The Desert Castle

by Isobel Chace

  ‘I do!’ Marion claimed, much too quickly. ‘It’s only that you might not be able to help yourself.’

  ‘Dear Marion, that’s why I want you to come with us this week-end.’

  She looked at her, her eyes half-closed and considering. ‘Of the two of us, I’d say you were the more likely to lose your head—which is another reason for sticking close to me!’

  ‘But he’ll be away—’

  Lucasta slapped her thighs with glee. ‘I knew it!’ she exulted. ‘You have fallen for him, haven’t you? And if you won’t do anything about it, I will!’

  ‘No, no, you’re not to. There’s nothing you can do. Your uncle would be furious if you were to interfere—and I would be too! I mean it, Lucasta!’’

  But the girl only laughed. ‘Don’t flap, darling, I was only teasing you! But you will come with us this week-end, won’t you?’

  Marion’s panic that her young charge might call her uncle’s attention to her when she was already afraid that he saw far too much subsided a little, leaving her feeling more than a little foolish.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Lucasta shrugged. ‘Gaston didn’t say. He hates staying in one place, though. He’s determined that I shall take a proper interest in my surroundings and gives me long lectures on the significance of a few dull little stones in the middle of nowhere whenever I let him. He’s really very sweet! And very easy to distract, I’m thankful to say!’

  Marion, growing used to Lucasta’s exaggerated speech, wondered if it would be selfish to suggest that they should go to Petra. It still stung that Gregory should have refused to take her. It was the way he had done it, just as if he couldn’t bear her company for two whole days. And she wouldn’t have imposed on him, she would have been as quiet as a mouse, but it hadn’t made any difference. Even if she had asked him, he had said he wouldn’t take her.

  ‘Let’s go to Petra,’ she said out loud. ‘Next weekend. Oh, do let’s, Lucasta!’

  ‘Petra? Would Gaston like it?’

  ‘I’m sure he would. It’s a city carved out of rock. You must have seen pictures of it!’

  Lucasta remained irritatingly unconvinced. ‘But what would we do there? Gaston likes to get off by himself,’ she added demurely, fluttering her eyelashes.

  ‘It’s a big place,’ Marion told her. ‘I believe it’s at least ten square miles inside. There’s only one place where you can get in to it through the hills. It’s a tiny little passage, cut by an old river. It must be interesting from an engineering point of view! Couldn’t you persuade him that you want to see it?’

  ‘I could,’ said Lucasta, ‘but I’m not sure I want to. I’ll think about it. I’m sorry to be maddening, but I may have made up my mind about Gaston by then and I’d rather keep our plans fluid.’

  Marion returned to her work, trying to hang on to the shreds of her good temper. ‘All right, think about it! But whatever you decide you’re not going off alone with Gaston—not with Gregory away and only me to keep an eye on you, whether I trust you or not!’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Lucasta repeated. She watched Marion work for a few minutes and then said maliciously, ‘Zein told Gregory she had seen your picture on the wall. She wanted to know what you were doing there. And do you know what she told him? She said you were waiting for him!’

  Marion’s eyes flew to the little houri. He had said more or less the same thing to her, she remembered, only she hadn’t seen the likeness between herself and the painted figure then. And, of course, he had been joking! She had laughed then, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to laugh now. Now, she couldn’t see anything funny about it at all.

  ‘There’s a letter for you. Will you come and collect it after dinner?’

  Marion nodded. She had only addressed two words directly to Gregory all week and she wondered now why he couldn’t have brought her letter with him to the table. If she went into his study she would have to say something, and she had nothing to say to him.

  She knew he was watching her all the time they were eating, but she refused to look back at him. If she did, she might betray herself, and he would know that she ached to ask him to come and look at the frescoes, even more to ask him if he was really going to stay with Denise this coming week-end. Sooner or later, she was going to have to speak to him about the frescoes. No matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t possibly finish even the ones in her bedroom in the few weeks of this holiday. She would need months rather than weeks to complete her task.

  It was the first time she had been in his study. It was a comfortable room, with a strongly Eastern emphasis in the furnishings. Marion knew that the Arabic for office was diwan, the same word in effect as divan, where the great man would once have lounged as he directed his minions to carry out his day-to-day business. There was a divan here too, a day-bed with an elaborately carved wooden back that looked beautiful but not very comfortable. There were some leather pouffes dotted around too, and a screen between the huge desk and the door which had some of the loveliest fretwork Marion had ever seen. It was the ikons on the wall that claimed her immediate attention, however. They were dark with age, glinting gold in the lamplight, and she knew as soon as she saw them madly valuable.

  ‘They must have been what you wrote to my father about!’ she exclaimed, moving in closer to see them better. ‘Oh, how he must have envied you such a fine collection!’

  Gregory sat down in the chair behind the desk. ‘Don’t you want your letter?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ She didn’t even pause in her examination of the ikons. There was one particularly beautiful one of Cosmos and Damian that took her breath away. She could have done with hours to look at that one alone. ‘Did my father ever see these?’

