She swung round, clutching the Knight, and the blood seemed to drain from her heart.
The Shaikh had entered in his silent way and he stood with his back to the flap of the tent. He had removed his riding outfit and wore a slash-throated kibr encircled by a waistband. His black, close-cut hair was uncovered, and there was a leopard grace and assurance about the man as he stood looking at her .. . taking in the breeches and boots she had refused to discard.
His eyelids narrowed, and she tensed herself for battle.
`Do you play chess?' he asked.
She had fully expected him to ask why she wasn't wearing the change of clothing he had provided, and she felt the tremor in her hand as she returned the chess-piece to the carved box. As she closed the lid she said coldly, 'Do you play, m' sieu?'
`Such games of advance and retreat were invented by the subtle mind of the East,' he drawled, and as he moved towards her, she tensed, a slim creature wanting to streak for cover.
`You are nervous as a sand bird.' He bent to take a nut from a dish on the table, an almond which he crushed between his strong teeth. The white tunic he wore accentuated the sunburned skin of his face, throat, and arms. On the forefinger of his right hand Lorna noticed a heavy ring engraved with golden characters . . . he was so darkly handsome, so overwhelming, with such wide and easily carried shoulders, that he seemed to cast a shadow around Lorna as he towered over her, his back to the lamplight.
`You look at me as if I mean to eat you,' he taunted. `Why are you not wearing the things I told the girl to bring to you? Surely you would feel more comfortable if you discarded those riding breeches and boots?'
`I prefer to stay as I am !' She dug her hands into the pockets of her breeches and assumed a boyish stance. 'Why send me the clothes, Prince Kasim? Would it ease your conscience to see me dressed like a harem girl?'
He quirked a black eyebrow. 'When I am in camp I prefer the title of Shaikh—apart from which, as you
must know, the devil has no conscience.'
`Have you strings of titles?' she asked scornfully. `To me you are worse than that horse thief ! He was poor and out for the money when he ... kidnapped me.'
`What makes you so certain of that?' Once again the white teeth crushed a nut between them.
`Because to an ordinary Arab I must seem pale and stringy,' she said with spirit. 'Not the admired moon of full curves, with the eyes of a gazelle.'
The Shaikh laughed softly . . . it was like a purring deep in his brown throat. 'You are very modest for a female, and no doubt you wish that I found you pale and stringy.' His tawny eyes slipped over her. 'I am disappointed that you choose to wear those boy's clothes. I think Eastern garments look at their best on a lissom figure.'
When he mentioned her figure, in that deep, deliberate voice, Lorna wanted to run and hide herself. She felt suddenly that the apricot shirt clung to her, that the boyish breeches revealed the slenderness of her hips. Her relief was beyond words when the flap of the tent opened and the Shaikh's servant carried in a tray on which were several dome-covered dishes.
With deft hands he arranged the dishes on the table, and he poured into the silver-rimmed glasses a liquid that shimmered cool and green. Not once did he glance at Lorna. His eyes were discreetly lowered as he bowed and withdrew from the tent, leaving her alone with his master.
`Please to be seated.' The Shaikh gestured at the divan.
`I ... I'm not hungry,' she said defiantly.
`I am sure you are, mon enfant.' He lifted her as if she were a child and settled her among the big cushions of the divan. He sat down beside her and handed her one of the glasses. 'This is limoon, a drink of crushed limes, wild mint, and a little honey. Come, I know you are thirsty.'
`You know nothing about me,' she re-joined. 'To you I am only an object!'
`A very decorative one.' He put the rim of the glass to her lips and his voice softened. 'You are foolish and a little wilful, like a filly who sees her reflection in a pool and shies away from the image. Don't you care for your own beauty?'
Lorna looked at him with eyes that were purely violet in that moment; eyes that looked as if someone had plucked two flowers and pressed them into her pale young face.
`Drink,' the Shaikh softly commanded. 'Your voice is husky when you speak, and I don't wish to force your compliance.'
`Force is all you know!' she flung at him. 'Your own people are terrified of you.'
