by Pippa Roscoe
‘Where is Eloise?’ he demanded.
Odir almost laughed. His brother had not spoken to him in such a way since they were teenagers.
‘Gone.’
That one simple word finally put a name to the thing that had happened. That he’d made happen.
‘Gone?’ his brother queried.
‘Gone.’
‘Is that all you can say? What the hell happened?’ Jarhan asked, casting his gaze around the room.
He stalked towards Odir in one easy movement and grabbed him by the shirt.
‘What did you do to her?’ he demanded, but the fury in his eyes was nothing compared to what Odir was feeling at that moment.
It struck Odir that just hours ago he would have taken his brother’s behaviour to be jealousy, but it wasn’t. It was love. Where yesterday he would have seen the lack of it, the absence of it as something that satisfied him, he now saw it all around him.
Jarhan’s features changed at Odir’s lack of response. ‘You do know that nothing happened—?’
Odir seized the change in their conversation as a distraction, to protect his mind and his heart from thoughts of Eloise. Instead, he dragged forth feelings and emotions about his brother—reactions and thoughts he’d kept at bay for hours now.
‘Why did you not tell me? I would have been there for you, Jarhan. I would have helped you in any way I could.’
Incredulity and anger shone in his words and Odir didn’t care—he didn’t care that his words betrayed his feelings. If tonight had shown him anything, it was that secrets and lies only destroyed.
‘What could you have done?’ his brother asked, removing his hands from Odir’s shirt and shrugging in a helpless way that broke his heart even more. ‘Would you have told the people of Farrehed? Would you have told our father? Torn our country apart because of your loyalty to me? Or would you have been forced to ask me to keep it a secret? To ask me to be something I am not?’ Jarhan stepped away and turned his back to Odir. ‘I could never put you in that position.’
‘Because you didn’t trust me to make the right decision?’ Odir asked, terrified of his brother’s answer.
‘No,’ Jarhan said, turning back to face him. ‘Not at all. I know what decision you would have made. You would have stood by me and watched our country burn. Watched everything you had ever wanted for Farrehed go up in smoke because you love me.’
And there it was—simply said and simply accepted. This love that Odir had fought so hard against ever since the loss of his mother, ever since the change in his father. Despite all that had befallen them, his younger brother had not been tainted with that same despair.
‘There may be a time in the future,’ Jarhan continued, ‘when what I am—who I am—will be accepted by our country. But not whilst our father sat on the throne and certainly not right now. And that is my sacrifice to make. That is my duty, my cross to bear. Not yours.’
Odir threw a curse out into the room. He had been so arrogant, so consumed with the need to protect the people of Farrehed from his father’s wilful neglect, selfishness and paranoia, that he’d thought all the weight of that duty had fallen solely on his shoulders. He hadn’t even seen how his brother had made his own sacrifices for duty, how he’d borne it on his shoulders too. How strongly he’d carried it.
Odir forced his sluggish mind to work. To pick up the threads of his earlier thoughts on how he would shield his brother from the harsh realities of the impact, of how this news would be taken by the people of Farrehed.
‘It’ll not be easy, Jarhan. It’ll not be accepted fairly by the more traditional members of our society,’ he warned. ‘But I will be there if you want to...to come out?’ he said, struggling with the terminology.
Jarhan’s face cracked into a smile. ‘Come out?’
‘You know what I mean,’ Odir said, feeling a faint flush of awkwardness colour his cheeks.
It wasn’t the subject that made it so, but talking to his brother like this. They hadn’t done it in years. And it soothed him, it washed over just some of the hurts of that day.
‘Whatever your decision—and it is absolutely your decision—I’ll be there. Standing beside you.’ He pulled Jarhan into a hug. A hug that he took strength from.
‘What happened with Eloise?’ Jarhan asked from within the embrace.
‘I let her go.’
‘Because...?’
There were so many answers to that question. Because he couldn’t willingly put her under the public microscope. Because he knew that his focus would have to be on Farrehed for the next few months. Because he couldn’t abandon her as her mother had done. Because he couldn’t use her as her father had done.
But beneath all that only one answer rang loud and true.
‘Because I love her.’
* * *
Eloise rushed through the hallways, not knowing where she was going, not seeing where she was going through the tears falling from her eyes.
For six months, and even for years before that, she had never cried. She had kept everything inside, had focused on what needed to be done. For her mother, for Farrehed, for Jarhan, for Odir. And the first time she had asked something for herself, had wanted something just for her, she had been...rejected.
Her heart pounded in her chest. Pain ricocheted through her body. Agony. She was in agony.
She realised that no one was following her—not Odir, not one of his guards. She was no longer under his protection. She was truly alone, and that thought sent a jagged splinter through what was left of her heart.
She pushed through a plain doorway and found herself in a concrete stairwell. She made it down one half-flight of stairs before her foot, clad only in a silk stocking, slipped and she slid down the last step, tumbling into a heap in the corner of the stairwell.
