Court of Veils

by Violet Winspear

  The drive back to their cliff top hotel in a horse-drawn cab should have been a romantic one, but there was a feeling of constraint between them. They talked a little about the mosque they had just visited, and then he fell silent and seemed absorbed in his thoughts. She stole a look at his profile, and for the first and only time she saw a resemblance in him to Duane ... nose and chin hard-hewn, the gay good-humour of his eyes veiled behind brooding eyelids.

  They arrived at the hotel and after the fiacre had driven away, they stood indecisive in the shadowy moonlight. ‘Yes, I think it will rain before morning,’ Tristan murmured, and then all at once he took her cold hands in his and gently crushed them. ‘Stop tormenting yourself, petite. You have forgotten how to do certain things, and that is perfectly natural in the circumstances. People were able to tell you your name, your age, and other details like that, but there are bound to be some things that you will have to learn to do again. Roslyn, are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yes, Tristan, of course.’

  But why, ran her thoughts, did you look so distant and troubled at the Dancing Fawn? Were you doubting me?

  ‘Suddenly you look as frail as a French egg,’ he said with a gentle touch of humour. ‘Tears not far away in those grey eyes. Come, let us go in. It is time you went to bed.’

  As they mounted the stairs, having claimed their keys from behind the reception desk that seemed for ever deserted, a bubble of hysterical laughter began to rise in Roslyn’s throat. ‘Not a sound, not a cheep, everyone is fast asleep.’ She chuckled. ‘Do you suppose they are all enchanted? This place is rather like a castle, and we—’ ‘—are rather like the Sleeping Beauty and the Prince.’ He stood looking down at her as they reached the door of her room, then he stroked with his long fingers the fur of her cape. ‘If I kissed you, I wonder if it would break the spell that binds you?’

  ‘No - we decided up at Angelot’s Bastion that kisses might be dangerous.’ The laughter died out of her eyes. They might make me forget that I have to remember your brother.’

  At once, in the dim lighting of the corridor, she saw his warm expression replaced by coolness. He drew his hand away from her and with abrupt formality he wished her good night.

  ‘Good night, Tristan,’ she said, and determinedly closed her door between them.

  It was eleven-thirty. Roslyn wandered restlessly about her room, waiting for midnight, when she would make her way down to the lake. Alone there, beside the whisper of water, she might find herself again.

  She was still wearing her blue dress. It would be a pity to spoil it, clambering down that rocky cliff-path, and she took off her finery and replaced it with a pair of trews, a shirt and sandals. She hung up the blue dress, which Tristan had admired. Dear Tristan ... a perfect gentle knight. If Armand had been like him in ways as well as looks, then surely she must have cared for him ?

  She paced about her room, feeling on edge and troubled. You are Roslyn, they had told her at the hospital, and how could it be denied when she had been found clutching in her hand Armand Gerard’s token of love?

  How had she come by the ring, with its French inscription, if Armand had not given it to her?

  And then she stood very still in that strange Arab room, her heart beat heavily as she seemed to hear a voice saying tauntingly: ‘Good evening - Juliet.’

  Her eyes darted round the empty room, taking in the blank walls that were symbolic of her unyielding blankness of mind. Suddenly, uncaring that Isabela and Duane were not yet back and settled down in their rooms, Roslyn hurried to her door, clicked off the light and stole out into the corridor. All was quiet and she carefully closed her door behind her and sped on rope-soled sandals to the stairs....

  There she was brought up short as the sound of voices floated upwards. They drew nearer, and Roslyn quickly darted across the corridor into the lavatory ... then as the couple passed by the door, she heard the man say plainly: ‘Deceiving people isn’t a game I happen to want to be part of.’

  ‘Don’t be so stuffy,’ the woman scoffed. ‘You act as though it were a crime for a woman to enjoy a little make-believe.’

  ‘Dishonesty is a crime, in my book,’ he rejoined curtly. ‘I know what a woman’s lies can lead to, Isabela. What they can do to a man ...’

  ‘Poor Duane,’ Isabela cooed, ‘are you not going to allow another girl to mend that broken heart of yours?’

