Those dark eyes lashed into her soul, stripped away all protection against him. Their force sent a dread shooting through her being. Try as she might, Aida had to admit she was not yet immune to their caressing fire, even from a distance.
There was a long moment of silence filled with a strange tension as they watched a couple of feluccas glide by at walking pace, carrying families who had been celebrating Sham El Nessim on the river, or coming back from the one public garden in Luxor.
Phares moved closer and in that rich deep voice that never failed to stir her, said, ‘You’re very subdued today.’
She avoided his eyes, refusing to succumb to his easy charm.
He inclined his head. Amusement coloured his voice. ‘You’re sulking.’
‘I may have many failings, but that is not one of my traits.’
‘Are you still angry with me?’
Aida lowered her head again, saying nothing.
‘I’ve apologised, haven’t I?’
In her mind’s eye she could just see Phares’s provocatively raised brow.
Though her voice was cool, her eyes were stormy as they wandered up to his firm chin and well-defined lips. ‘Arrogant you’ve always been, but I’ve never known Phares Pharaony to be rude to a guest before … and today you were deliberately rude to me.’
Dark pupils flashed. Outraged dignity animated his features. ‘Rude? When was I rude to you? And since when have you been a guest? Have I not known you for most of your life?’ he demanded, his face set. ‘Do we not share a special relationship, far removed from that of a host with a casual guest?’
Aida was silent, thrown by his response. Special relationship?
His eyes bored into her. ‘Why are you deliberately misconstruing my actions?’
Aida’s abashed gaze lowered, her cheeks becoming rapidly scarlet. How could she explain her confused feelings? At this moment she resented him for so many things.
Phares drew in a tight breath and his tone hardened. ‘Answer me.’
‘Why did you do it?’ she murmured, staring down at her hands in her lap.
‘Do what?’ You mean when I stopped that Brazilian lothario from making a spectacle of you in front of everybody? You think I haven’t read about his exploits with women? … Dance as if you’re making love …’ He broke off with a sound of disgust.
‘It isn’t up to you to decide what I should or shouldn’t do,’ she retorted hotly. ‘I’m quite capable of running my own life, even if I don’t have a father.’
A muscle jerked suddenly at the corner of Phares’s mouth and the expression in his eyes changed from scorching fire to soft velvet. ‘All right, all right, Aida … maybe I was wrong, chérie. I didn’t think for a moment that you would take umbrage.’ He held out his hand as he spoke and after a brief hesitation, Aida placed her slim one into it. His head bent, cool lips caressing her fingers.
Achingly, she wanted to run them through his thick locks of hair and drown in his dark gaze. She felt all at once as if his actions, words, emotions were as deep and unfathomable as the bottom of a well. It was this that both exhilarated and frightened her. Had it not been for the long-held antagonism she nourished for his father, she would have given in to him right then and there, if only for the sense of excitement he awakened in her.
Phares’s fingers tightened on hers. ‘Why must we quarrel each time we meet? You’ve changed, Aida, since you’ve come back from England.’ He studied her intently. ‘I would have said that you had grown up more, if you didn’t still have the touchiness you had when you were young. You’ve hardened, but you’ve not learned restraint. You do not control your emotions, you still explode too easily.’
‘If I’ve changed, then all I can say is that it’s a pity you haven’t! You’re just as arrogant as you always were. Arrogant and narrow-minded.’
Aida moved her fingers, still in his grasp, and his hand tightened on them cruelly.
‘Phares, you’re hurting my hand!’ she protested, but his grip only loosened slightly.
‘It is nothing to what I would like to do to you,’ he said. His eyes were black, probing her face, and she caught her breath beneath his smouldering gaze.
‘You can’t run my life,’ she said quietly, slowly slipping her hand free. ‘Whether you realise it or not, you have no right and I will never give you that right.’
‘You mean you don’t want me in your life?’
‘Of course I do … but not as a husband, a brother or a guardian, just as a friend.’
His brow creased. ‘But I am your friend.’
