An Arabian Courtship

by Lynne Graham

  Under the voluble onslaught of her emotional greeting, Raschid grew oddly tense. His brow furrowed, a curious expression set his hawkish profile for a split second before he produced a distinctly strained smile. Fingers of colour had overlaid his complexion when he turned to Polly. ‘This is Ismeni. She is very old, and her mind wanders now. Would you give her that rose you carry?’ He answered her bewilderment with a charged glance. ‘She believes it is for her because she imagines you to be Louise. The poor creature is quite convinced that we are my grandparents,’ he related under his breath.

  ‘She’s what?’

  ‘Dispute will only distress her, but indeed it is a melancholic misapprehension on which to begin our stay,’ he told her.

  Tickled pink by his discomfiture, Polly suddenly smiled and bent to bestow the rose on the weeping Ismeni. A clawlike hand clutched hers and dry lips pressed to her knuckles. Raschid gently raised the old lady. Snapping his fingers, he summoned two of the servants, stonily studying the floor nearby, to attend to her. To Polly’s amusement, Ismeni drove them back with a staccato stream of commands and bustled round again to usher her and Raschid personally into a lofty-ceilinged salon, adorned by some very fine pieces of period furniture.

  ‘Why did she want the rose?’ whispered Polly. ‘There are thousands of them outside.’

  ‘Louise planted them. Roses have special significance for Ismeni. Her former mistress allowed no one to pick them.’

  ‘Lord, I feel like a vandal now!’

  A disorientating smile slashed his lips. ‘Not at all. The gift of a rose from my grandmother must have been a signal honour. Why am I whispering? You are contagious, Polly.’ Then he raised a brow. ‘Or is this the result of being welcomed as the resurrected? Ismeni must see a doctor, though I doubt if much may be done.’

  ‘At least she seems happy.’ Polly sat down on a delicate gilded sofa with all the comfort of a rock-face. ‘Tell me the rest of the story,’ she pressed. ‘I assume that Louise had blue eyes.’

  ‘Yes. She was fair, though not as fair as you.’ His gaze strayed to the glistening veil of silver hair tumbling round her shoulders, lingered ruefully on her attentive stillness. ‘It isn’t a happy story. Salim was young and hot-headed. He persuaded Louise to marry him after only a handful of meetings, but religious and cultural differences soon divided them. After my father was born, Louise came here to live. She came on a visit and she refused to return.’

  Polly frowned. ‘What did he do to make her do that?’

  ‘What did they have in common, Polly?’ Raschid shrugged noncommittally. ‘She hated the way of life here. She was educated, well travelled and independent. She had enjoyed a freedom which was denied to her in marriage. She couldn’t adjust to the cloistered existence of the harem. She was also a devout Catholic, and the continued practice of her faith did not recommend her to female relatives who already resented Salim’s choice of a foreign bride.’

  ‘I wonder how much of an effort he made to help her adjust.’

  ‘Who knows? My grandfather was greatly angered when she refused to return to him. He took a second wife,’ Raschid divulged grudgingly.

  ‘My goodness!’ gasped Polly.

  ‘Mirsa, my uncle Achmed’s mother,’ Raschid supplied. ‘Undoubtedly there was a desire for revenge in the speed with which he made that marriage, but he was quite within his rights according to his faith. If he wanted to punish Louise he must have suffered for the impulse, for she never forgave him for it.’

  ‘How could she have?’ Polly demanded hotly.

  Raschid sighed. ‘When my father was six, Mirsa died in a cholera epidemic. In the intervening years my grandparents had scarcely spoken. When he came here, she remained in the harem and he would see his son and not her. But after a suitable period of mourning, he approached Louise and begged her to return to him as his wife. She refused him. There was no forgiveness in her heart.’

  ‘How could there have been? He spends six years with another woman, fathers a child and then condescends to ask her back?’ she interrupted.

  Exasperation clouded Raschid’s gaze. ‘He could not abandon Mirsa after marrying her. He still loved Louise. It must have cost him much pride to make that approach when she had deserted him in the first instance. It was my father’s belief that my grandmother still cared for him. However, they did not enjoy a reconciliation. When he was here, she kept to her own apartments. She died of a lung infection, and it is a fact that he grieved very deeply on her death and he did not remarry,’ he completed drily.

