by Isobel Chace
A HOUSE FOR SHARING
Isobel Chace
Rosamund Peyton was looking forward immensely to her stay in Tunisia, where her stepfather was to work on an oil project in the desert, and when Rupert Harringford, the boss of the project, offered the two of them a temporary home in his house, in return for Rosamund’s help with the house-keeping, she felt it was altogether a convenient arrangement. However, fascinating as it was to be living in a real Arab house, Rosamund found conditions somewhat primitive; but she gritted her teeth, determined not to be beaten by the inadequacies of an Arab kitchen and marketing in a foreign tongue. But when a glamorous French widow suddenly appeared on the scene, determined to get her elegant claws firmly into Rupert, Rosamund realised that she had a very different kind of battle on her hands!
CHAPTER ONE
ROSAMUND PEYTON stood thankfully in the small area of shade that the hotel porch offered and tried to think cool thoughts. Her dress stuck to her back and under her arms and quite suddenly felt a size too small, and she was beginning to wonder why it was that she had always said she would rather be too hot than too cold.
A group of men, sitting on the pavement, were making favours of jasmine, threading the fragile blooms on to pine-needles bound into a single stalk. The flowers, fresh that morning, already had a jaded look, and their perfume lay on the heavy air, mixing with the petrol fumes and hot humanity, as a promise of better things to come. If she could only stand the heat, she thought, she might even quite enjoy herself.
“Excuse me!” a cold voice said at her elbow, and she was uncomfortably conscious that he might have said it once before. She drew herself in against the wall.
“I’m so sorry,” she said automatically.
He was a big man and as dark as she was fair, and she knew, even before she looked up and met his eyes, that she wasn’t going to like him. It was a reactionary thing, because men with dark, wavy hair, in her experience, always thought that if one was fair one was also adventurous, and no matter how firmly one said no they just wouldn’t believe that one was not that kind of girl.
But this man looked withdrawn and cold and, if anything, mildly contemptuous.
“It’s very hot, isn’t it?” she heard herself saying, and was annoyed with herself for being so weak-kneed as to actually start a conversation with him.
His eyes swept up her.
“Very,” he agreed. He made her feel stickier than ever and very unattractive. “It always is in Tunis at this time of year,” he added.
“I know,” she sighed. But it hadn’t sounded as hot as all that in Centigrade, only she didn’t dare say so, knowing that then he would undoubtedly write her off as a complete fool. “It isn’t so much the heat as the swimming effect,” she went on quickly. “It’s such a wet heat.”
To her surprise he smiled.
“It doesn’t last long,” he said cheerfully and, touching the brim of his hat, he pushed past her into the hotel.
He didn’t look hot at all, she noted. His lightweight suit was immaculate, the creases down his trousers were sharp and newly pressed and the collar of his shirt was the only one she had seen that day that looked both clean and starched. She straightened up and tried, surreptitiously, to smooth the creases out of her own skirt. Bother the man! He couldn’t be human at all to be so immaculate. But at least he had shown her that it was possible, and with a renewed burst of vigour she went up to her room to change.
Rosamund and her stepfather had been given two single rooms at the very top of the hotel. They had hoped that this would mean that they would get whatever breeze was going, but either there really was no breeze at all, or else the prevailing wind blew in the opposite direction. The rooms themselves were comfortable, though, and were separated by a small bathroom that could be used by both of them. Rosamund went into it first and automatically picked up the towel Jacob Dane had dropped on the floor after his shower, and put away his shaving things. She had become accustomed to doing such services for her stepfather and she did it now without a second thought, completely forgetting how much she had resented his untidiness and forgetfulness when he had first married her mother.
She had been fifteen then, struggling against her devastating fair good looks that seemed to stand between her and everything that she wanted. Nobody would believe that any one who was so startlingly lovely to look at could possibly want to do anything very serious. Rosamund had been quite clear in her own mind about her future. She had wanted to take a secretarial course and to specialise in foreign languages, convinced that she would then easily be able to find employment with one international body or another and that the world would be her oyster. What she had not foreseen was that her mother, a little shocked that any two people as ordinary as herself and the man she had chosen to marry should have produced a raving beauty, was not prepared to allow her daughter out of her sight. Rosamund secretly thought that that was partly why she had married again in such a terrific hurry. She had found the responsibility too great a load to carry all alone, and had flung it, with gay abandon, on to the narrow shoulders of Jacob Dane. The fact that he was not the type of man to even notice the colour of his stepdaughter’s eyes had completely escaped her, and she had died four years later, completely happy that at least she was not leaving her much-loved daughter alone in a wicked world. Rosamund, at nineteen by far the most sensible of the trio, had swallowed down her own sense of complete desolation at the loss of her mother and had set about making a passable home for Jacob. She had continued to do just that in various quarters of the globe for the last three years.
She went out of the bathroom and into her own room, tossing up in her mind whether to take a shower and to suffer the reaction of heat that one felt after the blissful cold water, or whether to continue in her present hot stickiness with just a change of dress.