‘Well, then your concept of friendship and mine are far apart.’
‘I am only trying to protect you, as I would Camelia.’
‘Yes, I can see that, and that’s the problem.’ She gave a frustrated sigh. ‘You want me to live in a sheltered world, not a real one. The real world is the one I joined eight years ago when I left Egypt. I can’t blame you for wanting to keep up the illusion, but yes, I have changed.’ She looked down, pulling at a tuft of grass. ‘Maybe it was a mistake to come back. Perhaps returning to England is the only way for me to find fulfilment and a normal life.’
‘You love this land.’
‘You’re right, I love Egypt, but I can’t bear the narrow-mindedness of the people here … the restrictions placed on women in a society where man is king. It’s a high price to pay.’
‘It doesn’t need to be that way,’ he murmured.
Aida stared up at his face, shocked by her own yearning to touch him. She remembered this sensation from her youth: the way her skin tingled with unforgettable excitement. There was an odd flicker in his eyes before his gaze turned to scan the river, pensively. They sat together, yet Aida knew they could not have been further apart. Even so, it was impossible not to be aware of the man next to her. His clear-cut profile, the faint emanation of an expensive masculine fragrance when he stirred beside her, her hunger for his arms around her, moved her profoundly.
Talking with Phares like this was somehow even more painful than fighting with him, especially as he had been attending to Isis’s every need all day. Only now that the young woman had left did he bother with Aida, grudgingly sparing her his time. She wondered if he was going to marry Isis; there seemed to be a definite rapport between the two, and Aida had made her rejection of his proposal clear. Though Isis wasn’t a person she could ever really like, she had to admit that the woman was poised, worldly and confident – all the things Aida realised she wasn’t. With the added advantage of being a doctor, she was the kind of wife a man like Phares needed. At the thought of Isis sharing his life, the blood beat in her temples. Still, as confused and dispirited as she felt, she had to admit to feeling a painful sweetness in having Phares all to herself for a while, and she decided to make the most of it.
As if he had read her thoughts, his eyes kindled and he met her wary gaze. A shadow of a smile touched his lips. ‘Shall we be friends this evening?’ He reached out to cup her cheek in his hand.
Aida swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘Yes … yes, please. I really don’t like fighting with you, Phares.’
All at once he leapt up as though her answer had breathed a new vitality into him. ‘Yalla, come on! It’s still early. Let’s not waste this beautiful evening.’ He stretched out his arm commandingly. She took in the broad shoulders, the easy movements of an athlete, as she allowed him to pull her up. ‘Let’s take a felucca,’ he suggested.
‘What, now?’
‘Yes. It’s a fine evening.
‘But …’
Ignoring her hesitation, he continued, ‘Have you brought a jacket?’
‘No. Anyhow, there’s no wind, the river looks very still …’
He gave her one of his enigmatic smiles. ‘Ah, it appears to be still,’ he said, ‘but beneath the surface there are secrets hiding and reeds whispering of things past and those to come.’
Aida could see Phares was in one of his mercurial moods. ‘I didn’t say I would come.’
‘Bu
t, of course you will! I’ll fetch us both something warm to wear.’
‘No, but wait a minute, Camelia might …?
‘Camelia will not object.’ Phares grinned. ‘She likes her brother to be happy, and going for a sail in a felucca with you just now will make me happy.’
‘All right then, I’ll go and thank her and explain.’
‘No. Wait here. No need to draw attention … there are still a few busybodies around who will be delighted to read more into this than it is. We don’t want to start tongues wagging,’ he said, and moved off towards the house.
It was so like Phares to take for granted that she was happy with this arrangement. Aida smiled to herself and wistfully watched him walk away, aware of his long, lazy stride and the crisp curling of his thick, dark hair.
He was back in no time, carrying two sweaters and a small cool bag. Although the brightness at this hour was not as dazzling as earlier, he had put on sunglasses. Taking Aida’s hand silently, he led her to a gate at the back of the garden and down a short track to where the Pharaonys’ felucca awaited at a private landing stage to carry members of the family or their guests through an ancient world of relics and ruins.
