The Jewelled Caftan

by Margaret Pargeter

  Every living nerve inside her shaking, Ross tried frantically to pull away, raising her hands to push violently against the solid hard strength of his body.

  He merely laughed again, his wandering mouth finding the small pulse that beat tempestuously at the base of her throat, and the pressure increased. It was not a soothing sensation. Where his lips touched, as they wandered over her warm skin, as if seeking out every heartbeat, there was a trail of fire. A flame that ran like molten gold through her veins, transmuting defiance to a soaring sweetness, almost removing her last fraction of resistance. There was only her shuddering, indrawn murmur of protest to part her wide, trembling lips as he touched them roughly with his.

  Their breath mingled as he said softly, 'You storm, ma chere, while your body responds. Why don't you surrender? I can't be so very different from the other men you have known. A girl like you is made for, shaped for, love. I can feel it even as you struggle while I hold you.'

  As he spoke his tongue moved against her mouth insidiously and she hated him for his low, evocative words, for making her want to respond in a wholly uninhibited way. 'I hate you,' she moaned, while her heart beat to distraction. 'You don't know how much!'

  His left hand, that with the twisted fingers, went to her heart and he moved it deliberately over the full curve of her breast, as if determined to assess the depth of her hatred for himself. 'Haven't I just told you, cherie, your slender body tells me one thing, your words another. I must find out for myself!'

  With sensual insistence the pressure of his demanding mouth deepened over her own, parting her lips as he relentlessly explored. Then, as he skilfully aroused dormant senses, everything dissolved into a clamorous fever of the blood. Her arms lifted, sliding around his strong neck, entwining feverishly in his dark hair, as she strove only to get closer.

  When eventually he finished with her mouth she felt the edge of his hard teeth against her hot skin as he bent her back over his arm and lowered his head, but by this time she seemed to have no strength left, or even any desire to go on fighting him. She seemed to please him, even if she had no expertise to match his own. His voice soothed as he murmured softly, even while his arms proclaimed that he had no intention that she should escape lightly. Bit by bit he was drawing her along, letting passion mount slowly, if inexorably, but without any hurrying fierceness that might have frightened her. He knew exacdy where to find the nerve centres that made her puny efforts of resistance something to be laughed at. Until there only remained a delight she could scarcely control.

  Closely he ran his hands down the whole slender length of her yielding back, pulling her ruthlessly against the hard muscles of his thighs, his voice thickening. 'Do you realise what you do to me, girl, you small wildcat whom I found in the desert? Do you intend to give me a just reward for saving you? Life for a life—a full and utter surrender ! I can promise a trip to heaven and I will take you with me.'

  'Armel!' she was shuddering deeply now, through bruised and quivering lips.

  'I want an answer, ma chere, and immediately!'

  There was a sudden urgency within him, as if something was moving beyond his control. Her own was slipping. She wanted only to bury herself against him and moan and moan, to hold him as tightly as he held her. Then, on the very verge of. simply nodding her fair head, she was filled with an unbearable virginal terror.

  'No !' there was a half hysterical scream in her voice as she wrenched herself from his arms with a strength that took them both by surprise. 'No, never!' she cried, tears of reaction already streaming down her flushed cheeks as her dazed glance held his narrowed one feverishly. 'You had a nerve,' she gulped, looking away from him, 'to so much as kiss me!

  He made no move to touch her again, but his eyes were contemptuous. 'Do go on and tell me how much you disliked it!'

  Her eyes dropped, not wanting them to betray her. 'You don't have to take it as an insult if a girl doesn't care for your kisses. I'm sure there are many who do.'

  'Which wasn't exactly the point,-' he replied, with such smooth hardness in the voice which only a few minutes ago had enchanted her so softly that she flinched as if he had physically struck her.

  'No!' she shouted, despising herself that he could still actively hurt her. 'You found me, but you keep me only that you might avenge yourself on a woman who didn't return your love. Your fingers could only be an excuse, and you know it!'

