‘Start at the beginning and tell me everything,’ Rachel said. ‘We’ve got all night.’
Malik began talking. He told her about his arranged betrothal, the first time he’d set eyes on his wife-to-be, and he told her of the half-a-dozen times they had met during their teenage years.
‘Then I went to Europe, of course,’ Malik said, a smile dancing over his lips at the memories. ‘I forgot about Aliyyah, stuck back here. I knew she’d be waiting when I returned, but I have to admit I didn’t spare her a single thought as I sampled what Europe had to offer.’
The idea of Malik enjoying himself during his university years seemed strange to Rachel. She couldn’t imagine him as a carefree youth and she had a sneaking suspicion he hadn’t been all that carefree with his constant thoughts of bettering himself for the good of his kingdom, but all the same he must have experienced some of the pleasures of student life.
‘Whilst I was enjoying myself in Europe, Aliyyah was having an adventure of her own.’ Malik paused, as if uncomfortable with what he was about to say next. ‘She fell in love. She met a tradesman when her father was having part of his house renovated and they ran away together.’
Rachel felt her eyes widen in surprise. Whatever she had imagined to have happened between Malik and Aliyyah, this hadn’t been it.
‘Her father found her and brought her home before there was too much of a scandal, and he forbade them to see each other ever again.’
Rachel squeezed Malik’s hand and felt him lean towards her slightly. She wondered whether he had ever loved his wife; if so it would be difficult to talk of her affection for another man.
‘I returned to Huria and not long after my father passed away. I became Sheikh, took the reins of the kingdom and I felt like it was time to marry and fulfil the next bit of my duty.’
‘You didn’t know about Aliyyah and this man?’ Rachel asked.
Malik shook his head. ‘Her father and my father agreed it would be best if the marriage still went ahead. I was never told.’ He paused, staring into the glowing embers of the fire. ‘I don’t know if it would have made a difference if I had known. Marrying Aliyyah was my duty and I assumed she felt the same.’
Rachel wondered what it must be like to be so resigned to your duty. Aliyyah had obviously not taken to it well, but it must have been a burden for Malik as well.
‘We married and I knew we were not in love. I never contemplated a love match, but I’d hoped for companionship and mutual support. I’d hoped for a Shaykhah to help me run the kingdom.’
Malik’s complete self-sufficiency and isolation must have sprung from this, Rachel realised. For years he had to run the Kingdom of Huria on his own, it would make you used to getting your own way.
‘That didn’t happen?’
He shook his head. ‘Aliyyah barely left her rooms for the nine years we were married. I would visit her at first, sometimes to talk, to try and draw her out, sometimes because I was conscious of my need for an heir.’
Rachel sensed how difficult this was for Malik to admit. He was a Sheikh, a powerful man, irresistible to many, but his wife had chosen to ignore him and lock herself away rather than enjoy his company.
‘From the very beginning she was often melancholy, but years of barely leaving the palace made things so much worse.’
‘What about when the children were born?’ Rachel asked. She could not fathom how someone could not celebrate the birth of their own child, but she did know some women seemed to withdraw into themselves more and found it hard to bond with their newborns.
Malik shook his head sadly. ‘I hoped that might be a new start for us, a shared interest, someone for us both to love, but Aliyyah was as distant with me as ever.’ He paused before continuing. ‘She wasn’t a bad mother, in her own way she doted on the children, but she was a little inconsistent. Some days she would play with them, read them their bedtime stories, and other days she would barricade her door and you could hear her sobbing in her room.’
Rachel wondered what it must have been like for him, living with Aliyyah for so long but barely knowing her, being shut out of her life despite all that they shared.
‘I tried,’ Malik said quietly. ‘I tried so many times to make her happy, but after a while I gave up.’
She could sense his feelings of failure and his frustration at not being able to succeed at one of the most important aspects in his life. For such a charismatic and powerful man it must be hard to stomach.
