by Pamela Kent
“If you want to do more than just trot along like this,” she said, “I’m quite safe to be left alone. And, as a matter of fact, I think I’d like to go back.”
Her head was swimming, and her skin seemed to be pricking with heat, and he looked at her intently.
“Perhaps you’d better,” he said. “You’re not used to this climate yet, and it is a bit sticky. Do you feel all right?”
“I’ve a bit of a headache,” she admitted. She smiled wanly. “I get them sometimes—even without the heat!”
“Then you’d better let me come with you.”
“No, no!” She was anxious to be left alone, and she knew he was eager to catch up with the widow and the man who so monopolized her. Ayse had disappeared somewhere on the skyline with Armand, and he had plainly no intention of trying to catch up with her. “Do go on,” she urged, “and I’ll go back. It’s hardly any distance, and Ferida will carry me safely to .the stables.” To his credit she realized that he was loath to let her return to the villa alone, but the overwhelming compulsion for another woman’s society—highly unflattering to herself, as she recognized—was too strong for him. And as soon as he had seen her return her mount, she heard the thunder of his hooves as he galloped off after the others.
And this was when Ferida began to feel that things were not going as planned, and a touch of resentment because she was heading in the wrong direction grew suddenly and took possession of her. Susan realized that she was getting out of hand when she jerked up her head, gave vent to a kind of nervous whinny, and then swung round and started off after the fast-disappearing black.
Susan was in no condition to remember any of the injunctions that had been carefully laid upon her, or even to keep her head in a crisis. She only knew that her hitherto gentle and tractable mount was all at once obsessed by an unshakable desire to do exactly as she pleased, and to get some fun out of this morning’s excursion like the other equine members of the party. She went like the wind, ignoring a half-hearted attempt on Susan’s part to tighten the reins, and the girl bobbed up and down like a sack on her back.
Dimly she realized that they were approaching a kind of knoll and a cluster of palms, and already disappearing in the shade of the palms were Jacqueline Dupont and her escort, with Nicholas Carlton riding hard behind them. Susan closed her eyes and felt the world rushing past her, and felt cool air simply tearing past her ears, loose sand flying up at her, and knew that it was only a matter of seconds before it would all be over.
She shot over her horse’s head—more or less like an arrow from a bow—and landed in soft sand, but with such a thud that the breath was knocked out of her. Dimly she was aware of a blue sky paling before her eyes as she opened them stupidly.
When she came to her senses someone was kneeling beside her, and a hand was making exploratory movements all over her body. A voice, with a hint of urgency in it, was calling her name.
“Susan!... Susan, are you all right?” She was lifted gently, and a shoulder was interposed between her wildly disordered golden curls and the sandy ground on which she had lain. Her bandanna had become dislodged, and the curls strayed over the shoulder and touched the bronzed cheek of the man who bent over her, looking anxiously into her face, and as her long eyelashes fluttered upwards her blue eyes looked straight into his.
“Are you all right, Susan?” he repeated, more urgently. “What sort of a toss did you take?”
“I don’t know, I...” She became aware that there were other people standing round her, and amongst them was a woman’s slim form in beautifully fitting riding-breeches of thin white drill, and highly polished boots. Jacqueline Dupont despised jodhpurs, and when she rode abroad she liked to look the part. Her shirt, which revealed the entrancing curves of her diminutive figure, was a flaming tomato color, and her jetty curls’ were confined by a tomato-colored bandeau. Against the hard and almost unbearable blue of the sky, she looked like something cut out of a glossy magazine.
“She’s just winded,” Susan heard her say. “Or, rather, she was. She seems to be coming round all right now.”
“Yes, thank you, I—I’m quite all right now,” Susan said, stupidly, and felt a searing pain shoot through her head. She had had a headache to start with, and now she felt both dizzy and sick.
“I’m sorry, Susan,” Nicholas Carlton said, appearing suddenly and bending over her. “I didn’t realize you couldn’t manage that little beast...”
