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“In what way?”
“Everyway.” She took a sip of her water and sat back in her chair. “What was your family life like, for example?” She looked away. “What was your father like?” She glanced back at him again when she said the word “father”. He knew what his father had done to maintain law and order twenty-five years earlier. He’d always ruled with a heavy, cruel hand and had had no compunction in ordering the deaths of those who threatened his rule. It wasn’t done obviously of course. Accidents happen in the desert. But his father’s vizier knew all about his father’s transgressions and now, so did he. He just wondered whether she knew.
“My father.” He paused again and saw the flicker of interest in her eyes intensify. “What would you like to know about him?”
She hesitated, licked her lips. “Do you resemble him?”
Ah, so she did know. He understood her anger now when she’d discovered his identity.
“In some ways, yes.”
Her face froze.
“But in other ways, not at all.”
She swallowed, betraying her nerves and intense interest in the answer to her question. “Care to elaborate?” She tookanother sip of water, but her eyes held his like a laser beam above the glass.
“We both have a strong sense of responsibility for our country. Duty was central to my father’s life, as it is to mine. Nothing else can interfere with that. My grandfather was the same. My people depend on me to provide a safe place to live and work with their families in peace and prosperity. And that is what I must give them—or die trying.”
He paused as he noticed fear enter her eyes for the first time. He didn’t care to see that.
“But, there the resemblance ends,” he continued. “Our personalities are opposites and dictate that we both have chosen different paths to achieve these ends.” He licked his lips, wondering how far to go. Then he decided that if he didn’t go all the way, he risked losing this woman. And that was a risk he wasn’t willing to take. “He was cruel, Sarah.Ruthless. Not only with his enemies but also with his family. His children. His wife. The only love in my family was that between my brother and I. We would do anything for each other, and will always be there for each other. But my father? My mother?” He shrugged. “No. There was no relationship. No affection, no care, no love. Nothing which my father deemed might weaken us for the role which lay ahead of us.”
She placed her glass back on the table and sat back, her shoulders relaxed for the first time since she’d set foot on the terrace. The silence lengthened, but Kadar didn’t interrupt it.
“That’s good to know,” she said at last. “I had heard of your father’s cruelty and was shocked by it. So, of course, when I discovered you were his son I was, well, not to put to fine a point on it,appalledto think I’d been intimate with the son of someone I’ve heard described as little short of a monster.”
He opened his eyes wide in surprise. He knew what his father had been capable of, but still found it hard to hear him bedescribed as a monster. His father had done everything he could for his country, even if that meant suppressing any emotion of any kind. In his latter years, he’d seen what it had cost him, not least a wife who’d hated him. But now wasn’t the time to debate the accuracy of her description.
“I’m not like him, Sarah. I can assure you of that. But Iamlike him in that I want peace for my country and I will do whatever it takes—in my own way—to get it.”
“Hopefully that excludes having people killed.”
His eyes narrowed. No one talked of such things openly. “Of course. But…” He had to be truthful because, after all, wasn’t he tricking her for exactly this purpose? “But,” he repeated, “I still have to do things which are unpalatable to me to get what I want.”
“I guess we all do that to some extent,” she replied, obviously reassured by what he’d told her. “Even in the lives of ordinary working people.” She smiled at him.
“Indeed. I’m glad you understand and I want to apologize again for not telling you who I was earlier. But for once I was just a man?—”
“And I was a woman?—”
“And that was all that mattered. All that was important at that moment. It was too precious to shatter by telling you who I was.”
She nodded. “I understand. Looking around at the kind of life you have here, I can see that you yearned for a respite from it. You know, I don’t think you’re cut out to be king.”
He scoffed a laugh. “You and me both. I prefer to be with my people, not apart from them. I’ve never wanted the position, but I’ve been groomed for it. I have no other choice. It is my destiny.”
“Everyone has a choice, Kadar.”
“You’re wrong. Not me.”
“Yes, you. Even here, now, you had a choice whether or not to tell me the truth about your father, which couldn’t have been easy. No matter what he was like, he was still your father.”
He was surprised at her empathy. At how easily she understood him.
“But you did,” she said. “And I appreciate that. And now I have the choice whether I follow my instincts, or my rational mind.” She leaned forward, the shiny stuff of her dress gaping slightly to reveal her cleavage. “Which should I do, do you think?”
His heart thumped heavily. “That depends what your instincts are telling you. If they’re telling you to leave immediately, then I’d prefer you didn’t follow them. But, if they’re telling you to stay, so we can get to know each other better, then, yes, you should most definitely follow them.” He looked into her eyes and saw her answer there, but refused to jump to any conclusion. He needed to know. “What are your instincts telling you?”
