Beholden to the Throne

‘Go on,’ Emir invited.

‘When I took the job I understood that her pregnancy had made the Queen unwell—that it might take some considerable time for her to recover and that she might not be able to do all she wanted to for the babies. However—’

‘I am sure Queen Hannah would have preferred that you were just assisting her in the raising of the twins,’ Emir interrupted. ‘I am sure that when she hired you, Queen Hannah had no intention of dying.’ His lip curled in disdain as he looked down at Amy and his words dripped sarcasm. ‘I apologise for the inconvenience.’

‘No!’ Amy refused to let him turn things around again—refused to let him miss her point. ‘If Queen Hannah were still alive I would happily get up to the twins ten times in the night if I had to. She was a wonderful woman, an amazing mother, and I would have done anything for her …’ Amy meant every word she said. She had admired the Queen so much, had adored her for her forward thinking and for the choices she had made to ensure the happiness of her girls. ‘I would have done anything for Queen Hannah, but I—’

‘You will have assistance,’ Emir said. ‘I will see that Fatima—’

She could not believe that he still didn’t get it. Bold again now, she interrupted the King. ‘It’s not another nanny that the twins need. It’s you! I am tired of getting up at night while their father sleeps.’

‘Their father is the King.’ His voice was both angry and incredulous. ‘Their father is busy running the country. I am trying to push through a modern maternity hospital with a cardiac ward to ensure no other woman suffers as my wife did. Today I have twenty workers trapped in the emerald mines. But instead of reaching out to my people I have to hear about your woes. The people I rule are nervous as to the future of their country and yet you expect me, the King, to get up at night to a crying child?’

‘You used to!’ Amy was instant in her response. ‘You used to get up to your babies.’

And there it was again—that flash of pain across his features. Only this time it did not dissipate. This time it remained. His eyes were screwed closed, he pressed his thumb and finger to the bridge of his nose and she could hear his hard breathing. Amy realised that somewhere inside was the Emir she had known and she was desperate to contact him again, to see the loving father he had once been returned to his daughters—it was for that reason she continued.

‘I would bring Queen Hannah one of the twins for feeding while you would take care of the other.’

He removed his hand from his face, and stood there as she spoke, his fists clenched, his face so rigid and taut that she could see a muscle flickering beneath his eye. And she knew that it was pain not rage that she was witnessing, Amy was quite sure of it, for as sad as those times had been still they had been precious.

‘And, no, I don’t honestly expect you to get up at night to your babies, but is it too much for you to come in and see them each day? Is it too much to ask that you take a more active role in their lives? They are starting to talk …’

He shook his head—a warning, perhaps, that she should not continue—but she had to let him know all that he was missing out on, even if it cost her her job.

‘Clemira is standing now. She pulls herself up on the furniture and Nakia tries to copy—she claps and smiles and …’

‘Stop.’ His word was a raw husk.

‘No!’ She would not stop. Could not stop.

Amy was too upset to register properly the plea in his voice, for she was crying now. The scarf that had slipped from her head as she made her case unravelled and fell to the floor. She wanted to grab it, retrieve it, for she felt his eyes move to her neck, to the beastly scar that was there—her permanent reminder of hell—but her hands did not fly to her neck in an attempt to cover it. She had more important things on her mind—two little girls whose births she had witnessed, two little girls who had won her heart—and her voice broke as she choked out the truth.

‘You need to know that things are happening with your children. It is their first birthday in two days’ time and they’ll be terrified in the desert—terrified to be parted from me. And then, when they return to the Palace, they’ll be dressed up and trotted out for the people to admire. You will hold them, and they will be so happy that you do, but then you will go back to ignoring them …’ She was going to be fired, Amy knew it, so she carried on speaking while she still could. ‘I cannot stand to see how they are being treated.’

‘They are treated like the princesses they are!’ Emir flared. ‘They have everything—’

‘They have nothing!’ Amy shouted. ‘They have the best clothes and cots and furniture and jewels, and it means nothing because they don’t have you. Just because they’re gi—’ Amy stopped herself from saying it, halted her words, but it was already too late.

‘Go on.’ His words invited her but his tone and stance did not.

‘I think that I have already said enough.’ There was no point saying any more, Amy realised. Emir was not going to change at her bidding. The country was not going to embrace the girls just because she did. So she picked up her scarf and replaced it. ‘Thank you for your time, Your Highness.’

She turned to go and as she did his voice halted her.

‘Amy …’

So he did remember her name.

She turned to look at him, met his black gaze full on. The pain was still there, witness to the agony this year must have been for him, but even as she recognised it, it vanished. His features were hardening in anger now, and the voice he had used to call her changed in that instant.

His words were stern when they came. ‘It is not your place to question our ways.’

‘What is my place?’

‘An employee.’

