“His family is here,” Jessa continued because she had to. Because it was true. “Right here. And he has no idea that he ever had any parents but these.”
“Why am I not surprised that your sister would keep this secret as well?” Tariq demanded. “You are a family of liars!”
“He is a little boy who has only ever known these parents and this home!” Jessa cried. The wind whipped into her, racing down from the moors, and her hair danced between them like a copper flame. She shoved it back. “There’s no lie here! They are his parents by law, and in fact. He loves them, Tariq. He loves them!”
His hard mouth was set in an obstinate line. “He is not yet five years old. He will learn—”
“You lost your parents, and so did I,” Jessa interrupted, her heart pounding so hard in her head, her throat, that she thought she might faint. But she could not, so she did not. She searched his remote, angry face. “You know what it’s like to be ripped away from everything you know. You know! How could you do that to your own child?”
The door to the cottage opened, and it was as if time stopped.
“Aunt Jessa!” cried the sweet baby voice. Jessa’s heart dropped to her shoes.
“Tariq, you cannot do this!” Jessa hissed at him urgently, but she did not think he heard her. He had gone pale, and still. Slowly, he turned.
And everything ended, then and there.
My son.
Tariq stared at the boy, unable to process what he was seeing. It had been one thing to rage about a child in the abstract, and quite another to see a small, mischievouslooking little boy, still chubby of cheek and wild of hair from an earlier sleep, toddle out the front door.
Tariq was frozen into place, unable to move, as the boy scampered down the steps. Jessa threw a look over her shoulder as she moved to intercept the child, scooping him up into her arms. She murmured something Tariq couldn’t hear, which made the boy laugh and wiggle in her grasp.
The boy. Why could he not bring himself to use the child’s name? Jeremy.
Another figure appeared at the door. Jessa’s sister. She looked at the scene in front of her and blanched, telling Tariq that she knew exactly who he was. For a moment she and Tariq locked eyes, both struck still.
“Jessa,” the other woman said, keeping her voice calm for the child’s benefit though her eyes remained on Tariq, wary and scared. “What are you doing here? I thought you were on holiday.”
Jessa shifted and put the little boy back on the ground. “I was,” she said. She shrugged, half apology and half helplessness. “We thought we would stop by.”
She looked at Tariq then, her cinnamon eyes swimming with tears. She put out her hand and cupped the top of Jeremy’s head in her palm.
Jeremy, Tariq thought. My son’s name is Jeremy.
“How lovely,” the sister said, her voice strained. “You know how much Jeremy loves his aunt.”
Jessa stood before him, still touching the little boy, her gaze silently imploring. Tariq felt something rip apart inside of him, and the pain was so intense for a moment that he could not tell if what he felt was emotional or physical.
Jeremy shook off Jessa’s hand, his dark eyes fixed on the stranger he only just then seemed to notice standing before him. Tariq’s heart stopped in his chest as the little boy moved toward him in his lurching, jerky dance of a walk, stopping when he could peer up from beneath his thick black hair. He was close enough to touch, and yet Tariq could not move.
His eyes were the same dark green as Tariq’s. Tariq felt the impact of them like a body blow, but he did not react, he only returned the solemn, wide-eyed stare that was directed at him. Jeremy was as much Jessa’s child as his. Tariq could see her in the boy’s fairer skin, the shape of his eyes and brows, and that defiant little chin.
“Hello, Jeremy,” Tariq said, his voice thick. “I am…”
He paused, and he could feel the tension emanating from both Jessa and her sister. He could almost hear it. He glanced over and saw that Jessa’s sister had covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes wide and fearful. And then there was Jessa, who watched him with her heart in her gaze and tears making slow tracks down her cheeks. She stood with her arms at her sides, defeated, waiting for him to destroy everything she had worked so hard to protect.
She mouthed the word, Please.
“I am Tariq,” he said at last, gazing back down into eyes so like his own, because it was the only thing he could think of that was not threatening to anyone, and was also true.
Jeremy blinked.
Then he let out a giggle and turned back around, to hurtle himself toward the door of the cottage and toward the woman who stood there, still holding her hands over her mouth as if holding back a scream. He buried his face against her leg, his small arms grabbing on to her in a spontaneous hug. Then he tilted back his face, lit from within with the purest, most uncomplicated love that Tariq had ever seen.
“Hi Mommy,” Jeremy chirped, oblivious to the drama being played out around him.
Jessa’s sister smiled down at him, then looked back at Tariq, her own face stamped with the same love, though hers was fiercer, more protective. But no less pure.
Tariq felt his heart break into a thousand pieces inside his chest, and scatter like dust.
Tariq stood by the gate, his back to the cottage, while Jessa carried on a rushed conversation with her sister. She kept sneaking looks at his strong, proud back, wondering what he must be feeling rather than paying attention to Sharon. When her sister finally went inside and closed the door, she hurried down the path to his side.
He did not look at her. He kept his eyes trained on the fields across the lane, that swept to the horizon.
“Thank you,” she said, with all the feeling she’d tried to hide from Jeremy. And even from Sharon.