The concrete around her was hard, cold and unforgiving. It bit into the bare skin of her arms and calves, drawing any warmth from her body and taking up the sounds of her cries, returning them again and again in an echo that must have reached both the heights and depths of the building.
Somewhere in her mind a thought rose. This is the sound of a heart breaking. And suddenly she didn’t care that it was loud, undignified, that she was gasping for breath. She was in pain and she needed to let it out. It needed to be heard and recognised, not repressed and denied.
She was hurting, and there was something powerful in allowing herself to acknowledge that. It was evidence of how greatly she loved. So very different from her mother’s repressed feelings, her father’s tightly leashed control and Odir’s denial.
She thought of each of them. She thought about how she’d let herself be used as a pawn in other people’s games rather than standing up and saying no. She’d been passive, reactive, never really going after the thing that she wanted...until tonight.
She’d left Odir—but not because it was something that she wanted. She’d gone because of his command. For the first time she wondered whether, if Odir hadn’t seen Jarhan kissing her she’d still be at the palace in Farrehed. Waiting for him to come to her. Filling her days with impossible tasks. Doing anything to make it right but the one thing that would have worked—talking, opening up, feeling and accepting her love for him.
Zurich might have been a moment of escapism for her and she’d never regret it. Not for one second. But despite all outward appearances it had been safe. Safe because it hadn’t been something she’d wanted, but something she’d been forced to do. Yes, it had helped Natalia, and she’d be grateful for that for ever, but without Odir she’d have never reached out to Natalia. Even today she’d only come to London because she’d received his invitation to the event.
Today was her birthday. Today was the day she would inherit her grandfather’s trust fund. She could still claim that money. It would keep her in Zurich, it would help pay for Natalia’s treatment and she could go back to her secretarial role. But was that really what she wanted? To work day in and day out, claim her pay cheque, return to he
r little one-bedroom flat in Zurich. Eat dinner alone. Be alone.
She had come to the charity gala ready to ask for a divorce, ready to sever her ties with Odir, but he had shown her tonight that she had not been living at all in the last six months. She had simply been going through the motions. In just a few hours he had brought her to life. He had shown her the kind of passion that she was capable of. And, despite his bribery and lies, she had made the decision to help Farrehed, to put Farrehed first, and that had shown what kind of Queen she could be. One who was perhaps an equal to their King.
Thoughts clouded her mind, and the band of pain that had pressed in around her heart now wrapped itself around her head. She had told him that she loved him. And he had pushed her away.
She clutched her temples and groaned out loud in pain.
He had said that he wanted to be free to marry someone else.
The image of him standing before the world with a faceless bride, pledging to honour, protect and...and love her nearly killed her. But something about that image was off.
She knew Farrehed—she knew the people, their traditions and customs. They wouldn’t be so easily accepting of a second marriage. And she knew Odir. He wouldn’t risk causing upset—especially so soon after his father’s death. His every action in the last twelve hours had been about ensuring the secure future of his country. So why would he risk that? Why would he do that now?
He had not said that he didn’t love her. Only that he wasn’t capable of it. And she understood why he thought that. Understood the damage done by his mother’s death and his father’s horrifying grief-stricken behaviour. But she knew it wasn’t true. She had seen his ability to love in his every action towards Farrehed, had seen it shine from him when he had taken Jarhan into that hug when they had first come to the embassy. And she had seen it in his eyes when he had told her she looked magnificent.
Was it possible that he had let her go to protect her? Was it possible that this proud, sometimes arrogant and always powerful man had let her go for her own sake? Had he put her above the people that he loved so much?
‘Running away again?’
Odir’s voice from the balcony at Heron Tower only hours before echoed in her mind.
Perhaps she had been running. Yes, she had demanded love. But she had run at the first sign of trouble. Yes, she had been selfish—as he’d accused her. But that selfishness didn’t make her feel ashamed. She had a right to demand love. But she hadn’t stayed and fought for it. This time, rather than being scared, wanting to run away, she wanted to stand and fight.
This time she wasn’t running away from something. She was running to it.
* * *
Eloise ran back through hallways that should have been full of people and activity but were strangely silent. She threw open the door to the royal suites but they too were empty. She flew down the steps towards the reception rooms, down the impressive circular stairway, and turned the corner to find...
Forty people staring back at her.
In the centre of the crowd were Jarhan and Odir, locked in conversation. It was only the ragged sound of her breathing that drew their attention—that and the sudden silence of the crowd around them.
Eloise saw shock register in Odir’s face just before the royal mask came down and shut away his reaction. Hope. It left her with hope.
She took the next few steps down into the reception hall and barely registered the sound of forty voices resuming their chatter. People were shouting to each other across the room, and she could hear the buzz from the paparazzi outside the front doors to the embassy.
Jarhan broke away from the centre of the crowd, stalking towards her, and took her into his strong embrace.
‘You’ve got three minutes—make them count,’ he whispered into her ear.
And with that he disappeared into the crowd.
If she had expected people to part like the waves before their Queen she’d been wrong. She pushed through the crowd—against the tightly packed bodies that had formed a wall around her husband. Seeing her struggle against the press of people, Odir started making his way towards her, something like grim exasperation painting his features.
