City of Palms

by Pamela Kent

  But you, Susan thought, returning her look pityingly, find whatever your brother regards as a suitable diversion pleasant. And she found it quite impossible to meet Mehmet Bey’s eyes again while the light meal lasted, for there was a hot feeling almost of anger in her heart against him because he had more or less told her how little she had to offer by comparison with Madame Dupont.

  She was glad that Ayse said nothing about her letter from Nicholas Arnwood. To have had to listen to sneering observations directed at her friends would have been too much like the last straw just then.

  CHAPTER SIX

  BUT Ayse was right about the Villa of Stars. To come upon such a house in the midst of desert—even though that desert was softened by the luxuriance of the palms — was amazing. It was more like a Spanish house, with curly wrought-iron grilles to the balconies, and wrought-iron gateways admitting to the drive and various corners of the grounds. The grounds were extensive, and beautifully laid out. Everywhere there seemed to be a mass of color, destroying the myth about nothing ever growing in the heart of the desert, and there was even a swimming pool, and a hard tennis-court.

  Susan thought it attractive, and almost palatial, but she preferred the more harmonious lines of her employer’s residence. There, although there was a great deal of luxury also, everything seemed to be in keeping, and there was nothing at all that jarred. At the Villa of Stars something, she felt, did jar.

  Their hostess welcomed them with a great deal of empressement on their arrival—at least, she welcomed Ayse and Raoul as if she was delighted to see them, but her greeting to Susan was cool and casual. Raoul had driven them to the villa himself in his big cream car, and he went on round to garage it while the two girls were conducted upstairs to their rooms.

  Ayse expressed herself as pleased that they had two rooms adjoining.

  “We shall be able to pop in and out and see one another,” she said, and Susan was suddenly touched because in the short time they had known one another Ayse seemed to have become genuinely attached to her. “What are you going to wear tonight?” she asked, when the decision had been taken who should first use the bathroom they were to share.

  Susan found it impossible to prevent a sigh escaping her, for with only two evening dresses—in which she had already appeared on alternate evenings—the thought that she could hardly expect to compete with either her hostess or Ayse, or any other woman who was likely to be present, had definitely had the effect of weighing her down.

  It wasn’t that she was particularly anxious to shine on her own, but the thought of her hostess appearing in something spectacular, and Ayse looking as she always did, incomparably beautiful, while she herself looked like the little employee from England, made her feel as if her teeth were suddenly on edge. The little English dragon, as Mehmet Bey had called her, and with no more importance in the scheme of things. Certainly no importance at all in his scheme of things—someone who couldn’t even begin to compare with Jacqueline Dupont!

  She found it impossible to forget that he had as good as said that.

  “What’s wrong?” Ayse asked, while she watched her lifting out the grey dress and shaking it doubtfully. “You look very sweet in that, but haven’t you something a little more—well?...”

  “Important?” Susan asked, turning ruefully to confront her. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t,” casting the dress and its hanger on to the sumptuous-looking bed in which she was to sleep that night, and which was covered with a peach moiré quilt, and had a satin bed-head. “But it doesn’t really matter—does it?—because I’m not a guest in my own right. I mean, I wouldn’t be here at all but for the fact that I’ve been selected to act as your companion, and companions are not meant to be looked at.” She tried to sound casual and gay, as if she honestly had no objections at all to being regarded as a kind of Cinderella.

  But Ayse took the dress away from her, and then drew her into her own room.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “Of course you will be looked at, and you are very charming to look at. But we must do something about a dress for you that will provide a change from the grey one.”

  She went to her own cases and lifted out a confection that caused Susan’s eyes not merely to widen with admiration, but positively to light up with it. The gown was of creamy pink lace, over a taffeta underskirt. It was the sort of pink—more like a glow, or a light blush in the sky at dawn—that one with Ayse’s particular coloring could wear without causing any conflict with her magnificent hair. But for anyone of Susan’s coloring—delicate, slightly ethereal—it was almost too perfect. It would make her look like porcelain, or the pink heart of a wild rose.

  “I had you, in mind when I brought it with me today,” Ayse explained, looking shy and embarrassed. “It’s quite new—it’s one of the dresses I bought recently in Paris, and has never been worn. It occurred to me that you might—might not have anything fresh to wear, and as Jacqueline is certain to look terribly smart, and I want you to look smart, too, won’t you please accept it as a—as a gift?”

  “A gift?” Susan looked as if she could hardly believe the evidence of her ears. “But why?”

  “Because I want you to do so,” Ayse answered simply. “I have a special reason for wanting you to do so. So will you please take it?”

  “But I couldn’t possibly.” Susan’s voice sounded husky, and she was frightened because the temptation to take advantage of the other’s generosity was almost too strong for her. “I will wear it just for tonight—”

  “You will keep it,” Ayse said firmly, and laid it over her am. “And now I will go and have my bath, and later you shall tell me how I look in my own dress. And, remember, I want you to look your best!” and with a smile she vanished into the bathroom.

