A Question of Honor

Chapter TEN


SILENCE.

Total, shocking, frightening silence. Nothing more. All that had changed was that Karim now stood stock-still, the long line of his back turned against her, his head held high, his eyes fixed straight ahead. Other than that total stillness, he gave no indication of having heard her, so would she have to say those words again?

She would if she needed to. Because as soon as she had spoken them she had known how true they were. How far she had come from their first meeting that had brought her awakening, then knowledge of how it felt to be a woman, to now—to this, when she knew how to love as a woman, with all that a woman’s heart was capable of. And she knew that that woman’s love was strong enough to endure whatever the future held for her if she could just have this one day, one night—one time of loving Karim and creating memories to hold in her heart when the arranged marriage closed round her and imprisoned her for life.

‘I...’

She’d opened her mouth to say it again but at last Karim had moved. Slowly he turned to face her.

‘You love me?’

Did he expect her to deny it? Did he want her to deny it? Was that what was behind that stony expression, the tightly drawn muscles? Whatever he thought, it was impossible to turn back now.

‘Yes, I love you.’

It felt better, more right, every time she said it. This feeling had been growing silently and secretly like a seedling uncurling under the earth, ready to push the little green spike out into the sunshine. That spike was there now, out in the light, and she recognised it for what it was. And she was glad to see it. So grateful to know that at least she had experienced this feeling once in her life. She loved this man and she would never have to live out her days not knowing what this felt like.

‘I love you.’ She said it again because she wanted to and because it made her smile.

A smile that was not mirrored on Karim’s set face.

‘Why do you love me?’

What sort of a question was that? He had knocked her off her feet in the moment he had appeared on her doorstep and nothing had been the same ever since.

‘Isn’t it obvious? I love you for who you are. For your courage in trying to rescue your brother. Your loyalty to your father and your country.’ That had sent him out on this mission when he could have delegated it to someone else. ‘And your sense of honour. You couldn’t even cheat in a game of Snakes and Ladders, for heaven’s sake.’

Her laugh, already brittle, shattered into tiny pieces as she saw the look he gave her.

‘Then you will understand why I do this.’

‘Yes—no—’

Now she saw where he was going and a cruel hand reached out to grip her heart, twist it brutally so that she gasped in pain.

‘But you don’t have to. I don’t want you to!’

Dark brows snapped together in a dangerous frown.

‘It is not what you want—or what I want. It is what must be. You are legally promised to Nabil.’

‘But...’ Clemmie’s protest faded on her tongue as Karim held his hand up to silence her. But it was the look in his eyes that took the sound from her mouth.

‘You say that you love me—so you must love me as I am. All of me.’

He paused, waited a nicely calculated moment to drive the words home.

‘The man I am. My sense of honour.’


Her wounded heart had actually stopped beating. She could no longer breathe, and knew that every trace of blood must have faded from her cheeks, leaving them whiter than the pillows on her bed.

‘No...’ she moaned, so low that he must have had to strain to hear it. But she knew that, hear it or not, he understood what she was trying to say—and would refute it. ‘Please, no...just once.’

Even as she said it, she knew that there was no ‘just once’. Just once would break the moral code he lived by. It would bring them together and destroy them in the very same moment. But the alternative would break her heart.

There was no alternative.

‘When...’ It was all she could manage, knowing with a dreadful sense of inevitability just what the answer would be.

‘Now.’

It would destroy him if he stayed, Karim admitted. He couldn’t remain in her company any longer and not pull her down on to that bed and make love to her. Not do as she asked, as she so obviously wanted. Hell, she had offered herself on a plate. He wanted it too; so much that the hunger was tearing his guts apart, and he didn’t know how he could walk to the door without looking back.

She was so damn gorgeous—temptation personified. But—love?

If anything had convinced him that he was right to do this the way he had to, then that word was right up there. He had no right to stay unless he could offer her love in return. Hellfire, he had no right to stay at all. She had been forbidden to him from the start, and she was forbidden to him now. The repercussions of acting on the carnal hunger he felt would have the equivalent effect of a nuclear explosion. He couldn’t offer her any hope of anything else, so he had no right to stay when doing so would only destroy her future as well.

