by Dani Collins
“Your—Oh, my God!” If she hadn’t been so enthralled with the necklace, she would have put it together sooner. Now she quickly dropped the pendant on the table and jerked to her feet, backing away from a ghost. “Oh, my God!”
Charles shot in.
She held up her hand.
“I’m fine. Just a shock,” she insisted to her guard. “What is today’s word? I can’t even remember. Daffodil?” She touched her forehead. “Honestly, I’m fine. I just need a moment with...”
She waved at Kasim’s dead brother. Her hand trembled.
“I’m so sorry,” Jamal said with a wince. “I thought you might know.”
“How—? No.” She had to be white as a sheet, but managed to shoo Charles out.
He continued to watch her closely through the glass.
“Oh, my God, Jamal,” she breathed. “How on earth would I know? Your whole family thinks you’re dead.” She held her hand to her throat where she felt her own pulse thundering like a bullet train.
“Kasim didn’t tell you? He helped arrange it. The death certificate and name change...”
“No he didn’t tell me!” It caused her quite a pang to admit it, but she had already processed that however much she had thought she meant to Kasim, she had actually meant a lot less.
“Good God, why?” She moved to the settee and sank down, wilting as the shock wore off and her mind jammed with questions. “I mean, he told me that your father didn’t like that you were an artist, but—”
“Is that what he said?” His smile was crooked and poignant. “Our father couldn’t accept that I was gay.”
“Oh,” she breathed. More secrets with which Kasim hadn’t trusted her. She had been so open about her own family. It made her feel so callow to think of it. Where had her precious speech gone? The one from her first dinner with Kasim, when she had told him she was reticent out of respect for her siblings. But had he entrusted her with Jamal’s story? No.
“You couldn’t just...live in exile? Here?” she asked.
“My lover was already here and beaten to within an inch of his life for...leading me into that life.”
“No! Oh, dear God. Your father couldn’t have arranged that?”
“People in his government. There are those in Zhamair who are still very prejudiced. They said they were protecting the reputation of the crown, but my father did nothing to prevent or punish them.” Deep emotion gripped him for a moment and he struggled to regain his composure, swallowing audibly before continuing. “Either way, I couldn’t risk Bernard’s life again. I feared for my own. Merely leaving wouldn’t have been enough. I was afraid to even see Kasim again, in case it made things difficult for him, or exposed us.”
He propped his elbows on his thighs, back bowed with the weight of the world, expression weary. He rubbed his hands over his face, then looked at her over his clasped fingers.
“My mother’s life is not easy. The queen is very resentful of her. If my mother had had a gay son living flagrantly abroad...” He shook his head. “No. It was terribly cruel to tell her I was dead, but if the queen picks on her now, my father stands up for her out of respect for her grief.”
“I can’t imagine,” she murmured, appalled anew at the ugly aggression Kasim had grown up in. “I’m so sorry, Jamal.”
“Why?” he said, looking and sounding so much like Kasim, her throat tightened. “You had nothing to do with it.”
“I wish I could do something, I guess.” She realized immediately that she had backed herself into a corner.
His smile was sharp and amused. “Thank you. I would like that.”
She shook her head. “You’re so much like him it’s unnerving. But I can’t take that to Hasna and tell her it’s from you. You think I was shocked!”
“No,” he agreed. “She can’t know I’m alive, but Kasim could tell her it was in my old collection and that he had been saving it for her wedding day. It would mean a lot to me for her to wear this. I know she would.”
“We’re not, um... Kasim and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.” The press hadn’t quite caught on, so she wasn’t surprised he didn’t know. The words still abraded her throat. “I’m not going to Zhamair.”
“Ah. I didn’t realize.” His expression fell. “I’m sorry. From the photos I saw, you both looked quite...” He didn’t finish, only looked at the necklace, crestfallen.
She looked at it, too.
With. He wanted to be with his sister in the only way he could.
She couldn’t tell this to Trella or one of her brothers. It was Kasim’s secret. Jamal’s life.
I am a sucker, she thought. Trella would have a far better sense of self-protection. Kasim didn’t even want her there. She would be an embarrassment. He might even throw her out.
But Jamal looked so disconsolate. And Hasna missed her brother so much. It would mean the world to her to have this...
She closed her eyes, defeated. “I’ll go. I’ll go to Zhamair and give this to Kasim.”
CHAPTER NINE
THERE HAD BEEN many times over the years that Kasim wondered how his father could be such a pitiless, dictatorial bastard. These days, he understood the liberation in such an attitude as he adopted the same demeanor, contemptuous of those around him for being ruled by their emotions. What did the desires of others’ egos and libidos and hearts matter when his own had to be ignored? Everyone made sacrifices.
Don’t think of her.
Were it not for his sister marrying in two days, he would ride into the desert and take some much needed time to regroup. Instead, he was part of a ceaseless revolving door of relatives and dignitaries. One branch of the royal family had no sooner arrived and joined him and his parents for coffee, when a foreign dignitary was in the next room awaiting a chance to express felicitations.
