She pulled up, sharply, when Max leaned close and said : “Comme vous etes serieuse, ma belle.”
“Ca va bien, merci!” she lied gallantly.
“Ah, non! C’ est un homme!”
“Qu’importe?” She gave him a smile, the faintest of shrugs, and knew it was inevitable that a Frenchman should guess that her blues were related to a man. The way he glanced at the place card in front of him also spoke volumes.
To all outward appearances she seemed to enjoy the party.
She danced and joined in the fun, but when Max would have led her out on to the terrace she tugged free of his hand. “I
I must go upstairs for a moment. Excuse me, Max !”
She didn’t return to the party, pleading a headache when a maid tapped on her bedroom door with an enquiry from Amalia.
Brooke left early the following morning. Out on the front steps, after embracing his tearful aunt, he turned to Madeline, hesitated a moment, then encircled her with his arms and brushed his lips across her rather wan cheek. “See you soon, huh?” he whispered.
She nodded. “Good luck with the job, Brooke.”
“It’s in the bag, honey.”
His car sped away, leaving a vacuum of silence, then with a sigh Amalia turned and went indoors. Madeline followed, closing the door. For the very first time she felt uncomfortable in her employer’s presence, and murmured that she felt like a gallop if Amalia didn’t need her for anything.
“Don’t go beyond the Palmeries, my dear.” Amalia pressed her hand, then went into the study.
Madeline changed into a shirt and riding-trousers, and ten minutes later she was in Hassan’s saddle and giving him his head. Soon, now, she would be leaving behind her the free, wide spaces of Morocco.
Something stung her cheeks. Hot tears for the ‘Joy that crushed and the love that stung.’
The Palmeries came into view, green and cool-looking in their vivid setting of blue sky and terracotta Bled. She cantered Hassan into the shade of the palms and slipped from his saddle. She tethered him where he could crop the grass, then wandered through the lanes of tall trees, where frogs croaked in the irrigation ditches and the heat of the desert did not penetrate. She remained there for about half an hour, then returned to her mount. She swung into his saddle and headed him back the way they had come.
As she reached the boundary of the city, a prodding devil took the reins and compelled her to follow the path that would take her past a certain arched door set in a high, impenetrable wall.
The streets just here were narrow and winding, haunted by many gaunt and darting cats who existed on scraps of food and were at the mercy of tormenting children. There had been occasions before when Madeline had taken it upon herself to scold some urchin for ill-treating dumb animals, and this morning she was doomed to see something that made her blood run cold. She cantered round a corner and saw on the opposite side of the road a group of boys, playing she assumed with a ball. Then as the dark object rose again in the air a mewing sound issued from it and she saw with horror that it was a kitten.
In a flash she was out of the saddle and darting across the road. She flayed the boys with her riding-whip and scattered the little devils, who nursed their whip marks while she knelt in the dust and took the terrified kitten into her hands.
Fingers touched her shoulder and she glanced up, her blue eyes burning with fury. But the boy bending over her was not one of the kitten’s tormentors. It was young Mohammed, who worked for Victor. “Les diables!” he said.
“Is the doctor at home, Mohammed?” she quickly asked.
“This poor little thing should be looked at.”
To her relief the boy said Victor was at home. He led the way to the house, holding her mount’s bridle while she carried the kitten in the warm felt of her slouch hat. The ruffians responsible for the mischief had fled in various directions.
They had recognized Mohammed and knew who he worked for !
The boy pushed open the high, arched door of Victor’s house and Madeline told him to fetch the doctor to her. He raced off through one of the archways and while she waited she gently caressed the black, trembling little bag of bones that had been treated so abominably. She didn’t think it had any broken bones, but there was a possibility that it had been injured internally.
She heard footfalls and glanced up. Victor came striding across to her, his mouth compressed into a hard line. He took the kitten from her and suggested they go into his sitting-room, where she sank down shakily in a chair.