‘After years of sending her flowers with an invitation to dinner, just to dine alone, or trying to engage her in talk about the children to be greeted with monosyllabic answers, I moved on. I let Aliyyah wallow deeper in her black moods and I gave up.’
‘No,’ Rachel said forcefully, ‘you can’t blame yourself for Aliyyah’s moods. Many people seem predisposed to these sorts of depressing thoughts and isolating behaviours. It sounds as though you tried your hardest to engage her, it is only human nature to give up eventually when you don’t receive any interaction.’
Malik smiled at her and raised a hand to her cheek, gently running his thumb over her skin.
‘My warrior governess,’ he said. ‘Defending me from myself.’
Rachel reached up and placed her hand over his own. ‘You are your own harshest critic,’ she said. ‘You’re a good man, Malik, and sometimes even the most powerful of us need someone to come out and say nice things about us.’
He held her gaze for a moment, staring into her eyes as if they held all the answers in the world, and for a few seconds Rachel felt powerful herself. Then Malik shook his head and the moment was broken.
‘Save making up your mind on your opinion of me until you’ve heard the rest of the story.’
Rachel sat back and watched as Malik steeled himself to continue. He was finding this difficult, airing his relationship failures to her, but she also sensed it was a little cathartic for him, too. As he spoke he was relaxing a little, allowing his shoulder to roll back and some of the familiar gleam to return to his eyes.
‘The next part I’ve never told anyone.’
* * *
Malik wondered why it was so easy to open up to Rachel. He had never had a confidant before. With no brothers or sisters and no close friends whilst he was growing up he’d become accustomed to dealing with his problems on his own. Talking to Rachel, watching as she became indignant on his behalf, defended his actions and did not judge him, was liberating. All the feelings he had kept inside were just spilling out, and it felt good.
‘Just over a year ago Aliyyah found out the man she loved died in an accident. I had no idea.’
Malik always wondered if he should have kept a closer eye on Aliyyah’s correspondence, but he reasoned he was her husband, not her gaoler. After her death he had found out that she had been in contact with this man for many years, that they had exchanged promises to love one another for eternity even if they were physically kept apart. Sometimes Malik tried to understand how his wife had viewed him, the man she had been forced to marry. If he had known she was in love with someone else, that marriage would make her whole life miserable, Malik liked to think he wouldn’t have gone through with the wedding. But he hadn’t known and they had married and to him the only thing to do was make the best of it.
‘One morning one of her attendants came and found me. She was in a state and at first I could barely understand what she was saying.’
Malik heard the emotion in his own voice and he felt Rachel shift towards him. Her body was pressed up against his and he took comfort from her close presence.
‘It turned out Aliyyah had crept out in the night—she’d disappeared.’
Rachel brought a hand to her mouth to stifle a murmur of horror as she foresaw what he was going to say next.
‘She’d wandered out into the desert, without any food or w
ater, all alone, dressed only in her nightclothes.’ Malik felt the emotion leave his body and his voice become flat. ‘We sent out search parties, we searched for days.’
He always felt numb when he thought about how Aliyyah had died. They hadn’t been close—in fact, even after nine years of marriage Malik hardly knew anything about his wife—but they had still lived under the same roof, were parents to the same children. Aliyyah would have died in pain and Malik hated that maybe he could have prevented it, if he’d just taken a bit more notice of what his wife was doing.
‘After four days we found her, half buried in a sand dune. She’d died of dehydration.’
Malik fell silent. He’d never voiced what he was about to say next, never let the thought leave his head, even though many people knew the truth deep in their hearts.
‘We told the world it was a terrible accident—that she’d got lost in the desert and hadn’t been able to find her way home...’ Malik trailed off, then took a deep breath. ‘But deep down I don’t think that’s true.’
Rachel shifted beside him, raising a hand up to his cheek and turning his head so he was looking at her.
‘I think she was so unhappy she didn’t want to live any longer.’