  For one apprehensive second Ross feared he was going to strike her. There was a visible hardening to his face, discernible even in the starlight, a sudden coldness that penetrated, making her shiver almost before he spoke. 'You are insolent, Miss Lindsay. I believe chastisement is long overdue. You can be grateful I am a man of some restraint!'

  Ross wanted to sob out aloud, to lose every vestige of dignity she had and cry that she would never have thought it. The hasty words were on the tip of her tongue when something warned her that she must get back to her tent before she succeeded in arousing his fury uncontrollably. Already she had learnt that emotions could easily get out of hand in the desert where the thing of least importance seemed to be common sense. While she hated Armel's terse finale it was perhaps irrefutable. Trance-like, Ross turned and left him, running swiftly, on legs which trembled strangely, back to her tent.

  Control came much more slowly. It was only achieved as she forced herself into a calmcr frame of mind. All night she tossed restlessly, unconsciously muttering his name while she slept, seeing his face in her dreams, stamped with the same derisive expression he had worn as she had left him.

  She awoke unrefreshcd, with the dramatic impression of having passed not a few short hours but hundreds of years, that overnight she had completed the painful, underestimated process of growing up. Armel, she decided bitterly, had done this to her! He called her an irresponsible child, then treated her wholly as an adult. He hadn't spared her at all, and the response he had sought left her in no doubt that he had considered her quite capable, even ready, to meet his most passionate demands.

  Stretching her slender arms nervously above her head, Ross shivered with compulsive reaction, caught in a monumental despair. Somehow she must escape before the attraction this man held for her became apparent to all. Before she betrayed undeniably that she was not as indifferent as she must pretend to be. If only she could find someone to help her, someone who could be persuaded—one who was not so loyal to Armel.

  There was a man, one of those who had been left behind to guard the camp when Armel had been away. His other men spoke to her, but kept at a respectful distance. This man had also been respectful, but on several occasions when he had found her alone on the oasis he had wandered nearer. He spoke no English and only a few words of French, but he had been insistent. Ross had supposed he felt sorry for her, that he had some idea of her predicament. Maybe she could make him understand? He looked middle-aged and reliable. If only she could get through to him, she might appeal to him.

  Her head full of half-formed plans, Ross scrambled from her bed to rush across the tent. Swiftly she poured water into her rough earthenware basin, splashing herself all over until the heavy lethargy of the night left her and she positively tingled. She dried herself and dressed quickly, without waiting for Jamila. The girl's eyes saw too much, and Ross wasnot sure that all signs of the previous night's experiences were gone from her face.

  When the girl did arrive it was with a message—a surprising one. 'Sidi Armel wishes to see you at once, in his tent, mademoiselle. Is not the sun shining on you with the bestowal of such a favour?' she smiled.

  Ross had her own private thoughts on that which, knowing of Jamila's unaccountable affection for her master, she knew better than to express. She contented herself with observing coolly, 'It so happens I have no particular desire to see Sidi ben Yussef this morning, Jamila.'

  Jamila frowned at the mutinous young face before her. Not that Ross's face did look so very youthful this morning. It was smooth and beautiful, but it wore too haunted an expression. 'Pl
ease, Mademoiselle Rosalind,' she begged, 'you know that when Sidi Armel commands we must obey. Even you.'

  'How very brave we all are, Jamila!' realising all too clearly that if she refused to see him he was quite capable of dragging her across the intervening space between their tents. Probably, with his black, pagan heart, he would not hesitate to do so. She had had a taste of his unrelenting strength last night. If only she had not been so weak, so ineffectual in her protests, he might not be acting so imperiously now.

  Dragging her angry thoughts into some semblance of composure, she followed Jamila, trying to remember that for days she had been curious to see inside his living quarters. What he could want to see her about this morning she had no idea. She did not think he was the kind of man who would pursue his amours in the cold light of dawn. Not unless he loved a woman to distraction, and Ross felt very, very sure he did not love her at all!

  He was waiting for her, standing drumming his fingers impatiently on a narrow folding table which to Ross looked more like a desk. Ross's own fingers clenched as her nervousness returned. Why did her blood seem to take up the same mad beat that she had known in his arms, even a glimpse of him seeming to move her fatally? She wanted to glance around the forbidden area, to explore, if only with her eyes, but her gaze seemed fixed firmly to that of the man who stood regarding her sombrely.

