Chapter One #2
‘He’s long gone. Your country has your father now.’ His eyes shuttered as the news she had imparted properly hit. ‘I am sorry to hear he is ill.’
‘Thank you.’ She took a shaky breath.
‘We just have to hold on.’
She nodded, but there was still doubt in her eyes.
‘Yara, for now at least, nothing’s changed. I’m not going to call for marriage, no matter what my father says.’
‘Okay.’
‘So go home, and stop arranging these damn meetings, or we’ll be found out and your nightmare could come true.’
She actually laughed and, somewhat appeased, made her way down the stairs and left via the mews. Rafiq moved to the rear of his home and watched the convoy move away, slithering like a black snake through the back street.
He watched as Salar checked the gates were secured then spoke with an officer on the perimeter. Perhaps aware he was being watched, Salar suddenly looked up to the residence and caught Rafiq’s eye.
Rafiq did consider telling him not to allow the princess access without first discussing it with him, but he didn’t want Salar to get a glimpse that he was anything less than pleased to secretly meet with Yara.
Rafiq trusted no-one.
And with good reason.
So instead of summoning Salar, Rafiq nodded to say all was well.
All was not well on the inside though. Memories, no matter how he tried to resist them, were raining in.
Scenes that were surely best forgotten were flashing through his mind.
He recalled a worried-looking Salar, here in this very drawing room, informing him that Khalid was missing in the desert and his horse had returned to the tent without its rider.
At first it was assumed he’d been thrown from his horse and there were searches underway to locate him.
Unease had gnawed, as it was doing so now, and Rafiq wanted to open the window, just to inhale the frigid air. Instead, he picked up his coat from the couch and pulled it on, deciding to head out for a walk and clear the thoughts swirling in his head.
But the guard in the car would alert Salar, and even if they were discreet he would not be alone.
He still craved solitude. To disappear for a while and get away. And he knew how.
Heading out from the drawing room, he took the stairs down, and then another staircase down to the cellar. He hadn’t been here in a very long time.
Fourteen years to the very day.
Khalid had been the one who’d first shown him the tunnel—back then it had been behind a concealed door in the wine cellar. It wasn’t in the house plans; even security didn’t know it existed.
Their father had told Khalid about it.
His father before him.
The tunnel led to an alley in Knightsbridge near the underground, Khalid had explained. There was to be no bringing friends home, no sharing this route. It was the only chance a young prince had for a taste of freedom.
Now there was serious protection, the entrance and exits were more like bank vaults and opened by code. Rafiq, though he had never used it, of course knew the correct sequence, but hesitated before entering it.
He’d spent years trying to forget all that had happened.
Entering the code, he heard the grind of metal as the door slid to the side and he stared into the tunnel for the first time since his capture. He relived the shock of finding intruders in his home and being dragged down to the cellar then along the tunnel’s dank length.
He stepped in and as the door clanked closed behind him the paltry lighting flickered on.
The air held a dank, musty scent: a mix of wet stone, moss and urban dust. The lights flickered, and he felt the vibrations from trains, tubes and city life above.
The air was cold and clammy down here, unlike the underground passages in Al-Nawar, where the air had been stifling and every acrid breath had burnt.
Rafiq could not help but compare.
He ran the back of his hand along a damp stone wall and flinched, recalling the chains that had bitten into his ankles and wrists. Remembered for a moment the agony of the sandstone walls against his beaten and whipped flesh.
He came to the exit—more secure than it had been then—and entered the code and stepped into the alley where he’d been bundled into a car and taken to a plane…
.It was raining, and he looked up to the sky he’d once thought he might never see again and for a moment relished the cold rain falling on his face.
Rafiq walked to the underground and there boarded a semi-empty tube, taking a seat for he rather tended to stand out.
So much so that he could already feel someone watching him, and glancing over, caught a man wearing a grey cap looking at him.
Rafiq, even dressed in a dark suit and coat and trying to blend in, might as well be wearing desert robes, or in royal regalia…
At the next stop the tube filled, and it was standing room only by the next.
There was something about this man though that had Rafiq’s eyes narrow, disliking how he did not step back to let a woman who was boarding past.
She had coppery blonde hair that was damp from the rain and wore a dark trench coat and stilettoes and her lips were pursed in indignation as the man in the cap made it difficult to pass.
‘Excuse me, please,’ she said rather pointedly, and when the man finally moved, she squeezed past him, coming to a stand near to Rafiq. She went to take hold of the rail above.
It wasn’t her beauty that had Rafiq stand.
Simply that she was a lady…