Turqeya sat down beside Loma and caught at her hands. 'I had the hope that now you are my sister and Kasim's wife, you would intercede for me and tell him that I cannot marry at all if I cannot be allowed to marry Omair .
`Omair ben Zaide?' The blue eyes clung to the brown ones, and suddenly there were tears on Turqeya's lashes.
`You have spoken with him?' she asked eagerly. `You like him''
`Very much indeed.' Lorna wiped a tear from Turqeya's cheek. 'He is a fine person, Turqeya, so why should Kasim object to a marriage between you?'
`Omair has only his doctor's pay, and he fears that if he asked for my hand, my brother would refuse permission on the grounds that I am the only daughter of the Emir of Sidi Kebir.'
`But,' Lorna smiled perplexedly, `Kasim has married me and he is the only son of the Emir.'
`It is different.' Turqeya spoke with downcast eyes. `Your children will be Kasim's and he is a prince of the beni Saadi. If I were permitted to marry Omair, then our children would not have titles and distinction.'
`They would have love,' Lorna said warmly. `Turqeya, I am sure you are both wrong in your judgment
of Kasim. Omair is his friend. I am sure he would be delighted to have him for a brother. I am even more certain that he doesn't wish to force you into a loveless marriage.'
`He has forced you to marry him ! You have said, Lorna, that you don't possess his heart.'
It was an unbearable truth, one from which Lorna dragged her thoughts. 'You must be made happy, Turqeya,' she said firmly. 'I shall speak to Kasim and I promise you—'
She never finished the sentence, for Turqeya flung joyful arms around her and hugged her until she was breathless. 'I knew from the moment we met that you had a generous heart! I knew I could be friends with you, and it gives me great joy that we are now sisters!'
Lorna kissed the soft young cheek—fresh and unpainted—and felt the brush of her hoop earring studded with small jewels. She breathed the Eastern perfume that the girl wore, and it rushed over her that she had married into an Arabian family and would have to abide by the rules that dominated the wife of a Prince.
Lorna forced a smile to her lips. 'Let us go into the other room.' She jumped to her feet. 'We are keeping our guests waiting.'
The women were delighted with her. They fingered her hair and her person with a beguiling curiosity, and informed her that she was like a flower.
A zither and drums were played, and the company sat on the divans and drank coffee and ate rich pastries and sweets. They were clad in embroidered dresses
and their arms and ankles tinkled with jewellery. Their speaking hands were painted with henna, and their perfume was dizzying.
Lorna sat among them, the target of all their chatter and their quips, but she didn't understand very much of what they said. Later a great dish of cous-cous was brought in, stuffed with roast lamb, legs of chicken, ortolans, and apricots.
Being the bride she was not allowed to exert herself, and the laughing women fed her like a cuckoo by popping piquant morsels of food between her lips. At any other time she would have been very amused, but her thoughts were constantly with Kasim, who was among the male guests down in the courtyard of the palace.
It was close on midnight when Lorna, the bride, was lighted into the bedroom by candles held aloft by the women guests. Charms were strewn about to avert the evil eye, and dates and milk were placed beside the nuptial bed. Old Kasha came to help her undress, for she must be entirely unadorned for her bridegroom.
`The lella looks a little pale,' Kasha murmured. 'A wedding day is a trying day, and I am reminded of my lady Elena and how nervous she was on her wedding night.'
Lorna gave a shiver, and her gaze dwelt on the silken shift that lay like a handful of mist on the embroidered cover of the bed.
Was the lady Elena happy in her marriage?' she asked at last.
Kasha did not reply for several moments, and then she said quietly : 'My lady adjusted to the life . . . and there were compensations.'
`You mean the birth of her son, Kasim?'
`Yes, lella, I mean the birth of the Sidi Kasim.'
`He must have been a fine child.' Lorna's hands clenched the transparent shift. 'I expect his mother spoilt him'
`The lady Elena took a great delight in her baby boy . . . my lord the Emir took an even greater pride in him.'
