His vizier was waiting for Zavian’s return.
“Where are you going?” asked Naseer. Zavian stopped in his tracks and shook his head.
“Back to the reception, of course.”
“There’s no of course about it,” said Naseer in a tone most unlike his usual respectful one. “You and I need to talk.”
“Naseer!” Zavian said. “The last thing I wish to do now is to talk to you.”
“Zavian!” said Naseer, using the same tone. “This is something I should have done years ago. And would have, if I’d listened to the girl’s grandfather, rather than your father! Now, come with me.”
“But—”
“The rest can wait, this can’t.”
Naseer’s tone chastened Zavian. “What’s happened?”
Naseer’s mouth was a firm line as he shot him a dark look before proceeding toward a stateroom. Zavian entered, and Naseer closed the door firmly behind them. The place was in shadow and private.
Neither made to sit down. Naseer turned and crossed his arms, his back to the door. “Your father was a tough man, Zavian, and he was especially tough on you.”
Zavian shrugged. “It’s of no importance now.”
“Yes, it is. It made you the man you are today. Also tough, strong and determined, but you lost something you had in abundance as a boy. You lost your ability to be affectionate, you stopped showing your love, and eventually, you stopped feeling that love. Any emotion you had became twisted into something else. Power, lust…” Naseer shook his hand, indicating a range of other things. And then he pointed to where the feast had just taken place. “And that, in there, shows your ineptness.” He shook his head. “I’ve been remiss. I thought…”
“What did you think?” Any clue, Zavian would gratefully have received.
“I thought your father was right. At one time, anyway. I thought that maybe the soft heart you had in your youth was a weakness, a hindrance.” He pursed his lips with regret. “But it was only later that I realized it wasn’t because your father considered your affection weak that he wanted to eradicate it, but because he was jealous and scared.” He looked Zavian directly in the eye. “It was he who was the weak man. And it was his weakness which was the end of him. You have a capacity for greatness, which your father never had.” He stepped closer to Zavian, closer than was ever usual between a king and his subject. “Find your heart again, Zavian. For only that will connect you with your people. For only that will connect you with the woman who I know, deep down, you love.” He nodded, and stepped away. “That is all I have to say. Go now and think about what I have said. Your announcement has been well received, if not with a little puzzlement at its suddenness. Everyone, excepting your cabinet and ministers, was expecting an announcement of betrothal between you and the Tawazun sheikha.”
“That will now fall to Roshan.”
“Yes, and he had better not fail us. But that is up to him and his advisers to pursue. For us, all is dependent on you persuading Gabrielle that you truly do want to wed her. She loves you, anyone can see that. But also anyone can see that she is an extraordinary woman who needs security from her husband, which she has never experienced in the rest of her life. And the only thing she can trust is the one thing you need to find again in your heart.” The vizier tapped Zavian on his chest as he said the final words, in a gesture far too familiar for one of his advisers, but reminiscent of their relationship when Zavian was young.
As Zavian watched Naseer walk away and return to the reception to ensure that any rough water was smoothed over, Zavian realized he’d just been given a reprimand and told to sort himself out. For a moment, he wavered as to whether to be angry with his vizier but the moment passed, and he smiled to himself. Because he knew, deep down, that Naseer was correct.
Zavian returned to the sanctity of his suite of rooms and paced the floor. He felt as if he’d been run over by a truck. He stopped by the window and looked, unseeing, into the night. No, not a truck, but by a force of a woman who’d been deprived of security and love her whole life, and a woman who was also strong enough to hold out for what she wanted.
He rubbed his chest, where a deep ache lay. Between Gabrielle and his vizier, he felt as if his heart had been cracked open like a walnut shell, revealing a tender, shy, vulnerable center. His love ran deep, body deep, soul deep. The only question was, how could he convince her, given every other heartless thing he’d done in his life, done to her, that he loved her—truly and forever?
