Desert Doctor

by Winspear, Violet

  “If the rain’s easing off, then I’m certainly going ashore.”

  Lilane glanced across at her husband. “What are you doing, Greg?”

  He raised a black eyebrow, for as a rule she didn’t consult his wishes. “Maybe you’d like to lunch with me?” he suggested casually.

  Madeline was watching Lilane and she actually saw colour stain her slim throat. Go carefully, she silently pleaded. It’s too easy to hurt people — too hard to make up for it once the damage is done.

  “You’re on, Greg.” Lilane spoke as casually as he, but her hands were trembling slightly as she picked up her gold cigarette case and lighter. She rose to her feet, was about to pick up her discarded book on psychology, when with a faint grin at Madeline she left the book lying where she had thrown it. Greg followed her from the stateroom, pressing back his black hair and smiling in a lazily puzzled way .

  “You’re looking rather dispirited, my dear,” Amalia had followed Madeline into her cabin. “Is everything all right between you and Brooke ?”

  “We’re — still friends,” Madeline replied.

  “Only friends, honey?” Amalia took hold of Madeline’s hands and pressed her rings into them. “Aren’t you going to please an old lady by making it a little more than that? The boy loves you, and I’ve already decided to make over to both of you a real nice house I have on Long Island.”

  “Amalia, please don’t make those kind of plans !” The coils of Amalia’s goodness and Brooke’s desire had tightened to strangulation point, and with a gasp of desperation Madeline broke free. “As soon as the biography is finished I’m returning to England. I’m going to train for child care work as Max suggested.”

  “My dear, you can’t be serious?” Amalia looked astounded.

  “Brooke needs you.”

  “Brooke needs love, we all do, but I’d only be giving him fondness. I like him too much to — to jeopardize his future and my own. Child care work really appeals to me. Naturally there’s no question of my working at Green Palms — Dr Tou-relic doesn’t want me there. But there are plenty of other places where I can go.”

  “Madeline,” her employer’s lips had a tremor, “I’ve seen you look thoughtful and detached in the last few days, but I never dreamed you had this in mind. Have you told Brooke?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m a romantic old woman, I suppose,” Amalia sighed, “but I had such hopes. You’re both dear children — like my very own.”

  “You once said yourself, Amalia, that you wouldn’t advise any girl to marry unless she wanted to follow the man to the moon and back. I —I feel. the same way . It’s all or nothing.”

  Madeline’s chin was set. Hurting Amalia wasn’t easy, but she wasn’t one more toy to be added to Brooke’s collection.

  She and Brooke were people, and both of them were entitled to more from marriage than a half-hearted love.

  “Well, I’d better go and change for lunch.” Amalia searched Madeline’s blue eyes, faintly shadowed from a restless night, then she pressed her hands and released them. “Are you coming ashore ?”

  “I’m not terribly hungry. I think I’ll have a snack here on the yacht.”

  “Very well, my dear. I’ll tell Brooke you’ve a bit of a headache.”

  The cabin door closed and Madeline sank down on her berth. Lunch at the Continental with Brooke looking at her with deadly suspicion in his eyes would be unbearable. He had guessed something up there in the stateroom, and she just couldn’t face him right now. Her courage was at its lowest ebb, and if he demanded the truth she would probably admit that she wanted a man who had told her to go home to England — where she belonged.

  Somehow she got through the next few days and was deeply thankful when they arrived back at Mazagan. It was in the afternoon and Amalia had tea served in the sitting-room of her suite. Madeline curled down near the window with her cup and saucer. Brooke prowled — he had been doing a lot of it in the last few days — while his aunt read a letter awaiting her from Donette. It had been posted ten days before, and Amalia abruptly announced that her niece had flown to France.

  “She says here,” Amalia went on, “that we’re not to be surprised if she becomes engaged.”

  Madeline felt as though a knife had entered her heart.

  Donette was in France with Victor — where she expected to become engaged !

