“Practice,” he said with an apologetic shrug.
“Amazing.”
She replaced the top piece of paper and then turned to him. “Thank you, Amit. I think you’re very talented.”
“It’s nothing,” he demurred.
“Not at all. I couldn’t draw to save my life. When did you learn?”
“I don’t know if I ever learned, so to speak. It’s just something I worked out I could do one day.” He studied the picture of her with a critical eye, then lifted his attention to Chloe’s face. When he looked at her, it was as a craftsman might appraise a block of marble, searching it for crenulations and ridges, for the unique marks that made it distinguishable. “I must get it from my mother,” he said with a wry smile, moving away from her to pull the window closed, darkening the room once more. “My father hasn’t an artistic bone in his body.”
Chloe nodded in agreement, but inside, something churned. Raffa mightn’t be an artist, but he was a work of art. All six and a half feet of him, broadly muscled, so wonderfully framed, his long hair, his intelligent eyes.
Chloe and Amit spent several more hours together, wandering the palace, and Amit told her lots of facts she hadn’t known. The history of various wings, the hallway, the paintings that hung. On the subject of the native flowers he was particularly knowledgeable. He knew their botanical names as well as their ordinary, and from where each came. Each had been gathered from different parts of Ras El Kida, selected for their beauty but also for their significance.
“Peace is still relatively new to our people, Your Highness,” he said, as they approached her suite of rooms. “My grandfather would remember a time when each corner of this kingdom was at war, brutally murdering, stealing, violence erupting over the smallest of matters. The tradition of this family is part of the symbolism of unification.”
“Strange then that your grandfather would insist on me becoming Sheikha.”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “I mean, not when you consider the alternatives.”
“What were the alternatives?”
“Two brides from powerful families that hated one another. Both had been … of interest… to the Sheikh. He could marry neither without causing extreme offence to the other, and thus risking a return to hostilities.” Amit’s smile showed he had no idea that Chloe hadn’t known this fact. “Lucky I will never have to think of such things, eh?”
Chloe returned his smile but it felt heavy on her face. “Lucky indeed.”
She was distracted over dinner. Raffa didn’t join her, and left to her own devices and thoughts, her mind shifted this new piece of information. It was something she wished she’d known earlier. It wouldn’t have changed how she felt. But it might have answered questions that had been weighing heavily inside of her. Both of their fathers had wanted this marriage; she had agreed because she’d wanted to honour her father, who had never even cared that she was alive. And she’d agreed because she’d loved Malik. She’d hoped he had loved her too. That at least one of the men who was instrumental in her instalment as Sheikha of this great kingdom had brought her into this marriage because of love and affection.
And maybe that was true.
Maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t matter – because either way, Chloe’s marriage existed to stop a potential war. And their baby would cement that.
What had she thought? That there was no one else in Raffa’s life? No other bridal contender? How foolish. Of course there had been. Of course there had been many!
He had a child, for goodness sake.
It wasn’t that which hurt her.
It was the purely mercenary justification for their marriage. It was the certainty that he hadn’t married her for his father, for love of anyone; it had been love of his country, just as he’d said.
And was that so bad?
A week later, there was an official function at the palace, the kind of event Chloe had used to avoid like the plague, unless formally summoned by her husband. There had been no need for Raffa to summons her on this occasion.
He’d sent word from his staff to hers that she’d be expected in the ballroom by nine o’clock, and an hour later, a dress had arrived along with a seamstress, who made` sure it fitted perfectly.
It was the kind of attention to detail he’d never demonstrated before, but now that she was in the palace, Chloe supposed, such considerations were part of the package.
She was a queen.
It was only when the dress was zipped in place, and a crown of glorious, sparkling gems placed on top of blonde hair that had been styled in loose waves around her face, that Chloe accepted she’d been running from this fate the whole time.
She’d married Raffa but she hadn’t really wanted to be his wife. She had married him without truly picking up the mantle of what that meant.
Well, no longer.
She straightened her spine, staring back at her reflection. The dress was sensational – a dark green that hugged her torso and then fell into a wide, full skirt, with beading at the very bottom of it, that swished when she walked. She looked every bit the Queen of Ras el Kida and tonight, she would show that to the world.
It was an imperceptible shift, and yet, when Chloe approached the ballroom, she felt it. She felt power course through her, and as the doors were pushed open to admit her, a hush fell.
The room was full of dignitaries, but her eyes landed immediately on her husband, the Sheikh. He was taller than most, broader, larger than life, with his hair scraped into a bun, his ruggedly autocratic face terse as he spoke to three men she didn’t recognize. But at her arrival, the room’s silence, he turned towards the doors. Their eyes locked and
