Rapture of the desert

by Violet Winspear

  "Indubitably." There wasn't the faintest hint of mockery in his voice and he sounded quite kind. "You have a nice mother . . . my own was selfishly gay and in the divorce court long before I had my first long trousers."

  "I'm so sorry." She cast him a sympathetic side-glance, but his profile was as hard and fine as that upon a bronze coin. She knew at once that he had long since ceased to regret the legal loss of his mother, but she felt certain that he had never tried to fight the gay and wilful instincts inherited from her.

  "Are you wondering about my father?" he asked, and the car sped smoothly along as he spoke, and the street lights were less clustering, as if they were heading out of London. "He was a finer man than I am, who devoted much of his life to the Sheik's people, and who died one hot khamsin day when the North African campaign was in full swing. He was decorated for bravery, and his memory is cherished by the people of El Kezar. They expect me to live up to him, of course, but quite frankly I am not a saint. I sometimes think that if he had given to my mother the devotion and the passion which he gave to the Oasis, she might never have looked at another man. He married her, placed her upon a pedestal, and then was surprised when she toppled into

  the arms of a French artist who came to North Africa to paint the Ouled Nail dancers, and the Arabian cavalry, and all the wonders I remember from my boyhood. Much has changed, of course. The province is now state governed, and the fruits of the Oasis are so heavily taxed that profits are a laugh. But I still have the house in which Miroslava lived as a Sheik's friend. The house called Belle Tigresse! "

  "What a provocative name, milor." Chrys looked at him, and then at the wide highway along which they were travelling so swiftly, so smoothly that the engine made hardly a sound. It was as if the engine of the car was wrapped in velvet . . . the same velvet that seemed to enwrap the surrounding fields. Her heartbeats quickened. She wanted to ask him to head back to London, but she was strangely afraid of him and his unpredictable nature. If she showed fear of him now, he might dash the car into the nearest lay-by and give her every reason for being afraid. She strove to sit calmly beside him . . . she sensed that he was waiting for her to panic . . . this beau tigre of a man!

  "It is a provocative house, matushka. All of white stone, you understand, with one entire wall and tower enshrouded in scarlet bougainvillaea which Miroslava had planted . . . perhaps to remind her of her passionate Prince Ivanyi, who died in his white uniform, cut down by sabres on the steps of the Czarist palace the first day of the uprising. Magnifique! Come it taut."

  "I think it terrible," she retorted, "that a man and a woman should be parted in such a tragic way! "

  "Ah, there speaks the romantic! And now, matushka, I have discovered in my devious way why you remain the ice maiden who has never melted for a man. You are looking, yourself, for a preux chevalier."

  "I am doing nothing of the sort, milor. A man would interfere in every way with my career in ballet. He would expect me to make him my career! "

  "But you might fall in love with a dancing partner," drawled the prince, and still the car sped smoothly

  through the night, on towards the coast, it seemed, with London now left far behind them. Chrys cast a rather wild look behind her, and her hair flew in a gold wing, breaking loose from its chignon as the wind soared towards her. She gave a gasp, half fear, and half delight to be travelling along like this, in a swift car commanded by a man who drove fast but who broke not a rule in the driver's handbook. It was as if he had an instinct for going through life on the knife-edge of danger.. . only once had he come to grief, and that had been through a woman.

  Chrys thrust the loosened hair from her eyes and wondered briefly if love had blunted, for once, his instinct for enjoying danger without having it touch him?

  "Male ballet dancers are as dedicated as the females," she said. "To dance in ballet is to be at the mercy of the dance. Of course, there are one or two exceptional marriages within the world of ballet, but they are love matches in the grand tradition and would survive despite the demands imposed by the régime of the dance. Famous male dancers such as Lonza and Dantoni are also famous for their love affairs, and though it's marvellous when one is lucky enough to have the Panther for a partner, a sensible girl avoids becoming involved emotionally."