`Kasim was the only son?'
`Yes, lella, the only boy the Emir was to have for his heir.'
Left alone at last, Lorna wandered restlessly about the lamplit bedroom. Beyond the closed door the sounds of merriment continued ... and then quite suddenly all went quiet and Lorna's loudly beating heart told her that her husband was about to come to her.
Clad in the gossamer robe she backed away from the door to the edge of the bed. She felt as trapped tonight as in his tent in the desert . . . if only he came to her with a fiery love in his heart !
The door swept open and he stood framed there a moment before closing it firmly behind him. He wore a rich kaf tan of saffron silk swinging back from the creamy silk of his tunic. The sleeves of the kaf tan were bordered with gold thread, and a golden cord bound his snowy turban. His feet were encased in yellow slippers, and he looked as splendid as a prince of the Arabian Nights.
Lorna stared at him with great blue eyes. Love and fear raged in her like a flame . . . he was now her husband and never before had she felt so completely in
his power.
His eyes wandered over her . . . and it was then that the unnerving events of the day took their toll of her and every bit of strength ebbed out of her. She swayed where she stood and would have fallen if Kasim had not taken a quick stride forward and caught her in his arms. He lifted her and laid her on the bed. He leaned over her and stroked her pale cheeks.
`Poor petite,' he murmured. 'It has all been a little too much for you, eh?'
She lay beneath the spread of his shoulders, snared by love, by this marriage which was made to please a man who might be dying. 'So this was what you meant last night,' she said huskily. 'The amende honorable. A marriage made to content the Emir.'
`In part, Lorna,' he admitted, and there fell a little silence that seemed to tremble between them. 'If we had discussed it when alone last night, you might have found it impossible to agree to the idea let alone the actuality. Also there was the shadow to erase, which I had cast upon your honour. Now you share with me a much honoured name in this part of the world.'
She gazed up at him, taking in each detail of his darkly handsome face in the amber lamplight. A beloved face, a heart-shaking closeness of body . . . a distance of heart that only a mutual love could ever bridge. 'I have heard that it takes only a few words for an Arabian to discard a wife ... if he doesn't love her'
`Shall I speak them, Lorna, and let you return to your own world?'
`My world?' Her smile was bittersweet. 'You gave me the desert and showed me the way to the stars. You gave me the dawn, and now you would send me out into the darkness.'
`You grew to love so much the desert that we shared?' His arm cradled her, his eyes smouldered. `What happened to the rebellion in your heart? Why, only a few days ago you tried to run away from me . from the dawns we shared, from the desert stars. But for the storm you might have got away ... now you dare me to believe that you really wish to stay with me. Lorna, ma fille, do you wish to stay married to me?'
She gazed back at him with a deep shyness in her eyes. `M'sieu, you have me at a disadvantage.' `Meaning you are too shy to ask me if I wish to remain married to you?'
`I should like you to wish it for your own sake,' she found the courage to say, and as she suffered his tawny gaze upon her, and felt the wonderful strength of him, she tossed from her the few rags of pride that meant nothing any more. 'I am yours to keep, if you wish, Kasim. Yours to discard.'
`Mine?' Suddenly his arms crushed her to him, so that he hurt her in the most joyful way. 'Mon amour adoree. Mon ange, so sweet, so gallant, so full of go
odness that you shame the devil in my heart. My love, my eyes, my very life. I knew it from the moment I saw you and I had to carry you off, or lose you for ever. I had to show you my desert and woo you with rides l'aube, with passionate sunsets, and silver moonlight. You were part of all these with your own silver-fair beauty ...'
He broke off and buried his face in her hair. 'I longed for you to care, and to forgive my arrogance. Do you care ... do you forgive me for riding off with you? You were like a dream I could not let go of .
do you understand?'