Down below in the street the men had finished their favours and were dozing against the hotel wall, only waking when a likely tourist walked passed them, but Rosamund couldn’t smell the jasmine from that distance. She would have that shower, she decided, even if it made her late for lunch.
She wasn’t really any cooler when she had finished dressing and she was definitely late for lunch—not that Jacob would mind. He found the heat every bit as trying as she did and spent as much of his time as possible directly under the only fan in the bar, sipping ice-cold citrons presses. He pressed lemon drinks on to Rosamund too whenever she was there, but she hadn’t got his capacity, or something, for after one or two she began to feel slightly sick.
She took a last look at herself in the looking-glass and noted that she already needed powder. With a sigh of resignation she dusted her nose for the third time, locked the door of her room, and wandered leisurely downstairs to find her stepfather.
But for the first time her stepfather was not buried behind the latest British newspaper, eagerly scanning the latest cricket results. He had somebody with him, somebody who interested him, because she could see his lip quivering in the way it had when he was truly excited by anything. Maddeningly, she couldn’t see who was the cause of his interest, for a very large, solid marble pillar hid him from her view. She crossed the large room casually, a half-smile on her lips, and knew a sudden sinking feeling as she recognised the man in the hotel porch. She sat down quickly in the third seat by the table and pretended she hadn’t noticed that his eyes were on her.
“I’m sorry I’m late, Jacob,” she said huskily.
Her stepfather smiled at her absent-mindedly.
“Beauty’s privilege, my dear,” he said vaguely.
She blushed absurdly. She really wasn’t often late, and he made it sound an everyday occurrence, a right that she expected as her due. She could feel the disapproval of the othe
r man and knew that he had read exactly that into Jacob’s words.
“It was so hot that I changed my dress,” she said defensively.
The stranger looked fully at her then.
“Very pretty,” he acknowledged with scant courtesy, and turned back to Jacob with unnecessary eagerness. Rosamund bit her lip and waited for Jacob to remember to introduce them, but he also had apparently forgotten all about her in the excitement of discussing the endless ramifications of the latest oil take-over.
“It will be the Americans who will suffer this time,” he said on a note of relief. “Our company should be in the clear.”
“This time,” the stranger agreed succinctly.
The bar attendant came over to the table and waited patiently to be told what she would like to drink. Jacob blinked at him once or twice.
“Give him your order yourself, my dear,” he suggested at length. “He’ll probably understand your French much better than mine anyway.”
Rosamund opened her mouth to speak, but the stranger forestalled her.
“Have one with me,” he said smoothly, and proceeded to order her a mixed pressed orange and lemon in faultless French. “I think you may prefer that. It isn’t as bitter as plain lemon and it doesn’t taste so sweet when the sugar goes in.”
Rosamund thanked him coolly. She was both grateful to him for taking the matter out of her hands and resentful that he should have ordered for her without consulting her. But his one flash of interest in her was already gone and she was left to sip her drink in silence while the two men went back to their endless discussion of the problems that faced the oil companies of the world.
“Are you working on the same project as my stepfather, Mr.—?” Rosamund asked at length, hesitating prettily over the name.
His eyes met hers with a faint amusement to which she was totally unaccustomed.
“You could say that, Miss Dane,” he agreed.
“Miss Peyton,” Rosamund corrected him.
His eyebrows rose slightly.
“Of course, your stepfather,” he explained to himself. “I should have realised. Actually I’m the Company’s man in Tunisia. I shall be here for two years at least, whatever the results of the project.”
“I see,” she said. So there would be no escaping him! There had been other Company’s men in other parts of the world and she had always managed to get on with them very well. Their job, she knew, was not an easy one, combining as it did looking after the interests of a varied group of men, all of them convinced that their own particular branch of research or discovery was the most important, and making sure that the Company’s interests were tactfully handled under the varying conditions laid down under the concession. Sometimes the Company had a very real power in the land, sometimes hardly any, but it was difficult to say which was the harder to handle.
He looked faintly amused again.
“I’ll try and do something about finding you some accommodation,” he promised. “You’d better tell me the sort of thing you like.”
Rosamund hadn’t expected to be allowed to stay on in the luxury of the Mahgreb Hotel, but she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted this stranger to find a house or a flat for her.
“I—I thought something truly Arabic,” she hazarded. “Round a courtyard.”
“A patio,” he corrected her.
She gave him a look of barely concealed dislike that seemed to amuse him all the more.
“I don’t care what it’s called as long as it’s there!” she said abruptly.
Jacob Dane frowned.
“I really don’t think—” he began. But the other man interrupted him.
“You’d probably like my place,” he said calmly. “It’s the real thing, built round a patio and with even the old harem still intact.”
“We could hardly dispossess you, Mr.—?” This time the enquiry was a little more obvious.
“Harringford,” he supplied. “Rupert Harringford. You wouldn’t be dispossessing me,” he added, almost drawling the words. “There would be plenty of room for all of us.”
Rosamund sat up very straight.
“No, Mr. Harringford, I don’t think that would be suitable at all,” she said firmly.