`What makes you say that? Did you find Zahra and Hassan reluctant to help you escape?' He laughed, and because he was so near to her, holding the glass of limoon to her lips, she took it and drew away from him. She sipped at the drink, and watched him tearing in twain with sunburned fingers the roasted quails that topped the dish of beautifully cooked rice and vegetables.
`Come, you must eat, but I don't expect you to eat
with your fingers.' He indicated the pearl-handled cutlery. 'You have been out in the desert air most of the day and must be feeling hungry. Hassan is a superb cook and he will be hurt if he finds you have not tasted a morsel of our supper.'
Our supper. She shuddered, but because the Shaikh's tawny eyes were upon her, she took some of the cous-cous and forced herself to eat it.
`Some quail as well,' he coaxed, laying one of the roasted birds on her plate.
`It's typical of you to like quail,' she said, knowing the quails were netted in the desert for their tenderness.
`All the same,' he looked at her and quirked an eyebrow in typical fashion, 'you will admit that they make a meal fit for a king.'
`A prince,' she corrected him, and she looked deliberately at the way he rolled the cous-cous neatly in the fingers of his right hand and popped the ball in his mouth. Lorna had the feeling that he ate like a desert man on purpose, and when she heard him laugh she knew she was right.
Hassan returned in a while with their coffee, which he poured into small cups in filigreed holders. It was French coffee, but in her fear and her apprehension Lorna could not fully enjoy it. The Shaikh said something to Hassan before he departed, and the quickened beat of Lorna' s heart told her that from now on they would be left alone.
It surprised her when the flap of the tent was opened once more to permit entrance to a long-legged, silky coated gazelle hound, who bounded across the tent and settled its front paws upon the shoulders of the man beside her.
He ruffled the coat of the animal with a fond hand, and glanced at Lorna. 'Do you care for dogs?' he asked. 'British people are usually sentimental about them.'
`Yes, I like dogs,' she replied, but she eyed the saluki with the same distrust with which she looked at his master. The dog eyed her, and then came to sniff at her boots.
`There is no need to be nervous of Fedjr,' said the Shaikh, as he lounged back against the cushions of the divan. 'He's far more gallant than I am, being a true son of the desert.'
Lorna didn't fully understand what he meant. To her, in every respect, he was the desert at its most dangerous, its most subtle, its most picturesque. Without any real fear she held out a hand to Fedjr and found his muzzle cool and soft. He snuffed her fingers, and his master gave a deep, soft laugh as the hound rested his handsome head on her knee and gazed up soulfully into her face.
`You are a novelty to him.' The Shaikh leant forward and took a cigarette from the box at his elbow. `Will you smoke, Lorna?'
He spoke her name with the accent on the R so that it was almost a deep purr ... the very fact that he used her name so intimately made her furious.
`No thank you! They're a brand to which I'm not accustomed.'
`One can grow used to what at first seems alien,' he said, a meaning glint in his eyes as he struck a match and wedded the flame to his cigarette. He exhaled smoke, and his gaze dwelt lazily on Lorna as she stroked the hound. She could not relax. She felt the man's power and energy far more potently than if he had been a person who prowled about a room.
`Of what are you thinking?' he demanded.
`Of a friend at the
hotel at Yraa, who will be extremely worried about me.' Her voice shook and her lashes made dramatic little shadows on her cheekbones.
`Is this friend a man?' There was the whisper of a lash in the question.
`Of course.' She glanced up and met his eyes with appeal and defiance in her own eyes. 'He will organize a search for me—he knew I was going to the Oasis of Fadna, and he will hire Arab trackers to find me.'
`They will need to be keen-eyed,' he said sardonically. 'Each morning, after the caress of the night winds, the sands of the desert are virgin again.'
`Rodney will find me!' The words broke in desperation from her.
`He is fond of you, eh, this man called Rodney?' The cigarette smoke drifted blue-tinged beside the eyes that were desert-tawny . leopard-lazy.
`He . he's very fond of me.' She shut her mind to her careless rejection of Rodney Grant. 'I . . . I'm sure you have no use, m'sieu, for a woman who belongs already to another man.'