  "Sensible! " muttered the prince. "What a very British word it is! Like hotpot and pudding with gravy! Well, tonight I am teaching you that too much sensibility will blunt your natural sense of gaiety. Ah yes, it is there, the gaiety, like small blue devils in the eyes. You desire with one half of you to enjoy this drive without inhibition, but the primly obedient and dedicated half of you is terrified that the wind is combing out your hair into the wild silk which you have been taught to keep meticulously neat and orderly. What is this dance regime? Some sort of novitiate, for which you take vows of devotion and sublimation?"

  "Of course not! " She had to laugh, albeit with a touch of nerves and temper. "There are rules attached

  to everything, but you are a natural rebel, milor, so you wouldn't understand. To love something is to be enslaved."

  "But you would rebel against enslavement to a man," he argued. "You prefer the inhumanity of pirouettes upon the tips of your toes, and the arabesques that would seem like torment to your audience. You know, I have heard Miroslava say that for hours after dancing she has lain in a torpor of sheer exhaustion, with every muscle aching and in revolt against the merciless demands of the dance. Do you really think that a man would put you through such torment in his arms ?"

  Chrys tautened where she sat, and stared at the dark shapely profile of the prince, outlined now and again by the infrequent tall lamps at the roadside.

  "W-what are you implying?" she asked, and she felt the shock in her body, and heard it in her words. What did he mean? And where was he taking her?

  "Oh come, Chrysdova, you are not that unworldly." "Look, if you are planning some sort of a — a seduction —"

  "As if I would?" He laughed in that purring and infuriating way, as if laughter were an inward thing and never a bellow; a secret to be shared with himself but never with her.

  "You would, if you felt like it! " Anger and nerves shook her voice. "Where are we going? To some hideaway you have in the country, where you take your ladies of the night? I'm warning you — if you dare to touch me I'll tear out those devil eyes of yours!

  "I'm sure of it, little sand cat." But still he softly laughed as if illimitably sure of his own strength and his practised ability to overcome the resistance of a mere woman. "We are on the road to Kent, which is very attractive at this time of the year, with the fruit on the trees and the sunrise so colourful over the Bay of Sandwich."

  "Kent! "

  "Yes, do you know it?"

  "I know that never in my life have I met anyone with your gall! Turn the car this instant and take me back to Kensington! "

  "It sounds like a song," he rejoined, "from the music halls, hein? 'Take me back to Kensington as quickly as you can. Oh, Prince Anton, you are a naughty man!'"

  "The word 'naughty' when applied to you," she stormed, "is about as appropriate as calling a tiger pussy! I want to go home! "

  "And so you shall, matushka, in the morning."

  Instantly, wildly, she felt like grabbing at the wheel and forcing him to stop the car, but in that moment a long and laden trailer came towards them out of the night and passed them on the road with a roar that set Chrys's nerves humming like the steel-threads of a violin wound too tightly to take the assault on them.

  "Will it make you happy," she said tautly, "to make me hate you?"

  "I promise you won't hate me, petite. What lies ahead of you will be a revelation . . . an experience so enjoyable that you will thank me for bringing you to Kent instead of taking you home to prosaic Kensington."

  "You — you actually expect me to enjoy myself ?" Chrys was almost stunned by the sheer amorality of the man the astounding confidence in his own powers of seduction. "It might come as a
surprise to you, milor, but there are some girls around who enjoy being —good."

  "Chaste is the word, Miss Devrel. A Victorian, not much used term, these days, and related to the chastity-belt and the blush."

  "With men like you around the chastity-belt should be brought into fashion," she said frigidly.

  "You give me credit for not a single virtue, eh? I

  am all darkness and devilry in your eyes, is that so ?" "Yes! I knew it from the first moment I laid eyes on

  you. That man, I said to Dove, likes to make fools of women! "

  "How flattering! And would you like to know my thoughts of you?"