“I did not do anything that requires thanks,” Tariq said stiffly. Bitterly.
“You did not ruin a little boy’s life, when you could have and have been well within your rights,” Jessa said quietly. “I’ll thank you for that for the rest of my life.”
“I have no rights, as you have been at great pains to advise me.”
“I am sorry,” she said. She stepped closer to him, forcing him to look at her. His eyes seemed so sad that it made her want to weep. Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed hold of his hand. “I am so sorry.”
“So am I,” he said quietly, almost letting the wind snatch it away. He looked down at their joined hands. “More than I can say.”
She would not cry for him, not now, not when he held himself so aloof. She knew what that must mean—it was inevitable, really, after what they’d just been through. Jessa took a deep breath and forced herself to smile as she let go of him. She wanted to hold him and kiss him until the remoteness left him and he was once again alive and wild in her arms. She wanted to share the pain of leaving Jeremy behind, and make it easier, somehow, for both of them to bear. Oh, the things she wanted!
But she had always known that she could not have this man. Not for good. And she knew that he had lost something of far greater significance today than her. She could let him go just as she had let Jeremy go. It was the only way she knew how to love them both.
“You should return to Nur as you planned,” she said, proud that her voice was even, and showed none of her inner turmoil. She could let him go. She could. “Your country needs you.”
So do I! something inside of her screamed, but she bit it back, forced it down. He had never been hers to keep. She had known that from the start.
He seemed to look at her from very far away. He blinked, and some of the darkness receded, letting the green back in. Jessa felt a hard knot ease slightly inside her chest.
“And what about you?” he asked, something she couldn’t read passing across his face.
Jessa shrugged, shoving her hands into her pockets so that the fists she’d made could not betray her. “I’ll return to York, of course,” she said.
The wind surged
between them, cold and fierce. Jessa met his gaze and hoped hers was calm. She could do this. And if she broke down later, when she was alone, who would have to know?
“Is this your revenge, then?” he asked, his voice soft though there was a hardness around his eyes. “You wait until I am bleeding and then you turn the knife? Is this what I deserve for what you think I did to you five years ago?”
“No!” she gasped, as stunned as if he’d hit her. Her head reeled. “We are both to blame for what happened five years ago!”
“I am the one who left,” Tariq said bitterly.
“You had no choice,” Jessa replied. “And I was the one so silly she ran away for days. I left first.” She shook her head. “And how can we regret it? We made a beautiful child, a perfect child.”
“He is happy here.” Tariq said it as if it were fact, a statement, but Jessa could see the pain and uncertainty in the dark sheen of his gaze.
“He is,” she whispered fiercely. “I promise you, he is.”
She didn’t know what to do with the ache inside of her, the agony of feeling so apart from him. She was not the desperate, deeply depressed girl she had been when she had given Jeremy up. She was stronger now, and she knew that the way she loved Tariq was not like the infatuation of her youth. It was tempered with the suffering she’d endured, the way she had come to know him now, as the man she had always imagined him to be.
It might be that she could not bear to make this sacrifice after all.
He is not for you, she told herself fiercely. Don’t make this harder than it already is!
“Come,” Tariq said. He nodded toward the car. “I cannot be here any longer.”
Jessa looked back at the cottage, so cozy and inviting against the bleakness of the autumn fields, and yet a place she would always associate with this particular mourning—the kind she imagined might fade and change but would never entirely disappear. She pulled her coat tighter around her. Then she put her arm through Tariq’s and let him walk her to the car.
Jessa sat beside him in the plush backseat, feeling his grief as keenly as her own, as sharp as the wind still ripping down from the moors. Tariq did not speak for some time, his attention focused out the window, watching as fields gave way to villages, and villages to towns, as they made their way back through the country toward the city of York. Next to him, Jessa knew that his mind and his heart were still back at her sister’s cottage, held tight in Jeremy’s sticky little hands. She knew because hers were and, to some extent, always would be.
She had to hope that it would grow easier, as, indeed, in many ways it already had in the past few years. Seeing Jeremy thrive—seeing him happy and so deeply loved—healed parts of herself she had not known were broken. She hoped that someday it would do the same for Tariq.
“I do not know what family means,” Tariq said in a low voice. He turned toward her, catching her by surprise, seeming to fill the space between them. “I have never had anyone look at me the way that boy looked at your sister. His mother.” His gaze was so fierce then that it made Jessa catch her breath. “Except you. Even now, after everything I have done to you.”
Their eyes locked. He reached over and tucked a stray curl behind her ear, then took her face in his hands. The warmth of his touch sped through her veins, heating her from within.
“I have already lost a son,” he said, his voice almost too low, as if it hurt him. “I cannot lose you, Jessa. Not you, too.”
Joy eased into her then, nudging aside the grief. It was a trickle at first, and then, as he continued to look at her with his face so open, so honest, it widened until it flowed—a hard and complex kind of joy, flavored with all they had lost and all the ways they were tied together.