  He didn’t answer, and a few minutes later there came the sound of a door closing none too gently.

  Roslyn had been holding her breath as she listened, now she released it and let herself out of the lavatory. She sped down the stairs and out of the hotel, and was breathing rapidly when she reached the cliff-path to the shore. The path was steep, rockier than she had realized, and she bruised her ankles as she started to climb downwards.

  She had gone about half-way down when she paused for breath. Above her on the cliffs the hotel showed only one or two lights ... it loomed like a black castle in the shifting moonlight, and looking back she realized that she had fled from it as though from a place of demons.

  She commenced again her downward scramble, and reached at last the stones and sand of the shore. Tall palm trees stood here and there like sentinels, their slender trunks inclining towards the water of the lake, pooled with moon-mercury and cloud shadows.

  Roslyn thrust her hands into her pockets and walked along the edge of the lake. The night all around held the hidden chirr of cicadas, the rustling of palm-fronds and whirring of bat-wings. She wasn’t nervous of these sounds, for they were all part of her mood. In a while she sat down on the sand and with her arms laced about her updrawn knees she gazed at the moonlit lake.

  She didn’t feel cold, or very aware of her surroundings. She was quietly, forcibly willing her mind to yield again as it had that morning.

  The moon shimmered on the surface of the lake and made silver tracks . . . and suddenly a shiver of recollection ran through Roslyn. It was always fun swimming along the moon-trails, ever ready to duck out of sight because of the keeper who was always on the watch at night for poachers. The lake where they swam was near the airfield, and privately owned. They were not supposed to go there.

  It was a big lake surrounded by alders, and willows that dripped catkins into the water. They used to dry themselves under the trees, and dress to the sound of their own low-pitched laughter and the hoot of the owls.

  ‘Hush, we’ll be heard,’ Roslyn could remember saying, quite clearly. But her companion only laughed and performed a dance around the trees.

  ‘Don’t be scared of the keeper - he never comes to this end of the lake because he thinks we’re wood-nymphs.’

  Merry words, rippling back into Roslyn’s mind as the water of the lake rippled.

  Roslyn jumped to her feet, poised on the bank of the Temcina Lake, hearing again the laughter that was happy as a bell, silvery as the moon-trails on the water ... silvery as the other girl’s hair.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ a voice rapped out behind Roslyn ... real, this time, not that of a ghost.

  She swung round, her eyes wide with alarm as they took in the tall figure behind her. ‘You!’ she whispered, and then she turned and fled away along the shore, and as she fled, thunder growled over the lake.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE moonlight played over the scene. A girl pursued in the age-old way by a man, but not in fun, in fear that made her cry out as, he caught her where some palm trees interlaced, forming a trap into which she had run blindly.

  He pinned her to the scaly trunk of one of the trees, easily, ruthlessly. ‘You little wildcat!’ he growled. ‘Why did you run away from me? You might guess I’d chase after you ... don’t you realize that a storm is brewing? Can’t you hear the thunder?’

  She heard only the thunder of her heart... agitated by that wild chase along the shore and the closeness of this man, his black-sweatered chest against hers, her limbs held and pinned by his so that she must look like a starfish. She felt his breath in
her hair and she struggled weakly with him. ‘Let me go!’ she implored. ‘Please, Duane!’

  ‘What is it?’ he gibed. ‘Are you afraid of my intentions? Was that why you ran away from me?’

  ‘You frightened me - I ran without thinking.’

  ‘Do I frighten you now?’

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ she said. But it wasn’t quite the truth. Though he had her pinned against the palm tree, her hands were within his and shielded from the scaly trunk. Though he was close enough for her to feel the lift and fall of his chest, the wool of his sweater was chunky and warm ... warm, drugging, so that quite irrationally she wanted to rest her churning head against him and be lost in the woolly blackness.

  Their eyes clung and afraid he would guess how weak she was in that moment, she looked quickly away from him towards the lake, glinting darkly through the trees.

  ‘What are you doing down here?’ he demanded. ‘Moon walking?’