‘If I don’t do this then I can never be the man you love. I will be someone else entirely.’

She understood that all right. He watched her take it in, absorb it, and realise the deepest truth of what he was saying. She nodded silently, eyes huge in the pallor of her face. Something—pride, defiance, anger?—held the muscles in her jaw and chin tight, but those amber eyes were shadowed with something that it twisted his conscience brutally to see.

He didn’t have the time, or the right to try to make this any gentler. Hard and sharp—and fast—was the only way to do this now.

‘Goodbye, Princess.’

And then, to his horror, he saw that she was doing that thing with her mouth, digging her sharp white teeth into the soft flesh of her lower lip. It was impossible to stand by and watch it this last time. Without fully being aware of having acted, he moved across the room, his hand going under her chin—a chin he only just realised was quivering with the force of control she was imposing on it—as he lifted her face to his.

‘Don’t...’

With his thumb he pressed her mouth open slightly, easing her lip away from the worrying force of her teeth. But he had made two mistakes. The first was the worst. He had touched her and now he knew that he would live for ever with this feel of her flesh against his, the warm scent of her breath on his skin. And, this close up, he could see the betraying shimmer of her eyes. His own reflection blurred in that sheen. She couldn’t make this any harder for him—but at least he could make it as easy as possible for her. He could get out of here now, fast, and leave her to get on with her life.

But he couldn’t go without one last kiss.

His first kiss was meant to be firm and fast. Just dropped on to her forehead. An unemotional, uninvolved farewell. But the minute his lips touched her skin he knew that would not be enough. Every male sense he possessed demanded more.

With gentle fingers under her chin, he lifted her face again and bent his head. The last kiss was softer, lingered longer, put all the hunger he felt into its pressure on her mouth. So much so that he felt he was getting dragged into a storm of sensuality that threatened to close over his head and drown him.

With an effort that tore at his being, he wrenched himself away.

‘Goodbye, Clemmie.’

It physically hurt to walk towards the door. His body screamed in angry protest but he forced himself to ignore it. This time he was going. He was not looking back. He was not...

It was only when he was out of the room and in the corridor beyond that he realised he had been holding his breath all the time so that he had to let it go in one great wrenching, gasping, brutal rush. The door closed behind him so that at last he was unobserved, and, taking a moment or two to find a way of breathing again, he forced himself forward. He got himself out of the palace the only way he could. By putting one foot in front of the other and never looking back.

Clemmie watched the door close behind Karim with eyes that burned cruelly, aching and dry. The tears that had been so close had vanished now. She couldn’t let herself cry. She wouldn’t let herself. She had told Karim that she loved him and he had still walked out on her. He had turned and walked out of the door, never once looking back.

And the real problem was that she understood perfectly why he had done that.

She had just let the man she loved walk out of her life. She couldn’t do anything else. He was so right about that. If he had stayed, if he had taken what she offered, then he would not have been the man she had fallen in love with. She had lost her heart to a man of honour, never thinking of having that code of honour turned against her in a way that had ripped the soul from her body.

She loved him but she hated him for being so right about that. She couldn’t fault his reasons for behaving as he had, however much she wished he had never done so. She could argue with anyone, with herself—but she couldn’t argue with him.

She couldn’t argue with Karim.

Her hand crept up to her mouth, her fingers pressing on her lips to hold the memory of his kiss for as long as she could possibly manage. Already the moisture from his mouth was drying, but she could still taste the essence of him on her lips. If she could have found a way to call him back, to see a way out of this, then she would have done.

But the truth was that there was no way out. She could not call him back without destroying the man he was. The man she loved for his integrity. He would not be the man of honour—if he had stayed—and how could she hate him for being such a man, even if it had destroyed her one chance at happiness?

She had thought once before that she had had to face the fate that lay ahead of her with a heavy heart and a sense of dread. But now that future seemed so much darker, so much bleaker because she had had just a taste, just a glimpse of how wonderful the alternative might have been.

An alternative that was now closed to her for ever.