  "No, thank you! "

  "Ah, but you would! You clamour to know even as you make your denial. My immediate thoughts upon recognizing you as a dancer I had seen at the Bolshoi were that you had an aura of coolness like that of a fountain in a Moorish patio. That you were white-skinned as the houri dreamed of by the Arab in his enclosed garden . . . but disdainful of men as the she-tiger who rejects affection as if it were a thorn in her throat. I knew by the candour of your blue eyes that no man had yet made you his mistress . . . I knew from the shape of your lips that you were passionate but fastidious."

  "Please, don't stop there," she said sarcastically. "I am sure you must have guessed the colour of my lingerie and the location of the tiny mole on my shoulder-blade."

  "Tu es tres charmante," he drawled. "I cannot wait to see this mole on the shoulder-blade."

  "You will be lucky, milor. It will be over my dead body."

  "What a pity! You intend, then, to fight to your last breath for your honour?"

  "I — I'd put up a pretty good fight." She flung a look at him, a wing of hair windblown across her face. "You are taunting me, of course? You don't really intend to take me to Kent ?"

  "We are now in the county of Kent, matushka. Can't you smell the apples in the orchards? It reminds me of certain parts of Russia . . . that was why .. . yes, this is Kent, and we are on our way to an apartment overlooking the Bay of Sandwich."

  "Oh — you are being monstrous and taking glory in being so! How dare you do this to me?"

  "What am I doing to you when my hands are entirely

  occupied with the wheel of the car?"

  "You are taking me somewhere in Kent where I don't want to go! And you imagine that when you get me there I shall suddenly be overcome by your masculine charms and swoon in your arms ! "

  "Ah, what an attractive image. Ravissante!" And very deliberately he quickened the pace of the car, as if he couldn't wait to arrive at his retreat by the sea. Chrys felt furious with him, and curiously defenceless. This kind of situation had never arisen in her life before and she didn't know how to deal with the matter. She was utterly at a loss, for each thing she said was outrageously capped by him, and the only resort would be an undignified tussle with him. Could she, if driven to it, claw with her fingernails at those shockingly beautiful eyes, grey and smouldering as the smoke of a desert fire?

  "In the old days," he drawled, "they called this kind of thing a Cossack abduction, with the man snatching the girl away on the back of his horse and riding full tilt across the steppes with her. After that, of course, she was obliged to marry him, or be labelled a good-time girl to be had by any man who fancied her."

  "And is this the modern variation?" Chrys demanded.

  "What do you think, matushka?"

  "I — I think you've got a nerve! I wouldn't marry you if marriage was bliss and every other man already had a wife! I'd sooner be on the shelf until I'm eighty! I'd sooner emigrate! "

  "There is something so passionate about a woman's anger that it really excites a man, so beware of such anger, matushka. If I dared to look at your eyes as I drive through this dark old village, I should see them blazing like sapphires. It is fine for a woman to hate —the sabre cut is her indifference."

  "You would know, of course, Prince Anton, being such an authority on the subject. When did you decide to 'abduct' me? When you found out I had only a sis-

  ter and not a brother to be put another bullet through that philandering heart of yours ?"

  "Ah, but don't you care at all that it was very painful for me? I almost died, so you might spare a little sympathy for me. After all, I only went to the silly girl's bedroom in Monaco to give her the necklace she lost at the casino. I suppose, looking back, it was a little absurd of me to go by way of her balcony, but I wished to spare her the embarrassment of telling her strange, wild brother that she had been gambling. She was so delighted to receive her property that she flung her arms around my neck and kissed me . . . at which point the brother entered the room and shot me. He must have dragged me on to the balcony, for when the police came, and the ambulance, he said I was a prowler. Later it was established who I was, and people presumed that I was the girl's lover."

  "But didn't she tell the truth — explain the real facts?" Strangely enough Chrys didn't doubt the veracity of his story; she had always sensed that a man so worldly would so arrange his amours that an irate brother was unlikely to come stalking in on the scene. There was a secretive side to Prince Anton de Casenove; in his veins ran the instincts of men of power who had kept concealed in hunting lodges and tower apartments the femme chic of the moment. Swinging a leg over a balcony in search of love was not in tune with the suavity and self-assurance of the prince. He had an aura of sophistication in which boyish escapades played no part ... Chrys felt quite certain that it had never been part of his plan to be caught returning the girl's necklace.

