She closed the door, and caught her breath at the deep, sunken bath surrounded by a mosaic of green, gold, and black tiles. When filled with warm water and a froth of soap bubbles it would be heavenly to bathe in, Madeline thought, running water into the pedestal wash-basin and catching her breath on sandalwood soap as she worked the lather into her moist skin.
She dried her face and arms with a fresh white towel, noticing Victor’s shaving-kit on the shelf in front of the wall mirror.
Behind the door hung a huge striped robe, while on a white stool near the bath lay a French journal, folded at an article he had evidently been reading while soaking in his sunken tub.
A smile curved her lips as she turned again to the mirror and took up the tortoiseshell comb that lay beside his shaving-kit. As she ran it through her hair, she was suddenly overwhelmed by the intimacy of using his toilet articles and actually being here in his house. She tidied her hair, and reaching for the door handle, she was close to his robe for a suffocating second. Engulfed in a wave of masculine scents personal to him, sandalwood soap, citrony after-shave, and that strong dark tobacco he smoked. .
Her heart thudded protestation at the thrill that shot through her.
How inane how young, to actually go dizzy because a man’s robe touched you for a second ! She must be light-headed from all that desert air, and badly in need of something to eat!
She hurried along the corridor to the living-room. It was empty, so she crossed to the archway leading on to the patio which was drenched in the perfume of those lush, jewel-red roses. A circular table had been placed near the fountain with matching chairs set at either side of it. A woman in a black frock was bustling about laying it, while a tall, breeched figure stood examining the fruit on some dark-foliaged orange trees, the sun on his crisp hair and hard brown arms.
He swung round at Madeline’s approach. The woman in black, a starched white apron tied about her waist and a white cap with points upon her grey hair, treated Madeline to a sharp-eyed scrutiny. She said something very rapidly to Victor in French. He nodded, then introduced the old woman as Jeanne, who, he added, had been a friend and servant of his parents. She bobbed at Madeline, then went into the house to fetch their breakfast.
Madeline slipped into the chair which Victor held for her, wondering what his housekeeper had said about her to him.
She could follow his language when it was spoken slowly, but not when it was exchanged with rapid fluency between French people.
He must have guessed what was going through her mind, for as he sat down facing her and slipped the ivory ring from his napkin, he said : “Jeanne was surprised by your youthful-ness. She no doubt expected Amalia’s secretary to be rather older. Jeanne is from Provence, while her many years out here in North Africa have made her a little old-fashioned.”
“If I recall,” Madeline smiled as she slipped her own napkin ring, “you thought me young for the job yourself. Haven’t you French people much faith in the common sense of the young?”
“As in Spain, our families are more closely integrated than they are in Britain. Perhaps it is that we like to keep laughter and irresponsibility in young hearts a little longer,” he replied.
“This book of Amalia’s, it will be a dusty tome, no? Concerned with things resurrected from a dead age. I cannot really believe that you find all that of absorbing interest.”
“I do, as a matter of fact. The book is also a biography, and Henry Van Cleef was a man of humour and charm.
Amalia was extremely happy with him ”
She broke off at that point as Jeanne arrived with a coffee-pot, followed by the young Moorish boy with covered plates on a tray and oven-warm croissants wrapped in a napkin.
Jeanne had made omelettes, golden beds for thinly sliced mushrooms, curls of ruby tomato, and rings of buttery onion.
They looked delicious, while the croissants were crusty crescents awaiting the knife and lashings of butter.
Jeanne poured their coffee into generous pottery cups, then she rustled away, snapping her fingers at the boy, who was inclined to linger. Madeline gave him a smile, at which, like a shy and startled gazelle, he shot away into the house. No doubt Jeanne had chores for him, but Madeline, forking omelette and crunching croissant, had an idea they weren’t heavy ones.
Oh, how pleasant it was here, with Victor behaving like a human being instead of an aloof, critical observer. The fountain jets rose like liquid silver, pigeons swooped to its rim and butterflies fluttered their painted wings.