She reached across the space between them, over her fears and their shared grief, and slid her hand up to hold him as he held her—holding that strong, harsh face, looking deep into the promises in his dark green eyes.
“Then you won’t,” she whispered as if it were a vow.
She would let the fear go this time, instead of him.
She would love him as long as he let her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HE HEARD her laughter before he saw her.
Tariq strode down the wide palace corridor, past the ancient tapestries and archaeological pieces that told the story of Nur’s long history in each successive niche along the way. The floor beneath his feet was tiled, mosaics stretching before him and behind him, all in vibrant colors as befit the royal palace of a king. When he reached the wide, arched doors that opened into the palace’s interior courtyard, he paused.
Jessa was so beautiful, she took his breath away. She was a shock of cinnamon and copper against the brilliant blue sky, the white walls, and the palm trees that clanked gently overhead in the afternoon breeze. She seemed brighter to him than the vivid flowering plants that spilled from the balconies on the higher floors, and the sparkle of the fountain in the courtyard’s center. She had set aside her novel and was watching the antics of two plump little birds who danced on the fountain’s edge. She wore a long linen tunic over loose trousers in the fashion of his people, her feet in thonged sandals. Around her neck she wore a piece of jade suspended from a chain that she had found in one of the city’s marketplaces.
She looked as if she belonged exactly where she was.
Mine, he thought, not for the first time.
He crossed to her, smiling when she seemed to sense him and glanced around—smiling more when her face lit up.
“I thought you would be gone until tomorrow,” she said, her delight evident in her voice, in the gleam in her eyes, though she did not throw herself into his arms as she might have in a less public area of the palace.
“My business concluded early,” he said. He had made sure of it—he wanted to be away from Jessa less and less. In some sense, she was the only family he had ever known. What they had lost together made him feel more bound to her than he had ever been to another human being. And he could think of only one way to ensure that he never need be apart from her again. The birds chattered at him from their new perch on the higher rim of the fountain. “You have been here nearly a month and still you are fascinated by the birds?” He eyed her. “Perhaps you should get out more.”
“Perhaps I should,” she agreed. He watched as her gaze shuttered, hiding her feelings from him as she still did from time to time whenever any hint of a discussion of their future appeared. It was time to end it.
“As a matter of fact,” he said quietly, “that is what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Getting out?” she asked, frowning slightly.
“In a manner of speaking,” he said. He looked down at her, wanting to pull her into his arms and kiss his way into this discussion. That seemed to be the language in which they were both fluent. “I want to talk about the future. You and me.”
Jessa went very still. The splash of water in the fountain behind her was all Tariq heard for a long moment, while her eyes went dark.
Then she lifted her chin, defiant and brave to the end. “There is no need,” she said with a certain grace, drawing herself up and onto her feet. She picked up her book and tucked it underneath her arm with stiff, jerky movements. “I have always known this day was coming.”
“Have you?” he asked mildly.
“Of course,” she said briskly. “One of the first things you told me when you walked into my office was that you needed to get married. Naturally, you must do your duty to your country.”
She held her head high as she skirted around him. She headed across the courtyard and up the wide steps toward his private quarters. Tariq followed, watching the sway of her hips in the soft linen and admiring the ramrod straightness of her spine. He followed her inside the palace and all the way into the vast bedroom suite, where he leaned against the bed and watched her look wildly around, as if searching for something.
“Never fear,” she said in the same false tone, turning to face him. “I have no intenti
on of making this awkward for either of us. I will simply pack a few things and be out of your way in no time.”
She looked as if she might change her mind and bolt for the door.
“You are so determined to leave me,” he drawled, amused. “It is almost a shame that I have no intention of letting you do so.”
She froze in place, her face expressionless while her eyes burned hot.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
“What do you think I mean?” he asked.
For a moment she only stared at him.
“I will not be in your harem!” she muttered, scandalized. “How could you suggest such a thing?”
“I am not planning to collect a harem.” His mouth crooked up in one corner. “Assuming, of course, you behave.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, though it was more like a sob.
“You do.” He moved closer to her, so he could reach out and hold her by her slender shoulders. “You have simply decided it cannot happen. I do not know why.”
Her mouth worked, and she flushed a deep, hot red.
“You must have a queen who is worthy of you,” she said after a moment. “One who is your equal in every way.”
“I must have you,” he replied simply, leaning forward to kiss her. Her lips clung to his for a long, sweet moment, and then she pulled back to frown at him.
“No,” she said firmly.
“No?”
“I won’t marry you,” she gritted out, and moved out of his grip. She rubbed at her arms for a moment, her head bent.
Tariq ordered himself to be patient. “Why not?” he asked, in a far easier tone than the possessiveness that clawed at him demanded.
She looked at him. Her lips pressed together, and her hands balled into fists at her side.
“I love you,” she blurted out, and then sighed slightly, as if it hurt to say aloud, even as sweet triumph washed through Tariq—making him want to roar out his victory, shout it from the rooftops. When she looked at him again, her eyes were overly bright, but her chin was high. “I cannot marry a man who does not love me,” she said. Bravely and definitively. “Not even you.”
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