Page 25 of Sheikh's Secret Love-Child
CHAPTER SEVEN
SOMEDAYSLATER, Shona was escorted back to her rooms in the middle of the day when she would normally have expected to be corralled somewhere with another set of dour royal advisors for more tedious lessons about the role she resolutely declined the opportunity to play.
“What’s going on?” she asked Yadira drily when she was delivered to her own sitting room and found the other woman waiting for her. “Am I finally getting a little bit of built-in naptime in between all these exhausting stonewalling episodes?”
Yadira smiled in that way she did that told Shona that her personal servant—a term Shona still didn’t care for on any level—didn’t think much of her witticisms. And maybe there really, truly was something wrong with Shona. Because the less the people in the palace seemed to find her amusing, up to and including the king, the more she kept right on doing the very thing it was they found so distasteful. Over and over and over again.
She was beginning to think that she was naturally perverse. Or something worse. Something a little closer to boneheaded, another familiar term she’d been called by various foster parents.
“I have laid out clothes for you, mistress,” Yadira said in her deliberately calm manner that Shona understood was her own form of a weapon—and one she aimed well, every time.
“I think you can see that I’m already dressed.”
“Indeed. But the king has specifically requested that you wear what has been chosen for you today.”
“I was under the impression that the king made the same request every morning.” Shona eyed the other woman, who stood there emanating a kind of wholesale meekness Shona was beginning to suspect she didn’t actually possess. “Has that been you, all along?”
“Shona.”
She didn’t have to turn to identify that voice. She would know it anywhere. It haunted her dreams in ways she pretended she couldn’t remember every morning when she woke up, heart pounding with an ache between her legs.
But she had never heard Malak’s voice here before. Here in this suite of rooms that she had, perhaps foolishly, begun to view as her refuge. The one place in the palace she could escape this crazy new life she’d been hauled into, at least for a little bit.
And better still, where she could escape from him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, keeping her gaze on Yadira. “I thought these were my private rooms.”
“I think you will find it is my palace,” Malak said.
Shona didn’t want to look at him. But she made herself do it anyway because what she wanted even less than a glimpse of him was to show any hint of weakness. Particularly in front of Yadira.
“Forgive me,” she said, and she was proud of how steady her voice was. “I’m only emotionally prepared to see you at dinnertime. This is...alarming, to say the least.”
“There is no need to be alarmed.”
“And if I was truly, deeply alarmed, your telling me not to be would change it...how, exactly?”
Malak’s dark green eyes flashed, but he ignored that. “There is a small ceremony taking place shortly. Your presence is required. And I’m afraid that it will be recorded for posterity, so you must dress according to expectations. My expectations, before you ask.”
“I thought we had discussed your expectations already.”
His mouth curved. “But in this case, my expectations are not my problem—they instead carry the weight of the whole kingdom. It is unavoidable, I’m afraid. You might as well resign yourself to that now.”
There was a kind of disconcerting steel in the way he gazed at her, and it occurred to Shona that there could be only one reason that he had actually come all the way over to this side of the palace. And was actually standing here, personally demanding she dress in a certain way. She glanced at Yadira, then back at Malak, but could read nothing on either one of their faces.
“Are you here to force me into some awful costume?”
“I don’t like that word. I am the king of Khalia, am I not? Surely I need only make a request for my will to be done. Force is quite beneath me.”
“I know we’ve covered this. You’re not my king.”
She heard Yadira’s shocked gasp, but what really bothered her was the fact that she felt a kick of shame along with it. As if she’d agreed, somewhere or somehow, to keep her fight with Malak to herself, when she knew very well she’d done no such thing.
His gaze was steady on hers, and she didn’t know why that made it worse. Only that it did.
“It is always such a delight to have these arguments with you, Shona, particularly when they inevitably end my way.” He didn’t look delighted. But he didn’t look particularly affronted, either. And Shona was starting to view that veneer of laziness he liked to cloak himself in with suspicion. “But there is no time for the game today. I’m afraid this is a matter of some urgency and importance, or I would, of course, continue to support your curious need to wear and rewear the least attractive items of clothing in your wardrobe. And stand through dinners. And ignore your tutors. And all your other pointless attempts at defiance.”
“There is no way—”