  Moisture was clogging Polly’s vision. She grimaced over her silliness, but it really was the most miserable story. ‘It was all his fault.’

  ‘I knew it would make you sad, but why it should also make you argumentative, I do not know. Must we engage in partisan sympathies with two people who died even before we were born?’ He studied her ruefully. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as a trifle fanciful?’

  Embarrassed by her sentimentality, she got up and wandered restively across the room. But she was thinking of Louise, making a stand at Aldeza in what must have been a cry for help and rewarded for her defiance by her husband’s cruel resort to another woman.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Polly, they couldn’t live together. They were unsuited,’ Raschid pronounced with finality.

  An edged laugh fell from her, and she whipped round, her luminous eyes embittered. ‘Like us? Isn’t that how you would describe us? Once he’d tired of her, he didn’t give a damn about her feelings, and I bet that every inch of the way he laid down the law on exactly what suited him. And altered his arguments accordingly! Are you telling me that you can’t see parallels, Raschid?’

  He sent her a driven glance from shimmering blue eyes. ‘In the mood that you are in, I will not argue with you.’ Icy constraint marked him. ‘You are not yourself.’

  But she was what his handiwork had made of her. He had forced a need into her very skin that did not neatly vanish at his command. He had roused emotions that even she could not control. And now she was to switch off and meekly accept the status quo, swallowing the face-saving lies he had considerately put within her reach.

  He didn’t want to take advantage of her; that falsehood had been proven. They had no future because he couldn’t give her a child. That was her decision, not his. That he had not even given her that option proved his insincerity. Their marriage had been just a game for Raschid, a cruel sexual game for a highly sexed male. He had used her—he had admitted it. Now he didn’t want the messy complications. Damn you! she thought, you’re tearing me apart! He was standing there mentally willing her to match his composure and his control called up the devil inside her. Polly was swept by an incensed and bitter urge to smash it.

  ‘You won’t argue with me?’ With one hand she lifted a vase and slung it across the room, where it shattered noisily against the wall two feet to the left of him. He hadn’t moved an inch. Dazed by her wanton destructiveness and the violence which had suddenly forced a passage through her, she licked her lips. ‘Now we’ve got something relevant to argue about…’

  Anger and disbelief vibrated from him. Her breath loosed in a sobbing sound. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered.

  ‘Come here,’ ordered Raschid.

  ‘No!’

  Her judicious refusal seemed to land a second after he reached her. If she had wanted a reaction, she was getting it now. He had her cornered. Stepping sideways, she met with steel-clad fingers braced against the cold wall. ‘In all my life,’ he gritted, ‘no man and no woman has ever raised a hand to me!’

  ‘I wasn’t aiming at you!’ she protested.

  His hands clamped round her wrists. He wasn’t listening. ‘With the exception of you.’

  In one inexorable motion he dragged her against him. His aggressively masculine proximity inflamed her already stirred emotions. Whatever he might have intended to say was forgotten when he stared down at the breathlessly parted invitation of her lips, the unwitting softness of her eyes. Lat
er she didn’t know how it happened. One minute he was glowering down at her, the next his mouth was plundering hers with an explosive hunger that demolished her shaky defences.

  Rage and wild ecstasy were one in that embrace. Passionately she yielded to him, melting into boneless acquiescence against his hard male contours. He kissed her until a thunderbeat of crazy excitement had her trembling in his hold, and then he jerked back, thrusting her away from him. Bright sunlight hid his virile figure from her bemused stare. At the far end of the room a servant entered with a tray of refreshments.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Raschid ground out in a stifled undertone.

  Polly could not forgive him. She hadn’t seen the servant, dismissed by a mere motion of his hand; all she had tasted was the raw vehemence of Raschid’s repudiation. The drag in the atmosphere was intense. She was drained like a defeated bird who has beaten its wings too long against the bars of a cage. Last night in a fit of emotional insanity she had confessed her deepest and most private feelings, and had set the stage for her own humiliation. To rise above that awareness now in receipt of another rejection was impossible for her. It was over, it had long been over; he had tried to tell her that diplomatically last night. How many times did he have to hurt her before she would accept the truth? You couldn’t make someone love you, you couldn’t make them care.

