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“After we married.”
She shook her head. “I have to go.”
“We need to talk. We can’t leave things like this. There are things to discuss.”
Her eyes blazed. “Things to discuss? Like what? Like how you want to use me next? Like how we still should get married so that your throne will be more secure?”
He didn’t answer, and she knew she was correct.
“Just let me go, Kadar. Please,” she said as the tears threatened to burst through into noisy sobs.
Whatever made him turn around and leave, she was thankful. For the moment he closed the door, she fell to her knees and gave a quiet exhaled wail that tore the air from her lungs before she gasped and covered her head as sob after sob wracked through her body. And she stayed there until she was out of tears and her heart was well and truly numbed.
Kadar could hear the wail,even though he was sure she’d tried to smother it. He’d seen the desolation mounting in her eyes and knew that at least that was one thing he could give her—privacy to vent her sadness in private.
“Don’t go there,” he said to someone about to enter. “Stand guard, and make sure no one else enters, and extend help to the lady inside when she emerges. She may need it.”
He continued walking, knowing she wouldn’t have accepted help from him. The thought was like a nail being slammed into his heart.
He’d give her space for now. If nothing else than to show her he had no intention, ever again, of trying to control her, or trying to use her. And he wanted, in some small way, to demonstrate that to her. He’d go to her in the morning.
CHAPTER 17
It was early. The sweet smell of night blossoms still lingered in the air, and only a few people were out and about. So when Kadar swiped the security lock onto the private garden door which led to Sarah’s suite, he was full of anticipation. He’d thought about nothing else all night long. He was determined to make her see things from his point of view. After all, they’d shared enough for her to know that his feelings for her were real. It would be fine, he reassured himself. He’d even spoken about it to his vizier, who agreed that it wouldn’t be hard to bring a woman around who’d openly declared her love for him. Women were driven by emotions, his vizier had said. And with all of his heart, Kadar wanted to believe him.
As he moved through the silent garden, the smell of the night flowers and sound of the fountain soothed him, and stirred his senses. He was looking forward to making it up to Sarah, showing her exactly how much he wanted her. He remembered the sultry afternoons and cool nights they’d spent in bed together. He’d soon make her forget her doubts, her lack of trust, and how he’d withheld the very information from him which she’d wanted more than anything. How, in her words, he’d usedher. He’d make these things of the past. He just needed her to understand that they both wanted the same things.
Once he was outside her suite of rooms, he looked up and was puzzled to see the place in darkness and the windows closed. He knew she liked to sleep with them open. Maybe she’d decided she wanted the air conditioning on. He shrugged and slipped the key in the lock and went inside. He walked through the sitting room and stopped at the bedroom door. He knocked gently.
“Sarah,” he said, unwilling to enter without her permission after everything that had happened. He wanted to show her how much he respected her. He pressed his ear to the door, but there was no sound. “Sarah,” he repeated, a little louder. Still nothing, so he knocked at the door. To his surprise, it wasn’t latched properly and opened a little way. He pushed it open further and stepped inside. At first it took him a while to see anything as it was dark inside with the curtains pulled across the early gray light of dawn.
“Sarah,” he repeated one last time. But there was no sound, and with an increasing sense of dread, he approached the bed. The bed was still made. The pillows undented, and the sheets unrumpled. The bed hadn’t been slept in. He turned around and shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice full of desperation, “Sarah!”
As Sarah watchedthe desert landscape slide by, the anger which had fueled her actions slowly dissipated, leaving a stone where her heart should be, and an emptiness in her soul.
How she could have loved a man who had tricked her out of everything she’d ever wanted was beyond her. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been warned. Her grandfather had told her about Kadar’sfather. And she’d chosen to believe Kadar was different. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The chant repeated in her mind in time to the rhythm of the vehicle as it drove over the lines at the side of the road.
That Kadar had known about her family all along and hadn’t told her seemed the worst betrayal. He’d known how important they were to her. They were her only living relatives, for goodness’ sake. And yet he’d withheld that information for his own purposes. She didn’t think she could ever forgive him for that.
He, and his powerful vizier, would be informed of her departure soon, and then she knew they’d come looking for her. By that time, she hoped she’d have found her family. At least she knew their name, and where they lived now. She just hoped they would believe her story and that they would welcome her.
At some pointin the journey, exhausted from the emotions of the previous days, she must have fallen asleep. Because she awoke with a start as they drove through a large open gate set in thick walls and into the center of a town, its marketplace.
“Where do you wish to be dropped off?” asked the driver in heavily accented English.
She lowered her head to look out the window, scanning the streets for ideas. Her aim had always been to arrive in this town, and her plans had never gone beyond that. Then she caught sight of what appeared to be an official building. If there was anything she’d learned from her time being shown around his country with Kadar, it was that the regions were very independent. She just hoped that here, far from Kadar’s influence, the regional officers would be sympathetic to her, and that her name would mean something to them.
She paid the driver, who immediately turned away for the eight-hour trip back to the city. She watched the plume of dust rise after him as he disappeared through the open gates of the town into the desert before crossing the mountain range, and felt anxious for the first time since she’d left, not about Kadar only, but about what would happen next. She’d been so full of grief at his betrayal that she’d not planned further than getting here.
She looked around. Dressed in a modest abaya and scarf, and with the same colored skin and eyes as these people, she fitted in and didn’t receive a second glance. She picked up the small bag of belongings she’d bought the day before. Most things which had been bought for her, or which she’d borrowed, she’d left behind. She had no intention of profiting from her association with Kadar. She’d only brought the essentials—enough to see her through the next few days before she returned to England.
She drew in a deep breath, walked purposefully up the wide steps and entered the building. It bore little resemblance to the buildings in the city. This was much, much older and people were everywhere, enjoying the cooler temperatures inside the stone building. She suspected that few of the people had any connection to what she reckoned was the equivalent of the town hall. But it seemed that all were welcome, anyway. She looked around and walked to what looked like the reception and began speaking in halting Arabic.
The woman waited until she’d finished. “It might be easier for us to speak in English,” she said with a smile.
Relief flooded Sarah. “Thank goodness,” she said. “I doubt I’d have made myself understood with my limited Arabic!”
“And yet”—the woman looked around Sarah—“you appear to be traveling alone, far from where tourists usually come.”
