A Secret Birthright - By Olivia Gates Page 0,53
stopped, her agitation mounting.
He had to spare her. “There was nothing to question. You were doing what Hesham would have wanted you to do. He lived in fear of our father finding him and spoiling his life and yours. He clearly knew what Emad did, that our father was looking for him, not in the way I thought, out of anger. When he knew he’d die, he knew if he ever found you, you could lose Ryan to the man who almost destroyed him. My siblings and I were lucky because we had our mothers, whom everyone called the lioness, the Amazon and the harpy, to fend for us. But Hesham didn’t. His mother died giving birth to him.”
Her gaze wavered. “Hesham said your father never let anyone mention her to him as he grew up.”
Fareed exhaled another of his frustrations with his father. “It was whispered around the kingdom that she couldn’t withstand him, being this artistic, ethereal creature. It did seem that our father was so furious with her for being different from what he’d wanted, then for dying, that he banned any mention of her. When he realized Hesham was turning out like her, he did everything to force him into the mold he thought acceptable for a son of his. Hesham was right to fear our father and to instill that fear in you. If Ryan had fallen into his hands, he would have suffered an even worse fate because Hesham at least had us, older siblings who’d done all we could to temper his autocratic upbringing. So I understand that you had to hide the truth with all you had. I only wish you’d trusted me. At least, trusted Hesham’s decision to entrust your and Ryan’s futures to me.”
She grabbed his forearm, urgency emanating from her. “I trusted you with Ryan’s life, with both our lives when I came to the land I feared most on the strength of nothing but my belief in you. But it’s more complicated than you think. And when we…we…”
“Became lovers?” He placed his hand on top of hers before she could retract it. “I can see how this made you feel more trapped. But after I was furious with Emad when he revealed the truth, then told my father, I can’t be more thankful to him now. Like we say here, assa an takraho shai wa hwa khayronn lakom.”
She nodded. “You may hate something and it’s for your best.”
He smiled. “I’ll never stop being impressed by how good your Arabic is. Hesham taught you well.”
She blushed. Blushed. With pleasure at his praise. And at the ease with which he now referred to Hesham, and the beauty of the relationship she’d shared with him?
Then her color deepened to distress again. “But Emad didn’t find out the full truth. And when you know it, you won’t find acceptable excuses for my half truths.”
He took her by the shoulders. “No, Gwen, whatever you hid, I’m on your side, and only on your side, always.”
The tears gathered in her eyes slipped down the velvet of her cheeks as she nodded. “Hesham said your father told him his life story when he was fifteen. He said he married three women, one after the other for political and tribal obligations, had children from each, sometimes almost simultaneously.” Fareed knew well the story of his father and his four wives and ten children. He had a feeling she’d tell him things he didn’t know. “But he didn’t love any of them.”
“It was mutual, I assure you.”
Gwen winced. “Yes. Then he met Hesham’s mother and they fell in love on sight.” Fareed’s jaw dropped. That he surely didn’t know. He believed his father was love-proof, let alone to the on-sight variety. “But even if his marriages were to serve the kingdom, she wouldn’t be a fourth wife. So he divorced his wives wholesale, and dealt with the catastrophic political fallout.”
He was only six when this happened. He still remembered the upheavals. “My mother and the other two women say it was the best day of their lives when they finally got rid of him.”
She nodded. “It was how he convinced Hesham’s mother to marry him. She feared if he could divorce the mothers of his children so easily, that she couldn’t trust him. So he let her interview them and they told her it was what they longed for, how they, like him, had felt trapped in the marriages, that he’d never loved anyone but her in