  ‘I - came to be alone. To think, and to try and find myself,’ she said huskily, ‘and here by this lake I remembered a lake in England - where I used to go swimming with someone—’ Suddenly she was trembling, and on the point of tears. ‘It was a girl! Not Armand at all, but a girl I used to know—’

  She felt the hot welling of her tears and no longer cared that Duane should see them. The lake shimmered through her tears, and then his hand moved up her shoulder to her nape, enclosing its hollowed slenderness as he made her look at him. His lean face was moon-touched, his eyes intent upon her face. ‘Who was the girl?’ he asked. ‘Do you remember her name?’

  Roslyn shook her head and a tear spilled down her cheek. ‘I -I wish I could remember.’

  ‘Gould the girl have been- Juliet Grey?’

  ‘Juliet?’ She shied from the question as lightning flickered along the shore. No! It seemed too terrible to think of that fair, laughing girl as dead ... killed in the plane crash. And yet it was obvious from what she remembered of those midnight dips in that English lake that she and the silvery-haired girl had been good friends.

  It was at that point that the sky above was riven by lightning. It stabbed down towards the palm trees, and Duane wrenched her from the trunk and, her hand locked in his, ran her out into the open, away from the trees. The rain came down in a sheet and within seconds they were soaked.

  ‘We must find somewhere to shelter while this lasts.’ He glanced about him. ‘Look, there’s a shed of some sort -come on!’

  Their feet sank in the wet sand as they ran, pursued by flashes of lightning and thunder that sounded as though Zeus was rolling his wine-casks for a long, stormy ‘party’. They reached the door of what turned out to be a boat-shed; the lightning followed them in, revealing a couple of punts on their sides, coils of rope, a pile of canvas sails, some oars, and shelves of paint and tackle.

  Duane pushed a hand into the hip pocket of his trousers and produced a lighter. He flicked it on and played the small light round the crowded shed, which smelled strongly of paint and tar. The small flame flickered, as though about to go out, and something made a whirring sound overhead.

  ‘It’s only a bat,’ he said crisply. ‘Ah, we’re in luck for some illumination! A lamp!’

  It was a small kerosene lamp and when he shook it, oil swished in the bottom of it. He took off the glass chimney and lit the wick. He was looking over at Roslyn as he replaced the chimney.

  The rain had plastered her shirt to her like Regency muslin, and her hair lay on her forehead in wet spikes. She was shivering a little, wet, cold, and nervous under Duane’s scrutiny.

  He stepped across one of the punts and came to her. ‘You seem to have got wetter than I did,’ he said, feeling her shirt, either not noticing, or caring very much, that she shrank from his touch.

  ‘You can’t shiver in that wet shirt for the next hour -or two.’ With a quick, lithe movement he peeled off the black sweater that had replaced his dinner jacket and felt it between his hands. ‘You can wear this, the rain hasn’t penetrated the wool - heavens, child, your teeth are chattering like castanets! Get that shirt off, pronto, or you’ll take a chill.’

  She stood by the boat-shed door, the rain pounding on the roof overhead, and though she recognized the sense in what he said, she couldn’t do as he asked. She could only shake and feel wretched.

  ‘There are two things in a female that really get my goat, mock-modesty and stubbornness. Here - catch!’ He threw her the sweater, which she caught automatically. ‘I’ll turn my back while you take off that shirt - and you’d better take it off, Miss Prim, unless you want me to whip it off for you.’

  She shivered, and saw his eyes narrow to jade slits as he swung away from her and stood lighting himself a cheroot. Her fingers shook on the buttons of her shirt; she dragged it off, pushed her arms into the sleeves of the sweater and dropped the garment down over her head. It was still warm from his body, smoky, with a faint male tang clinging to the black wool. It fell loosely to her hips, concealing her girl’s body and giving her the look of an urchin in grown-up clothing.

  She was laying her shirt out to dry on the hull of one of the boats when Duane turned to take stock of her. ‘Great Scott!’ Grin lines slashed his cheeks. ‘You were kidding yourself, thinking I’d lose my control over a scrap like you. I have my standards, Miss Brant, for all my jungle upbringing.’

  Yes, she thought, a picture of Isabela springing into her mind, a long curving leg revealed under her robe as she strolled out of his bedroom.

