Court of Veils

by Violet Winspear

  Nanette studied Roslyn, kneeling there on a heap of cushions, a finger of desert sunshine stroking her hair and the thin line of her cheek. ‘You have a lot of imagination, haven’t you, my child?’ She spoke in a thoughtful tone of voice.

  ‘I think I must have,’ Roslyn agreed.

  ‘Armand had very little,’ Nanette said, and then she walked quickly across the room to the carved armoire and jerked open the door. About half a dozen youthful dresses hung inside, also some jaunty blouses and several pairs of bright, narrow trousers. Nanette’s hand delved into the back of the cupboard and hangers rattled as she brought into view a fold or two of something white. ‘These are your trousseau, sent to us from a London shop while you were in hospital.’ Armand’s grandmother turned to give Roslyn a long, considering look. ‘My grandson must have intended his marriage to you to take place in El Kadia.’

  Roslyn stared at the white lace dress now fully revealed in Nanette’s hands.

  ‘Along with the dress came a tiny cap of pearls, and slippers also of white - Duane was of the opinion that you should be shown these things as soon as possible.’

  Roslyn slipped to her feet and approached to touch the dress. Something seemed to stir into life in her mind . . . she sensed, though could not say for certain, that once before she had touched this lacy, knee-length dress with its simple heart-shaped bodice.

  Nanette showed her the Juliet cap and the slippers. Roslyn knew them with her fingertips!

  ‘I - I had dresses,’ she said, in a shaken voice. ‘You need not have bought me one.’

  ‘You lost weight in hospital, child.’ Nanette returned the lace wedding dress to the back of the armoire, along with the cap and the slippers. She fingered the day dresses and those for evening wear. ‘These will have to be slightly altered, I should think, to fit your present measurements. I have a sewing-machine. My maid, who is very adept with her fingers, will see to the alterations.’

  ‘Thank you, madame.’

  ‘Nanette!’ Suddenly the tiny ringed hands of Madame Gerard were pressed one each side of Roslyn’s face. Her fingers traced the thrust of the fey cheekbones and the hollows beneath them. ‘We must build you up, Roslyn. You are thin like a crane, with eyes that swallow your face. Does it hurt that I showed you the dress in which you would have been married?’

  ‘Seeing it must hurt you as well, Nanette.’

  ‘Just so, it hurts. But Duane was right. He said that there is nothing else at Dar al Amra to remind you of the past. The white dress and the little cap of pearls were familiar to you. They jolted your mind, eh?’

  Roslyn nodded. ‘I know, though I can’t remember, that I tried on the cap. I - think Juliet Grey must have been with me. I think we might have joked about the Juliet cap.’

  ‘The poor little Juliet who was killed,’ Nanette said sombrely, ‘In sha Allah. You will hear the Arabs say that very often, my child. If a thing must be, it will be. And now I will leave you to take a little rest. Beside your bed you will find a service bell. If you require anything, ring it and one of the servants will soon come. Jakoub speaks half a dozen languages, so you will have no trouble communicating with him.’

  The vermilion door closed behind Nanette, and for a long moment Roslyn stood where she was, facing the mirrored door of the armoire. It gave back her reflection in a strange, shadowed way. Her face looked masked ... that of a masquerader who had wandered into a house of strangers who were as uncertain of her as she was of them.

  She went closer to the mirror and stared at her unfamiliar self. Her grey eyes still held some of the shock of that morning in hospital when she had first realized that she could not remember who she was. In tears and panic she had listened to the doctor telling her gently that the affliction was only the temporary result of her head injury, and that normal functioning of her memory would return - in time.

  But it felt so awful not to be able to remember anything but nightmare fragments of the crash itself ... the flare of fire, the sound of rending metal and screams. Her escape, they said, had been miraculous, and in time the pain and emptiness of losing her fiancé would grow more bearable.

  Armand ... she spoke the name aloud and tried desperately to remember the man for whom she would have worn the white lace dress, and the Juliet cap studded with tiny beads. Surely when you fell in love the heart and the senses were far more involved than the mind, yet here she stood with her heart as empty as her mind!