  'You sent for me?' she asked at last, as the seconds dragged interminably, and she thought she might drown in the dark speculation of Armel ben Yussef's eyes if she didn't take care.

  'Yes,' his smile was tight with a grim satisfaction as his glance weht to where her reddened lips still showed signs of bruising, and the darker shadows of a not yet dissipated exhaustion showed faintly beneath the deep blue of her eyes. 'I trust you slept well, Miss Lindsay?' There was no mistaking the smooth sarcasm in his voice.

  Vaguely she nodded as if she could think of nothing that might have disturbed her slumbers. Inwardly there was a hard lump of resentment. Did he have to refer to that?

  'Which was more than I did!' Balefully he came around the side of the table to stand closer. 'How long do you usually keep a man in suspense, mademoiselle, before you grant him the pleasure he seeks?'

  A flame licked up in the darkness of his eyes and as if it had burnt her Ross felt her whole body flinch with an agonising reaction as she backed away. Her face whitened slowly and her voice was husky. 'How much longer are you going to insist that I'm the type of woman to bestow such favours?'

  They stood there motionless, facing each other. For Ross it was a moment of excruciating pain—the disbelief on his face, the open contempt in his eyes.

  'I'll admit,' he drawled sardonically, 'you have little experience written on your so beautiful face. Or is it that your previous men friends have left no impression? I must warn you by the time you leave here this will be changed. You won't reject my arms for ever, Miss Lindsay. I would be a fool to think so. Your response last night was something to keep me awake long after dawn crept with rosy red fingers across the horizon !'

  He ended on a note of such savagery that Ross trembled and shrank. It was as if hatred and desire combined in him, and, as his hands descended like steel on her shoulders,' she stared at him, trembling, the now familiar excitement which his nearness evoked rising with panic in her throat.

  'If you don't approve of me, if you are so convinced I deliberately provoked and cheated, why don't you let me go?' she whispered.

  His brief laughter was hard. 'Perhaps, Miss Lindsay, it is because a man appreciates a plaything out here in the desert where even the delights of solitude can pall after a time, if there is no one to share it with. A man is not too obsessed with perfection in a toy that is bought cheaply, merely made to be discarded.'

  God, but he could be cruel! For no reason she could think of Ross's anger felt more like tears, the constriction in her heaving breast pain. 'You've made your point, monsieur,' she cried, trying unsuccessfully to wriggle from his hurting hands. She was no match for him and he did not allow her to escape, so she lifted her small chin and tried to look at him coolly.

  'Now that I'm here perhaps you can tell me why the sudden summons this morning? Surely you don't need to chastise me further for my lack of co-operation when you forced your unwanted attentions on me? If I appeared to respond at all, monsieur, it could only have been a trick of the night. Your arms left me cold. Why else do you suppose I ran?'

  If he could torment, he would find her not too feeble an adversary. Yet she prayed silently for forgiveness for the lie that crossed her lips.

  Not that he looked very impressed. In fact she saw dully that his sensuous, hard mouth curled at the corners in a derisive sneer and his eyes clearly mocked her strangled little sentences. But he simply said enigmatically, 'We shall see, Miss Lindsay, we shall see.'

  'Now!' Abruptly he dropped his hands and turned away,. 'I will be gone for two days, perhaps three. I must warn you, under no circumstances must you attempt to leave this camp. If it was at all possible I would take you with me, but this I can't do.'

  Ross did not know why she should feel so dismayed. To hide it she pretended absolute indifference. She even heard a faint, tinkling laugh come from her lips as she murmured, daringly, 'One reads, Armel, in the best novels of how the prisoner always tries to escape as soon as the villain's back is turned.'

  'So that is how you think of me?'

  His name on her lips seemed to jolt him a little. His voice was low, his mockery mixed with something she could put no name to.

  'I choose not to think of you at all,' she retorted softly.