“You had absolutely no right to leave her alone,” Mehmet Bey told him icily, and then rose with Susan in his arms. “I’ll take her back,” he announced. “She can sit in front of me on Said, and one of you can bring in Ferida.”
His words were so clipped and curt that Susan hardly dared to look at him when he had her in front of him on the back of Said, the huge chestnut. His arms held her strongly, and with a wonderful feeling of security, and in spite of the fact that Said had always impressed her as a splendid menace on four wickedly trampling hooves, she was able to sink back in a relaxed attitude once they started off. The movement of the stallion was amazingly smooth, and she was not conscious of being jarred, or of suffering any discomfort as a result of that swift journey back to the villa.
Only once did Mehmet Bey look down at her and enquire:
“Did you go over Ferida’s head? Was she travelling very fast?”
“She ran away with me.”
His lips tightened.
“So much for your friend Carlton! But it was really my fault. I should have known better than to trust you with him.”
She made a slight, negative movement with her head, winced at the pain of it, and then shut her eyes.
“It was no one’s fault really,” she told him. “I wasn’t feeling very good when I started off this morning, and perhaps I should have had the sense to go back earlier.”
“You didn’t look very good,” he admitted. “You looked pale, and I noticed it, and therefore it’s entirely my fault that this has happened to you.”
And as if his conscience were suddenly hurting him almost unbearably she saw him gnaw at his lower lip, and his arms tightened about her for a few moments in almost a convulsive fashion—unless it was purely her imagination. But she didn’t think it was, because when he spoke again suddenly there was a curious ragged note in his voice, and it was a trifle husky.
“I’m sorry, Susan,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry!”
And with her cheek pressed against the thin silk of his shirt, she could almost hear the strong beat of his heart.
He carried her up to her room when they reached the house, and laid her on the bed with its delicate peach-colored coverlet. It was in that same luxurious bed that she had passed many sleepless hours the night before, and thought, had he but known it, almost constantly of him “You must stay here and rest for the remainder of today,” he said. “And I’ll get a doctor out from Baghdad to make sure you’ve done yourself no real harm.”
But at that she attempted to sit up, and insisted that there was nothing wrong with her.
“If I can only rest, I’ll be quite all right tomorrow.”
“We’ll see,” he said, and she knew that he would do exactly as he thought best, and that it didn’t matter much what her own opinion was just then.
He summoned a couple of women servants to look after her, and as soon as he had departed they undressed her and got her into bed. By the time Ayse returned with the information that a suitably subdued Ferida was once more back in the stable, she was beginning to feel drowsy. Ayse said softly:
“I’ll stay with you.”
“There’s absolutely no need...” Susan began, with the waves of sleep rushing over her. But Ayse merely smiled and repeated:
“I’ll stay—of course I’ll stay! Raoul has insisted that I do so.”
Susan checked herself from falling off to sleep immediately by turning that one over in her mind. Raoul had insisted that his sister stayed with her, but why? She was only a companion—an employee ...
And Ayse was his sister, and, in any case, it was unreasonable...
And then she suddenly saw again the picture of a man’s eyes, dark and concerned, very close to her own. There were little golden lights leaping up and down in them as if he was intensely agitated, and just as he had done the night before he seemed to have lost a lot of his tan. He was even paler than the night before...
CHAPTER EIGHT
SUSAN stayed in bed for the remainder of that day, but she insisted on getting up the next day. She felt a little stiff and sore from her hard contact with the earth—and she realized that it was lucky for her it had been sandy earth—but her head was better, and she was otherwise herself.
Her hostess looked at her with an inexplicable smile in her eyes, and on her exotically reddened lips, when she made her appearance in the lounge.
“I had an idea you might regret learning to ride,” she remarked. “It’s the sort of thing one should become thoroughly accustomed to when still young. And by young I mean when a child if possible.”
