He lifted his brows. “There’s no party line?”
Lilah leaned forward a little. Though there was still a marble coffee table between them, she felt a spark of something as her eyes leveled with his. “You are a strange man. I am answering the questions you ask and yet you keep behaving as though my answers are suspect in some way. Why? What is it you would like me to say?”
“What you really feel,” he said simply. “I always want my subjects to be honest.”
“Again you are accusing me of lying?”
“Not lying,” he corrected. “Of being false. Of keeping your true thoughts buried completely beneath a veneer of dispassion.”
“Goodness me, thank you. That is so much better.” Lilah was acutely conscious of her accent thickening as her temper spiked. She took a deep breath in an attempt to still her racing heart. “It is not my true thoughts being bared that I mind.” A small line formed above her nose as she knitted her brows together.
“No? Then what are you afraid of?”
“Why do you think I am afraid of anything?”
He expelled a frustrated sigh. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I can usually tell within the first two minutes of meeting someone how an interview is going to go.”
“Oh? What a gift,” she murmured, despising the easy way sarcasm had flown from her tongue. She clipped her hands together on her lap, outwardly projecting an image of calm. “And what did our first two minutes together tell you about me?”
He placed his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, significantly closing the gap between them. Lilah fought the urge to recline back into her chair.
“You are artifice and grace.”
“Artifice and grace?” She swallowed the words bitterly. “Such a beautiful insult.”
His lips quirked. “You asked the question.”
“And you answered it with honesty bordering on cruelty.”
His eyes scanned her face. “Unlike you, I don’t have to worry about what the world thinks of me.”
Lilah’s throat knotted visibly as she swallowed. Will’s eyes dropped to the betraying gesture and he almost felt sorry for her. This woman was not a dictator in a foreign war. She was not a bombastic general dispatching children into the fields to fight. She was a princess by birth and upbringing. Her only crime was having been born into a family of intense political power and importance.
“We can do this your way,” he said gently, regretting the stormy confusion that raged on her pretty features.
“It is not my way,” she surprised him by admitting a minute later. “You are right. There is artifice in who I must be. If I were speaking to you as an equal – as one person to another – I could perhaps speak more freely on the subjects you raise.”
“You think we’re not equal?” It fascinated him, the class system that Delani still clung to.
“I think your job is to report on my family. That I am responsible for giving you an insight into my life. And that if I do not carefully guard what I say, you may misrepresent things in your articles.”
He was very still. “You know your brother trusts me.”
“Yes.” She toyed with her fingers distractedly.
“But you don’t.”
Lilah squared her shoulders in an almost imperceptible gesture of strength. “I believe you will do your job diligently and so I must do mine.”
“Which means what, exactly?”
Her smile was wan. “I love my people, sir, and I see my function in life wrapped up in serving them. But I reserve just a little of myself for myself alone. Does that make sense?”
An intensely private man, Will found himself nodding. “Yes.”
“So the woman who is to become your sister-in-law is a lovely person who will make an excellent Emira.” He repeated the words she’d uttered back to Lilah and now she heard the clinical detachment in them, as he must have done.
“I have known Melania a long time. She is a kind person who has long understood that her duties would lead her to marry Kiral.”
“You do not pretend it is a marriage of love?”
Lilah’s expression was stricken and Will leaned even closer. “Off the record.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“For a moment, yes.” He reached down and pressed a button on his Dictaphone so that it made a soft clicking sound.
“Thank you.” She swallowed. “You see why I do not speak freely? I would hate to say the wrong thing and have it be taken out of context.”
“Am I taking your words out of context?”
Lilah’s eyes were trained on the tape recorder. She bit down on her lower lip thoughtfully and then a small smile marked her lips. “There are many types of love,” she said finally. “My brother’s love for his country and his people; Melania’s love of her family and her family’s honour.”
“But love, as is considered normal between husband and wife?”
“Love is not so easily defined, is it?” She ran a hand over her knee, pushing away an imaginary hair. “Love does not need to burn brightly to exist. It can be a gentle flicker; the warmth of respect and admiration. And certainly Kiral and Melania admire one another. She is an excellent woman and she understands him almost as no one else. As the daughter of a King has a unique insight into a man like my brother.”
“Yeah,” he swallowed. “But that’s a pretty insipid sort of love, isn’t it?”
“It’s not for you or me to say.”
“As his sister, you’re not led to speculate?”