‘Eloise, what—?’
‘No,’ she said, the moment he stood before her. ‘You don’t get to talk now. You don’t get to issue commands or demand my removal from your presence. It’s my time now, Odir. It’s my time to talk.’
He pursed his lips together, wariness in his eyes now. Perhaps he was shocked by this new Eloise, she thought. Well, he’d better get used to it.
‘This whole time I’ve been reacting to other people’s demands—doing what was asked of me or doing what was needed of me. But I’ve never really done something for me. Not until tonight. Not until I wanted you to say that you love me. But you’re right, Odir. I ran. I ran away from everything. You, my father, my mother. I spent six months hiding. And when I did come to fight for what I wanted—you—I stumbled at the first hurdle. I wanted you to tell me that you loved me. I wanted you to prove that you loved me. But I never proved that I love you.’
His eyes widened, and she knew that she’d hit close to home. It gave her the strength to continue.
‘No one has ever shown you that you are worthy of their love and trust. Not your family, not your father, nor even your brother. I’m ready to place my trust and love in you. I know you love me. I know because you would never have sacrificed the future of your rule for me unless you loved me.’
He grasped her by the arm, pulling her closer to him, and in a rough, low voice he said, ‘I do love you, damn it! That’s why I let you go. I could never bind you to this life. A life where I will need to make sacrifices, where you will never be free from public scrutiny. There will be political manipulations for our whole lives, and I would not force that on anyone—especially not you. You’ve been so horribly used and manipulated by those who should have loved you unconditionally and I won’t do the same. I could never ask that of you.’
There was a pain and hopelessness in his eyes the like of which she’d never seen before. But through it she could see the truth in his words, the truth in his heart, and her own heart soared.
‘This is my sacrifice to make for the man I love. Because you have made me strong enough to bear it. I want this. I choose this. I choose you. I will stand by you and love you and be loved in return. All you have to do is say yes.’
Somewhere behind her a voice broke through the noise of the crowd.
‘We go live in five...’
‘Just say yes, Odir?’ she asked.
‘Four...’
‘It’s as easy as breathing.’
‘Three...’
His finger reached up to wipe away the trace of a tear that had appeared at the corner of her eye.
‘Two...’
The doors swung open on the front steps of the embassy, where the international press was waiting and the flashbulbs of the paparazzi exploded in front of them.
‘Yes.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen of the press, Sheikh Odir Farouk Al Arkrin of Farrehed and his wife have an announcement to make...’
EPILOGUE
Three years later, the Farrehed Embassy, London
THE SHEIKH OF FARREHED and his wife chased down the rich red carpeted halls of the Farrehed Embassy after a giggling, determined two-year-old hell-bent on freedom.
‘Your child has inherited your waywardness, Wife,’ complained Odir.
‘And your stubbornness, Husband,’ Eloise replied with a smile, slightly out of breath. ‘I am too far gone for this, Odir,’ she replied, stopping to lean against the cool walls of the embassy.
Glancing down, she placed a comforting hand over her seven-month pregnancy bump.
Odir checked the end of the hallway, seeing Jarhan scoop up his nephew, grin knowingly at Odir and head off, leaving a trail of tiny hysterical giggles.
‘One day I fear that my brother will tickle our son to death.’
‘Don’t be si
lly. Besides, it’s good to have someone to help out. God knows we’ll need it when this one comes along.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider hiring a full-time nanny?’ Odir asked.
He understood his wife’s reluctance, but still feared that two children would exhaust her.
‘Absolutely. Besides, Mum has offered to come and stay—and Natalia’s also on hand if we need her. Though I think she might have her own hands full soon enough.’
Shock registered in her husband’s features. ‘Really?’
‘Really. But my lips are firmly sealed,’ she replied playfully.
‘More secrets, Wife?’ he said, without a trace of the bite with which he had once spoken to her.
Eloise marvelled at how dramatically their lives had changed in three short years.
Despite her doubts, her mother had been telling her the truth that night almost three years ago to the day. Angelina Harris had sought the help she’d needed, but she had done it on her own terms, and Eloise wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
Her father had been deeply shocked two years before, when Angelina had served him with divorce papers and simultaneously—and very publicly—ended his political career.
Eloise and Odir had weathered the storm of family revelations, and the press had quickly lost interest once some other international scandal had taken its place. Two years on, Eloise and her mother had managed to carve out the tentative foundations of what Eloise hoped would be a strong, loving and honest relationship. It wasn’t easy, but it was something that both women worked at each time they came together.
Natalia had also worked hard to overcome her personal demons and had undergone a successful transplant almost a year ago.
She felt a jerk in her stomach and groaned out loud.
‘What’s wrong?’ Odir asked, concern building in his eyes in a second.
She laughed. ‘Nothing. Just hiccups.’ She took his hand and laid his palm over her stomach. ‘I think it was all that running.’
Odir’s hand jumped as another hiccup vibrated through her frame. And love, so pure and so strong, filled his gaze.