`A man who allowed you to go alone into the desert?' The tawny eyes roved her 'hair, her face, and came to rest on the pulse that beat visibly beneath the soft skin of her throat. 'The desert is a place to be shared and I don't believe, ma fine, that you wished to share its magic with this man.'
`We ... we had an argument and I rode off in a huff without him ...'
`Did he give chase?' The eyes that dwelt upon her were those of a man impossible to fool.
`He isn't like you!' she flashed. 'He wouldn't gallop after a girl and drag her from the saddle of her horse!'
`What a very tame young man he must be.' The well-cut lips curled into a mocking smile. 'No wonder you don't love him.'
`I would sooner be with him than with you ... you desert barbarian !'
`Would you?' He laughed deep in his throat. 'But I have blood in my veins that dilutes the barbarian in me ... my mother came from Cadiz in Spain, the silver cup as they call it. She had the soft pale skin of a camellia and eyes like marigolds.'
Lorna stared at him her heart beat oddly, as if
with relief that his mother had been a Latin girl.
Did your father carry her off and put her in a
harem?'
`She worked as a nurse in a Moroccan hospital.' He lifted his cigarette and drew deliberately upon it. 'The man I have the honour to call father met her there, and he made her his wife.'
`He married her?' Lorna exclaimed.
`He fell deeply in love with her.' Suddenly a dangerous little flame burned in the tawny eyes. 'A desert love would no doubt alarm a little ice-maiden from the cool shores of Britain?'
`I lived in Paris for a. year so I'm not entirely insular.'
`And what did you think of Paris? Did you find it fascinating?'
`You speak as if you have been there, m'sieur.' `I was educated there, mamzelle.'
Her eyes grew wide, she felt intrigued by the man and at the same time she resented her own stirring of interest. 'Really,' she said. 'Then that explains your knowledge of the French language.'
`You speak excellent French yourself, ma petite blonde.'
Again there crept into his voice a possessive note, and Lorna drew away from him, back against the cushions, afraid again of this man called Prince Kasim, who lived by desert rules and who took what other men only looked at.
The tent seemed to revolve slowly around Lorna as he rose to his feet and took the saluki out of the tent. All was quiet. The large encampment had settled down for the night and the silence was broken only now and again by the yawn of a camel, the jangle of a neck-bell, or the yap of a guard dog. Lorna gave a shiver as a little cold air crept into the tent and stirred the flames in the bowls of the oil-lamps. Shadows stirred across the tapestry walls and the bead curtain moved as if touched by invisible fingers.
Lorna stared at the curtain, and with a sudden sob of torment she jumped to her feet and made as if to flee out of the tent into the night ...
Hands caught at her, lean and strong and ruthless. They lifted her and carried her through the beaded curtain and there in the amber lamplight he stood holding her and she saw the deep gold of his eyes through his black lashes. Fear of him lent strength to her struggles, but his lithe body was full of a power that made a mockery of her efforts to escape from his arms.
`Little fool, you will wear yourself out.' His lips brushed the frightened tears in her blue eyes. 'Is there any sense in resistance? You know you cannot get away from me.'
`I hate you!' she stormed. 'I despise you!'
`I like your spirit.' His voice was low-pitched, almost crooning, as if he laughed at her a little. 'You are wilful and exciting ... I believe you would kill me if you could!'
He carried her to the silken bed and she wanted to curl up and die as he put her down on it. He smiled into her eyes, and then he knelt to remove her boots and she felt paralysed by the fear he aroused in her. Her senses felt drugged. They clamped her to the bed as he tugged off first her right boot, then her left, and tossed them aside. 'You don't need a valet for the rest,' he said. 'I'll turn out the lamps.'
She lay biting her knuckles, as if to stop herself screaming, as his tall figure brushed through the curtain and set the beads swinging and dancing. She glanced round wildly and her eyes alighted on a knife that lay beside a bowl of fruit on the bedside table. A richly ornamented kinzhal with a slightly curved blade.