  "It suited Mademoiselle to let it be thought that I was in her bedroom in order to be her lover."

  "Oh! "

  "She thought I would be honour bound to marry her."

  "But you aren't all that particular about a girl's honour?"

  "Not that of a rather silly blonde with a mad brother."

  "I see." Chrys's lips formed an involuntary smile. "It's rather like a stage farce."

  "Except that I have a very realistic scar. Would you care to see it?"

  "No —" Chrys bit her lip and her smile was gone, wiped away as she remembered her own precarious position, miles from home, with no one at all to know that she was alone like this with a secretive, amorous, self-willed man who was accustomed to having his own way. "Please — can't we go back ?"

  "It is too late for that — see, there is the Bay and the dark gleam of the ocean against the pale sands."

  It was true! She could see the thrust of the cliffs encircling the bay, and she could smell the ocean, and ahead of them, rising against the starlit sky the enormous, almost fearsome bulk of a castle! She stared in sheer amazement at the turrets and round towers as they drew nearer and nearer, and the car swept in through a gateway into the drive of the castle. Gravel crunched beneath the wheels, and lamplight shone in the arched entrances to the towered, grey-walled, romantic residence!

  "This is it?" she gasped.

  "Of course." He brought the car to a smooth halt in front of a massive corner tower, with narrow windows deepset in the stone, with lights burning softly behind them. "Did you imagine I had brought you here on a sightseeing tour?"

  "But it's a castle! " She stared around her at the courtyard, and felt the mystery that haunts the environs of an ancient building. Looking upwards, she saw the indented parapets and the thick curtains of ivy mantling the walls. "Why have we stopped here ?"

  "For the past couple of hours you have been quite certain of my motive in bringing you all this way." He slid from the car as he spoke and came round to open the door beside Chrys. "Come, it is surely traditional

  for Cinderella to return to the castle after attending the dance."

  "I'm staying right here —"

  "No, Chrysdova, you are coming into the castle with me." His hands were lean and powerful and utterly determined to overrule her defiance. He almost lifted her from the Rapier, and for a brief and electrical moment she was even closer to him than she had been when they had danced together, the silv
er silk of her dress shining against the darkness of his topcoat, her slim body pressed to him, wild with the instinct of his strength and his potent male grace.

  "Please — be reasonable, Anton! Stop playing the villain! "

  "Ah, but villains have a better time of it, cherie, than men of virtue." Suddenly he bent his head and kissed her throat, and then, while she still seethed with fury, he marched her into the tower entrance and up a shallow flight of stone steps to an oval-shaped wooden door. He gripped her wrist with one hand, forcibly, actually hurting her, while with the other he inserted a key into the lock of the door and swept it open to a lighted vestibule.

  "Well," he drawled, "is it so surprising for someone to have an apartment in a centuries-old castle overlooking a smuggler's bay?"

  Chrys could only look at him with blazing blue eyes and hate him for his wicked laughter as he pulled her inside the tower and slammed the door behind them.

  CHAPTER V

  "I SUPPOSE now you're happy?" she stormed.

  "Unimaginably. And now will you enter the petit salon?" He opened an interior door of the apartment and stood aside for Chrys to enter. She did so unwil-

  lingly, knowing that if she had made a dash for the front door he would have been there ahead of her, to bar the way with mocking ease and the assurance that she was in a strange place and in his hands.

  Head held high and with a blaze to her eyes, she walked into the petit salon, as he had called it, and found herself in a long, shadowy, sensuous room, with several leopard skins stretched on the floor, oddly wrought lamps hanging from the ceiling, dim mirrors, low tables, and divans heaped with cushions. Lampshades and curtains blended in dark jewel colours, small fine ornaments stood on various shelves, and there were portraits with penetrating eyes — the family de Casenove eyes!