love but it was concern, but for how long would she even retain that hold on him if she continued to keep her secrets? Naturally he was curious, naturally sooner or later he would need to know the truth about her past. For the first time she accepted that telling Zahir the truth was unavoidable and a bridge she would eventually have to cross.
Zahir’s sister, Hayat, accompanied the consultant, who had tended her through her pregnancies. A well-built older man with a studious manner, he was calm and practical and exactly what Saffy needed to reinforce her belief that a little nausea was not serious cause for concern.
‘The baby’s father is very worried about your health,’ the doctor declared. ‘It is a challenge of civility to tell a king he must not worry unduly.’
Hayat was waiting outside to ask Saffy to join her for tea. Dressed in a light summer dress in shades of blue, Saffy accompanied her sister-in-law to the rear of the palace complex where she and her husband and children lived. Her husband, Rahim, was a senior doctor at the city hospital and their three little girls occupied much of Hayat and Saffy’s conversation until a maid arrived to take the children out to the gardens to play.
Tea with tiny sweet cakes was served on a shaded balcony.
‘My brother needs to learn to say no,’ Hayat told Saffy firmly. ‘The same day he brings you home a bride he was immediately dragged into some government squabble about security concerns and forced to abandon you. You will quickly discover that Zahir doesn’t know how to say no to the demands made on his time.’
Saffy simply smiled, warmed by the frank tongue that Hayat appeared to share with her brother. ‘Zahir was always very conscientious. Thank you for being so welcoming, Hayat. I appreciate it.’
‘I know how much you and Zahir went through when you were married five years ago and our people now have a very good idea as well,’ Hayat commented, her brown eyes level and serious. ‘Zahir was wise when he chose to issue a public statement, admitting that he was remarrying the woman whom his father once forced him to divorce.’
Saffy stiffened in surprise at that revelation. ‘I had no idea there had been any statement made about our marriage!’ she exclaimed.
‘Or that now my brother, the king, is forced to tell lies in public to protect you?’ another louder voice interposed from the doorway behind them and both women’s heads whipped around in astonishment at the interruption.
‘Akram!’ Hayat snapped in a warning tone at her youngest brother before turning back to Saffy with her face flushed and her expression uneasy to say, ‘Please excuse me for a moment.’
But Zahir’s volatile kid brother had worked up too much of a head of steam to be denied the confrontation with his brother’s wife that his temper clearly craved. He concentrated his attention on Saffy, who was already starting to rise from her chair in dismay. ‘You walked out on my brother—you deserted him after all he had endured to keep you as a wife against our father’s wishes!’ he accused with loathing. ‘Zahir was imprisoned, tortured and beaten for your benefit and then you threw your marriage away by divorcing him when he needed your loyalty most!’
Her expression distraught, Hayat was pleading with her angry brother to keep quiet while simultaneously yanking on his arm in an unsuccessful effort to physically drag him away.
Saffy could barely part her numb lips. She was in serious shock from Akram’s ringing condemnation of her behaviour. And what on earth was he talking about? Imprisoned, tortured, beaten? Zahir?
‘I will deal with this…’ and another more familiar voice intervened, cutting across the row going on between Hayat and Akram with commanding force.
Trembling, Saffy focused on Zahir where he stood like a bronzed statue in the centre of the light, airy reception room, coldly surveying his squabbling siblings. He spoke in his own language at length to Akram and Hayat backed off, dropping her head apologetically. Whatever Zahir told his brother, Akram turned his head in consternation to stare back at Saffy with frowning disbelief. He took a half-step towards her and muttered uncomfortably, ‘I am very sorry. It seems I got everything wrong.’
‘Yes, Zahir divorced me,’ Saffy pointed out ruefully.
‘Even so, I should never have spoken to you in that way or approached you in a temper. It was not my business,’ Akram mumbled, his face very flushed, his discomfiture in Zahir’s thunderous presence pronounced. ‘Over the years it seems I reached the wrong conclusions and, as my brother has reminded me, I was never party to the true facts of what happened between you.’
An uneasy silence fell. Zahir was still glaring angrily at his kid brother.
‘No harm done,’ Saffy said awkwardly, keen to dispel the tension. ‘I assume that Zahir has told you what really happened and that you no longer think so badly of me. Now, if you would all excuse me…’
‘Where are you going?’ Zahir demanded.
‘Only for a walk. I’d like to be alone for a while,’ she muttered tightly.
‘I will accompany you,’ Zahir pronounced.
‘No…I only want a minute alone,’ Saffy whispered pleadingly, because she was thinking about what Akram had hurled at her and reaching the worst possible conclusions. Zahir had been punished by his father for defying him by marrying her? Why had that possibility never occurred to her before? Why had she been so wrapped up in her own misery that it had never occurred to her that Zahir might be dealing with bad things too? But, imprisoned, tortured, beaten…surely not? Was that possible? Would his father have subjected his son to such brutal intimidation? According to his reputation, King Fareed had been responsible for many atrocities. She thought of Zahir’s appallingly scarred back and a sense of cold fear of the unknown and of such cruelty infiltrated her. But if Zahir had suffered like that, why hadn’t he told her?
When Saffy actually focused enough to recognise where her wandering feet had carried her, she realised that she was back in the old part of the palace where she had once lived. She walked down a dim corridor and cast open the door of the room that had once been theirs. It shook her that it was still furnished the same, untouched by time or alteration, and she walked in with a compulsive shiver of remembrance of the past.
A thousand images engulfed her all at once and she reeled from memories of Zahir watching her with wary eyes, his silences, sudden absences and his refusal to answer questions. Had he been hiding stuff from her that she should have guessed? Was Akram telling the truth? She couldn’t bear that suspicion, wasn’t sure she could ever live with any discovery that painful…
‘I should have had this place cleared…’ Zahir murmured from behind her. ‘But I used to come here to think about you.’
Saffy turned round, her face pale as milk, her eyes nakedly vulnerable. ‘When? After the divorce? I think you need to start talking, Zahir…and maybe I do too,’ she acknowledged unevenly.
‘After I married you, my brother Omar asked me if I was insane to challenge our father to that extent,’ Zahir admitted with curt reluctance. ‘But at first I genuinely had no idea what I was dealing with: Omar had protected me too much. He kept a lot of secrets. I was the younger son, the junior army officer, and I wasn’t part of the inner circle of people who knew what a monster my father had become on a diet of unfettered power.’
‘So, you must have regretted marrying me rather quickly,’ Saffy assumed, searching the lean strong features she loved for every passing nuance of expression and sinking down on the edge of the bed where she had often cried her heart out with loneliness.
His handsome mouth hardened. ‘I only ever regretted the unnatural lifestyle which our marriage inflicted on you. I had no regrets on my own behalf.’
‘That’s a kind thing to say but it can’t be the way you really felt.’
‘I loved you more than life,’ Zahir breathed starkly. ‘My mistake was in rebelling against my father and bringing you back here to become the equivalent of a hostage. I should have married