He stopped pacing at his desk and glanced down. Her name swam into view. The monograph she’d written on the Khasham Qur’an. Dr. Gabrielle Taylor. He flicked it open. Words, full of words. Words carefully placed together to create a whole, a truth, which no one could now dispute. Before her monograph, there had been uncertainty around the origins, but the words had confirmed everything. Without the words, all was uncertainty, but now with them, there was a single truth which no one could challenge. No one.
He closed her book and sat down and put his head in his hands. His head throbbed with the painful knowledge that he’d got so much, so wrong. With his love of black and white, he’d baldly said the words to her, informed her that he loved her. But it wasn’t enough to convey the meaning. For that he needed subtlety and passion. For that… his eyes strayed to the book of poetry… he needed poetry.
It was early in the morning the next day when he strode through the palace to Gabrielle’s rooms. After a sleepless night, he could wait no longer. He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He hesitated, pulled out his phone and rang. But again there was no answer and it wasn’t ringing inside the room. He knocked again. Tentatively he opened the door, but all hesitation left him at what he saw there. The room was empty, clear of her things. He strode in, wanting to see if anything had been left behind. But there was nothing.
He called the housekeeping people. They’d tidied her room, as she’d requested before she left.
Left where? No one knew.
“Then find out!” He slammed down the phone. Zavian stormed onto the terrace, gripped the wall, and looked around his city as if hoping to find her. The heat was intense, both inside of him and outside now. He needed air, he needed to breathe. But most of all, he needed her.
His phone rang, and he answered it immediately. He rang off as soon as he heard the information he needed. Her cell phone had been traced to a location in the desert. As he slipped his phone back into his pocket, his mind went over the options. No, there was only one place she’d gone to. And it wasn’t the border as others had suggested. It was somewhere much more meaningful than that. It was somewhere he’d stopped her going to when she’d first arrived. She was returning to the one place where she’d ever been certain of being loved.
Gabrielle crunched the Landrover into gear and headed north, into the desert. It was where she wanted to be, and she was sure that it was where no one would think to look, least of all Zavian.
It was night before she reached it. The old house was deserted now, and the nearby village was quiet. There was a crescent moon perched above the horizon, and stars were beginning to emerge. She drove up to the high walls and unlocked the gates. The keys had always been on her keyring. For the past year, they’d been a mere reminder of a past life, but now they were useful again. She parked the Landrover in front of the stables, now empty of their white Arab horses. The hinges on the wooden doors had come loose, the doors hanging.
She got out of the vehicle and left her bags at the front door. She’d let herself into her old family home later. But now she’d explore, for the last time, the place where her grandfather had raised her, and taught her the importance of love.
She pushed open the gate to the walled courtyard and was immediately taken back in time. Here, sheltered from the fierce winds of the desert, and fed by the underground streams, the plants, shrubs and trees still flourished. A swift flew overhead, catching the last insects in the rapidly fading twilight. The scent of the flowers and shrubs was overpowering after the dryness of the desert.
She walked down the path, which led to the center of the gardens. She trailed her fingers along the leaves, sticky with nectar, and looked up into the towering trees, untouched by a gardener’s hands for years. Then she heard it, a songbird and the trickle of water.
She followed the sound to the central fountain. A small bird has tilted his beak back and was singing loudly in the silence of the desert.
“Just you and me, birdie,” she said, taking a seat on the bench. The bird continued to sing, somehow tame, not frightened by this stranger in the midst of its loneliness.
She couldn’t have said how long she sat listening to the bird but was suddenly aware that it had stopped, and was no longer on the fountain. And that darkness had fallen. A stray beam of moonlight filtered through the leaves, casting shimmering shadows over the water. It was only then that the tears came.
She stayed sitting without moving, as the tears streamed down her face from deep inside of her. She’d kept them in too long, she knew. Ever since that day, twelve months before, when she’d realized she had to leave Zavian. And had realized with equal certainty that she loved him.
