smirked, and then raised her gaze to his again. As if they were equals.
“Important and you have a magic finger,” she said.
Tarek was not accustomed to insolence. From anyone—and certainly not from women, who spent the better part of any time in his presence attempting to curry his favor, by whatever means available to them.
He waited, but this woman only gazed back at him, expectantly.
As if he was here to wait upon her.
He reminded himself, grudgingly, that he was. That he had not fought a war, against his own brother, so that the world could sit back and judge him harshly.
At least not for things he had not done deliberately.
“I am Tarek bin Alzalam,” he informed her, as behind him, all the men bowed their heads in appropriate deference. The woman did not. He continued, then. “I am the ruler of this kingdom.”
The doctor blinked, but if that was deference, it was insufficient. And gone in a flash. “You’re the Sheikh?”
“I am.”
She sat up then, pushing her hair back from her face, though she did not rise fully from her bed. Nor fall to her knees before him, her mouth alive with songs of praise.
In point of fact, she smirked again. And her eyes flashed.
“I’ve been waiting to meet you for eight long months,” she said, the slap of her voice so disrespectful it made Tarek’s eyes widen.
Around him, his men made audible noises of dismay.
Once again, he quieted them. Once again, she tracked the movement of his finger and looked upon him with insolence.
“And so you have,” Tarek gritted out.
There was still no sign of deference. No hint that she might wish to plead for her freedom.
“I’m Dr. Anya Turner, emergency medicine.” Again, her dark eyes flashed. “I’m a doctor. I help people. While you’re nothing but a tiny little man who thinks his dungeon and his armed guards make him something other than a pig.”
Copyright © 2020 by Caitlin Crews
Love Harlequin romance?
DISCOVER.
Be the first to find out about promotions, news and exclusive content!
Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
Instagram.com/HarlequinBooks
Pinterest.com/HarlequinBooks
ReaderService.com
EXPLORE.
Sign up for the Harlequin e-newsletter and download a free book from any series at
TryHarlequin.com
CONNECT.
Join our Harlequin community to share your thoughts and connect with other romance readers!
Facebook.com/groups/HarlequinConnection
ISBN-13: 9781488073014
The Secrets She Must Tell
Copyright © 2020 by Lucy King
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at [email protected].
Harlequin Enterprises ULC
22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor
Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada
www.Harlequin.com