Chapter Six #3
‘Our countries believe we are.’
‘How? My family would have had to announce it too. Omrhain wouldn’t just believe—’
Her words were cut off by the look in Malik’s gaze, a look masked quickly, but not quickly enough.
And that’s when she understood what had happened. That her family, her father, had been forced to announce her marriage, or risk the greatest scandal she had caused yet.
‘Can I see them?’ she asked, suddenly fearing what they must think of her, of what she had done. Did they hate her for it? Was this it? Was this how they sent her away?
Did her father blame her for this?
This time, even Malik couldn’t meet her gaze.
No. She couldn’t see them, she realised. Their countries believed that they had married in Omrhain, that they had celebrated in Omrhain and that she had bid goodbye to Omrhain.
And now she and Malik would have to return to Al Surrahin as if they had.
They hadn’t even said goodbye.
‘You can call your father from the jet,’ Malik said.
Hana nodded, but suddenly wasn’t sure that she wanted to. It confused her, the hurt, the guilt pulling her in different directions, making her head swim. What would she do if her father did blame her? Blame her the way that Malik must.
‘Malik, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for this. I’m so—’
He held up a hand to cut her off.
‘It’s done now. There will be time to talk later, but we have to go. Right now.’
The silence between them, so different to what it had been like only moments before, tension where she thought there might have been understanding, difficulty where there had almost been ease. Distance where, for just a brief moment, she’d thought there had been closeness.
Hana nodded, even though every single part of her wanted to stay here, hidden away from the world. How quickly had she gone from doing anything she could in order not to be sent away, to suddenly wanting only the kind of isolation she had feared.
Malik held the door open for her. Just outside she could see Malik’s assistant, but she could hardly meet his eye.
They had carved a lie from necessity, but what did they actually think had taken place between her and Malik?
Her cheeks blushed painfully and Hana was sure that Ehsan could clearly see her shame and embarrassment.
‘Your Highness,’ he said, bowing at the waist. The man stood, flicking his gaze between Malik and her, before gesturing her towards the helipad.
‘If I may, I should probably go over what will happen next,’ he said.
Hana turned back to look at Malik for permission, but Malik’s gaze was fixed straight ahead.
The mannerisms and expressions she had come to recognise as his were now hidden behind the mask of the straight-backed, serious man who had tried to break their engagement before she had so rashly intervened.
Hana nodded absently to Ehsan, following him towards the helicopter, unaware of the damage the storm had done to the annex or the villa’s grounds.
She tried to listen to what Ehsan was saying.
She knew it was important. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, bring the kind of disgrace to Malik that she had brought to her family.
Not now that her actions had bound their futures together in a way that she knew he’d hate.
‘When we get back to Omrhain the cavalcade will return us to the palace, where you will get settled into your suite. I’m afraid in order to maintain appearances, the tour—’
‘Tour?’
‘Yes, the tour—it is part of royal protocol that the new married regent should visit several key cities and towns in order for the people there to pay their respects and to celebrate with the happy…couple.’
‘How long is the tour?’
‘Twelve days.’
‘And how many visits?’
Ehsan inhaled a shaky breath, as if he knew that what he was asking for was too much for her to handle.
‘Nine. I understand that this is all a lot to take in—’
‘It’s fine,’ Hana replied, even though it sounded anything but. Her family had spent years trying to leave her out of the kind of public visits Ehsan was describing. And they’d done it with good reason, because no matter how hard she tried, she had always caused a scene of some kind.
But now, more than ever, it was important that she didn’t.
Hard work and determination.
Within what felt like a matter of minutes, Hana and Malik had been ushered into the helicopter by Ehsan, and were lifting up into the air.
Hana peered down at the island, a place where, for just a few hours, she’d felt as if she’d been seen for the first time in her life.
As if Malik had wanted to know, and discovered, things about her that no one knew.
And she’d thought, she’d really thought, that she too had seen a side of him that no one else had.
A softer, younger, easier side. But as she looked at where he sat across from her now, the sharp, tense lines of his body, the gaze that avoided her, the closed features, making his thoughts and feelings unfathomable to her, that man felt as far away from her as the island that slowly dropped from view.