Lorna reached for it without hesitation. She was gripping the handle as Prince Kasim came striding back into the harem and swift as a little cat she leapt for his heart, grazing him through the linen kibr as his hand flashed and caught her by the wrist. He almost snapped her bones as he forced her to drop the kinzhal. It fell soundless and glittering to the carpet, and Lorna cried out as the Shaikh bent her backwards over his arm. He held her mesmerized while blood from the small wound spread against the white kibr.
Now you have made me rather angry,' he said, and his teeth were white against the bronze of his face.
'Please...' Tears of fright made her eyes look like flowers in the rain. 'Please don't..
`I'm not going to beat you,' he mocked, and his lips ran like flame to the hollow of her throat. She struggled to escape his lips and suddenly there fell from the pocket of her shirt the flower she had plucked that morning from the wall of the crumbling oasis house. She suffered the Shaikh's bruising clasp as he bent to pick up the flower. The rose-like petals were crushed but they still emitted a faint, brave perfume.
`Why do you carry this flower against your heart?' he demanded.
`Give it to me !' She tried to snatch it from his hand.
`Who gave it to you?' His eyes narrowed and raked her face. 'That tame fool who let you ride alone in the desert, where even an Arab is in danger?'
`Yes, it comes from someone I love,' she said defiantly. 'You can't force me to tell you his name!'
`I thought it was Rodney?'
`Did you?' She snatched the flower, crushed like herself, no longer cool and out of reach of a marauding hand.
`Keep your secrets.' He let her go and touched a hand to his breast, as if the knife cut was hurting him a little. He gestured at the bed. 'You should sleep comfortably and quite soundly after your day in the desert. Goodnight, my desert captive!'
He swung on his heel, and then paused with a hand on the bead curtain. 'I shall be in the other room, all night. And I am always on the alert, even when I sleep.'
He was gone, leaving her alone. She could hardly believe that he had gone for the night. Somewhere in the desert a jackal barked, and she gave way to her weariness and sank down across the bed. The flower was pressed to her cheek and a tear slowly watered it as she fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
DAYLIGHT spread through the camp and there was a lot of activity about the coffee fires. The neck-bells of the camels mingled with their grunts as they were pulled to their feet and led off by the camel-boys to graze off the desert shrub. Cloaked figures strode to their horses and a couple of stallions blared at each other until firmly
chastised.
These morning sounds penetrated into the big double-tent of the Shaikh, but the girl within did not hear them. She stirred but did not awake.
Now her lips were relaxed in sleep and her lashes lay still, caught and held by the tears that had dried on her cheeks. Her hair was soft and tousled as a child's, and she had for a while escaped into the dream world of a child again. The camel-bells stole into her dream and became the bells ringing in the convent where men had been excluded; where the gate had opened only to let her into her father's safe keeping.
The early morning activity of the encampment slowly quietened down, and the sun was in the tent when Lorna finally aroused from the deep sleep into which she had fallen to find herself beneath the fine neting someone had draped around the bed to keep out the sand-flies that appeared when the sun grew. warm.
She sat up and pushed aside the netting. She gazed around at surroundings that were at once terribly strange and fearfully familiar.
On the bedside table the cigarette-box lay open, as if earlier a hand had reached for one and forgotten to close the box. A white kibr lay discarded across a stool, 'and Lorna shrank against her pillow as she realized that the Shaikh had entered while she slept; he had drawn the silk coverlet over her and arranged the netting; he had gazed upon her while she was innocently unaware of his eyes. As dreams fled and reality took their place, she gasped as if ice-water had been dashed in her face. The events of yesterday and the fact that she was a captive in a Shaikh's tent were as real as the sunshine that blazed outside, inescapable as her own shadow.
She was here in the desert, a reluctant guest of Prince Kasim ben Hassayn, a man of a certain mystery, a man who was as cultured as he was ruthless.
She turned her face into her pillow and tried to blot out his face. It was impossible. The man was so vivid a personality that she could recall his every feature, had forgotten not a word he had said to her during their supper together, and later when he had carried her into this section of the tent. As she remembered her fears of last night she wanted like a child to crawl beneath the bedcovers and hide from the shivering woman that she was.
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