Malik felt all the tension he had been carrying start to drain out of him. He’d never admitted out loud that he thought Aliyyah had killed herself, for some reason it had felt like a betrayal of her and a judgement on him, but with Rachel sitting beside him, looking up at him with her understanding eyes, it just felt like the truth. A nasty truth that had been allowed to fester, but the truth all the same.
‘You’ve coped with this all on your own, haven’t you?’ Rachel asked softly.
Malik nodded. There hadn’t been anyone else to confide in. He was sure Aliyyah’s family knew the circumstances surrounding her death, but they had been eager to hide the truth, to preserve her memory and avoid the shame that was associated with a suicide.
‘You’re a strong man, Malik. The strongest I know.’
Suddenly Malik needed to possess her. He wanted to kiss her and claim her as his own. Rachel’s soft words and understanding heart triggered something inside him that made him want to wrap his arms around her and never let her go.
Without saying another word, Malik turned his body and looped his arms around Rachel. Firmly he pulled her towards him, noting how she melted into his body with no resistance whatsoever. In the soft light from the moon he could just make out the curve of her lips and the tilt of her face as she looked up at him.
With a groan of surrender Malik kissed her. He couldn’t have resisted if his whole life had depended on it. He covered her lips with his own and felt a surge of desire as she kissed him back. Feverishly he ran his hands over her back, up her neck and tangled his fingers in her hair, pulling at the grips that secured it. He wanted to possess her, to kiss every inch of her body and trail his fingers over her silky smooth skin.
A soft moan escaped Rachel’s lips and Malik felt her clutch at his arms, trying to pull him closer. Rachel wasn’t a woman who did things in half measures, he thought, wondering what it would be like to strip her naked and lay her down in front of the fire.
Malik pulled away, just enough to start kissing Rachel down the angle of her jaw and on to her neck. He felt her shiver with anticipation as he reached her collarbone, his hands all the time dancing over her back and neck, wishing he could feel more of her bare skin.
‘Malik,’ she moaned as he kissed the hollow at the base of her throat.
He wanted to strip off her clothes, devour every bit of her body with his eyes, claim her for himself.
Rachel looked at him, her eyes glazed with desire. It took every bit of Malik’s legendary self-control not to scoop her up in his arms and make her his right here in the desert. For a few seconds they both just sat, their breathing heavy and erratic, and looked at one another. Then Rachel pulled further away and shook her head.
‘We can’t do this,’ Rachel said, her voice heavy with uncertainty.
He wanted her badly and he could tell she wanted him. Malik would enjoy nothing more than to lose control and take what he wanted, but he knew he would not let himself. If Rachel could find it in herself to be strong, then so could he. Kissing Rachel again had been unforgivable enough, if he took things further their relationship would be ruined and he would lose her.
Malik knew that part of him was scared of losing Rachel the governess, the woman who in just a few short weeks had made his children blossom and grow. He had a sneaking feeling that he also didn’t want to lose Rachel the woman, the one person he could talk to, open up to. If he drove her away, he would go back to having nothing, no one.
‘We can’t do this,’ Rachel repeated quietly before Malik could speak. ‘We can’t.’
She sounded dejected and sad, and Malik wondered whether they were making the right decision. Surely if they both wanted it so much it couldn’t be wrong.
‘I need to focus on Huria, on the children,’ Malik said, trying to convince himself.
All his life he had been brought up to put his duty before his desires, but right now Malik was questioning that. He kept reminding himself how destructive love and relationships were—he only had to think of Aliyyah to recognise how her life had been ruined by love. Malik knew his wife would have been happier if she’d never fallen in love, if she’d put her duty to her country and her children before her own wants and desires.
‘It’s all right,’ Rachel said, patting his hand. ‘It was only a kiss.’
Suddenly Malik wondered what was giving Rachel such a resigned air. He had Huria and his duty to think of, but he realised something was holding her back as well.
‘It’s not that I’m not attracted to you,’ Malik said, trying to make things better, all the time knowing he was making it worse.