`Oh Kasim.' Her hands pressed close against the
strong neck that carried his proud head. Never before had he bent that head to anyone, now he bent it to her. `I realized that I loved you while the sandstorm raged. You talked of us dying together, of being locked for all time in each other's arms. I would want to die if I couldn't be with you.'
She spoke his name again and he took his name from her lips, a kiss so piercingly sweet that she could have died. 'Our marriage must be a real one, Lorna. Abiding and honest, with no secrets ever between us.
`Have you secrets, Kasim?' She laughed softly, for it seemed in the sweetness of this moment that nothing mattered except that he loved her and held her in his arms. She felt weak in his strong arms, no longer the little icicle who had scoffed at love in the garden of the Ras Jusuf. A real desert man had melted her. ...
`Yes, there is something I must tell you, cherie.' He kissed her eyes, and then he reached for a cigarette from the box on the bedside table. She lay and watched him as he lit it, and her heart quickened. What was he about to tell her? That he had loved someone else before le destin had brought them together? She told herself that she would be indulgent, but all the time she hoped that he had never loved anyone but her.
He smoked in silence for a few minutes, as if to get his thoughts into order, and for the first time she noticed the mass of blue jasmine in a pewter vase. Its scent mingled with the smoke of his cigarette, and suddenly on a low carved bureau she saw in a silver frame the portrait of a boy. His hair was dark and tousled, his eyes were full of the devil, and there was something about him that reminded her of children she had seen playing on the boulevards of Paris.
Kasim saw her studying the picture and he smiled into her eyes. 'I was about ten years old when maman had that photograph taken of me.'
`I should have loved to know you as a boy,' she said shyly.
Tar better to know me as a man, chérie .' His smile was the faintly wicked smile of their desert days. 'I hope maman knows that I have found myself a girl so lovely and spirited.'
`Is there not an Arabian word for mother?' she asked, intrigued.
`There is, of course, but I never used it. My mother wished me to call her maman from the moment I could speak.'
`Why was that, Kasim?' Lorna looked at him with the tender eyes of a girl beloved. 'Did she ever tell you why?'
`I think she meant to,' his eyes were thoughtful through the smoke that twined about his lean, suntanned face. His eyes dwelt on Lorna, fair and young in the big Arabian bed, her eyes the colour of the blue jasmine scenting the bedroom, her lips love-kissed.
Suddenly Kasim reached for her hand and took it to his lips and kissed each finger in the Gallic way. 'It was also my mother's wish that I learn Spanish as well as French. She kept a diary that after her death no one could read but me. There were pages that I tore out and destroyed after I had read them . . . they revealed the secret she could share only with me. Now I intend to share it with you, Lorna, because you love me, because you have said that you wish to stay with me as my wife.'
Lorna gazed at him with wondering eyes. 'I thought you meant to tell me you had loved someone else before we met.'
`Girls?' He quirked an eyebrow. 'A few in Paris during the years I was a student. I shared a little laughter and gaiety with them, but my heart was never involved. I loved the desert ... she was the woman for me ... until you came into my life, blue-eyed, with sunshine-coloured hair and all the temperament of the desert.'
Did no lovely Arabian girl ever take your eye, Kasim?' she asked teasingly.
His answering smile was a little strange. 'Some of them are very lovely, like Turqeya, but it would seem that my instincts were always French and that . .
`French?' Lorna exclaimed.
`Yes.' His fingers gripped hers. 'I am not the son of the Emir, but the son of a Frenchman who came to Sidi Kebir a year after my mother came here as a bride.'
In the silence that followed his thunderbolt, Lorna could have counted her heartbeats. Her eyes were fixed upon Kasim, a blue and eager light in them. Outside in the palace gardens a nightingale was singing, and it was as if her heart broke into song.
`Please,' she whispered, 'please tell me everything.'
Kasim bowed his head slightly, as if never before had he talked of the things his mother had revealed in her Spanish diary. As if, even with Lorna, he found it a little hard to speak of a secret that was rather painful.
