Tawny Sands

by Violet Winspear

  Janna gave a nervous laugh. 'It's all so ridiculous, like a farce or something. She could have let me stay till the morning, now here I am stranded, without a bed for the night.'

  `Yes, what a predicament,' he said in that dangerous purr of his. 'And you come to me, when only an hour ago you ran from me as if a tiger were at your heels.'

  Janna looked at him and told herself she had been a fool to expect anything but mockery from Raul Cesar Bey. `I'm sorry I awoke you—I'd better go—'

  `You had better stay,' he rejoined. 'I don't feel inclined to argue over the telephone with the night clerk, and there is a strong possibility that hotels in the area have a full complement of summer guests. Tell me, when you informed Madam Noyes that you had another situation to go to, had you Morocco in mind? Have you changed your mind about coming with me?'

  `If you have not changed yours, senor.' Janna braved his eyes. 'I worked hard for Mildred Noyes and my reward was to be called a thief—'

  `Why so?' he demanded.

  `I borrowed her mink stole,' Janna said solemnly. 'You must have noticed it. I hoped she wouldn't be back from the Casino till late, but she evidently had a run of bad luck and returned earlier than usual. She was waiting up for me, and she accused me of intent to steal and made me feel so small. If I'd asked for the loan of the stole she'd have asked questions and then refused to lend it. I wouldn't care, but she never wears it.'

  `She is a selfish woman, and envious of someone young who can look slim instead of bulky in a fur.' He placed an arm about Janna, took her suitcase with the other hand, and led her from the small foyer of his suite into the sitting-room. 'Sit down and I will pour you a small brandy. You look shaky.'

  `I—I must admit I feel it, senor. I don't enjoy rows

  with people, and she spoke to me as if I were a loose creature, or something.'

  He laughed as he stood at the cocktail cabinet pouring brandy into a pair of globe glasses. Holding them cupped in his lean fingers, he crossed the carpet to where Janna sat deep in a soft leather couch.

  `Drink this, Janna. It will settle your nerves and make the situation seem much less dramatic. A loose creature, indeed? Well, it won't matter if you stay here the night. You might as well be blamed for the act instead of the fiction.'

  `What do you mean?' Janna's eyes were large and shocked, and the brandy glass almost slipped from her hand.

  `You had better revive yourself with a mouthful,' he advised, his eyes upon her in a sardonic way.

  She took his advice, and tried not to shrink away as he lounged on the nearest arm of the couch and inhaled his cognac.

  `You have nowhere to go tonight, Janna, so I suggest you stay here.'

  `I couldn't—not possibly !'

  `I am sure you could.' His eyes smiled down into hers, wickedly. 'Wrapped in the cover from my bed, this couch should make a comfortable bed for you. I would offer you mine, but I don't want to frighten you away now you have braved the dragon and have come to me. Don't you know that when a desert man offers the protection of his tent he would never dream of betraying the trust of his guest?'

  `This is not a tent in the desert.' Janna felt a trifle dizzy from the brandy and the events of this unusual night. 'If I were seen leaving your suite in the morning—well, you know what people are ! It would be assumed that you and I—' There she broke off in helpless confusion, her cheeks flushed.

  He tilted his brandy glass and savoured the contents. `Only sticks and stones can break bones, senorita. Idle gossip can't hurt us if we know we are innocent as a pair of infants.'

  She had to smile. He was the kind of man it was impossible to think of in those terms. If she left him in the morning as innocent as she came here tonight, then it would be because she looked too much like Joyosa, the girl who had fled from him He had kissed her in the mimosa just to punish, and in comparison the tittle-tattle of other people was a small thing to bear.

  `I—I have nowhere else to go.' She spoke drowsily, and longed all at once to put up her feet and give in to the softness of the couch and the forgetfulness of slumber.

  `Off with your shoes and your dress,' he ordered. 'I will fetch a coverlet and a pillow, and you will sleep as sound as a child, and not worry about tomorrow until it comes.'