“I like your house, Dr. Tourelle,” she murmured.
“It surprises you a little, I think.” A wicked glint came into his eyes. “The grim docteur should have equally grim surroundings, is it not so ?”
“I’ve never thought of you as grim,” she protested. “You’re a bit of a bully and rather impatient when it comes to women but I decided to forgive you that day I saw you with the children at Green Palms.”
“How sentimental women are,” he smiled. “Ah, your cup is empty, let me refill it.” He did so, replenishing his own, and flickering a quizzical brow. “Try some of these figs,” he added. “They are Syrian and very palatable.”
He sank his white teeth into one, lounging back in his chair as if he had all day to spare. Madeline took a quick look at her wristwatch and saw that it was eight o’clock. Out here, where the sun was hot in the sky at an early hour, it was possible to lose track of time, and she was surprised that she had been with Victor less than two hours. As in a dream they seemed cut off from reality. Something stupendous, she felt, had happened. But she couldn’t pin it down. At this moment, like a detail in a dream, it eluded her.
“Don’t you particularly like women, Dr. Tourelle?” she found herself asking, with a quick sip at her coffee in a belated attempt to appear casual. She hadn’t meant to ask him such a question, but out it had come !
He was rolling a cigarette, and he glanced up briefly to give her a droll, Gallic scrutiny. “Do you ask that question because I am French, Miss Page?” A match flared, smoke wafted towards her, then he lounged back, crossing his long legs. “Are you, too, under the impression that we live only to love? Au contraire, we Frenchmen are very practical, it is just that we have never made the mistake of thinking women a form of masculinity in skirts a mistake much made by your own countrymen, which is why it ruffles you to learn that as a woman you are ruled by your heart and prone to illogical im-pulses ”
When she would have spoken, he gestured her to silence.
“You see, you are ruffled,” he mocked. “A Frenchwoman, on the other hand, is flattered when a man pays her the compliment of thinking her feminine. It would not please her in the least to be considered a capable bon camarade.”
“Different nations have their own characteristics,” Madeline argued. “Englishwomen consider it a compliment to be thought good sports.”
“Really?” He quirked a dark eyebrow. “They would rather be imitation boys than the roguish angels le bon Dieu meant them to be?”
Roguish angels !
Was that a confirmed bachelor speaking? Her eyes must have widened in a stare, for as he flicked ash a smile came and went on his lips. Then quite deliberately he changed the subject. “The architecture of these Moorish houses is very interesting, is it not, Miss Page? It was the Moors who taught the people of Spain to put fountains in their gardens. The knew the psychological benefits to be obtained from the refreshing sound of water in a hot land.”
Madeline accepted the change of topic with a feeling half chagrined, half relieved. As she admired the cloak of morning-glory tumbling from the fountain’s rim, she told herself it was perhaps better they discuss impersonal matters. He was infuriating, and also dangerously fascinating.
Fascinating in both a purely physical sense, and by reason of his seeming detachment from the turmoil of the heart that attacked most people at some time or other.
“Colours and scents are so much richer in Moorish gardens, aren’t they
?” she remarked. “Is this a compensation for the aridity of the desert?”
“Sometimes after a rainfall it bursts into patches of bloom,”
he said. “The desert is a strange place … in fact it has been said many times it is like a woman, for it is equally complex
at dawn cool and fresh and innocent, then towards noon it becomes a brazen vixen, searing with a look, tormenting with a touch. For hours this mood will continue, then comes a magical softening, and scented, clad in dark velvet and diamonds ”
he snapped his fingers in the air, “irresistible again.”
“You were born in North Africa, weren’t you, Dr. Tourelle?” she said.
He took a deep pull at his cigarette. For a moment surely she didn’t imagine it his face had a hard, austere look.