`He came, this man, from la belle France. My mother was not too happy with her life, which she found enclosed, strange to her, and this Frenchman was a diversion for her. He was young but learned, and he came to investigate some scrolls found in an old vault of the palace. He was charming, very much of the world my mother had left when she married the Emir. Soon she was admitting in her diary to a guilty happiness in the company of Justin.'
Kasim glanced up and looked significantly into Lorna's wide, blue, listening eyes. 'The Emir was always busy attending to his duties, and when he found time to be with his young wife he treated her as a toy, to be fondled but not made a real companion of. This fellow Justin was not like that. He discussed his work with her. He told her about the countries he had visited. It was inevitable that their friendship turn into a stolen affair of love.'
Kasim sighed a little and fondled the star sapphire on Lorna's hand. The little ostrich played with fire. She dared to be with this man here in this very apartment. She was lonely, and he was fascinating, but their hours of love were numbered of course, and in
time his work was completed and he went away. My mother settled down to try and forget him, but soon she knew there was to be a child, and that child would be Justin's not her husband's !'
Lorna's husband paused in his narrative, and she could almost feel again—here in this room—the anguish that his mother must have felt when she realized that her affair with the Frenchman was to bear fruit. Lovely, her long dark hair to her waist, she would have paced about this very room, not regretting the love she had felt for Justin, but afraid for her coming child—his child.
`She must have gone in dread fear for some time,' Kasim went on, a deep, moved note in his voice. But the Emir was desperately eager for a child and as mercy would have it he never suspected that his Elena had been unfaithful to him. I was born and he accepted me without question as his son. Kasha tells me that I was a large, bawling, black-haired infant, and that when I was placed in the Emir's arms he carried me to the forecourt of the palace and showed me proudly to his people as the next heir.
`It was strange, Lorna, but the Arabians always liked me and I had an affinity with them. I loved the hot sun, as they did. Fleet horses, and riding with the wind across the desert. I know my mother always meant to tell me the truth about my birth, but she died suddenly when I was thirteen and I alone could read her diary when it was found among her belongings.'
The tawny eyes held Lorna's. 'The Emir is sick, perhaps dying, and it is too late to tell him the truth. I
must continue to give him loyalty and affection. He needs me, looks to me to carry on with his work, and the bond between us cannot be broken by a secret as old as I am. I think Kasha has always suspected the truth, but she loved my mother too much to ever betray her. Lorna . .?'
She didn't speak. She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, sealing them and their secret. 'I love you, Kasim. Whither thou goest, my dear. Whither thou dwellest.'
Again his arms held her a
nd crushed her close to his heart. He looked at her and it was as if a flame glowed in his eyes. 'The people here in Sidi Kebir are saying that you are like a pearl, Lorna. How right they are, chérie. My pearl of the desert. It was as if I always knew I would find you there. As if I called you to me. Do you think it was my voice you heard?'
`My heart heard it, Kasim.' She nestled against his shoulder and breathed the tobacco smoke that always reminded her of her father. 'Do you remember the white flower that I carried in my pocket? It made you angry because I said it came from a man I loved. That man was my father. He lived in a house at the Oasis of Fadna and after he died I went to look at the house. It had slowly crumbled away and all that was left was a wall and on that wall some white flowers were still blooming. I plucked one, Kasim. It was all I had to cling to, that first night in your tent. I was so afraid of you..:
`Mon ange,' he buried his lips in her hair. 'Never be afraid of me ever again !'
`I shall always be a little afraid of you,' she laughed softly against his warm throat. 'You can look so fierce at times, my desert lover.'
He gazed down at her, straight into her eyes, and then he smiled slowly at their unwavering blueness. 'I think sometimes we will fight,' he murmured. But afterwards we will always kiss.'
Lorna smiled and drew his dark head down to her. The nightingale sang in the garden where the blue jasmine starred the moonlit walls and Lorna no longer fled from the arms of her desert lover. Never would either of them be lonely again. They had searched and found the golden garden ... and it was the garden of love.
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