“To what end?” She blinked to break the mesmerizing web of confidence that was building around them. “Kiral will never sway from his course. He has agreed to marry her and so they will marry. It was an agreement entered into many years ago, sanctioned by our parents before we lost them. The marriage will be important to my people. It is as good as done.”
Will nodded pointedly towards the tape recorder, reaching down to turn it on. “And so you’ve been sent to New York collecting ceremonial jewels for the occasion?”
Back on safer ground, Lilah’s face transformed completely. The look of relief was marked. “Yes. An assortment of ancient gems has been on loan to MOMA. Some of them date back several hundred years. They’re beautiful.”
A knock on the door sounded and Lilah startled, sitting back as far as she could in the seat and arranging her features into a mask of untouchable disinterest. It was a fascinating ability she possessed, to switch herself off completely, rendering the sparks of her personality completely extinguished.
A servant entered and began to perform one of the many routine security checks that were undertaken. Lilah was used to them. Though her demeanour remained reserved, she nodded at Will to continue.
“I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Delani. You are absolutely worshipped by your people.”
Her smile was a rebuke. “In your culture, you find it easy to bandy about terms such as worship, forgetting that they carry a sacred implication. I am not worshipped, sir. I am no god.”
Will thought shame-facedly of his Pulitzer. He did not deal in hyperbole. The use of the word had been a slip-up, and he didn’t make slip-ups. “Adored then. Popular.”
“Yes, perhaps.” She cupped her hands around her tea, though it was nearly empty. The warmth was encouraging. “When my parents died, Kiral and I were really taken into the hearts of our people. Even more so than before. He was a young prince and I was still a girl. I think it was a very tragic event that inspired a great sense of nationalistic protectionism towards us.”
He lifted his brows at her definition of the affection. “Your brother is respected. He is revered. Even perhaps feared, a little. But you seem to straddle effortlessly the boundaries of celebrity and royalty. You appear at pop concerts and polo matches, on yachts in the Mediterranean and art galleries, and also opening children’s hospitals or speaking on behalf of causes that are important to you. A google search brings up over sixty one million posts.”
“Does it?” H
er cheeks flushed with two perfectly round pink spots. “I had no idea.”
And Will believed it. “To what do you credit your popularity?”
“I told you,” she said softly. “My parents –,”
“No.” He interrupted, earning a sharp look from the security agent. But Will didn’t notice. In that moment, every single bit of him was focused on this woman. “It’s more than that.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’ll have to fill in the blanks.”
The security agent moved closer to the table and reached down to clear the princess’s tea. As his fingers curled around the edges of the tray, Will was blasted back into the past by the sight of a tattoo he hadn’t seen in a very long time. Clearly printed on the guard’s wrists were the markings that instantly alerted him to danger:
نحن متساوون
Will felt a flush of adrenalin spike through him, but he didn’t visibly react. He lifted his eyes to Lilah, mentally calculating the closeness of the guard to the princess. He was only two feet from her. Will’s eyes dropped to the man’s waist. He wore a gun. He would probably have a knife somewhere too, and perhaps another concealed weapon.
Will forced himself to lean back in his chair, affecting a pose of total relaxation.
“Madam, you have the prime minister’s wife phoning in ten minutes.” The guard spoke in his own language. Will spoke it fluently.
“Goodness, is that the time?” Lilah responded in kind, her own words soft and almost mythical seeming.
Will’s smile was reassuring. “I won’t be much longer.” He held his body tight like a spring, ready to pounce.
“It’s fine.” She lifted her eyes to the guard. “Thank you.” It was a dismissal and the guard took it as such. He left swiftly, clicking the door behind him.
“Lilah –,”
“You know,” she said with a curious smile, “Most people feel obliged to call me by my title unless they know me very well.”
He was standing, his eyes not leaving her face. His whole body was as stiff as glass. “Where are your things?”
“My ... what things?” She was still smiling, his sudden change in demeanour almost a joke to the princess.
“Where is your room?”
“My room?” Now her smile fell. She stared at him with a frown of confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s no time to explain. You’re in danger. I need you to go –,”
“Danger?” She stared at him as though he was deranged. “Me? In danger? Have you not observed for yourself my rather decadent fortress?”
“You are only as safe as those protecting you want you to be,” he foreshadowed darkly. “Grab some clothes.”
“No,” she shook her head, her eyes drawn together in confusion. It began to dawn on Jalilah that perhaps he wasn’t, in fact, joking.
“Damn it, Lilah, if you want to survive you’ll do what I say and you’ll do it now.”
THE PRINCESS’S FORBIDDEN LOVER is available to purchase from 30th August.
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