For the fifth evening in a row, Harper was absent when Zaid walked into the dining room. The table was set with only one place setting.
He called for one of her attendants. "Where is my wife?"
The words tasted heavy and possessive as they left his mouth. Arranged marriage or not, she was his wife. She was his. And he would let no one, not even Harper, herself, forget that mere fact.
"I'm afraid she won't be joining you," the attendant said.
"Is she ill?"
“No, sir.”
“Has she somehow lost her ability to descend a staircase?”
“Not that I am aware.”
Zaid strode out of the room, his frustration mounting. He expected more from her. She was an adult, after all. Soon she would be a mother. There was no room left in either of their lives for indulging in the luxury of hurt feelings and self-pity.
He made quick strides upstairs, unceremoniously letting himself into Harper's apartment, momentarily shocked as the scent of her perfume, the essence of her, surrounded him.
She looked up from the medical journal she had been reading, her eyes widening slightly at the sight of him. Then the shock receded, leaving behind an annoyed expression that danced with his own.
"You are refusing food now?" Zaid asked. "Does that not strike you as a touch melodramatic?"
"I'm not refusing food," Harper said. "I'm refusing your company. Though I suppose that only works when the person you're avoiding doesn't have access to your apartment."
"You're being childish."
"And you are intruding."
She closed her book and stood, her pregnant stomach more pronounced than Zaid remembered.
It seemed impossible. Less than a week had passed since he'd seen her last, since she'd castigated him for his refusal to bow down to that wretched weakness that had taken up shelter in his very core. And yet there was a new roundness to her figure.
He forced his eyes away from her stomach, his mind away from the child residing within. "I came to make sure you were well."
"Perfectly well." She placed the book back on one of the shelves and turned to face him, crossing her arms over her swollen chest. "Is there something else I can help you with?"
"You can't continue behaving like this," he said. "People are starting to talk."
"People have talked ever since you brought me here. I'm the pregnant mistress no one knew you had." The laugh faded, shadowed by a sadness that crept into her expression, as if the thing she had been laughing about she no longer found funny. She turned from him again. "Talk will happen. We can't avoid it. When we're in public, we'll play the perfect, happy couple. But in the privacy of this palace, I expect you to respect my boundaries."
Zaid reposed against the curved archway. "And these boundaries require that you participate in a hunger strike?"
"No. But they do require time away...from you...from your responsibility to your country." She breathed out a sigh, edging closer to him, every move hesitant. "You were right, what you said in the hospital. We should never have overstepped that line. We should never should have allowed our relationship to become physical."
"I'm asking you for dinner, not sex."
"It doesn't matter." She shook her head. "This isn't just about us. Soon there will be another life to consider. A child. A baby girl. And she won't have the luxury of understanding what we, as adults, understand."
"So your plan is to sequester yourself inside your apartment until the child comes of age?"
"Not at all," Harper said. She sucked in a deep breath. "I have given it thought, and I have decided to move back to the States. Not right away, of course. According to my itinerary, we still have several public functions to attend. There's too much focus on Gulzar right now, and I'm in no condition to fly. I'll move into one of the other residences at first. And then, when the baby is born, after enough time has passed..."
The blood in Zaid's veins froze, rendering his limbs numb. "You can't. The child is to be raised in Gulzar. We agreed."
"A girl can't rule, Zaid."
"It makes no difference."
"It makes a world of difference," Harper said. "This whole arrangement was predicated on the probability of a male child. Without an heir, the child is of no use to you. And neither am I."
She kept her eyes on his, a question in them. He wanted to pull her to him, hold her close, tell her none of it mattered. But something stopped him, kept him from reaching for her.
Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the sonogram picture. "I thought you might want this back."
Fire danced in her eyes as she looked at the picture. "I have a copy," she said. "This was the father's copy."
Zaid looked down at the picture and tightened his grip as something welled up inside him, a terrifying protectiveness. He forced himself to release it again, and in that moment, before he could take it back, she snatched it from him.
"But I suppose that was presumptuous of me."
"Yes." Zaid forced himself to sound unaffected. Because he was unaffected. He would be unaffected. It was his duty, his birthright. "It was."
The sea of hurt in her eyes swallowed the fire that had emblazoned her. Then, as if not to be buried beneath the tears, they glossed over, turning hard. A sea of glass.
"Then I guess there is nothing more for us to say to each other," she said. She turned from him, showing him her back. Showing him how impervious she as to his words, his actions. To him.
He had hurt her. Wounded her deeply. But she had taken that power from him and now he couldn't hurt her any further. He would not humiliate her again; she would not allow him the opportunity. Another chance to betray her trust.
"If you think you are taking my child away from me, you are mistaken," Zaid said.
She resisted the urge to face him. "She is neither your child, nor is she of any use to you."
"She will be raised as my daughter."
"She will be raised as mine," Harper said, unable to keep the fierce protectiveness out of her voice.
He stepped forward, closing the distance between them. "I have an obligation to ensure your wellbeing, and the wellbeing of the child."
"And I will release my medical records to you," Harper said. "Dr. Rousan will provide you with her notes while I'm here, and I'll make sure my doctor in the States provides you with the same."
"That is not good enough."
"But that's all you will get."
She locked eyes with him, unwilling to back down. His overpowering aura, the one that had always made her crawl into herself, danced around her, like bright, swirling flames. And then it fell silent, no longer thrashing at her power, but harnessed by it. She wouldn't fear him, his power, his wealth, his position.
"I could stop you," he said. "I have the power to insist the child stay here. To have you removed from her life, if it comes to that."
"You could," she said. "But you won't. Because you don’t want for this child what you went through."
Bitter resentment raged in his eyes. For her. For him. For the unfortunate situation he was once again put in.
"I gave you a choice," she said. "Our future or your past. And you made your decision."
"That was hardly a choice," Zaid said bitterly.
"We all have choices to make. This is mine. I spent my whole life surrounded by men who were half-in, half-out of my life," she said quietly. "I won't subject my child to that."
"I am better than those men."
"No, you aren't, not until you can offer her what she needs. What I need. Comfort. Security. Affection. Love. Can you offer that now?"
"No."
"Then I’m sorry, Zaid, but we are where we are."
Zaid held the chair in a white-knuckle grip. He released it, backing away from her. "You must do as you will."
Fire burned in his blood, eliciting in him an anger he'd never known was there. The same anger he'd seen rage in his father, in Matthias.
But not in him. Never in him.
Now he knew. He hadn't escaped it. He had merely run from it. Run from it for so long that he had forgotten what he was running from, what he was trying to escape.
But there was no escape. That fear, that longing, that anger was in him, bound to him on the most intimate level he knew, unearthed by the unwelcome and unexpected emotions he felt for Harper.
Emotions he could not indulge in. Never again.
He would bury himself in work. In women. In whatever would have him. Whatever would keep him from giving in to that temptation, keep him from thinking about her, caring for her.
It was the only way.