Oh, he’d made things brutally clear, but at least it sounded as if she still had a job—at least she would not be sent away from the twins. ‘I’ll remember that in future.’

‘You would be very wise to,’ Emir said, watching as she bowed and then walked out, leaving him standing for once alone in his sumptuous office. But not for long. Patel walked in almost the second that Amy had gone, ready to resume, for there was still much to be taken care of even at this late stage in the day.

‘I apologise, Your Highness,’ Patel said as he entered. ‘I should never have allowed her to speak with you directly—you should not have been troubled with such trivial things.’

But Emir put up his hand to halt him. Patel’s words only exacerbated his hell. ‘Leave me.’

Unlike Amy, Patel knew better than to argue with the King and did as he was told. Once alone again Emir dragged in air and walked over to the window, looking out to the desert where tomorrow he would take the twins.

He was dreading it.

For reasons he could not even hint at to another, he dreaded tomorrow and the time he would spend with his children. He dreaded not just handing them over to the desert people for the night, but the time before that—seeing them standing, clapping, laughing, trying to talk, as Amy had described.

Their confrontation had more than unsettled him. Not because she had dared to speak in such a way, more because she had stated the truth.

The truth that Emir was well aware of.

Amy was right. He had got up at night to them when they were born. They had pulled together. Although it had never been voiced, both had seemed to know that they were battling against time and had raced to give Hannah as many precious moments with her babies as they could squeeze in.

He looked to his desk, to the picture of his wife and their daughters. He seemed to be smiling in the photo but his eyes were not, for he had known just how sick his wife was. Had known the toll the twins’ pregnancy had taken on her heart. Six months into the pregnancy they had found out she had a weakness. Three months later she was dead.

And while Hannah was smiling in the photo also, there was a sadness in her eyes too. Had she known then that she was dying? Emir wondered. Had it been the knowledge that she would have but a few more days with her daughters that had brought dark clouds to her eyes? Or had it been the knowledge that the kingdom of Alzan needed a male heir if it was to continue? Without a son Alzan would return to Alzirz and be under Sheikh King Rakhal’s rule.

He hated the words Hannah had said on the birth of their gorgeous daughters—loathed the fact that she had apologised to him for delivering two beautiful girls. His heart thumped in his chest as if he were charging into battle as silently he stood, gave his mind rare permission to recall Hannah’s last words. The blood seared as it raced through his veins, and his eyes closed as her voice spoke again to him. ‘Promise you will do your best for our girls.’

How? Emir demanded to a soul that refused to rest.

Any day now Rakhal’s wife, Natasha, was due to give birth. The rules were different in Alzirz, for there a princess could become Queen and rule.

How Rakhal would gloat when his child was born—especially if it was a son.

Emir’s face darkened at the thought of his rival. He picked up the two stones that sat on his desk and held them. Though they should be cool to the touch the rare pink sapphires seemed to burn in his palm. Rakhal had been a prince when he had given him this gift to celebrate the arrival of the girls—a gift that had been delivered on the morning Hannah had died.

Hannah had thought them to be rubies—had really believed that the troubles between the two kingdoms might finally be fading.

Emir had let her hold that thought, had let her think the gift was a kind gesture from Rakhal, even while fully understanding the vile message behind it—sapphires were meant to be blue.

Without a male heir the kingdom of Alzan would end.

Emir hurled the precious stones across his office, heard the clatter as they hit the wall and wished they would shatter as his brain felt it might.

He hated Rakhal, but more than that Emir hated the decision that he was slowly coming to. For it was not only Hannah who had begged for reassurance on her deathbed—he had held his dying father out in the desert. He had not been able to see the King dying because blood had been pouring from a wound above Emir’s eye, but he had heard his father’s plea, had given his solemn word that he would do his best for his country.

Two promises he could not meet.

Emir knew he could keep but one.

His decision could not—must not—be based on emotion, so he picked up the photo and took one long, last look, tracing his finger over Hannah’s face and the image of his girls. And then he placed it face down in a drawer and closed it.

He could not look them.

Must not.

Somehow he had to cast emotion aside as he weighed the future—not just for his children, but for the country he led.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS too hot to sleep.

The fan above the bed barely moved the still night air, and the fact that Amy had been crying since she put the twins down for the night did not help. Her face was hot and red, so Amy climbed out of bed, opened the French windows and stepped out onto the balcony, wishing for cool night air to hit her cheeks. But in Alzan the nights were warm and, despite a soft breeze, there was no respite.

The desert was lit by a near full moon and Amy looked out across the pale sands in the direction of Alzirz—there, the nights were cold, she had been told. Amy wished that she were there now—not just for the cool of the night, but for other reasons too. In Alzirz a princess could rule.

There girls were not simply dismissed.