The inference in her smooth voice was that Susan’s background had probably never presented her with the opportunities to acquire a knowledge of horsemanship at the right period of her life. A slight lift to delicate eyebrows, and a supercilious gleam in the violet eyes, completed a suggestion that there was something to be deplored about that background.
Susan, not really quite herself, felt defenceless and vulnerable before such scarcely veiled sarcastic attacks. She had felt from the first that Jacqueline Dupont did not like her, but now she was certain that she actively disapproved of her.
An uncomfortable blush burned in her wan cheeks.
“I’m sorry if I spoiled things for the rest of you yesterday morning,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m too much of an amateur to join riding parties.”
“Nonsense!” Nicholas Carlton exclaimed, moving over to sit beside her. “Next time I’ll keep so close to you that nothing will go wrong.”
“Next time you won’t have the opportunity to keep close to Miss Maldon,” Mehmet Bey announced in harsh tones as he stepped in through the open French windows.
Jacqueline Dupont turned on him with upraised eyebrows.
“Really, Raoul, are you constituting yourself Miss Maldon’s guardian angel, as well as her instructor, when next she summons up the courage to join us on Ferida?” she demanded, half laughingly. “Because that will be rather a whole-time job if she can’t manage the mare better than she was able to convince us she could do yesterday.”
But for once he ignored her and strode over and took a chair on the other side of Susan, which embarrassed her enormously, because the two most attractive men in the villa were electing to pay attention to herself, while the hostess, in her white dress with huge scarlet roses scattered all over it, blood-red finger-nails to match—as well as that exciting mouth that was curling up derisively at the corners—was standing, in the middle of the floor and both looking and feeling overlooked.
In fact, the glorious violet eyes sparkled ominously for a few moments.
“How are you feeling?” Raoul asked Susan.
“Quite all right.” Her color increased still more because of her acute embarrassment. “I was just apologizing for making a nuisance of myself.”
“And I was just pointing out to her that she’s a bit old to expect to become a finished horsewoman in a few days,” Jacqueline interposed coldly. “If you’ve nothing better to do with your time, Raoul, than think up something to instruct your sister’s companion in, you’d better come along with me and give me your advice about the new wing I’m proposing to build as soon as I can find a really good architect. The last one let me down about so many things.”
But he still did not give her his undivided attention, although he turned and glanced at her coolly.
“Don’t do very much today,” he said to Susan. And don’t go outside in the heat.”
“Are you coming, Raoul?” Jacqueline demanded, grinding her heel in the polished boards and catching at her full lower lip.
He stood up and accompanied her outside. Everyone left behind in the beautifully cool and exquisitely furnished lounge heard her say, as she caught at his arm and held on to it:
“Well, really! ... A negligible toss, and you treat her as if she’d broken her neck! You didn’t make half as much fuss over me when I really did break my collar-bone, and that was when you put me up on Said—something you ought not to have done! You can be an absolute brute when you choose, Raoul ... But a little English Miss with a pasty face gets lashings of sympathy!” Susan wished ardently that she was anywhere but where she was, especially when she caught Nick Carlton’s eyes smiling at her quizzically. He leaned towards her and whispered:
“I hope you’re not going to become a bone of contention!”
The General’s widow, engaged in very fine needlework, looked across at Susan and studied her with rather intent curiosity in her face.
“Jacqueline’s right,” she remarked. “Raoul can be very brutal—I don’t altogether envy her when she becomes his wife! But she’s probably the only woman who could manage him! A weaker one could never stand up to him at all.”
“Sometimes weakness is a form of strength,” Nick offering Susan a cigarette from his case, observed obscurely. “And it can be its own defence against ruthlessness. Ever heard of that?”—as he snapped his lighter shut and continued to smile at the English girl.
“Nonsense.” The General’s widow sounded annoyed, and Susan realized that she had clearly been warning her against something—or warning her off something! “Strength is necessary to combat strength, and an iron will needs another iron will to sharpen itself on! Jacqueline has never yielded ground to anyone or anything, and neither has Raoul!”