“Those little brutes !” she said. “They were using the kitten like a ball, tossing it up and down ”
“You are not to upset yourself any more, Madeline.” Then he turned from her as his housekeeper came into the room. He asked Jeanna to make a pot of coffee, gave Madeline a reassuring smile, and took the kitten to his surgery.
“What makes these children do such things?” Madeline asked Jeanna, pressing back the fair hair from her hot temples and looking rather sick with reaction.
“They see no wrong in it.” The old woman shrugged cynically. “Animals are of little account to them, and the doctor always says that only the spread of education will remedy their attitude. You would like to wash your hands, eh, mademoiselle? Then come this way.”
In Victor’s bathroom Madeline splashed cold water over her face, then dried off with his big white towel and dug in her trouser pocket for her lipstick. Strange, the way women carried a lipstick about with them. Their red badge of courage, making of a pale smile a gay one.
She returned to the sitting-room to find coffee waiting in an earthenware pot, along with a pair of pottery cups and a jug of cream. She poured herself a cup of the hot, fragrant coffee and was sipping it when Victor reappeared. “Will the kitten be all right?” she asked eagerly.
He nodded. “The little thing has been badly frightened, but apart from that he is all right. Mohammed is feeding him with milk, then he will sleep.” Victor broke into a smile as he took a chair facing Madeline’s and accepted the cup of coffee she poured out for him. She was conscious of his flickering appraisal as he lounged back in his chair and stretched his long legs across the carpet.
“I must apologize for not putting in an appearance at the party last night,” he remarked after a few minutes of silence between them.
“Dr. Berault said you were probably busy at the, hospital.”
“That is so. A child was brought in with suspected meningitis and I did not think it advisable to leave her. Dr. Fouad was off duty, but he has taken over from me this morning.
The party was enjoyable?”
She nodded.
“And now your beau has departed for the States, eh?”
“He left quite early. Amalia was rather upset, but I think he’s done the best possible thing. He’s far too good a journal-ist to waste himself on a playboy existence.”
“The boy has become a man.” The rare charm of Victor’s smile tugged at Madeline’s heartstrings. “It is amazing what love will accomplish. I assume that you will be joining him upon the completion of Amalia’s book and that your marriage will take place in New York?”
Madeline stared across at Victor, then rather clumsily she put her coffee cup on the palmwood table between them. “I’m not marrying Brooke,” she said.
She rose and walked to the archway that led out to the patio.
She could face him no longer and remain calm. Her heart was in a turmoil … she shuddered as his warm hands came down on her shoulders and she felt him at the back of her.
“I assumed from what Van Cleef said in the restaurant yesterday that a marriage was imminent between you.” Victor’s voice seemed extra deep, his touch thrilled through her like an electric current. “Was he not suggesting that he was getting this job in order to be independently responsible for you?”
“I-I’m sorry, but you misinterpreted what he said. We’re friends, Doctor, nothing more.” Her voice shook as she added : “I’d better be getti
ng back to the villa. Amalia worries when I’m late home from a ride.”
His hands dropped from her shoulders and she turned round, thinking he had stepped away from her. But he hadn’t!
Their eyes clung for an interminable minute, the world seemed to stand still, then it tilted crazily as Victor took her blindly against his chest. The next instant she was swept by the incredible wonder and warmth of his mouth on hers. The kiss for which she had hungered so long was piercing in its sweetness, and lost in it she clung to him.
He didn’t let her go. He held her and questioned with his tawny eyes the kiss-paled sweetness of her face against his arm. “To be wise in love is impossible,” he groaned. “I tried to make you indifferent to me ”
“Why should I be indifferent to you?” she asked, feeling the tensing of his forearm muscles against her lightly clad back.
“From the beginning, ma belle, I knew that something sparked between us, but I felt it best to extinguish it before it grew into a flame.” He touched a lean, brown hand to the honey hair that fell so softly above her eyes. “My heart was at once hot and cold outside the airport when we met. She is adorable, I thought. Such eyes, like gems ! Such golden youth, which I cannot subject to the rigours of my life out here. Love, chérie, was a luxury I was never going to permit myself.”
“Victor,” her heart was in her mouth, “are you saying by any chance that you love me?”