But even that didn’t ring true. In many ways Alzan was progressive too—there were universities for women, and on Queen Hannah’s death the King had ordered that a state-of-the-art maternity hospital be built in her name—not only with the cardiac ward he had mentioned but free obstetric care for all. Sheikh King Emir had pushed his people slowly forward, yet the royals themselves stayed grounded in the ways of old, bound by rules from the past.

The two lands had long ago been one, she had been told—Alzanirz—but they had been separated many generations ago and were now fierce rivals.

She had met King Rakhal and his wife, Natasha, on a few occasions. Natasha was always disarmingly nice and interested in the girls; Rakhal, on the other hand, despite his cool politeness, was guarded. Amy had felt the hatred simmering between the two men, had almost been able to taste the deep rivalry that existed whenever they were both in a room.

Still, it was not the rival King who troubled her tonight, nor was it the King who employed her.

It was her own soul.

She had to leave. She was too involved. Of course she was. Realising the toll her job was taking on her daughter, Amy’s mother was urging her to come home. But as Amy stared out to the sands she was conflicted—she simply could not imagine abandoning the twins.

Ummi.

It hurt to hear that word from Clemira and Nakia and to know she would never be one herself.

Amy gulped in air, determined not to start crying again, but though she was dealing with things better these days—though for the most part she had come to terms with her fate—on nights like tonight sometimes the pain surfaced. Sometimes all she could do was mourn a time when happiness had seemed more certain.

Or had it?

She closed her eyes and tried to remember, tried to peer into the dark black hole that was the months and weeks leading up to her accident. Slowly, painfully slowly, she was starting to remember things—choosing her wedding dress, the invitations—but all she could see were images. She simply couldn’t recall how she had felt.

Amy had always worked with children, and had been about to marry and start a family of her own when a riding accident had ruined everything. Her hopes and dreams, her relationship and even her fertility had all been taken in one cruel swoop.

Maybe it was for best, Amy pondered—perhaps it was kinder not to remember happier times.

It had been a relief to get away from London, to escape the sympathy and the attention. But Amy’s mother had warned her about taking this job—had said it was too much and too soon, that she was running away from her problems. She hadn’t been.

The thought of being involved with two babies from birth, of having a very real role in their lives, had been so tempting. Queen Hannah had been well aware of the challenges her daughters would face, and she had told Amy about the disappointment that would sweep the country if her pregnancy produced girls—especially if it proved too dangerous for Hannah to get pregnant again.

Hannah had wanted the girls to be educated in London, to live as ordinary girls there. The plan had been that for four years Amy would take care of the girls in Alzan, but that they would then be schooled in the UK. Amy was to be a huge part of their lives—not a mother, of course, but more than an aunt.

How could she leave now?

How could she walk away because she didn’t like the way they were being treated?

Yet how could she stay?

Amy headed down the corridor to do a final check on the twins, her bare feet making no sound. It was a path she trod many times during the day and night, especially now that they were teething. The link from her suite to the twins’ sumptuous quarters was a familiar one, but as she entered the room Amy froze—for the sight that greeted her was far from familiar.

There was Emir, his back to her, holding Clemira, who slept on his chest, her head resting on his shoulder, as if it was where she belonged.

Emir stood, silent and strong, and there was a sadness in him that he would surely not want her to witness—a weariness that had only been visible in the first few days after Hannah’s death. Then he had gone into tahir—had taken himself to the desert for a time of ritual and deep prayer and contemplation. The man who returned to the palace had been different—a remote, aloof man who only occasionally deigned to visit the nursery.

He was far from aloof now as he cradled Clemira. He was wearing black silk lounge pants and nothing else. His top half was bare. Amy had seen him like this before, but then it had not moved her.

In the first dizzy days after the twins had been born they had grappled through the night with two tiny babies. Amy had changed one nappy and handed one fresh, clean baby to Emir, so he could take her to Hannah to feed. Things had been so different then—despite their concern for Hannah there had been love and laughter filling the palace and she missed it so, missed the man she had glimpsed then.

Tonight, for a moment, perhaps that man had returned.

He’d lost weight since then, she noted. His muscles were now a touch more defined. But there was such tenderness as he held his daughter. It was an intimate glimpse of father and daughter and again she doubted he would want it witnessed. She could sense the aching grief in his wide shoulders—so much so that for a bizarre moment Amy wanted to walk up to him, rest her hand there and offer him silent support. Yet she knew he would not want that, and given she was wearing only her nightdress it was better that she quietly slip away.

‘Are you considering leaving?

He turned around just as she was about to go. Amy could not look at him. Normally her head was covered, and her body too—she wondered if she would be chastised tomorrow for being unsuitably dressed—but for now Emir did not appear to notice.

She answered his question as best she could. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

Clemira stirred in his arms. Gently he placed her back in her crib and stared down at his daughter for the longest time before turning back to Amy.

‘You’ve been crying.’

