up on their lives, something that would be impossible to do at his wedding. Royal weddings never left enough time for the married couple to enjoy the guests, but that was the luck of the draw. He was a sheikh, after all, and a royal wedding was his destiny.
He’d been born for it. Why did it feel so stifling tonight?
It wasn’t even that he expected to be in love with his fiancée. Rashid had understood from a young age that love didn’t always come until after marriage. He cared for Jazmin, of course. They’d grown up together. Her father had been secretary to the king, Rashid’s own father, and her mother had worked with Rashid’s mother. She was in the palace as much as any of his siblings had been. He blew out a breath, trying to offload his unease. Jazmin was whip smart and gorgeous. She was familiar with palace life and skilled at navigating gatherings like this one. It would be easy between them. She knew, as much as anyone could, about the demands that would be placed on him when he took the throne. As the eldest of his parents’ children, he would take the throne, and that would be his life.
The fact that they weren’t marrying for love and passion meant that he could do right by Omirabad and focus most of his attention on the kingdom.
It was like his thoughts were arguing among themselves.
No—that wasn’t it. There were actual voices, coming from around the corner. A light breeze buffeted the words themselves. Rashid stepped closer.
“No.” A woman spoke the word in a tone that was low but insistent. “Not tonight, Barron.” Two things hit him in quick succession: he knew that voice from somewhere. And he knew the name Barron. Rashid hadn’t met many Barrons in his life, and that name on the breeze made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. The Barron he had in mind was not a good man. He was the son of a man who had done business with the royal family of Omirabad, and they’d run in similar circles at Oxford.
Years ago, on another trip to London, Rashid had found him cornering a woman in a dark alcove of a bar. He’d had a half-finished drink in his hand and an expression on his face that Rashid had never forgotten.
He took another step forward. He’d intervened that night, but he had no idea if this Barron was the same one. Rushing in on some unsuspecting couple wouldn’t be the best decision in this moment, but—
“Come on.” It was Barron. No question. “It’s only a little wedding night preview. Surely you can’t argue with that.”
“Surely you can wait two days,” said the woman, her voice light and strained. It made his heart beat faster.
“That’s the thing,” Barron said. “I don’t want to wait two days. And you shouldn’t want me to wait, either. Not if you want to be a good wife.”
The breeze picked up then, rustling though the foliage around Rashid and blocking out what she said next. When it quieted…
“Impossible,” Barron was saying. “Two days from now, you might regret being so difficult.” His voice got louder as he spoke, and then he came around the corner, almost running into Rashid. “My apologies,” he said, putting a gentlemanly hand on Rashid’s shoulder and brushing by like he’d barely seen him.
Rashid blinked. Apologies to Rashid, but not to the woman he’d spoken to like that.
The woman with the familiar voice.
He had just made up his mind to step around the corner when she came into view, wearing a frown that was totally uncharacteristic of her.
“Nora Williams,” he said. “I thought I recognized your voice.” It was a stupid thing to say—a dead giveaway that he’d been eavesdropping—but Rashid’s heart was fluttering like a bird’s wings at the sight of her.
At the sound of her name, Nora looked up at him, and there it was—the smile he’d known since their days at school. Not university—secondary school at Westminster, where King Rafiq had sent all his children. Rashid and Nora had had classes together starting when they were sixteen. He could still see her now, sitting at the desk next to him in her navy uniform, her hair in a bouncing ponytail and her face all grin.
“Rashid.” She took a step closer. “Who’d have thought you, of all people, would be out in the courtyard? I guess our families’ circle is smaller than I thought.”
The Nora who