  ‘Surely this storm will let up soon,’ she said.

  ‘It hardly seems likely.’ Lightning flared outside the boat-shed window as he spoke, and thunder seemed to rock the foundations of the nearby cliffs. ‘Surely you’ve realized by now that our desert climate, like our emotions, is never moderate?’

  ‘I’m beginning to realize it.’ She perched on the hull of the boat where her shirt was spread, her fingers ruffling the damp hair at her temples, feeling the warmth of his chunky sweater seeping into her bones. ‘I hope you aren’t missing your sweater,’ she added.

  He leaned against one of the stripped palm-pillars that supported the roof of the boat-shed, his cheroot smoke wafting up about his green eyes. He had a sleek, dangerous sort of strength, bristling in the copper hair, controlled but apparent in every hard line of him. A disturbing man!

  ‘I’m used to climatic extremes,’ he replied. ‘You’d be amazed how cold it can become in the desert at certain times of year, mainly at night and towards dawn. Our sun is a hot one, but the actual climate is surprisingly cool. You could say,’ he glanced lazily at the burning tip of his cheroot, ‘that in many respects the desert is like a woman.’ ‘What, not easy to know, or temperate, with sometimes an inclination to be cool?’ Her flippancy was a defence mechanism, switched on because they were alone in a storm and she could feel his sweater against her skin like a warm, rough touch.

  ‘Those reasons, among others,’ he agreed. ‘Anything might crop up in the desert, as in a relationship with a woman.’

  ‘And you, Mr. Hunter, prefer to deal with the moods of the desert rather than those of a woman?’

  ‘Yes,’ his mouth pulled to one side in a sardonic smile, ‘as a matter of fact I do. A man can enjoy the desert without getting involved - emotionally.’

  ‘Does Isabela share your sentiments?’

  It wasn’t until the words were out that Roslyn fully realized their import. Duane didn’t move, and yet his white shirt seemed to tighten against the muscles that strapped his chest and shoulders. Then dropping his cheroot butt to the floor he ground it out beneath his heel.

  ‘Why,’ he drawled, ‘should Isabela share my sentiments?’

  Roslyn found it difficult to meet his eyes; unwavering jade eyes agleam with mockery. ‘I’m not a schoolgirl,’ she said defiantly. ‘I know that a man and a beautiful woman don’t discuss the weather - or the desert - when they’re alone together in his - bedroom.’

  ‘What do they do?’ he asked deliberately.

&nbs
p; Colour rushed up her neck into her face. His affair with Isabela was none of her business and it was a wonder he was looking - well, almost amused instead of angly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You must think me very impertinent.’

  She looked away from him, the bones of her neck showing fragile against the black wool of his sweater.

  ‘Yes, you’re impertinent,’ he agreed. ‘It’s a fault of the young to rush in where angels fear to tread, and one that should be corrected.’

  She gazed back at him, struck by a note in his voice that made her go tense. He had moved and was coming towards her, his shadow towering up the wall in the lamplight. A draught blew like cobwebs against her cheek, thunder cracked overhead, and then she felt the grip of his hands and was being swung bodily off the hull of the boat.

  ‘No - you mustn’t!’ she gasped.

  ‘Mustn’t what?’ As she dangled in his arms like a doll, he looked down into her eyes, enormous with her alarm. ‘Spank you, or kiss you?’

  ‘Oh -I hate you! Put me down!’

  ‘Not until you take your choice,’ he taunted. ‘Shall I spank that pert little behind of yours, or shall I kiss those indiscreet pink lips?’

  ‘You - you wouldn’t dare—’

  ‘I’d dare both, and you know it.’ He laughed unkindly, gave her backside a light clip and set her down near the door. ‘Now stay there a moment, you hasty female. As it happens I didn’t grab hold of you in order to slake a sudden passion - my intentions were never more honourable, as you will soon see.’

  Still laughing, he took a stride back to the boat on which she had been sitting and peered hard at something embedded in a web that had been empty when she had first sat down. It was a large black spider with crooked legs - a repulsive hairy thing that sent a thrill of -horror through Roslyn.