She’d done her best to do the right thing, just as her grandfather had always told her she should. And she’d trust nothing less than love, just as her grandfather had told her. He’d loved her grandmother for every minute of her short life, just as her parents had loved each other. Her grandfather had shown her that there was nothing more important than love in everything he did, everything he’d said.
So, she’d walked away from Zavian, and made sure he couldn’t follow. She’d been outwitted then, but she’d make sure she wasn’t outwitted now because she refused to compromise on this one point. She knew what happened to couples without love. Zavian’s parents were examples of that.
She’d thought he’d brought her here to punish her for leaving him, by rekindling their passion only for him to discard her. Given how angry he’d been, retribution was the only thing she could imagine. After all, it was something his father had been expert at.
And maybe he had at first, but now he wanted her back. But how could she stay when he didn’t love her? If the walls around his heart were so strong that they refused to feel, what if circumstances dictated she should no longer be with him? What if people turned against her and wanted her gone? Without love, she was disposable. And she refused to be that. She was worth more than that. Her parents’ and grandparents’ love for each other had shown her that, and her grandfather’s constant love and advice had driven the point home.
She suddenly felt incredibly tired. Drained. Exhausted. All she wanted was to curl up and stop thinking, stop feeling. She took a deep breath of the scented, familiar air—air that had surrounded her growing up—and let it infiltrate her body, sending a soothing calm to her frayed nerves. She succumbed to temptation and lay down. Within seconds she was asleep.
Zavian clunked his door shut firmly, and looked up at the house where he’d fallen in love with Gabrielle. Of course, then, he hadn’t admitted it. It was only now that he could, and he saw it through different eyes. The building’s traditional facade, the smell of the dry desert air edged with perfumes coming from the abundant garden, took him back immediately to those days when they’d first discovered each other. The sights and sounds by-passed his mind—the place where he’d lived his life—and went straight to the place he’d spent his whole life denying, until now—his heart.
He rubbed his chest with the heel of his hand to try to rid it of the ache, which was growing as he realized he might have missed Gabrielle and lost her. Time was running out. He looked with increasing desperation around the building. No lights were on. For a moment, Zavian wondered if he’d been correct about her destination. Then he shone the light from his phone around the courtyard, and it caught the gleam of a vehicle parked in front of the stables. He went over to it. It was hers all right. But where was she? He gave the stables a cursory look, but there was no sign of her there, nor in the vehicle. And there were no lights on in the house.
Then he heard it—the sound of a nocturnal bird in the gardens. He huffed a relieved sigh. Of course. She’d always loved those gardens. He pushed open the gate and walked around the perimeter of the gardens, checking each arbor carefully before moving on. The outside path wound in like a snail’s shell, moving ever closer to its central feature—the fountain.
He stopped as soon as he saw her. She was curled up along the bench, her head propped on her arm, facing the fountain as if she’d found peace there before her eyes had fluttered closed. Under the moonlight, he could see her features were relaxed, but there was a glistening smudge beneath her eyes, and her abaya against which her cheek pressed was dark with tears.
His immediate urge was to go to her, to pull her into his arms and hold her until the hurt went away. But he now knew, because of her, that he couldn’t erase the pain. It was beyond his ability to control people, to change people, to make the pain go away, or to bring happiness. All he could do was be here for her, to try to help her if she wanted help, and ask her to stay. And to do that, he had to control himself, not anyone else. He drew in a deep breath and flexed his hands and stepped forward.
The splash of water had lulled her to sleep, and that same sense of peace filled her as she awoke. Gabrielle didn’t open her eyes immediately. The voice in her head was as calming as the water which flowed from the broken fountain across the once magnificent paved areas to the lush garden. Then she heard it again—her name. And it wasn’t in her dreams any longer.
She opened her eyes with a start as she tried to figure out where she was, and more importantly, who she was with.
