Chapter 6 #3
of them day and night? He had told her that she could burn him down
to scorched earth, and he would rise again for her. She scoffed.
Apparently, he only meant until another woman came along, one more
practiced in the art of carnal pleasures.
That he had been set up was obvious. Why else
would Anastasia have been so adamant that Sahar accompany her to
the stables? Anastasia may have claimed it was because Sahar would
require another respectable woman to be her escort, completely
ignoring the fact that she was in and out of the stables unescorted
all the time, but she’d known something was up, and had been glad
when Brawn and Munir announced that they would accompany them as
well. Then she’d turned the corner and found Aleksi with his back
against the wall and that painted harlot on her knees, her face
buried in his groin, his hands in her hair.
Sahar may still have been a virgin, but she
was no idiot. She knew full well what that whore had been doing.
Set up or not, Aleksandr had been letting her, and to make Sahar’s
humiliation complete, all the others had seen it too. As if that
wasn’t bad enough, they heard Aleksandr tell Sahar that she was
nothing to him.
She’d run out of the stables , not knowing or
caring what happened after, though it was a sure bet that the story
of the princess happening upon Aleksandr being serviced by a whore
would be known far and wide by morning. Brawn and Munir would tell
her father, of course, and the three of them would remain
circumspect about the whole matter. The others though, Yago and
Taweel and Anastasia, they would spread the tale throughout the
palace every chance they got. As for the painted harlot, who had
been quite pretty actually, Sahar could only guess who and what she
would tell.
“Arghh.” Sahar gnashed her teeth and fisted
her hands so tightly she dug her nails into her palms. Unclenching
her fists, she rubbed the tender indents and then glanced up and
around. She was standing no more than fifty paces from the entrance
to the royal family’s private chambers, not where she wanted to be
right now. Where she wanted to be was some place she could scream
loud and long without being heard, a place where she could rage and
rail, and even weep if she wanted to, which she felt ridiculously
close to doing now. She paced in a tight circle, trying to figure
out such a place she could go to, alone, in the dark of night, when
she heard her name being called.
“Sasa. Sasa.” Halah was standing in the open
doorway, waving Sahar in. “Rima wishes for some female company
tonight while Asim is going over the race’s course with our
fathers. Our mothers are already with her, they sent me to find
you.”
Sahar stood there for a long moment, unable
to think of an excuse for not joining them. The last place she
wanted to be was in a room full of happily married and betrothed
women whose men adored them and where pregnancy and childbirth
would be the topics of conversation.
“What is the matter with you?” Halah asked,
closing the door behind them. “What happened in the stables?”
“It was a set up,” Sahar said, her voice
sounding oddly distant. “Yago, Taweel, Anastasia, they wanted me to
go with them so that I would discover Aleksandr in a compromising
position with a harlot.”
“No.”
Sahar nodded numbly. “Oh yes.”
“What did Aleksandr do? What did he say when
you discovered them?”
“He swore it was not what it seemed.” Sahar
closed her eyes against the image of the harlot kneeling before
Aleksandr and took a shaky breath. “He said he did not know why he
was bothering to explain himself to me, that we were nothing to
each other.”
She stepped away from Halah, refusing to meet
her eyes. If she did and saw pity in them, she would surely burst
into tears. That she would not do.
“He was lying, Sahar.”
“No.” Sahar shook her head. “He was set up. I
am certain of it.”
“I am sure he was too. I am saying that he
lied about you two meaning nothing to each other.”
Sahar chuffed. “Aleksandr may be arrogant,
bold, and beyond cocky,” she said, “but above all else he’s honest.
Brutally at times.”
“Perhaps about most things,” Halah insisted,
“but not about his feelings for you.”
“Munir was there, he heard Aleksandr. Ask
him.”
“Oh, I am sure that’s what Aleksandr said,
caught with a harlot, by you, in front of all those others.”
“Adding to my humiliation.”
“And his.”
“True enough,” Sahar admitted.
The gossip would be as cruel to him as to
her, of that she was certain. Still, it was a humiliation they
would both survive, yet another distraction to what they both
wanted. Sahar wanted to win the coming race, to prove a woman as
good and capable as any man, and to show the world that a woman did
not need any man. Aleksandr wanted a wife, and not any wife, but an
easy-tempered broodmare, something Sahar would never be.
“You are right, Halah,” she said. “As was
Aleksandr. We may be drawn to each other, but we are nothing more
to each other than a passing distraction. When the race is over and
done with, he will go back to his home with his winnings and I will
stay here with mine.”