  “She’s chased after our new Comte,” Brooke drawled, adding ironically : “Well, good luck to her! She’s going to need it.”

  His aunt glanced up at him with a frown. “Victor needs a wife, Brooke, and personally I think it’s a good match. He’ll be firm with her, and she needs that.”

  Brooke, his hands thrust into his pockets, stood looking down at a snarling head attached to a tiger-skin spread on the floor. Then abruptly he swung round and stared at Madeline.

  “What have you got to say about the romance?” he demanded.

  “Only that I think Donette will have to be prepared to share Dr. Tourelle with his patients. But as they’re mainly children she shouldn’t mind that,” Madeline replied quietly.

  “She’ll mind like hell — and you know it !”

  Madeline glanced up sharply. “It’s hardly any of my business what Donette minds.”

  “No?” He quirked an eyebrow. “The good doctor might like a peaceful life when he gets home in the evenings — think he’ll have it with my sweet cousin minding things?”

  A tremor ran through Madeline, and she didn’t dare meet Brooke’s eyes a second time. He knew how she felt about Victor, and he was hurting her to ease some of his own pain .

  kicking like a boy at what had tripped him.

  But later that evening, when he swung her Kashmir stole about her shoulders and wanted to stroll in the hotel gardens, she didn’t deny him. They had to speak of what lay between them, and the sooner it was over the better. They came to the cliffs that overlooked the beach, where the sea whispered like silk. The starlight showed Madeline the rigidity of Brooke’s jaw muscles and she quietly suggested that he smoke.

  He lit up and faced her slender figure. “Away from Morocco, on the other side of the world, I could make you forget Victor Tourelle,” he said firmly.

  But she didn’t want to forget Victor. She wanted to remember for ever how it had felt when he smiled at her.

  “One doesn’t marry friends, Brooke,” she said quietly.

  “You think now that you could accept me on such terms, but time would sour your belief, and I’d have made of you another Greg Annderson. I won’t do that to you. I won’t give you counterfeit for the real thing.”

  “You’re remarkably generous, little one —”

  “Don’t!” She walked to the cliff edge, then saw his cigarette spark through the dusk and the next moment was held tightly against his chest.

  “What are you going to do when you leave Morocco?” he demanded.

  She told him, resting against his crisp tuxedo, accepting the warm pressure of his hands upon her arms.

  “We’ll meet now and again,” he said. “Time is a great healer.”

  Of course it was, she thought. It would heal him, and he would find love with another girl.

  “Shall we go back ?” Something drifted across the top of her head, and she knew it was a kiss. “Amalia wants to make an early start in the morning.”

  They retraced their steps through the garden, hung with evening dew and filled with the sound of cicadas. Fireflies flittered among the trees, burning bright one moment, then abruptly extinguished.

  Back at Marrakesh, Amalia and Madeline resumed work on the biography, which was now in its final stages. Brooke, grown restless, announced that he was returning to New York.

  He phoned and made reservations on an Air France flight from Casablanca to Paris, where he would take a plane for the States. He was due to leave on the coming Sunday, and reluctantly agreed to his aunt giving a dinner-party for him.

  She invited various friends and neighbours, including Max Berault,
had the salon floor waxed for dancing, and arranged a sumptuous menu with her chef. But it was plain to Madeline that her employer was putting a cheerful face on a situation that hurt her.

  On Saturday morning Madeline drove into Marrakesh with Brooke. He wanted to buy his aunt a gift and was uncertain what to choose. Madeline said that a good perfume was always welcome to a woman, so after parking the car they went into the souk and made their way under the tiger-striping of the bamboo laths to a shop where some of the most delectable scents in the East were blended. Brooke was taken with a carnation scent and he had a pretty enamelled flask filled with it. Afterwards they went to the Restaurant de France for lunch. They sat out on the terrace under a fringed awning, watching the colourful, shifting crowds of the Djema’a el Fna, and the way the bright sun gilded the ancient Kutubia to copper.