“That is so, Miss Page.” He inclined his dark head. “My father was an officer in the French army. His headquarters were at Sidi-bel-Abbes. The Tourelles have always given a son to the army, and doubtless if I had not been orphaned I should have gone into the service myself. But my close association with Max changed the direction of my ambitions and I chose a medical career much to the disdain of my grandfather !”
“You have a grandfather alive?” Madeline was openly as-tonished. Because he had been reared by Max Berault she had taken it for granted that he was without close relatives.
Now there was no mistaking the cold, almost harsh austerity of his expression. “My grandfather is the Comte de Tourelle,”
he explained curtly. “As in many old-established French families my father, the younger son, was sent to Saumur to train for the cavalry. His older brother would inherit the title and the estates the chateau alone is now left therefore with a clear conscience my father eventually came to North Africa to give all his heart to the army. Then quite unexpectedly his brother died in a hunting accident, leaving a wife but no children, which meant that my father was now the heir to the Tourelle title. My grandfather wished him to marry immediately, but it was some years before he did so and he chose to marry for love the daughter of a Danish farmer.”
Victor scowled at the fountain, his tawny eyes flaring with passionate anger. “The overbearing arrogance and pride of that grandfather of mine ! To dare to say that my mother was not good enough for a Tourelle ! My father adored her, and he never forgave his father for the things he said of her. That was why Max Berault was made my legal guardian a year or so before my parents died. The old eagle lives alone in that chateau in Provence with just a pair of elderly servants in attendance. We have met but twice. When I was studying medi-cine in Paris I thought to go and see him. It was a mistake,”
Victor ground out his cigarette with savage movements of his brown hand. “I have my mother’s eyes, you see ! ”
Madeline could feel the hard thud of her heart. She knew she wanted to touch that tormented hand that mangled a cigarette so ruthlessly. He could hate very thoroughly, and love with equal intensity, this man she had thought so armoured and controlled !
Then, in one supple movement, he rose from the table, and that moment of revelation might never have been. Madeline saw that once again he was the imperturbable doctor, his mask of self-sufficiency back in place, his eyes a cool gold as they rested on her. “There is nothing of an urgent nature awaiting me at the hospital, so I will escort you to the villa,” he said She was pushing back her chair when, lithe and silent, he came round to her. His closeness was confusing and unexpected and she stumbled as she got to her feet, feeling at once the clasp of his steadying hand. In that brief moment when his fingers encircled her arm, her slender body wilted in the warmth of his towering strength. Her glance dwelt wildly on him, met his eyes through a bright, truant wave of hair, then to her relief he stepped away from her and stooped to pick up something which she took for a cat.
“Have you ever seen a desert fox, Miss Page?” He held a fox cub in his arms, a creature soft and furry as a chow puppy.
Madeline found small animals as irresistible as small children, and forgetful of the shyness Victor had aroused in her a moment ago, she approached him and took hold of the cuddly thing, which snuffled her as she stroked it. “What do you call him?” she laughed.
“I have not yet named him.” Victor smiled and pushed long fingers through the cub’s soft fur. “I found him out on the desert the other morning, he had wandered perhaps from the rest of the litter, or was the sole survivor of an attack by a jackal. He’s a friendly little creature, eh? Perhaps you would like to give him a name?”
“May I?” She was pleased by the idea.
“I will accept any name for him but Cuddles,” he murmured half mockingly.
His French pronunciation of the word was too much for Madeline’s sense of humour, and she laughed openly, seeing the answering glimmer of his teeth as she played with the cub’s long, pointed ears. “He has a lovely ruffly coat,” she decided, “so Ruff might be a good name for him.”
“Ruff, the little desert fox with the British pet name,” Victor agreed, with a nod of his dark head. He poured milk into a saucer for the podgy cub, then while he went to fetch the horses, Madeline went into his living-room for her slouch hat.
As she jerked it down over one eye, she gazed at the framed photographs on the book cabinet. Victor had his father’s lean, haughty features, but his topaz eyes were indeed his mother’s.
Madeline moved over to the cabinet and took Astrid Tourelle’s photograph into her hands.