“I shouldn’t be too hasty, your stepfather might have some views on the subject too. It’s not easy to find furnished properties in Sidi-Bou-Said—that’s the place where I live—and it’s not easy to find a cool, pleasant place so near Tunis.”
“Even so—” Rosamund started to turn down his offer. See the man often, she had to; live in the same house with him, she would not!
“Sidi-Bou-Said!” Jacob Dane explained. “Surely that’s near Old Carthage!”
Rosamund’s heart sank. Jacob only had one great interest beside his work, and that was in the ancient civilisation of the Phoenicians, the people who had built Carthage, had rivalled the greatness of Rome, but had been defeated at last in the bitter Punic Wars.
“We could probably get a house in Carthage itself,” she murmured hopefully, but Jacob was not even listening.
“Sharing a house for a few weeks is not the same as doing it over a long period of time,” he said hopefully.
“You’d be very welcome,” Rupert Harringford assured him. “I have a maid who comes in and does most of the cleaning and what have you, but I expect your stepdaughter will find a way of getting along with her all right.”
Rosamund gave him a startled glance. As far as she knew she had always managed to be liked by any servants she had ever had.
“She only speaks Arabic,” he explained belatedly, “and she has her own way of doing things.”
“And I suppose you speak Arabic perfectly,” she said more than a little irritably.
He grinned.
“I get along,” he said.
Jacob Dane’s lip twitched excitedly all through lunch.
“It was far too good an offer to miss!” he kept saying. “You don’t really mind my accepting, do you? It will be good for you to have someone in the house besides an old codger like myself! And imagine being so near Carthage!”
Rosamund smiled reluctantly.
“I expect we shall manage,” she said. “But I’m not sure that I really like Mr. Harringford—”
Her stepfather laughed.
“He doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve,” he admitted happily, “but then that shouldn’t dismay you unduly. Usually you complain what bores they all are because they all fall in love with you.” Rosamund pondered for a long moment on the obtuseness of men, and of her stepfather in particular.
“That wasn’t exactly what I meant,” she said at last.
But Jacob was feeling exceptionally pleased with himself. “He seems a nice enough young fellow to me,” he said. “Besides, anything is better than staying on in this awful heat.”
Rosamund dutifully tried to persuade herself that this was so. Her clean dress was already crumpled and her hair felt damp again with sheer perspiration. It would indeed be nice to get somewhere cooler, out of the public life of a hotel. And the house sounded ideal! She could imagine now the cool marble floors and a light breeze playing through the open windows. The only snag was Rupert Harringford. In a way that she didn’t like to admit even to herself, he made her nervous. He would expect such impossibly high standards in the running of his home and she knew she wouldn’t be able to live up to them. She was frightened that she wouldn’t be able to manage.
She was being silly, she told herself firmly. She always had managed before. The other wives had always congratulated her on the way she had managed to find places to live and had transformed them into homes for Jacob. Their place had always been a centre of attraction, even for the young married men who had had to leave their wives and children at home in England behind them. But she had never had to deal with anyone like Mr. Harringford before, who hadn’t even noticed that she was beautiful and wouldn’t have cared less if he had.
Jacob Dane arranged that they should move out the foll
owing day. He told her so gaily at dinner that evening.
“Harringford says he’ll tell the maid to expect you and will send a car for you and our luggage directly after lunch.”
Rosamund made a face at him.
“Couldn’t we go together?” she asked him.
Jacob blinked rapidly at her.
“But I shall be working at that time, my dear,” he reminded her.
“Not in the evening,” she objected.
“Oh, I see, I see what you mean. Oh no, that wouldn’t be possible now. You see, Harringford has arranged everything. It will be far better for you to have the afternoon to yourself and to have a good look around, and then by the time we come in it won’t seem so strange to you.”
Rosamund wondered whether it was his own idea or one of Rupert Harringford’s, and thought it was probably the latter’s. It was so glossily thoughtful and so very much what she didn’t want to do! She didn’t want to go out alone and be received by a maid that she couldn’t understand!
She was still in this rather rebellious mood when the desk rang through to her room the following day to tell her the car had arrived. The porter stowed the luggage away in the boot and opened the back door for her to get in in lonely state.
“How far away is Sidi-Bou-Said?” she asked the driver.
“About seventeen kilometres, madam,” he replied. “It’s a very pretty place,” he added. “A beauty spot, you might say.”
The road out was certainly impressive—a broad, four-lane thoroughfare that swept round the edge of the Bay of Tunis, past the airport and on to La Marsa where the Presidential Palace was situated. From there it was only a matter of a few short kilometres to the high peninsula of Sidi-Bou-Said, with its white Andalusian houses with their doors and windows painted blue, reflecting the blue sky above them. They drove round the outskirts where the soil showed a vivid red and came suddenly into the main street. The car paused, and Rosamund caught a glimpse of the paved street that led up past a few shops to an Arab café that was reached by a few steps. Then they had crossed the street into a small opening and were creeping past the village pump and some playing children, then came to an abrupt stop outside one of the foursquare houses that led straight off the unmade-up street.