  A shiver of self-doubt ran through her. Perhaps she had not loved Armand, but had agreed to marry him because he was a Gerard and could give her a fairly easy life. That could be the explanation, much as it repelled her ... and something of the sort might have been in Duane Hunter’s mind when he had stared at the ring on her finger.

  With a sigh she started to explore her room and the adjacent alcove which had been converted into a bathroom. The water used at Dar al Amra was evidently tapped from the underground springs that fed its acres of date and fruit trees, and when Roslyn discovered a robe, bath-towels, soap and crystals, she ran a tub of lukewarm water and eagerly undressed to take a cool bath after that desert drive from the hospital.

  Afterwards she felt relaxed, and in the long robe she curled among the cushions of a window recess and flipped through some French magazines on a palmwood table beside her. In a while there was a knock on the door and she called, ‘Entrez!’

  A robed servant came in carrying a tray; a dignified, smiling Arab who informed her in throaty English that he was called Jakoub and that at the orders of Madame he had brought luncheon to the young sitt in her room.

  He arranged the various dishes on the palmwood table in front of her, shooting interested glances at her, and all the while informing her that her menu consisted of onion soup, little lamb cutlets with vegetables, and pancakes with honey. ‘Everything looks very tasty,’ she assured him, with sudden appetite. ‘Is Madame Gerard having lunch in her room?’

  ‘Always Madame eats in her room at this time of day,’ he replied, smiling and nodding approval as Roslyn broke a brioche and started on her soup. ‘The sun at noon is like fire in the sky, and we at Dar al Amra do our utmost to conserve the health of our Lella.’

  Roslyn glanced up at Jakoub, who had a superbly trimmed beard and who wore the pale green turban of a Mecca pilgrim. ‘Madame informed me that you speak several languages,’ she said admiringly. ‘Your English is extremely good, Jakoub.’

  ‘The sitt is more than kind to say so.’ He gave her a grave bow. ‘I travelled much in my youth with a great writer from your land, Mees Brant. He wrote many books about the East, and I should be gratified if you would like to read some of them.’

  'I'd love to, Jakoub!’ She was delighted. There had been books at the hospital, but all of them written in French, and her craving for a good read told her that she must be a bookworm.

  Jakoub was only too happy to sort out for her a selection of the books written by the novelist he had once served. With pride he pointed out a couple of dedications to himself, and Roslyn - whose genuine interest in the books had won her a friend in this desert house - settled down after her lunch to enjoy a long, luxurious read.

  Then around three o’clock there came an interruption in the shape of Madame’s maid. She couldn’t speak English, but managed to convey to Roslyn that she would alter a dress for her to wear that evening at family dinner downstairs. Roslyn - heart hammering as she touched the trousseau dresses - selected a pleated chiffon in misty blue-grey. She had to try it on, of course, and Maryam indicated that it needed taking in at the waist and hips. She carried the dress away with her, and after she had gone Roslyn found herself restless, unable to settle down again with the book she had been enjoying.

  She knelt in the recess, gazing down through the mesh-lattice at the Court of Veils. The great shade tree was quite still in the afternoon heat, and only the tinkling of fountain water and the chirr of katydids could be heard. The spicy scents of the plantation stole through the windows, that were without glass,
and Roslyn found her thoughts wandering down the groves of palm trees to the Moorish house hidden away among them.

  Duane Hunter’s solitary house, where he lived surrounded by the tall trees to whom he gave most of his devotion.

  Roslyn’s first encounter with him came back vividly into her mind, the way he had stood looking at her from the carved entrance of the salon, the sun on the dark fire of his hair, tousled above eyes the colour of lichen on a craggy wall. The instant their eyes had met, Roslyn had felt him to be hostile and unwelcoming, and it was a relief to know that he lived apart in his own establishment.

  Perhaps living for years in the jungle had hardened him, made him so self-dependent that he had no pity to give to someone like herself, who had accepted the protection of strangers because she felt so lost and lonely ... and scared.

  Her head fell back sleepily against a cushion and worn out by the events of the day she drifted off to sleep. The room was in darkness when she awoke and she uncurled her stiff body and groped her way to the light switch. She blinked as the light came on, and was in the middle of a stretch when she noticed that Maryam had brought back her altered dress and laid it carefully across the foot of the bed.