“There is a harshness here,” Victor had said. “It winnows out the delicate from the strong.”
It had winnowed out his adored mother, and Roger Tourelle, perhaps, had not fought hard enough for his life when he too had been stricken by enteric fever. He had wanted to be with Astrid, the girl he had married for love in the face of bitter opposition from his father, the Comte de Tourelle.
A shadow blocked the room’s archway. “Come, it grows late,” Victor said.
She replaced the photograph and turned to him. They went to the horses and a minute later were cantering out of the patio.
On the way to the villa a silence hung between them which Madeline found impossible to break with conventional conversation. She could not be sure that the cordiality he had shown her this morning would continue. The next time they met he might hurt her again with his bruising coolness, therefore, when they reined in by the villa gates, she was ready with a polite little smile. He must not think that she attached any importance to the meal they had so recently shared. He must never learn that for one wild moment in his Moorish garden she had wanted to feel his arms around her.
“Thank you for breakfast, Doctor.” She spoke in a brisk, fashion. “The next time I ride in the desert I’ll stick to a horse I can manage.”
Victor’s glance flashed over her face. “Perhaps the Barb bolted because something upset him, eh?”
“It was having a stranger in his saddle,” she returned lightly, for nothing was to be gained by saying Donette had flicked the horse with her whip. Victor was attracted to her, but he was far too intelligent to be fooled by her. He knew there was a streak of wilfulness in Donette … it was even possible that he was drawn to her because of it. Some men liked a woman they could fight with.
“Au revoir, Miss Page.” He was again the aloof doctor as he swung his mount and galloped away from her. His spurs flashed blindingly as the sun caught them … was it their dazzle that misted her eyes for a moment?
Donette’s reception of her return to the villa was outwardly cool, and quite unrepentant, though it was obvious from Amalia’s manner towards her niece all that day that she was angered, not to say disturbed, by the callous way Donette had left Madeline a newcomer to the desert to fend for herself.
Now the incident was over, Madeline wanted to forget it.
It seemed to her that Donette was less mature in mind than she was in body and that, like a sulky child, she saved up grudges and found spiteful little ways in which to satisfy them.
&nb
sp; This one had back-fired. He had done something Donette could never have envisaged, invited Madeline to his house for breakfast!
But, in more ways than one, Madeline regretted going home with him. In doing so she had been shown how charming he could be, and she had also learned a very potent reason for Donette’s interest in him. One day he would inherit an ancient title, and though there might not be a fortune entailed as well, the prestige attached to being the Comtesse de Tourelle would appeal very much to Donette.
CHAPTER VI
AMALIA VAN CLEEF was always happy when she could do a good turn for someone, and a New York friend had written to say she was furnishing a new flat and wanted a good carpet for the hall. Would Amalia purchase one for her, a real eastern beauty, which would cost the earth if bought in the States?
Madeline had not yet shopped in the heart of the medina, and consequently she was thrilled when Amalia asked her if she would like to go along on Friday to buy the carpet. “The Arab I’m going to is a devil,” Amalia chuckled. “He’ll drown us in syrupy black coffee and bombard us with the terrible struggle he has to make ends meet, but he sells the genuine article, and he sells at a reasonable price.”
Zamil drove them as far as the city square, which was humming with an activity so vivid that Madeline felt she had stepped straight into an Eastern canvas. “Balek! Balek!” yelled a donkey boy, and Amalia pulled her to one side as a donkey trotted past, carrying on his back a pair of deep straw baskets filled with purple egg-plants, orange pumpkins, and rustily crimson pomegranates. On every side there were robed figures, and dust was thrown up thickly by slippered feet, settling on the waves displayed in palm-fibre panniers. Zithers and drums thrummed and boomed while a group of beggars whirled in an energetic dance. A waterseller clattered by, armoured in copper bowls. Shoeshine boys pursued Europeans in the hope of earning a copper or two, while under a mat awning a pair of barbers were busily at work.
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