  Susan could hardly believe that the reflection given back by her mirror was really her own when finally she was dressed and ready. It took Ayse’s little crow of delight to convince her that the pink and white and gold vision was herself. Her eyes looked deep and dark like gentians, and the gold sparks flew off her eyelashes as her eyelids fluttered nervously.

  “You are perfect,” Ayse told her, with infinite satisfaction. “There is something about you I cannot explain. It is as if you were not quite real.”

  Susan didn’t feel quite real, but she was full of admiration for Ayse, who looked regal and lovely in parchment-colored taffeta that stood out about her like a board, and pearl studs in her ears.

  When they went downstairs they found the others already assembled in the huge lounge, and Susan was introduced to an elderly little woman, with a mass of high-piled white hair, who was Jacqueline’s aunt, and staying with her for a while. She was the widow of a well-known French General, declared that she knew the whole of the East like the back of her hand, and had shrewd and penetrating eyes that seemed to find Susan an interesting study.

  She was also introduced to a young man called Armand, who was another connection of Jacqueline’s—although Susan failed to gather the exact relationship during the brief introduction. But he was a handsome young man, with lazy and rather melting eyes, who also seemed to be quite noticeably impressed by Susan.

  When they entered the room, Raoul Mehmet Bey was standing before the flower-filled fireplace—which was seldom, if ever, used—and looking almost insolently handsome in his evening clothes. Susan felt her heart behave oddly when she discovered that he was looking at her, and that there was unconcealed admiration in his eyes—for the dress she was wearing. She told herself that it must be that, for usually it was well nigh impossible to decide upon the expression in his eyes, and as it quickly gave place to a faint suggestion of amusement she felt certain he even recognized the dress, and went hot all over with acute embarrassment, wishing she had never consented to wear it.

  But Jacqueline Dupont’s eyebrows noticeably ascended when she first caught sight of Susan. She was wearing something cloudy and black, scattered like stardust with sequins, that made the most of her flawless skin and silken mo
p of dark curls, and the corners of her scarlet mouth went downwards with sudden displeasure. Then she seized a glass from the tray of cocktails a servant was handing round, threw back her head and looked up into Raoul’s face, and announced a toast.

  “To all the wonderful times we’re going to have now that I’m back! And to the hope that I’ll never find it necessary to run away again!”

  “It’s always a foolish thing to run away,” Raoul murmured, looking with gentle derision into her eyes.

  Hers flashed back at him a message.

  “I’m free, free, free!...”

  He placed the rim of his glass to the rim of hers—where her moist, exciting lips had already rested—and they drank to one another.

  Susan turned away, and was glad that at that moment Armand placed a glass in her own hand, and she sipped at the concoction it contained. It was so potent that it gave her an excuse for looking a little taken aback, and Armand laughed down at her.

  “Trust Jacqueline,” he said, “for never stinting things. There are never any half measures with her, as you will find out when you know her better.”

  But Susan felt certain that she knew that already.

  The dinner was superbly cooked and served, and nothing about the meal could have been improved upon. Jacqueline looked radiant at the head of her own dinner table, and although so absurdly small, she was in some curious way a compelling personality—striking and vivid and vital.

  She persuaded Raoul to take the host’s place at the foot of the table, but in spite of conversation that flowed unceasingly, and a separation of several feet, their eyes met constantly above the flower centrepiece.

  After dinner, coffee was served in a long verandah that was open to a courtyard, where a fountain played and the scent of exotic shrubs hidden in the dusk floated penetratingly on the still warm air. Susan was provided with a deep basket chair by Armand, who then sat beside her. Ayse was drawn into conversation by the elderly aunt, and the hostess and her obviously most favored guest sat away down at the far end of the verandah. Susan could hear little bursts of merriment leave Jacqueline’s lips occasionally when something Raoul said amused her.

  Susan declined to look towards him, or even in the direction of her hostess, and she found Armand an entertaining young man, who was eager to hear all that she would tell him of her life in England and how long she proposed to remain in Iraq.

  Coming back to the small table for more coffee, Jacqueline looked in an insolently languid manner at Susan, and observed:

  “We are a couple of men short, but I think that will be partially remedied before long. Ayse must have someone to pay her some attention. Ah!” She broke off as someone entered the courtyard—a white-dinner-jacketed masculine form with a fair head well held above reasonably broad shoulders—and came moving gracefully towards the verandah. “So you made it after all, Nick! I was afraid you weren’t going to manage to get here until tomorrow!”

  Nicholas Carlton bent with a courtier’s gallantry above her hand, and she smiled at him with an indescribable expression in her violet eyes.

  “You commanded, and I came!” he told her. “I’m sorry I’m a little late. Ah, how are you, Mehmet Bey?” as the Bey rose and moved down the length of the verandah until he was standing close to him.

  Susan felt an almost panic-striken sensation as she looked up at her employer. He seemed to have lost a good deal of his tan in the lights that streamed from the room behind them, or else he had actually turned white—white even to the lips.

  Jacqueline turned swiftly and slid a hand inside his arm.

  “It’s quite all right, darling,” she said. “I invited Nick because I know he’s a friend of Miss Maldon’s, and we had to have another man.”