  He strode into the other room, and she thought how kind he was being now she had given in to him. She was almost asleep when he returned with the quilted cover and a pillow. He stood beside the couch gazing down at her. She had removed her casuals and her jacket, but was still wearing her skirt. 'You will crease it,' he said drily. 'Come, don't be shy with me.'

  She stirred as he touched her, her eyes flew wide open as he unzipped her skirt and pulled it off. 'Don't !' she gasped.

  `It is done, Miss Smith. And I begin to suspect that it might be most amusing to coax you out of your shell.'

  She grabbed the coverlet and wrapped herself in it, hiding her slip-clad figure from his gaze. He laughed and placed the pillow beneath her head. 'By this time tomorrow, you funny child, we shall be on our way to Morocco and you will never again see Madam Noyes.'

  It was a nice thought. Never again to hear that bossy voice. Not to feel caged in with a typewriter and reels of tape recordings. Or to see other girls having fun with exciting men while she trailed in the wake of a large, booming figure and looked what she was ... a colourless typist, humbly certain that adventure and romance were not for her.

  Morocco ... the golden sands of the desert ... herself in the hands of Raul Cesar Bey. Circumstances had made it almost inevitable that she be drawn into his life; into the strands of an intrigue that would unwind beneath the hot sun of El Amara. Yet despite her guilty doubts she was excited by the prospect of visiting a place that sounded so legendary. A desert city, ruled over by a real-life Princess, whose grandson and heir was the most dangerously attractive man Janna had ever dreamed of meeting.

  Complications were bound to arise from such a game of make-believe, but all her life Janna had looked before she leapt ... this time she was going to leap first and if she landed in the soup it would be a most exotic one, a Moroccan cous-cous studded with plums both sweet and bitter.

  She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, unaware that Don Raul came again to the side of the couch and studied her face against the pillow, his eyes intent and searching. In his dark silk robe, with the lamp slanting its light at an odd angle across his cheekbones, he looked proud and masterful. A smile moved his lips, and if Janna had suddenly awoken to see that smile she would have been alarmed.

  She would have seen herself trapped in his eyes ... the girl from nowhere, who meant nothing to nobody, chosen because of a strange likeness to Joyosa to enact the role of his unwanted, unloved bride-to-be.

  He put out the lamp and walked away from her, into his own room. The door closed and all was quiet, only the cicadas chirred in the dark trees, and the sleeping girl moved with a sudden restlessness, as if she felt an urge to throw off sleep and escape now, while she could, but soon she lay still again and her lashes were locked against her cheeks. A dream held her .

  And when she awoke sunlight was streaming into the sitting-room. Don Raul was standing over by the table pouring coffee, and looking active and lithe in a white polo

  shirt and a pair of rust-red slacks of immaculate cut.

  He swung round to look at her, his lip quirking at the gamine picture she made with her hair tousled and her eyes big and startled. 'Good morning,' he said, bringing her a cup of coffee. 'I have to go out for an hour or two, and I want your promise that you will stay here in my suite. That you will not change your mind and run off to other employment now morning has come.'

  She held the cup of coffee in both hands and gazed up at him. 'I don't think I have a free choice any more, Don Raul. You have taken charge of me, haven't you?'

  `I am not abducting you,' he drawled.

  She took a sip of coffee, and she couldn't have said if this were true or not. She knew only that she wanted to escape to a complete c
hange of routine and environment; to meet people who were not overfed and selfish, spending their lives in enjoyment while others toiled for' them. Whatever the outcome of this trip to the desert, Janna was sure of one thing . she would see new things in a strange, exciting, colourful land, where the sands of gold surrounded the village of El Amara, and the House of the Pomegranate.

  Don Raul glanced at his wristwatch, the leather strap dark against his brown and muscular arm. 'I have to arrange for our flight tickets to be booked, and I wish also to visit my cousin. I should be free by twelve o'clock, when we will lunch together and then go to Louis Jean for your new clothes.'

  `My new clothes?' she echoed.

  But of course. You will, when we board our jet plane tonight, be the ward of a Princess and be dressed accordingly, and you will be wearing the Romans emerald. In fact we will see right now whether it fits you.'