This morning the parade had begun with an ambush. The king had introduced him to the father of the woman he thought would make a fine queen someday—when she grew up. Did his father seriously expect him to marry a child of barely eighteen?
To his prospective father-in-law’s credit, a concern for the age difference was expressed. Kasim smoothly stated he could wait until she completed her degree if that was preferred. It would serve the kingdom better if the future queen was well educated.
The king had correctly interpreted it as an effort to put things off and took him to task the minute they were alone.
“Did you give me your word or not?”
“I cleared the field for her, didn’t I?” Kasim replied in a similar snarl. A glance over the guest list a few days ago had shown that Angelique had sent her regrets. “Surely we can get one wedding over with before we host the next?”
Sadiq’s family were announced, cutting short the clash. Kasim sat down with Sadiq and their fathers to sign off on the marriage contracts, then they joined the queen and Sadiq’s mother.
“Hasna isn’t here?” Sadiq said, morose as he glanced around the room.
“The gown has arrived,” the queen said with a nettled look toward the king. “Fatina has been pestering to see it. Such a nuisance when Hasna has guests. What if she ruins it?”
“The girls will not let that happen,” Sadiq’s mother soothed. “They have been ever so careful this week, watching the unpacking of Hasna’s wardrobe.”
“The Sauveterres were staying with you?” the queen asked in her most benign yet shrewd tone.
“Oh, yes,” Sadiq’s mother said with a smile of pleasure. “The men went into the desert for what the Westerners call...a stag? Is that correct, Sadiq? I had a nice visit with their mother. We are all friends for many years.”
“And they all came with you here?” the king asked, gaze swinging like a scythe to Kasim. “Both girls?”
“Yes, Trella was the one we worried wouldn’t make
it, but then Angelique came down with the flu. She recovered, though, and...” Sadiq’s mother lost some of her warm cheer as she sensed the growing tension. “Is there a problem?” She touched the draped folds of her hijab where it covered her throat. “I know we said she was not coming, but she shares a room with her sister so I didn’t think it would be an imposition when she made it after all?”
“It’s no problem,” Kasim said firmly, aiming it at his father.
Get rid of her, he read in the flick of his father’s imperious glance.
* * *
If she had left things as they’d been in Paris, Kasim brooded as he strode down the marbled hall of the palace, he would be resentful, but not furious.
This. This was unacceptable. Now he would be in for it with his father. Threats would be made. His uncle and several cousins were coming to the wedding. Tensions were high. Impulsive autocratic decisions could easily be made in a fit of temper.
Not only was he now courting that disastrous possibility, thanks to Angelique coming here against his orders, but he was raw all over again. Her rejection stung afresh and his intense feeling of being hemmed in by impossible circumstances was renewed.
He had resigned himself to never seeing her again, damn her! Now she was in his home.
He started to ask a passing servant which suite the Sauveterres had been given, but glimpsed a face he knew down near the end of the hall, standing outside the door to his sister’s apartment.
His heart rate spiked as he approached the guard.
“Charles,” he said, ears ringing. Angelique was behind this door.
“Your Highness.”
Kasim knocked.
Female laughter cut off and his youngest half sister cracked the door to peer out at him. Her smile beamed as she recognized him.
“Kasim!”
“Is Hasna dressed? May I come in?” He fought for a level tone. Distempered as he was, he would never take out his bad mood on a six-year-old.
There was a murmur of female voices, then Hasna called, “Yes, come in.”
He entered, picking up his baby sister as he did, kissing her cheek and using her small frame to cushion the rush of emotion that accosted him as he anticipated seeing Angelique.
Hasna’s suite was half the size of his, yet still one of the most opulent in the palace, decorated in peacock blues and silver, with high ceilings and the same sort of delicate curlicue furniture his mother favored.
She was in her lounge and stood on something because she was a foot taller than normal. He couldn’t see what it was because her wedding gown was belled over it, flaring a meter in each direction. A filmy veil was draped over her dark hair and all of it was covered in more seed pearls than there were in the ocean.
Fatina rose from her chair and came to kiss his hand, tsking as her older daughter charged at him, arms raised in a demand to be lifted and hugged.
Kasim concentrated on setting down his one sister and lifting the eight-year-old so she could squeeze his neck with her skinny little arms and press her lips to his cheek.
“You’re growing too fast,” he told her. “You’ll be wearing one of these soon and then who will draw me pictures? You look very beautiful, Hasna.”
He set down his sister and pretended he was taking in the extravagance of the gown when he was far more focused on the flash of movement behind the flare of her skirt.
The veil rippled slightly and Angelique rose, her attention remaining stubbornly fixed on her creation.
His heart skyrocketed as he took in the graceful drape of her pink dress and the way she’d covered her head in an ivory scarf so she looked like she was a part of his world—
She turned her head to meet his gaze.
The mercury shooting to the top of his head stalled and plummeted.
Trella.
He didn’t know how he knew. The resemblance was remarkable and he couldn’t say that her eyes were set closer or farther apart, or that her face seemed wider or thinner. He just knew this wasn’t Angelique, even though her greenish-hazel eyes stared at him.