“So small a word for what I feel, ma bien-aimée, que ‘adore a jamais ” Emotion was unloosed too long had they waited for this, and explanations had to wait while he took her mouth in a kiss of consuming passion. This was how she had dreamed it would be with Victor, who was not cold or hard. This was the heaven she had thought beyond her reach like the stars of Jezara.
He lifted her and carried her to the divan, where he put her among the cushions. Then he pulled up a chair and smiled at her as he rolled a cigarette. “In a while I will take you to the villa,” he said, “but right now we must talk.”
“What an understatement, darling,” she laughed, devouring his face with her eyes, free to each out and touch him. “Victor, you brute ! You led me to believe you wanted Donette … and led that poor girl on! ”
“Poor girl?” He laughed at the description, showing his glinting teeth, his eyes sweeping Madeline’s curled-up figure with sudden dominant possessiveness. “She was a handy weapon with which to fight my battle of love, the kind that could not be damaged. But when she followed me to France I thought it time to make it clear to her that I was not prepared to be married for my title. You see, Madeline, I am only half a brute. Had I thought for one moment that Donette genuinely cared for me, then I should not have encouraged her in any way, even to confuse the situation between us.”
“Why did you ever think it necessary to do that, Victor?”
Madeline put out a hand and rested it upon his left one. His fingers at once captured hers and carried them to his lips.
“I hurt you from the best intentions, ma chčre,” he replied.
“This is the East, and it can be so harsh to European women.
There was my mother stricken down so swiftly and ruthlessly I could not bear to think of that happening to you.”
“Monsieur le Comte, you are too gallant,” she smiled whimsically, “but don’t you know that it was slowly killing me, the thought of leaving you?”
“I, too, have lived in a private hell at such a thought,” he admitted in a raw voice. “I wanted with every nerve in my being to keep you with me, but the time of wine and roses is so fleeting ”
Her hand pressed against his lips, shutting off his words.
“There can be no wine and roses for me without you Victor,”
she said softly. “If you send me away you will break my heart.
Do you want to do that, rather than have me here with you
whatever the future might hold ?”
“I think my mother must have said just those words to my father.” Victor held her hand against his cheek. “You are vet like her, do you know that? Jeanne noticed it the first um you came here to my house.”
“Was that what she really said to you on the patio ?”
He nodded. “Two weeks ago, when I received the news the my grandfather was dying, I prayed that I would reach hi side in time to speak with him. I think I knew then that h had something to say that would be important for us. `Tourelle pride is a curse,’ he said to me. ‘It leads us to believe that we are always in the right in what we do. It was far from right of me,’ he admitted, ‘to judge your father’s love, and only wish I could remedy my mistake. I can only tell you Victor, never to repeat it in any way. That is my real legacy to you.’ ”
Victor stubbed his cigarette and drew Madeline into hi arms. He held her close and pressed his cheek to the warn honey of her hair. “I accept his legacy, Madeline. I will no make the mistake of sending you away from me, my love.”
Her arms slipped round his neck and she relished the strength and ardour of the embrace that would always be hers “I do love you, Victor,” she whispered. “I’ve dreamed so often of telling you so.”
“You may tell me as often as you want to, chérie.” He kissed the sudden happy tears that clung to her lashes. “Do you think your good father will approve of me as a son-in law?”
“I’m sure of it, darling,” she smiled. “He told me not to fall in love while I was out here in Morocco, but love has no respect for our good intentions, eh?”
Victor grinned. “Tell me, would it not be a good idea to invite Monsieur Page and your aunt out here to our wedding?
You would like that?”
“Oh, Victor,” her eyes sparkled into his, “what a very dear person you are ! ”
“Nice enough to be kissed?” he enquired.
Her answer was made without words, and a little later they rode to the villa to tell Amalia about their forthcoming marriage. Their eyes kept meeting in that tender, secret smile of lovers. The sky arched blue above them and there was infinite promise in the radiance of the Moroccan sun.
Come what may they would be together, and that was all that mattered.
Desert Doctor Page 18