  He strode to the bureau, unlocked a drawer and took

  from it a small velvet box. He returned to Janna and when

  he opened the box a dazzling ring was disclosed. He took

  it from the velvet and asked her to give him her right hand.

  She couldn't move. She felt as if all the will-power had

  left her limbs, and she could only watch numbly as he took her hand and slipped the ring on the third finger. It fitted as if made for her, the fabulous emerald ring of the Romanos family.

  `What do you think of it?' he murmured.

  `It's utterly splendid,' she gasped. 'So green and pure and yet full of fire. It frightens me a little, as if something terrible could happen because I wear it.'

  He gazed down at her, his face thoughtful. 'You are sensitive enough to realise that the emerald has a history, you are not merely enraptured by its lustre and how it becomes a slender hand. It is placed on the right hand because for now it is merely a token; something the Princess wished me to present to her ward in the hope of an alliance between us.'

  Janna listened to him with a sense of unreality. The flawless emerald and diamonds looked so strange on her hand.

  `You must have a manicure at Louis Jean,' he drawled. `My grandmother has sharp eyes, and she will be expecting someone chic, and a little pampered. I wonder if you can manage to look as if life has treated you like a pet?'

  `Please tell me about the emerald, Don Raul. I'd like to know if it's a sad or a happy stone.' Then she glanced up at him and the breath seemed to catch in her throat. His eyes were glittering, as if with some intense emotion he barely suppressed. He plunged his hands into the pockets of his slacks and began to pace back and forth, the sun through the blinds striking gold and black across his tall figure, making him look like a caged tiger.

  `An ancestor of mine received it as a gift from a Peruvian temple dancer, and it is said to bring good fortune only to the wearer who is pure as the stone itself. Many women have worn it down the years, Janna, and it has changed its setting several times, but still it holds a magic. Memories of the exotic dancer who loved a conquistador. Some of the Romanos brides have been happy enough, but there is also a history of sadness. Of young men of the

  family lost in wars, in clashes with authority, and in duels fought for the honour of a woman.'

  He paused and stared into a bar of sunlight. 'It seems as if the stone has not yet found its true wearer, who could love as the Peruvian girl loved her Spanish soldier, throwing herself from the temple roof when he was ordered back to Spain.'

  His eyes flashed to meet Janna's 'There you have the story of the Romanos emerald; it is set down in the records of the conquistadors, a stone of love and tragedy.'

  Janna was still sitting like a small statue when the door opened and closed behind Don Raul. She was alone with the ring, a token of deception, worn by her to bring him happiness with another woman.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE journey to Casablanca was for Janna a whirl of unusual impressions. They boarded the streamlined jet as dusk was falling, and her brand new luggage was stowed away with the more travelled cases of Don Raul. Her smart clothes and new hairstyle made her feel strange as they took their seats and he buckled the belt for her. Their eyes met as they were airborne.

  `Relax,' he said. 'You look for all the world as if I am taking you to Morocco against your will ... that sheik of the desert abducting a girl for his pleasure.'

  `It's been a strange and unreal sort of a day, senor. Selecting all those new things, going through the mysteries of the beauty salon, and running into Mildred just as we were leaving the hotel.'

  He laughed softly, beckoned one of the hostesses and asked Janna what she fancied to drink. She glanced at the ring upon her hand, the emerald sparkling like a green eye,

  living and lustrous. 'A creme de menthe, please.' She had never tasted one and had a sudden longing to do so. The drink seemed in keeping with her new exotic role, and she watched with large, intrigued eyes as Don Raul ordered their drinks with worldly ease from the attractive air hostess ... who looked at him with admiring eyes. She had every reason to do so. He wore a grey lounge suit that offset his air of distinction, and made his hair and eyes seem all the darker. He was the most striking man on the plane, and Janna sat beside him looking like his pampered property.

  No one was to know that she was only hired to travel with him.