The moon was higher now and, together with the stars, they gifted the landscape—the leaves, the water, the stone—with a silver mystery.
“Gabrielle?” His voice was soft but unmistakable.
She jumped up with a cry. “Zavian! What are you doing here?”
He didn’t move, simply sat there, looking up at her, making no move to come to her. She pressed her hand against her heart. “You startled me. I thought I was alone.”
“I’m sorry to surprise you, but you know we couldn’t leave it like that.”
She stepped away from him, not knowing what he was here for, unsure of what was to come. “You’re wrong. We have to leave it like that.”
He reached out for her hand, and she couldn’t do anything but accept it. He slid his fingers through hers and gripped it like a lifeline.
“I’m so sorry for everything that has happened.”
“You’ve come here to apologize?”
“Amongst other things, yes. I tried to buy you, Gabrielle.” He shook his head. “Even as I say those words, it sounds crazy. I can hardly believe that is what I did.”
“Crazy is an understatement.”
“And I know you’re angry with me, rightly so. But I’m a different person now. You’ve made me that different person.”
“Not too different, I hope,” she said, with a faint smile.
“I love you, Gabrielle. And I cannot live without you.”
Her eyes filled with tears to hear the words she’d waited so long to hear, to believe the prayer he’d offered her. Her mind stilled, and her speech froze. The silence between them was broken only by the rustle of leaves that had grown above the protection of the wall, and the murmur of the water as it flowed across the weed-clogged rills.
“Gabrielle…” His words sounded as if they’d been wrenched from him. “Speak to me.”
She gasped in a breath, refusing to believe his words. She had to take them at face value. She couldn’t risk doing anything else. “You’re just saying the words you know I want to hear.”
He shook his head. “No. Not anymore. Gabrielle, I can’t speak without feeling now.”
He licked his lips, and then he started to speak, and Gabrielle could hardly believe her ears.
“Between what is said and not meant
And what is meant and not said
Most of love is lost.”
This was no punchy, bullet-pointed sentence, no instruction, no adamant statement. This was poetry. After he’d finished speaking, she shook her head, hardly daring to believe her ears.
“‘Most of Love is Lost’ by Gibran Khalil Gibran,” murmured Gabrielle.
Zavian nodded. “It seemed apt.” He shrugged. “I have failed, Gabrielle, to persuade you that I love you. Every time I tried, I seemed to send you further from me. I am no good with words and like the poet says, I see my love disappearing like smoke into the air, lost between words said, and words not said.” He opened his arms in a gesture of surrender. “That’s it. I have no more words to say or leave unsaid. It’s up to you to believe in my love, or else it is lost. Do you trust my love is real? That is what it comes down to.”
Gabrielle’s frown deepened, and she glanced at him, unsure now, and edgy. She nodded, too rapidly, as if trying to understand something. But still, she didn’t speak.
He smiled. “It seems you are at a loss for words, so I must continue. Without you, my life is a half-life, a life lived behind a heavy curtain, looking out at the world, but not hearing it, not feeling it, not participating in it. You’ve shown me that life cannot be lived by calculation alone. It needs heart. And you have mine.” He brought their joined hands to his lips and kissed the back of her hand. “So, you see, I cannot do without you. Because if you go, you will take my heart, and I cannot survive.”
She half-laughed, half-sobbed.
“Marry me, Gabrielle. Please, marry me. Together we can deal with whatever comes our way. We’re stronger together. We’re right together. We’re meant to be together. I feel it profoundly, deeply, here inside. Please, marry me. Will you share my life with me, will you love me, and will you bear my children, will you allow me to care for you, adore you, cherish you always, and to be obsessed by you, forever?”
“Forever is a long time,” she said with a smile.
“Too long without you. Not long enough with you.”
She grinned and shook her head.
“Marry me, Gabrielle.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
It was the only word that could emerge before his lips claimed hers for a kiss, which felt like it would go on for a thousand years… or two.