The reis, the skipper of the felucca, in long white gown and green turban, was crouching in the shade of a clump of palm trees on the bank where the boat was moored, drinking tea with a couple of other boatmen. He scrambled to his feet as Aida and Phares appeared. ‘Salam ya Bey,’ he uttered in a deep, guttural voice. Phares greeted him kindly, then told him he would be taking the boat out alone. He helped Aida aboard, and she watched from the seat that ran along the side of the felucca as Phares took his place at the end of the long, elegant boat and tucked the tiller under his arm.
He sat very straight, still and dark against the back of his seat, raven glints in his hair. Although Aida couldn’t read his eyes, she could read both challenge and danger in that chiselled face, which she found thrilling.
He was the most self-contained and certain man she had ever met. He said whatever it pleased him to say, prepared at a whim to flaunt convention with such suavity that Aida wondered just how far he meant to go with her. Alone with him, away from prying eyes, in the romantic setting of a felucca on the Nile, her intuition grasped at the fact that it would be dangerous to dwell upon his undoubted charms. A man like that could create hell for a woman, she thought. But not her. She had too much common sense for that … or did she?
A great inner sigh raked her. Phares had roused in her a craving for adventure, and in that moment she didn’t care about anything other than to live for the moment and savour every last drop of pleasure this outing offered.
Phares had been right: the breeze on the beautiful river shining like glass in the splendid light was stronger than it had seemed from the bank. Filling their sails, it carried them along at a brisk rate, the smooth surface rippled in the wind like the curls of a sheep’s back. The scent of beans in flower was carried to them by a light mist, and Aida inhaled deeply their sweet fragrance. The view slid by, of feluccas dozing with folded sails, lying on their sides like seabirds asleep; endless fields of corn, wheat, beans, cotton and sugarcane stretching afar; and the tiny, unreal villages, their mud walls and winding ways fringed by palms looking like bottlebrushes.
They passed dovecotes taller than the houses: massive earthen domes with niches for nesting, stuck full of posts at the top on which the pigeons could perch or use as supports for their nests. Donkeys grazed on the bank wherever it was clear of reeds, and a caravan of camels kicked up dust as they ambled along a narrow path on the edge of the desert where it bordered the Nile, lined with acacias rising above all other trees. Aida had never noticed before the variety of trees that graced the shores of the river, all of which were native to Egypt. There was the delicate tamarisk, with its bluish-green feathery blooms, the thick-trunked mulberry, with its light-green leaves and edible fruit, the wind-breaking casuarinas, with their long pine needles, the tall eucalyptus, with its camphor-producing pale leaves, and, of course, the sycamore, ‘the tree of love’ of the Ancient Egyptians. This tree they prized above all others, its dense foliage providing welcome shade, while the rosy, plump figs that grew on the trunk in clusters gave their life-prolonging benefits.
They had been silent since the beginning of their journey. Aida now lay on the edge of the felucca, making ridges and furrows with her fingers in the water, with half an eye on her companion, unable to bring herself to talk first.
‘You’re rather quiet, chérie.’
‘It’s so peaceful on the water. There’s not a soul in view.’
‘It’s a beautiful land.’
She glanced up and smiled.
‘Beautiful, but limiting.’
Phares was silent and although Aida couldn’t be sure where his gaze fell, she sensed him watching her. ‘You know, all those years during the war, I always wondered how the headstrong Aida El Masri was faring,’ he said finally. ‘You’ve never mentioned your life in London.’
‘You never asked.’
He grinned. ‘That’s because you were too busy arguing to give me a chance.’
It was such a typical response from him that Aida laughed, despite herself.
‘I always thought you’d make a good nurse,’ he added. ‘You have a compassionate heart.’ His face was unreadable again behind his sunglasses. ‘Camelia told me you began your training at the Royal London Hospital.’
‘Yes, and the war completed it, I suppose. I learned so much in those years.’