  ‘He bought some of than for me in the London sales.’

  ‘I’m surprised he could bear to let them out of his sight,’ she gloated. ‘How did you persuade him?’

  ‘He didn’t seem to be a particularly envious man,’ Gregory remarked.

  ‘No, he wasn’t. Far from it. But these ikons are something else, aren’t they?’ She studied one of the larger ones which was carved in an arch and from which most of the paint had fallen. It had probably once been the lid of a monk’s chest in which he had kept the few personal possessions allowed to him. Beneath the paint, the wood was grey with age.

  ‘Yes, they’re something else,’ Gregory agreed. ‘They’ve taught me something too, something I think your father always knew. You can’t own things of beauty; the most you can do is to look after them for a while. Ownership is a very relative term.’

  She was surprised that he had known her father so well when at most they could have exchanged a few letters.

  ‘My father always said it was a privilege to see great works of art,’ she confided. ‘He used to say that the effect they had on oneself was the only part of them one could possess. He could look at things much more objectively than I can, though. With me it’s a mood thing. I need to see something in every kind of mood before I know it. I’m only just getting to know the frescoes in my room.’

  He smiled across the room at her. ‘I’d say you were more appreciative than most.’

  She smiled back, forgetting her nervousness of him. ‘I’d be pretty dull of mind if I didn’t like them a little, my father being the man he was.’ She advanced across the room, her eyes alight. ‘May I come back some time and look at them again? I wouldn’t interrupt you while you were working, but while you’re away at the weekend, for instance. Please, may I?’

  ‘Who told you I’d be away for the week-end?’

  ‘Lucasta.’ She sat down on one of the pouffes, tucking her feet up under her. It was nice in here, she thought, alone with Gregory and with his ikons all about them. She wouldn’t spoil it by dwelling on his chosen companion for the week-end because she would spoil it all.

  He watched her settling herself with a slight smile.

  ‘Does it take you as long to get to know people?’ he aske
d her. ‘Do you have to see them in every mood too?’

  She had never thought about it. ‘I suppose people are more complicated,’ she answered. ‘They have different moods too. It isn’t the same because everything they say changes what I feel all the time. Pictures are less demanding in the long run.’

  ‘They don’t cut up your peace like people do?’

  Her sober expression broke into laughter. ‘Sometimes. Nobody ever did before—’ She broke off, giving him an apologetic look. ‘Peace isn’t everything!’ she added by way of offering him an olive branch.

  ‘No. I prefer to be challenged myself.’ He held out her letter to her and she took it from him, meaning to read it later. ‘I think you may find it more exhilarating too when you get used to it.’

  She felt shy under the probing of his navy-blue eyes and turned her letter over in her hands. ‘Oh, good! It’s from Mother. I wonder how she’s enjoying Devon.’

  ‘Why don’t you open it and find out?’

  Her fingers shook a little as she pulled the closely written pages out of the envelope. She didn’t want his eyes on her when she read it. He would know as if he had read it himself what was in it. He would know that she hadn’t wanted her mother to stay in his house in Devon—and he would know why!

  She allowed her eyes to slide over the lines of her mother’s writing and stiffened, unable to believe what she was reading.

  ‘What is it?’ Gregory asked, amused.

  ‘My mother likes Devon,’ she told him in cool, stilted tones. ‘She’s sleeping better than she was in London and she likes having something to do.’

  There were little lights in his eyes reflected from the lamp in front of him. When she looked up at him, she found them quite hypnotic and it took a distinct effort of will to look away again.

  ‘Your mother likes a challenge too,’ he told her. ‘You’re more like her than you allow.’

  She read a little further and her whole world fell in on top of her. ‘She wants to move to Devon for good!’ she whispered. ‘She wants to sell the house in London. But you can’t want her in your house for ever?’ She looked down at the floor. ‘And what am I to do?’

  ‘What do you want to do?’ His voice was bracing and she managed a quavery smile because she didn’t want him to think that she lacked spirit, though she must do because she felt quite flattened by the news.

  ‘I like the school where I teach. They’re expecting me back next term. I have to give them some notice if I’m going to leave.’

  She consulted the letter, struggling to move the lump in her throat before it reached astronomical proportions. She swallowed hard as the words blurred before her eyes.

  ‘She thinks I can get a job in Exeter.’ She laughed shortly. ‘It’s only twenty miles away! It’s years since we had a car and we couldn’t possibly afford to run one and, even if we could, I can’t live in your house too!’ She looked up at him, an unconscious appeal in her eyes. ‘She must be mad to think you’d want either of us there on a permanent basis!’

  He was silent for a long moment, then he said, ‘It’s a nice house. I think you’d like it.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It suits me very well to have your mother living there. I was hoping she would want to stay on. I’m there very seldom, but the house has been in our family for a good many generations and I like to know it’s there to go back to whenever I want to. We had some marvellous holidays there as children.’