  ‘I don’t think you really understand how I feel. Perhaps I did not express myself well last night, but you must believe that for a long time I have considered only what was best for you,’ he breathed starkly.

  Disgusted at this piece of hypocrisy, Polly refused even to look at him. ‘Will you get someone to show me to my room?’ she said coldly.

  He uttered her name as though it was torn from him. Only when the dead silence had ticked painfully on did he fulfil her request. He didn’t argue her retreat—he had to be relieved by it. Tact and exquisite manners were not enough to drain the discomfort from dealing with a wife who did not want to let go and who had the most embarrassing habit of opening her mouth to say exactly what she thought.

  Half an hour later she lay in the barbaric splendour of a sunken tiled bath, an escape from the excessive attention of several twittering female servants. This was an old-style harem, accessible by a single corridor and sealed behind grilled windows, mesharabiyah screens and an iron-barred gate. An unearthly silence had reigned through the intersecting and richly ornate rooms. They had crossed an echoing expanse, an eerie green marble grotto of still water and shadowy archways. Thinking of Louise sentenced to solitary exclusion here from the outside world made Polly shudder. At least she would be going home eventually, she thought in miserable self-consolation.

  She dismissed the servants hovering in the bedroom. The bed was enthroned on three shallow marble steps and on it rested an ensemble that would not have shamed a Twenties film starlet. Surveying the shimmering silk nightdress and the ridiculously extravagant azure satin wrap with its silly feathered trimmings, Polly squirmed. It had been dug from the bottom of her case and pressed. Just three weeks ago that over-the-top glamour had caught her wistful eye in the window of an exclusive lingerie boutique near her father’s hospital, and in a weak moment she had splashed out. For Raschid. Cruel reality had shredded her embarrassing daydreams but, since she didn’t know where the rest of her clothes were, she had to put the outfit on.

  A meal was brought to her while she rested on a tasselled ottoman. By then she had examined her surroundings. She was in Louise’s rooms, falsely occupying apartments that Ismeni appeared to have conserved to the best of her ability. Faded sepia photographs adorned the elegant writing desk. A tiny bud vase there contained the rose she had given the old lady. An opened drawer had revealed yellowing notepaper, envelopes inscribed with spiky handwriting and tied with ribbon. On the dressing table monogrammed silver brushes awaited a ghostly hand. It was decidedly creepy.

  Shortly after nine Ismeni appeared bearing a tiny cup of hot chocolate. With gnarled hands she turned down the bed and lovingly smoothed pillows embroidered with tiny roses. She became agitated when Polly tried to communicate with her. Polly had to steel herself to get into Louise’s bed. A shiny crescent moon speared pearly, indeterminate shadows into the room and the quiet folded in. Twenty minutes later Polly rebelliously threw the covers back and got up. Dammit, she didn’t have to play up to Ismeni’s batty delusions to this extent! The old dear wouldn’t know if she sneaked off to find another bed, because frankly the hair was starting to prickle at the back of her neck. The unhappy Louise’s spectral presence had got a death-grip on Polly’s imagination.

  Leaving the room, she almost tripped over the bundle sleeping across her doorway wrapped in a rug. Shoe-button eyes came alive, and Ismeni gave her a toothless grin. Startled into a gasp, Polly was guiltily put in mind of one of Macbeth’s witches. Tottering upright, the old lady seemed unsurprised to see her. Bowing low as if a command had been issued, she started down the dark corridor in the most peculiar stealthy fashion without putting on a single light.

  After a moment’s hesitation Polly followed. Traversing the grotto room, Ismeni disappeared into the shadows where she opened a door, motioning Polly to precede her. Glimpsing a narrow, curving staircase, her curiosity fairly caught by now, Polly went ahead—then flinched when the heavy door thudded shut behind her, sealing her into Stygian gloom. In vain she struggled to open it from the inside. Incredibly, there was no handle.

  ‘Ismeni!’ she yelled frantically.