‘Were you there for the whole of the war?’
‘No. After 1941, they often loaned us to hospitals outside London and we were bussed out to the home counties. There were months on end when I didn’t know where I’d be stationed, or for how long.’
‘That must have been difficult for you. So much unknown.’
She shrugged. ‘No more than for anyone else. We were all in it together. In some ways, I was grateful to be so busy and not have time to think too much about the horrendous things we witnessed.’
Phares turned his head slightly. ‘Yes, no one can see that sort of suffering and be untouched by it.’
Still reclined on the edge of the felucca, she looked up at him pensively. ‘Your father … he told me that you worked in the hospitals in Alexandria during the war. They must have been crying out for experienced doctors like you.’
‘Yes, I began working at the Anglo-American Hospital at the start of the war and then spent a couple of years at the British General Hospital in Alexandria, and some time in Suez too. There were some French and Italian doctors, but it was run by the Royal Army Medical Corps so it was mainly British doctors and nurses stationed there. I knew when the war broke out that they would need as many trained medical staff as possible.’
Remembering how she had so scornfully dismissed his wartime experience, Aida winced inwardly with shame at her misjudgement. ‘Look, I’m sorry about what I said before about you having no idea of what it was like – the war, I mean. I realise now how wrong I was. What was it like for you?’ she asked quietly.
Behind his dark glasses Phares seemed to be scanning the edge of the river. ‘As you said, we did what we needed to do. So many wounded came in from hospital ships from places like Tobruk or ambulance trains where they were too seriously injured to be treated at the dressing stations. El Alamein was the worst. Many of them ended up in Alexandria or Suez. Most of the time I was operating on men who had lost their eyesight from mortar bombs or assisting with amputations.’ His head turned back towards her. ‘I saw many of the British nurses come and go, sent to other places whenever they got the order. Often on the move and with no warning, just like you.’
He must have sensed that the atmosphere had become suddenly solemn and stopped abruptly. ‘Come, we have plenty of time to talk about the war. It is too beautiful here to mull over such dark things. Now we must look to the future, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, whatever that might be,’ Aida answered wistf
ully. ‘The world has changed.’
‘Not here. Look around you.’ He paused, regarding her face. ‘The desert, the Nile … its majesty is timeless. This is your world.’
Aida sighed. ‘I don’t know if I fit in here anymore.’
‘Haven’t you already had a chance to find out what life would offer you if you were to leave? Can England give as much? Think of all you have … all you could have if you just stopped thinking emotionally?’
‘I’m at an age when my horizons have just begun to widen.’
‘You’re at an age when every sensible woman should be married, have a home, a husband and children.’
Aida stared out across the water. ‘I would have to fall in love first, don’t you think?’
Phares’s smile was faint and mocking. ‘What you would have to do is learn how to curb your belligerence and that overwhelming need you have for independence.’
She kept her eyes on the scenery. ‘That is the failing of Egyptian men,’ she answered impudently. ‘They see a woman speaking her mind as belligerence and her desire for independence as a threat.’
Phares gave a low laugh. ‘You are wrong, habibti. I am not threatened by you, just exasperated.’
‘You exasperated by me?’ Aida had to bite back a grin at the
insufferable man.
‘Yes, habibti. Men do not like the kind of wilfulness in women that ignores reality.’
‘Honestly, Phares, faint wonder you’re still a bachelor! Marriage is a joining of equals. Have you never been in love?’ Aida couldn’t stop herself from asking.
‘It depends what you call love. Women have a different perspective of love from men.’
Aida glanced up at him, still trailing her fingers in the water. ‘Really, and what, pray tell, would that be?’
‘Women want to be desired and cherished. They look for acceptance and respect, security and fidelity. In fact, everything a man would be looking for in a relationship, but the difference is that women are much more insecure and emotional, and take everything personally. That makes them moody, possessive, jealous …’ He met her gaze directly. ‘Rationality goes out the window with a woman as soon as she thinks she’s in love.’
Song of the Nile Page 23