Given the antagonism he sensed coming off her in waves, the straight pins poking out of her mouth were unabashedly symbolic.
He knew how she felt. He was ready to spit nails himself. Where the hell was her sister?
“Angelique has done an amazing job, hasn’t she?” Hasna said. He could hear the lilt of trickery in her voice, hoping to fool him.
“I understood this to be a collaboration between the twins. Hello, Trella. It’s nice to meet you. Is your sister here?” He looked around the lounge, returning to a state of tense anticipation.
“Oh! You can’t tell this is Trella!” Hasna accused. “I can’t. I still think this is Angelique and she’s tricking me.”
Trella pinned a place on the veil that she had marked with her fingers, then removed the rest of the pins from her mouth to say lightly, “I showed you my passport.”
Hasna chuckled and Trella glanced at Kasim, smile evaporating.
“She went back to our suite.”
He couldn’t stop staring, feeling as though he was looking at a film of Angelique. She was a faithful image of her sister, but there was a sense of being removed by time or space. She made him long to be in the presence of the real thing.
“Still recovering from her flu?” he said with false lightness. “Perhaps she should have stayed home after all.”
“It was minor. She’s over it.” Trella’s glance hit Kasim with pointed disparagement.
Did she recall that he had done her a favor, hiding her night with the Prince of Elazar? An attitude of deference wouldn’t be amiss here, he told her with a hard look, but he didn’t have time to teach her some manners.
He had to get her sister on the next plane back to Paris.
* * *
Angelique was normally at her most relaxed around her family, but not today. She was wound up about being here, feeling like she was smuggling drugs, that pouch of Jamal’s was so heavy on her conscience.
Ramon was not helping. He was growing restless away from work and began badgering her to play tennis.
“I thought Henri said he would?” She was actually dying to see more of the palace. As they had come in by helicopter with Sadiq’s family, Angelique had been awestruck. And taken down a peg. What had made her think she had any place in Kasim’s life when his home sprawled in opulent glory over more area than a dozen football fields against the stunning backdrop of the Persian Gulf?
She told herself that it was the heat of the desert sun that caused her to sweat as they were taken by golf cart along a palm-lined path overlooking a water feature. It was actually anxiety. Kasim was here. Somewhere behind those columns and tall windows, beneath the domes and flags, he was carrying on with his life, perhaps already having moved on to another lover, completely unaware she had defied him and come to Zhamair after all.
She searched across the gardens, noting small gatherings in gazebos and colorful tents, trying to see if he was among any of the groups. Guilty and eager at once for a glimpse of him.
Maybe she wouldn’t see him until the wedding. She’d been trying to decide whether to contact him outright and request a meeting prior to the wedding—and probably be asked to leave—or just hope she came across him and was able to say her piece before he deported her.
Being special guests of the groom and traveling with the groom’s parents, her family was given a luxurious suite of four rooms with a stunning stained glass window set high on the exterior wall of the lounge. It poured colored light onto the white tablecloth of the dining table, where fruit, cordial, sweets and flowers had been waiting on their arrival.
“Gili!” Ramon said. “Are you listening?”
“Are you? I said you and Henri should play. I have to hem these for Hasna’s sister
s.” She lifted the silk dresses she’d brought back from Hasna’s suite.
Fatina had cried when Hasna revealed that her daughters hadn’t been overlooked in the wedding preparations.
Now that Angelique had met Jamal and had an even broader understanding of the family’s painful dynamic, she was thrilled to be part of including Fatina’s children in the wedding. And, as much as it pained her, she had accepted payment from Fatina for them. Fatina had insisted, worried what the queen would say if she didn’t. Angelique had kept it very nominal, doing what she could to keep the peace.
Ramon sighed.
“You have to come with us so we can talk to any women we meet.” He spoke like he was explaining it to a child. “I don’t know how Sadiq survived these restrictions,” he muttered, resuming his pacing.
Ah. It wasn’t work he was missing so much as his extracurricular activities.
“Ask Mama to go with you,” she suggested drily.
“Siesta or I would,” he shot back. “Desperate times.”
She shook her head at him.
Henri emerged from his room. He had changed into light gray sweatpants and a white long-sleeved tunic. He made a small noise of disgust as he saw that was exactly what Ramon already wore. They didn’t try to dress alike, but it happened constantly. Even their panama hats had been purchased on two different continents, but their tastes were so in sync, they had each brought one to Zhamair.
When they set them on their heads, they did so facing each other, moving like mirror images—because that’s what they were. She and Trella were stamps, both right-handed, both wearing their hair parted on the left because that’s where their crowns were.
The boys were left and right, but were still difficult to tell apart for most people. They wore their hair in the same short, spiked cut, favored the same clothes and had such even features they easily passed for the other, not that they played that game.
Well, Ramon had tried with Cinnia a couple of times, because he was a tease, but she had always caught him. Her ability to tell both sets of twins apart from the get-go was one of the reasons Angelique had been so sure Cinnia was right for Henri.