  Evening slippers of dark blue brocade had been put out for her, and with bated breath she slipped her feet into them. She gave a sigh of relief, and then wondered why it should cross her mind that they might be too small or too large for her. How odd of her! Your feet didn’t alter in size because you lost a little weight.

  She had a wash, then slipped into the pleated chiffon dress and studied her reflection in the mirror of the armoire. The soft draping of the dress was kind to the angularity of her body; the grey of her eyes picked up hints of blue from the material, and she had obeyed Madame’s injunction to be more lavish with her lipstick. She didn’t look too bad, she supposed, and then she saw her nose wrinkling up as she remembered the way Isabela Fernao had giggled when Duane had made his crack about the Sleeping Beauty.

  ‘Rats!’ she muttered. ‘I don’t like you either, Mr. Hunter!’

  She turned from the mirror in a brisk swirl of chiffon and clicked off the light as she marched out of the room.

  The corridor was lighted at intervals by wall-lamps, and vaulted overhead so that the effect was that of a cool, winding cloister. Set here and there were oval-shaped doors of varying colours, leading into bedrooms similar to her own, Roslyn conjectured. She thought the idea of coloured doors sensible as well as attractive, for it ruled out the mischance of a guest entering the wrong room.

  Roslyn was approaching an arcade at the very end of the corridor when it occurred to her that on leaving her room she should have gone left instead of right. She was about to turn and remedy her mistake, when she noticed to one side of the fretted arch a narrow flight of steps leading upwards. She hesitated, then couldn’t resist mounting them to find out if they led to the roof.

  They did! She was out under the Arabian stars that pierced a smoke-grey sky, and with a little murmur of delight she went to the edge of the parapet and saw that from here the house faced the desert, awesome and shadowed, filled with a silence that yet held small sounds. The rustle of the long-leaved palm trees, the distant yap of a jackal, and the rumble of Arabic down in one of the courtyards.

  Roslyn breathed the spicy night air of El Kadia, and felt in tune with the mystery and emptiness which lay for miles beyond the plantation ... she seemed to belong here, and guessed that Armand had talked often about his family and Dar al Amra.

  Suddenly her left hand clenched the parapet and the big diamond of Armand’s ring shone like a tear in the starlight. It all came rushing back over her as she stared down at the ring she had been holding so tightly when the rescue squad had found her, flung yards from the wreckage of the big jet, with hardly a rag left to her back.

  ‘Now don’t get in a panic,’ she warned herself, but still it came, that awful shaking that made her cling tightly to the tower wall of Dar al Amra.

  ‘I’m Roslyn - Roslyn Brant,’ she whispered as the terror of her plight swept over her. ‘I'm twenty-two and I work for an airline and live in England ...’

  Perhaps she ought to return to England, to familiar places which might help her to find her way out of this blank, dark tunnel...

  ‘Good evening - Juliet,’ said a voice behind her.

  Her heart contracted, then she swung round and saw a tall figure outlined against the star-grey sky. By a trick of the shadows the man’s lower face seemed masked ... but she would have known those keen, glinting eyes anywhere!

  CHAPTER THREE

  Roslyn stood by the parapet, still as a hunted creature, as Duane Hunter drew near and towered beside her in the semi-darkness. ‘Why - did you call me Juliet?’ Her voice came back with a rush.

  ‘I couldn’t resist it,’ he drawled. ‘The balcony scene ah, but you wouldn’t remember, I’m forgetting that you’ve lost your memory.’

  ‘That was a cruel remark, Mr. Hunter.’ Roslyn’s hand clenched on the crenellated parapet. ‘But then, if this household has to have an Inquisitor to find out if I’m faking my amnesia, I can understand them choosing you.’ He smiled through narrowed eyes, and it seemed to Roslyn that the shadows all around had somehow grown menacing. ‘Why did you jump so, when I called you Juliet?’ he crisped.

  ‘Because you meant it as a shot in the dark, Mr. Hunter.’ She met squarely his challenge of a glance. ‘From the moment we met, you decided not to like me. You think me a plain nonentity whom your handsome cousin could never have been attracted to. But love is a funny thing—’

  ‘The biggest joke perpetrated against mankind,’ he agreed dryly.