‘It’s just not meant to be,’ Rachel said, more firmly.
They stood, both looking awkwardly, neither knowing whether to say any more or to go their separate ways.
‘You would make a fine companion for any man,’ Malik said.
Rachel turned to him, a fiery look flaring in her eyes. ‘I don’t need to be a companion to any man,’ she said firmly. ‘And you don’t need to keep trying to reassure me. I’m a grown woman, I know when something is a bad idea, just like I can take responsibility for my own actions.’
Malik was pleased to see some of Rachel’s customary confidence come flooding back. He had to suppress a smile as he realised no one else had ever spoken to him so directly and honestly as Rachel.
‘We kissed. Thousands of people do it. Hundreds of thousands. It doesn’t mean I’m expecting a marriage proposal and it doesn’t mean I’m going to swoon every time I see you.’
Malik nodded gravely, wondering whether he could get away with kissing her one more time. He loved it when she was aroused like this, the passion and self-confidence so many lacked making her into an incredible woman.
‘In fact, I plan on returning to my tent and getting some sleep. I suggest you do the same.’
Malik wondered what his advisors and the noblemen of Huria would say if they heard how Rachel spoke to him. Many were very old-fashioned and traditional in their views on women and marriage; they thought their wives existed to make their lives more comfortable, but not to have opinions on anything other than running the household or occasionally on raising the children.
‘Tell me one thing before you go,’ Malik said, catching hold of Rachel’s arm.
She looked at him expectantly.
‘If I kissed you again, would you resist?’
Chapter Sixteen
Rachel firmly pulled her arm out of Malik’s grasp before she answered his question. Just the heat of his skin against hers made it hard for her to think, but she could never tell him that. She needed to preserve some dign
ity, to walk away with a modicum of self-respect.
If I kissed you again, would you resist?
‘I suggest we don’t find out,’ Rachel said more coolly than she had imagined was possible.
Holding her head up high, she walked away. She felt the tears begin to well in her eyes and was glad her back was to Malik. She’d hate for him to see her cry, to see that she wasn’t as strong as she made out.
The distressing thing was that she didn’t even know why she was upset. The kiss had been lovely. No, it had been more than that. It had been passionate and heart-melting and all-encompassing, but then it had ended and Rachel had known that it couldn’t happen again. Theirs was not to be a happy ending, she was not destined to marry a prince, or a Sheikh as it might be. She should be glad that Malik was so level-headed about it and that they agreed they should just put the moment behind them, but part of her cried out for something more. All her life she had promised herself she would not get carried away with the notion of love and romance; all her life she had vowed not to let passion make her as selfish and volatile as it had her parents. It had been easy to stick to that vow before Malik, but when he looked at her with his serious eyes and just a flicker of a smile, or when she watched him bend down to talk to one of his children, her heart screamed out in protest. She might have promised herself not to fall in love, but she was having a hard time obeying her own command.
Rachel stopped walking and looked up at the stars. She wished she had someone to talk to, to help her sort her thoughts and feelings out and untangle the raging emotions that kept colliding inside her. She wished Joanna was here with her quiet sensibility and soothing words. Or Grace, indignant on her behalf and spitting fire. Or Isabel, ready to distract her and occupy her mind with something else. Rachel wished for any one of her friends right now, just someone to put their arms around her and tell her she would be all right.
She wasn’t even sure what to label the feelings she had for Malik. Sometimes he infuriated her with his self-assured ways, sometimes he humbled her with his ability to admit his faults. Her heart quickened when he looked at her and her skin tingled when he touched her. Rachel knew she liked Malik and that she enjoyed spending time in his company, but she also knew there was more to it than that. There was a deeper, more primal emotion present and Rachel wondered if it could be love. She’d only seen the volatile, destructive love her parents had shared, but could there be a different sort? Something that didn’t require you to argue and fight the entire time.
GOVERNESS TO THE SHEIKH Page 17