  She wore a cream suit from Louis Jean trimmed with a whisper of fur. Her shoes and her bag were of matching snakeskin, her hair was softly scrolled about her slender face. Her fingernails and lips were a soft coral. She had no need to look in the mirror of the compact initialled with tiny jewels, which Don Raul had dropped casually into her bag. She looked a new person, and that was why Mildred Noyes had stared at her with maliciously accusing eyes in the foyer of the Splendide.

  Buen prevecho.' Don Raul raised his glass to her, and she murmured good health in return and sipped the misty green of her own drink, the ice cool against her lips. It was strange, but the further they flew from France, and the closer each mile brought them to Morocco, the shyer Janna felt, as if she had only begun to realise how much of a stranger was the man who had talked her into intrigue and dressed her in fine clothes to assist the part.

  `Are you thinking of Madame Noyes and how she looked at us?' He leaned forward and his eyes were wickedly amused. 'What does it matter, what such a woman likes to infer from seeing you in the company of a man? It was gratifying that she be given a jolt of surprise. She could see for herself that you were not about to be tied to a typewriter.'

  `No.' Janna smiled wryly. 'I'm sure she thought the very opposite; that I had sold my humble soul to Lucifer himself.'

  `So?' His eyebrow quirked steeply. 'You regard me as a dark angel, eh? You think I have persuaded you to fall from grace?'

  `Well, I wouldn't put it quite so dramatically.' She topped up her courage with another quick sip of her drink. But it was rather grim to have Mildred look at me from head to toe as if I had taken leave of my morals and become a Mata Hari.'

  `You know what your trouble is,' he drawled, 'you have no confidence in yourself. Why should a man not uncover the snow to reveal the gentian? You remind me of the blue flower that grows on the lonely, snowy hillside.'

  `I've been revealed for a reason,' she said, colour stealing into her cheeks. 'If I hadn't looked like Joyosa, you would not have bothered with me.'

  `So be glad you have the look that caught my eye.' He ran his eyes over her. 'It pleases me that you wear good clothes with a natural grace. I wonder, Janna Smith, who your parents were? Did the orphanage never know?'

  She shook her head. 'I was found in the stone niche where the Principal's milk was left each morning. There was no note attached to my shawl, only this gold chain bound three times about my wrist.' She showed him the chain which never left her wrist, to which was attached the little golden fish he had already noticed. 'When I left the Home they gave me the chain. It's all my worldly possessions.'

  He gazed at her with eyes that were abruptly sombre. `You have not had much of a deal,
have you, Janna? The cold high walls of a charity house were yours; mine were the sunhot walls of a large desert villa. I was born on the edge of the desert. I grew up in the sun, under the burning blue sky, amid what is wonderfully wild and free. I can't- imagine what it must be like to be imprisoned. by rules and regulations, to sleep in a narrow iron cot, and not have the

  Princess Yamila to run to with my boyhood discoveries.'

  He fingered the chain on her wrist, and the little fish. `All we have in common is that I lost my parents when I was still a child. We were travelling home by ship from a visit to Spain and were a few miles off Tangier when a fire broke out in the cargo section. Within half an hour the ship was aflame. My father kissed me, flung me into the water, and I swam away, thinking my parents would quickly follow. It was only later that I remembered my Spanish father couldn't swim, and I knew when I was at last picked up that my mother would have tried with all her heart to keep him afloat, only to drown with him. They were very devoted. If one had to die, then it were better they die together. Devotion should not be torn asunder.'

  `I'm so sorry,' Janna was moved by his story, shocked by the imagery of a boy flung from a burning ship into the seething ocean. A boy so full of life, so strong even then, that he had battled all alone in the water until picked up; a lean, dark, vital boy, bursting into tears, perhaps, when landed at Tangier to await the parents who never came to him; who had gone together to a farther place.

  `I had the Princess,' he said quietly. 'You had no family at all.'

  `One gets used to it,' she assured him. 'It seems quite natural in the end to be alone.'

  `It is unnatural,' he retorted. 'Birds rarely perch alone, fish swim in shoals, and something dies in the heart if there is no one to love. There has been no one, chica? No boy, no man? Ah, of course not. I knew it when I kissed you ... it was like holding snow in my hands.'