“Quite,” Nick agreed, lying back languidly in his chair, while a servant appeared with, a tray of drinks. “But the time may yet arrive when they’ll both do so ... When they’ll be glad to do so...”
The General’s widow uttered a contemptuous exclamation, and turned to her drink of iced lime. Having watched Susan dispose of a similar drink—without the generous quantity of gin he added to his own—Nick pulled her up out of her chair and suggested:
“Come and walk beside the pool. It will be cool there, and we can talk about taming tigers. Any ideas on the subject?”
Susan looked at him a little curiously as they walked in the shade of a long line of slender dark cypress trees that cast shadows across the silvery waters of the pool.
“Why did you annoy Jacqueline’s aunt?” she asked. “Or try to annoy her?”
“Because she’s made up her mind that Jacqueline is going to marry Raoul—one day, when he feels like submitting himself to the marriage yoke—and I have other plans for them both. What about you?” looking down at her with an odd mixture of mockery and concentration in his eyes.
The rest of the day passed in much the same manner as a day in the Mehmet Bey household, with a period for siesta in the heat of the afternoon and a languid gathering for aperitifs in the big lounge before dinner. But after dinner the rugs were taken up in the lounge, a programme of dance music was picked up on the powerful radio-gramophone, and they danced until the small hours. That is to say, the others danced, but Susan excused herself and went early to bed.
She felt that her hostess heartily approved of her decision to remove herself from the midst of her more welcome guests, but Nick tried hard to dissuade her. Raoul said nothing at all to dissuade her, and as she finally shut herself in her own room Susan felt a leaden depression weighing her down—a depression such as she had never known before in her life—because he had not added one single word to her fellow-countryman’s insistence that she stay up for just a little longer.
He had merely looked at her in his inscrutable manner, bowed with unusual formality when she left the room, and then no doubt had instantly turned his attention to Jacqueline and taken her in his arms and danced her out into the middle of the floor.
As she rem
oved the fine platinum chain, with a simple pendant attached, which she sometimes wore round her neck in the evenings, Susan told herself that she hadn’t really wanted to dance. That she actually hadn’t felt in the least like dancing, and as the result of a lack of practice she would have shown up very badly by comparison with Jacqueline and Ayse. But the thought that a man who was doing the strangest things to her day after day—one moment filling her with a feeling of resentment, and the next with an urgent desire to know him better—was down there giving all his attention to a woman who, was determined to marry him, still had the power to dismay and upset her.
She told herself that it was the heat, to which she was not yet accustomed, and an undignified fall from a horse on top of the effects of such a relentless climate, but she knew that this was only an explanation she was offering to herself for something she could not explain.
She could not, for instance, explain why her thoughts kept harking back to a night when it had been very dark in the patio, and a hard arm had prevented her from tumbling into a marble basin filled with water and water-lilies. Why, only yesterday, on recovering consciousness after Ferida had got rid of her, dark eyes with little golden lights in them looking directly into hers had had the power to communicate with something wildly responsive deep down inside her, so that for a few moments it had been sheer bliss to lie there in the heat of the sun and know that it was Mehmet Bey who was supporting her.
She had discovered that his voice, which could mock and deride her—and lash out at her like a whip stroke when he thought that he had some just cause for doing so—could soften and become slightly husky and apologetic when she was hurt and dependent on him. And that his arms could be wonderfully gentle, as well as hard and purposeful.
The fact that he had even today bothered to concern himself about her to such an extent that he had temporarily aroused Jacqueline’s peevish indignation was some curious source of comfort to her. Although the fact that Jacqueline was plainly on very good terms with him tonight—as evidenced by her slightly melting glances, and the way she had ignored the others at dinner in order to talk to him—should have convinced her that it was not the sort of comfort that was very valuable.