  He shrugged, glancing swiftly from her flushed face to his watch, as if time pressed too closely. 'But you will heed my warning. You must not allow your natural rebelliousness to overrule common sense. To be lost in the desert is not an experience you would enjoy. It is my duty, I'm afraid, to point this out.'

  'Your duty!' Hurt surged ridiculously at his conventional statement. 'I wouldn't have thought you were too occupied with that!'

  'But you have no idea what stirs my conscience, do you, girl? It is certainly not a crazy little wanton like you.'

  The need was in him, she realised, to whip her cruelly, but again it hurt. He wanted her. If he thought she was such a—wanton, what was holding him back? It could only be pride. He would have her come crawling, begging at his feet. Crying over those broken fingers which caused him such mental pain, it appeared to be twisting his character! Helplessly she trembled, seeing herself suddenly, voluntarily in just such a state of subjection. Futilely she tried to regain some calm as his eyes strayed moodily to the seductive curves of her figure which the thin material of her caftan barely disguised. Even his impersonal glance seemed able to disturb her too intimately, and she sought desperately to find a topic somewhat removed from themselves.

  'Wherever you are going to you might hear more news of Freddy? He must be somewhere around.'"

  'He could be,' Armel's laugh grated, 'but you don't have to thrust him between us like some sort of defence mechanism.'

  'What defence could I possibly need against you?' she demanded.

  'I could make love to you now and you wouldn't even fight me, not after the first minute.'

  Her bodice moved with the force of her heartbeats, the frightening truth of his words. Her legs felt paralysed, incapable of movement. It was only the sound of someone approaching outside that released her. 'Oh !' she cried, as she turned and fled, while hating herself for such a cowardly retreat, such an unoriginal exclamation. 'Oh, how I hate you!'

  'Don't forget,' he called indifferently after her, 'that which I have just told you. Stay within the confines of the oasis and you will be quite safe.'

  Later, after Armel and his entourage left, Salem, the man she had noticed previously, sought her out. The day was well advanced when, wandering at the quiet end of the oasis, she saw he had followed her. He was a small man, extremely thin, rather ragged, but with a darkly earnest expression. Ross was convinced he felt sor
ry for her and it struck her again that he might be persuaded to help her escape. As he furtively approached her she tried to speak to him, but unfortunately not even her best attempts succeeded in breaking the language barrier. Not even when she pointed first to herself, then the distant horizon, did he seem to understand.

  Then, like a bolt from the blue, she hit on the idea of a pencil and paper. She had seen such things in Armel's tent that morning, she felt sure, although she had left there so swiftly that no particular detail remained fixed in her mind. Hastily she gestured to the man to stay where he was until she returned. At least he seemed to understand this as he squatted obediently under the branches of a feathery palm tree, obviously prepared to wait.

  Ross was reluctant to enter Armel's tent again after the tumult of the morning, but as there was no one around she knew she must grasp the opportunity which might never come again. Not for a moment did she dare allow herself the luxury of hesitation. Should anyone discover what she was up to she might never get another chance.

  Silently Ross slipped through the closed flap, seeing immediately, to her relief, some neatly stacked paper and writing material on the table. Even while the faint query flashed through her mind as to why he should want such things she hastily stuffed a few sheets in the folds of her caftan, along with a thick charcoal pencil, before beating an equally hasty retreat. The whole atmosphere of the tent reminded her too much of Armel, and the peculiar sensation in her throat she did not like.

  Under the palm trees Salem still waited. When she recovered her breath, Ross knelt down beside him and drew a living likeness of them both on the paper. Then came twp horses and the distant horizon. This was so cleverly executed that he understood right away, without the need for further gestures.

  Nodding his greying head, he smiled cunningly and held out his hand. Ross bit her lip, knowing instinctively what the man was after. With even more reluctance than she had entered Armel's tent, she drew from an inner pocket the gold watch she had managed so far to conceal. This, along with a small sum of money, had been hidden in her torn jeans and no one had apparently noticed. The watch had been a treasured expensive gift from her father, the only thing of real value she had ever possessed, and much as she hated parting with it Ross felt he would have wished her to do so under the circumstances.