  There was no answer. Unable to see an inch ahead in the musty darkness, she had to feel her passage clumsily up the climbing wall. There were thirty-two precariously narrow steps. At the top her palms met solid wood. In claustrophobic panic she pushed with all her might, and the panel swung out with a noisy creak. Her own momentum catapulted her forward into the dark room, and she stubbed her bare toes painfully on something and went down with a crash and a very unladylike epithet to clutch her throbbing foot in inexpressible agony.

  Sudden light illuminated the scene. Aghast, she stared at Raschid, who had leapt out of a chair by the window. If Polly was astonished to see him, he was equally astonished to see her. His hand dropped back from the tall Persian lamp. He stood there poised, his shirt hanging unbuttoned and loose from the jeans sleekly outlining his long, straight legs, his brown feet bare.

  Recognising Ismeni’s gruesome mistake with scarlet-cheeked chagrin, Polly mumbled, ‘I must have taken a wrong turning somewhere.’

  Raschid was strangely unresponsive. His brilliant blue eyes fanned over the opulence of her attire. His lashes fanned down. He seemed to breathe in very, very slowly before he unfroze and strode over to crouch down beside her. ‘My apologies. You…er…startled me. Your foot…nothing is broken?’

  Above her averted head an anguished twitch threatened his steel-set mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ muttered Polly.

  Absently he plucked a cobweb from her feathers. ‘I was not in bed. I went for a ride and…came back.’ His voice fractured and slurred as she released her grip on her foot and the over-large wrap lurched off one pale shoulder to reveal the utter transparency of the whisper-thin garment underneath. ‘You came to me…and it went wrong,’ he murmured with husky suddenness. ‘I know how this feels. You must not be embarrassed. It was very sweet, and I am very touched.’

  On the brink of glacially disabusing him of the notion that, not content to trail him home to Dharein, she had decided to lay siege to him in his bedroom as well, Polly looked up, connecting with the electrifying intensity of his eyes. Her heartbeat accelerated as if he had turned an ignition key. His forefinger unsteadily skimmed an untidy strand of silver back behind her ear.

  ‘And also it is very exciting,’ he muttered thickly.

  Her brain was in limbo. That straying hand was gliding a tantalising path down over the column of her extended throat and she wanted to move into the warmth of that hand. The potent male scent of him intoxicated her. ‘Ex…citing?’ she echoed.

>   ‘An invitation from one so shy.’ Lean fingers banded round her slender forearms to tug her relentlessly closer. ‘Your generosity shames me. My pride would have kept me from you, but now that you are here…’

  ‘Yes?’ she croaked.

  ‘I cannot refuse you when night after night I have ached for you.’ His voice was uneven, sibilant. ‘And to what avail? I cannot deny you. Insh’allah.’

  The tip of his tongue traced the sensitive curve of her lower lip, and she shivered violently. Insh’allah. If the Lord wills it, so it will be. Insh’allah. This happens because it is already written. Raschid captured her hands, guiding them down over warm, bronzed flesh, roughened by a crisp haze of dark hair. Beneath her tentative caress he shuddered, venting a shaken groan of satisfaction. He threw back his head, his darkened eyes fiercely searching. ‘Is this what you really want?’

  A torture chamber would not have extracted the admission that she had not arrived under her own steam. ‘You’ve…er…changed your mind?’

  Her nervous question elicited a rueful laugh. He pulled her to him, sealing her soft curves hungrily to his male heat. ‘Polly, I have never been in doubt of what I want. I have only doubted what was fairest to you, and never more than when I saw you in another man’s arms—a man whom you have always been ready to love, a man whom you might have married had I not come into your life. It did not seem unlikely to me that you should turn to him when I had neglected you, and I wanted to hate you for it,’ he breathed roughly into her hair, ‘because I did not feel I had the right to tear you from him. But now I find there is little of the martyr in me.’

  Slumbrously he studied her as he got up, lithely carrying her with him. Silk sheeting cooled her back, as he laid her down as if she was fashioned of spun glass. All that she grasped from that hail of sudden words was that his jealousy of Chris had been much more deep-rooted than she had ever suspected.