  The appeal in her eyes changed to accusation. ‘You meant her to make her home there?’

  ‘I did suggest that she might think about it,’ he admitted. ‘Your father’s ghost was making the London house unbearable to her.’ He bent forward until his head was on the same level as hers. ‘Do you really mind so much?’

  She nodded. ‘Even if I paid you an economic rent I’d feel I’d lost my independence. I’d have nothing to offer in return.’

  ‘Isn’t that for me to decide?’ He sat back, his face in shadow, and Marion felt a shiver inside her at his change of mood. ‘I was going to speak to you about next term in any case. How are the frescoes going?’

  ‘I’ve hardly begun.’

  He glanced at her and she couldn’t begun to tell what he was thinking. ‘As a job, how does it compare with teaching?’

  ‘There is no comparison,’ she returned. ‘Teaching is bread and butter and what I do to earn my living; the other is ambrosia. It’s the most marvellous opportunity I’ve ever had to do the kind of thing I really want to.’

  ‘Then you’d better stay here until you’ve finished the job,’ he said drily.

  ‘I can’t!’

  Her passionate refusal hadn’t put him out one jot.

  ‘Why not?’ His very calmness made her feel the more distraught.

  ‘Why not?’ she repeated. ‘It should be obvious to anyone why I can’t stay here! When Lucasta goes back to England—’

  ‘Good heavens, aren’t there enough other females around to suit the proprieties?’ he exploded.

  She shivered. ‘Only Denise,’ she murmured. ‘And she’s only here at week-ends.’

  The dislike he felt for her was naked in his eyes and the lump came back into her throat, making her feel more miserable than ever. She already knew he thought her prudish and over-concerned about Lucasta, but she couldn’t bring herself to say that she would stay on in his castle alone with him. It might not matter to him, but for her it would be total disaster. She couldn’t go on pretending for ever, and she was almost sure she wouldn’t want to, and she would be the one to be hurt —more than she was now, if that was possible!

  ‘There’s Zein and Umm Hanhn, or don’t they count in your scheme of things?’ he asked her nastily.

  But she knew without being told whose side they would be on. ‘Perhaps Denise wouldn’t mind staying for a while—if her father can spare her—’

  ‘I think not,’ he said with unexpected firmness. ‘I’ll write to your mother and see what she suggests. She can give in your notice at the same time to that school of yours, which should give them nearly a fortnight to find a replacement.’ He moved and the light fell squarely on his face and his eyelashes seemed all of an inch long. ‘I thought you got on all right with the Bedouin women? You don’t seem to share Denise’s dislike for them?’

  ‘I do! I like them very much!’ She wished he wouldn’t stare at her like that. In fact she wished he wouldn’t look at her at all.

  ‘Then what’s the matter?’

  The gentleness of the question took her unawares and she blurted out the truth before she could help herself.

  ‘They’d think you’d kept me here for yourself. They wouldn’t understand that there’s nothing like that between us. They wouldn’t think we could be—friends, or employer and employee, or anything like that.’

  He raised his eyebrows with a touch of humour and the planes of his face were unbelievably handsome in the lamplight.

  ‘Perhaps they’re right.’

  The words lay between them for a long moment and then she laughed. It was a reflex action, for she could see nothing funny in what he had said.

  ‘But we’re not—’

  ‘We’re not friends, either, Marion.’

  Her eyes fell before his. ‘You said you’d try to be my friend,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I must have been mad!’ He came round and drew her to her feet. ‘Should I stay home this weekend?’

  She took fright immediately. ‘No. Gaston and Lucasta may take me to Petra.’

  ‘You can go some other time,’ he tempted.

  But she shook her head. ‘I want to go. I’ve always wanted to go to Petra!’

  The corners of his mouth kicked up into a smile.

  ‘I’m glad your mother is going to live in my house.’ he said slowly. ‘It makes our adoption of one another more official. Shall we celebrate our new relationship, you and I?’

  His hands burned through her dress as he pulled her up on to the leather pouffe she had been si
tting on. She blinked up at him.

  ‘What relationship?’

  He laughed, touching his lips to her brow. ‘Kissing kin?’ he suggested.

  She could have escaped him if she had really wanted to do so. At no time did he coerce her to stand as still as a statue before him, nor did he force her to cling to him, afraid as she was that she might fall if she let go her hold on him.

  ‘I’m not kin,’ she said in a voice that sounded like someone else’s and not even remotely like her own. ‘I’m not kith either!’

  ‘Just as I’m not your friend,’ he confirmed. ‘Nor do I want to be!’

  He kissed her mouth and it was as if she had never been kissed before. Her heart seemed to have stopped within her and then, in a mad race to make up time, it rushed into a new rhythm that left her breathless with a dizzy happiness that he must have felt too, for he kissed her again with increasing passion, and then she turned away from him with a determination that took the happy feeling away and left her feeling as awkward as ever. She had remembered Denise, she thought, and shut her eyes in case he should see how much he had hurt her.