‘There’s an awful lot to cry about.’ His black eyes did not reproach her this time. ‘I never thought I’d be considering leaving, When Hannah interviewed me—I mean Sheikha Queen—’

‘Hannah,’ he interrupted. ‘That is the name she requested you call her.’

Amy was grateful for the acknowledgement, but she could not speak of this in front of the twins—could not have this conversation without breaking down. So she wished him goodnight and headed back to her room.

‘Amy!’ he called out to her.

She kept on walking, determined to make it to her room before breaking down, stunned when he followed her through the door.

‘You cannot leave Alzan now. I think it would be better for the twins—’

‘Of course it would be better for the twins to have me stay!’ she interrupted, although she should not. Her voice rose again, although it should not. But she was furious. ‘Of course the twins should have somebody looking after them who loves them—except it’s not my job to love them. I’m an employee.’

She watched his eyes shutter for a moment as she hurled back his choice word, but he was right—she was an employee, and could be fired at any moment, could be removed from the twins’ lives by the flick of his hand. She was thankful for his brutal reminder earlier. She would do well to remember her place.

She brushed past him, trying to get to the safety of the balcony, for it was stifling with him in the room, but before she could get there he halted her.

‘You do not walk off when I’m talking to you!’

‘I do when you’re in my bedroom!’ Amy turned and faced him. ‘This happens to be the one place in this prison of a palace where I get to make the rules, where I get to speak as I choose, and if you don’t like it, if you don’t want to hear it, you can leave.’

She wanted him out of the room, she wanted him gone, and yet he stepped closer, and it was Amy who stepped back, acutely aware of his maleness, shamefully aware of her own body’s conflicted response.

Anger burnt and hissed, but something else did too, for he was an impressive male, supremely beautiful, and of course she had noticed—what woman would not? But down there in his office, or in the safety of the nursery, he was the King and the twins’ father, down there he was her boss, but here in this room he was something else.

Somehow she must not show it, so instead she hurled words. ‘I do love your children, and it’s tearing me apart to even think of walking away, but it’s been nearly a year since Hannah died and I can’t make excuses any more. If they were my children and you ignored them, then I’d have left you by now. The only difference is I’d have taken them with me …’ Her face was red with fury, her blue eyes awash with fresh tears, but there was something more—something she could not tell him. It meant she had to—had to—consider leaving, because sometimes when she looked at Emir she wanted the man he had once been to return, and shamefully, guiltily, despite herself, she wanted him.

She tore her eyes from his, terrified as to what he might see, and yet he stepped towards her, deliberately stepped towards her. She fought the urge to move towards him—to feel the wrap of his arms around her, for him to shield her from this hell.

It was a hell of his own making, though, Amy remembered, moving away from him and stepping out onto the balcony, once again ruing the sultry nights.

But it was not just the night that was oppressive. He had joined her outside. She gulped in air, wished the breeze would cool, for it was not just her face that was burning. She felt as if her body was on fire.

‘Soon I will marry …’ He saw her shoulders tense, watched her hands grip the balcony, and as the breeze caught her nightdress it outlined her shape, detailing soft curves. In that moment Emir could not speak—was this the first time he’d noticed her as a woman?

No.

But this was the first time he allowed himself to properly acknowledge it.

He had seen her in the nursery when he had visited the children a few weeks ago. That day he had sat through a difficult meeting with his elders and advisers, hearing that Queen Natasha was due to give birth soon and being told that soon he must marry.

Emir did not like to be told to do anything, and he rarely ever was.

But in this he was powerless and it did not sit well.

He had walked into the nursery, dark thoughts chasing him. But seeing Amy sitting reading to the twins, her blue eyes looking up, smiling as he entered, he had felt his black thoughts leave him. For the first time in months he had glimpsed peace. Had wanted to stay awhile with his children, with the woman he and Hannah had entrusted to care for them.

He had wanted to hide.

But a king could not hide.

Now what he saw was not so soothing. Now her soft femininity did not bring peace. For a year his passion might as well have been buried in the sands with his wife. For a year he had not fought temptation—there had been none. But something had changed since that moment in the nursery, since that day when he had noticed not just her smile but her mouth, not just her words but her voice. At first those thoughts had been stealthy, invading dreams over which he had no control, but now they were bolder and crept in by day. The scent of her perfume in an empty corridor might suddenly reach him, telling him the path she had recently walked, reminding him of a buried dream. And the mention of her name when she had requested a meeting had hauled him from loftier thoughts to ones more basic.

And basic were his thoughts now, yet he fought them.

He tried to look at the problem, not the temptation before him, the woman standing with her back to him. He wanted to turn her around, wanted to in a way he hadn’t in a long time. But he was not locked in dreams now. He had control here and he forced himself to speak on.

‘I did look through your contract and you are right. It has not been adhered to.’

Still she did not turn to look at him, though her body told her to. She wished he would leave—could not deal with him here even if it was to discuss the twins.