  ‘And I suppose you think if you wear an armour of cynicism, you’ll escape Cupid’s arrow?’ For some intang¬ible reason she was suddenly aware of enjoying herself, of being alive to the fact that though the plane crash had impaired her memory, it had not scattered her wits.

  Duane Hunter leaned his back against the parapet, and Roslyn felt the rake of his eyes. ‘As Isabela said, you speak up for yourself, my fey friend.’ His voice was silky, dangerous. ‘Quick wits are an indication of a mind on the alert rather than in a fog, so let me warn you, Roslyn Brant, that if you’re playing a game with us, you’ll be made to pay up in a way you won’t like. Nanette is an open-hearted woman, and I won’t see her led up the garden by some little chit who sees her as a soft touch, someone to provide free board and lodging, not to mention other perquisites.’

  Roslyn felt slapped by the things he said, and she wanted to slap back, hard. Even as her hand itched, she hung on to her dignity and swung round to walk away from him. Swiftly he clamped a restraining hand on her arm and gave a pull that jerked her back against the parapet. Close to him, the grey tussore of his suit crushing her dress, she was very conscious of his lithe, disciplined strength. Her eyes dwelt wildly on his lean face, that was without a hint of humility.

  ‘Why didn’t you slap me, Miss Innocent-Eyes?’ he mocked.

  ‘I wouldn’t lower myself to fight with a bully,’ she said coldly.

  At once he pressed her to the crenellated wall and came closer, his muscular warmth, his possible intention, making her shrink back until she was in real danger of tumbling through the parapet opening. He gazed down at her, his teeth glimmering in a smile of pure diablerie. ‘You’re quick with the verbal comeback,’ he taunted. ‘Now let me see you wriggle out of your present contretemps.’

  She obliged by aiming a kick at his shin, forgetting that she wore soft brocade slippers and that his shin would be as hard as the rest of him. ‘Oh - you How dare you treat me like this?’ she gasped, half in pain from a stubbed toe, and half in helpless rage.

  ‘It must be the influence which this part of the house still exerts,’ he told her, enjoying her struggles. ‘This is the harem tower.’

  ‘Really?’ She stood ruffled but interested as he let her go, her eyes straying round the tower and a little shiver running over her. So much had happened long ago in thi
s desert house. Shades of the intrigue and the violence, the loving and the hating must linger to cast their shadows.

  ‘Old houses are always haunted,’ Duane said casually. ‘It’s part of their charm.’

  Roslyn took a quick look at his face. Was he now trying to frighten her? she wondered. ‘I don’t think I’m frightened of ghosts,’ she retorted. ‘Least of all those of Dar al Amra. Armand lived here most of his life, and I—’

  There she broke off and turned to gaze out over the desert, a sea of shadowed amber, with Dar al Amra an island upon which she had been cast up ... stormdrift ... which the man beside her was ready to cast back into the unknown.

  ‘Does the desert frighten you?’ The question came suddenly from Duane Hunter.

  ‘If I said no, you’d smile with all the cynical superiority of a man who knows the desert in its worst moods,’ she replied. ‘I’m fascinated, Mr. Hunter, by what I’ve so far seen of it.’

  ‘Fascination is the correct term,’ he allowed. ‘After four years I’m not certain whether I love its moods, or hate them. I sometimes think I like the desert best when it is wild, untamed, like a horse to be broken, or a woman.’

  ‘I get a strong impression that you don’t care very much for women, Mr. Hunter.’

  ‘Women, say the Bedouins, were created from the sins of Satan.’

  ‘And men are angels, I suppose?’ she flashed back at him.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ she caught the chatoyant gleam of his eyes, ‘bachelors are called the brothers of the Devil.’

  An appropriate term, she thought tartly, for the tower of gall and whipcord beside her. ‘Which do you prefer, the desert or the jungle?’ she asked.

  ‘So,’ he gave her a sideglance of lazy sarcasm, ‘you’ve been warned that I learned my uncouth ways in the jungle?’

  ‘Madame Gerard told me. I didn’t realize at the time that she might be warning me against you.’