  “I see,” Raoul said, but his voice sounded thick. Ayse had turned very pale in the shadows, and she turned swiftly and disappeared in the direction of the stairs. Susan wondered whether she ought to follow her, but her hostess’s voice arrested her.

  “Why don’t you let Nick show you the pool by moonlight, Miss Maldon? It’s quite a romantic sight. And don’t be stuffy cheri”—lifting a white hand to Raoul’s face and actually stroking his cheek. “Please don’t be stuffy,” she implored, crooning into his ear, and Susan watched as he turned stiffly away and then allowed her to lead him into the night. She felt as if something deep inside her was suffering.

  “Clever girl, Jacqueline, isn’t she?” Nick murmured into her own ear. “She’s even found out the secret of taming Mehmet Bey! Shall we go look at the pool?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE week-end stretched like a piece of taut wire interminably ahead of Susan. Before she went to bed she learned that the whole party—with the exception, of course, of the General’s widow—was proposing to ride before breakfast the following morning, and she wondered how she was going to distinguish herself in the company of a woman as critical as she felt certain Jacqueline could be, when she was near enough to observe every false move she made.

  The horses had been brought over from Mehmet Bey’s stables, and the one comfort she had was that she and Ferida were already getting to know one another, and the little mare was not the type to display temperament—or so she hoped. Ayse had her own mount, and Jacqueline looked beautiful and challenging on a pure white mare that looked fiery to Susan, but which Madame Dupont managed with ease. It was the horse she had bought recently, and a good deal of time was taken up with admiring and discussing its various points—especially on the part of Raoul, who seemed unable to resist anything thoroughbred in the way of horseflesh—before they got away, and by that time Susan, to her own annoyance, was feeling unaccountably nervous.

  She had had no conversation with Raoul the previous evening, and after the arrival of Nicholas Carlton he had pointedly ignored her. The fact that Jacqueline had won him over, and that she was all but purring like a contented kitten when they returned to the house, after disappearing together into the garden, was obvious to everyone, but he didn’t even say good night to Susan before she went to bed.

  Therefore she was fully prepared for receiving no assistance from him when it came to mounting, and she thought that Madame Dupont’s groom, who finally helped her into the saddle, looked at her with a kind of supercilious disdain because she plainly knew very little about horses.

  She was turning her mount— anxious, if possible, to avoid Nicholas Carlton, who seemed to be bearing down on her on a spirited black—when she suddenly discovered that Raoul was right beside her, grasping at her reins.

  “Why didn’t you wait?” he demanded, rather harshly. “Do you imagine you’re a fully-fledged horsewoman?”

  “I thought I could manage,” she answered. Already the sun struck her as hot, because they had wasted so much time, and the bandanna she wore was hardly enough to protect her head from the fierceness that beat down on her. Also she had slept badly, and she felt bewildered and confused inside her head. “And you seemed very preoccupied.”

  He looked up at her in rather a strange way, and she instantly averted her eyes from his. He had ignored her the night before—no doubt secretly condemned her because of the unexpected inclusion of Carlton in the party—and she was not prepared to overlook a deliberate slight, or to be judged out of hand.

  “Are you all right?” he enquired. “You look a bit pale.”

  “I’m quite all right.” But her heart was laboring heavily and she felt a little sick—sick with a desire to be left alone, and to be overlooked by all of them if it suited them to overlook her. “Madame Dupont is expecting you to join her,” she pointed out, in a stiff, prim voice, as she observed the widow sitting impatiently astride her mount.

  But he ignored the reminder.

  “Take things slowly,” he said, “and don’t attempt to do anything more than canter gently. Ah, here comes Carlton,” with his lip curling. “He’ll keep an eye on you!”

  He left her just as Carlton joined them, but Susan didn’t instantly look round at the new arriva
l on the scene. She sat, her reins lying limply in her hands, looking after the striding, arrogant figure of the Bey, and the look on her face, without her knowledge, was so revealing that the man on the black whistled softly.

  “So,” he exclaimed, “the wind already blows in that quarter, does it? Dear me! Poor little Susan!” and she looked round in startled indignation.

  “What do you mean?”

  He smiled. She found his smile particularly irritating just then, for it contained the ingredients of amusement and sympathy.

  “Nothing, my dear, except that you can’t be feeling very tender-hearted towards Jacqueline. But I’m afraid she got there first, and what she has she holds—or so she says! However, we’ll see!”

  Susan made no attempt to answer him. The sun was in her eyes, blinding her, the whole palm grove seemed to shiver in a haze of heat, and she only hoped that when they got moving, a cooler air would rush past their ears. The thunder of the other’s hooves made her wish that she could attempt to emulate their example and charge into a gallop straight away, but she knew that was the last thing she could attempt to do.

  Carlton kept beside her for the early part of the ride, apparently feeling no urgency to allow his own spirited horse its head, and he complimented her on being able to manage a horse so well after so few lessons. When she admitted that it was Mehmet Bey who had given her those lessons he looked amused, but said nothing further that could possibly annoy her. After a time his eyes began to follow the party ahead of them, and she felt certain he was secretly, and quite genuinely, admiring the performance of Jacqueline in the saddle.