  “Boujour!” said a deep voice behind Madeline. She turned a startled head, her tan standing out from the sudden whiteness of her face. Victor stood looking down at her, a tall, distinguished stranger in dark worsted, and a black tie. His eyes were serious, their pupils fully expanded against the tawny irises.

  “Why, hullo, Tourelle !” Brooke jumped to his feet and held out a hand. “Darned sorry to hear about your grandfather!

  I hope the Comte didn’t suffer too much?”

  “No, there was no bodily suffering,” Victor replied, after gripping Brooke’s hand.

  “Won’t you join us?” Brooke invited. “I — er — take it you’re alone?”

  “I am quite alone, mon ami.” Victor took a chair, and once again his glance was upon Madeline. “You have had an enjoyable stay at Mazagan, Miss Page? You liked it there?”

  “Very much.” Her heart was pounding. Where was Donette? Had he left her in Paris to shop for a trousseau?

  “You will both join me in a drink?” he asked. “Garcon!”

  He snapped his fingers at a passing waiter and ordered another vodka martini for Brooke and gin and lime for Madeline and himself.

  “Where’s Donette? Still in France?” Brooke enquired casually, flicking open his cigarette case and offering it to the other man.

  “Donette?” Victor arched an eyebrow as he accepted a tipped Virginian. “I expect she is still in France. The announce-ment of her engagement to Lestrade was in the papers … ex-cusez-moi, but is there something wrong?”

  He glanced from Brooke to Madeline, for both of them had gasped with surprise at what he had just said.

  “Good lord, we thought it was you she meant!” Brooke exclaimed. “She wrote and told my aunt she had flown to France, where she expected to become engaged. Lestrade’s name wasn’t mentioned in the letter, so we took it for granted —

  well, it was a natural mistake for us to make. You were over there —” By now Brooke was looking faintly embarrassed, and when the waiter placed his drink in front of him, he quickly lifted the glass and emptied it.

  “As you say, a natural mistake, mon ami,” Victor agreed suavely. He lifted his own drink. “Let us hope that Donette finds happiness with her wealthy playboy.”

  How oddly he used that word, Madeline thought. Was he bitter that Donette had chosen the bright lights of Paris?

  There had always been a chance that she would, especially if he intended to remain in Morocco.

  “So my cousin is going to marry Lestrade?” Brooke mused.

  “Women are the devil, eh, Doctor? Say, I take it we can still address you that way?”

  “Naturellement. I have little use for my title, beyond that I promised my grandfather I would not renounce it. He had pride in it — perhaps a little too much.”

  “Then, Doctor, you must grace my farewell dinner-party this evening,” Brooke said. “I’m leaving for the States tomorrow, and my aunt insisted I be sent off in a blaze of good-will and gaiety. I’m off to get a job on a newspaper. Regular employment, mon vieux. Madeline insists on it, otherwise she’ll have nothing more to do with me. She’s an obstinate little thing despite those melting blue eyes.”

  Something flickered on Victor’s lips — it could have been derision — and Madeline felt herself flushing.

  “Les femmes.” He raised his glass, then finished off his drink and got to his feet. “I will try to attend the soiree, but you understand that I have been absent from the hospital for two weeks, and work has accumulated. Bon voyage, Brooke !”

  He gripped the American’s hand, gave Madeline a Latin bow, then strode away.

  Madeline stared out across the Djema’a el Fna. She knew Brooke was looking at her and she couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. It did indeed take courage to love Victor ! Right now she wanted to run a thousand miles from Morocco and the thought of seeing him again. There was no middle course in love. It would be bearable only if she went far away. Seeing him was wanting him. Being unwanted by him was the sheer-est torment.

  “Drink up, honey,” Brooke urged.

  She obeyed, and a few minutes later they left the Restaurant de France.

  An airmail letter had arrived at the villa while Madeline had been lunching with Brooke. It was from Donette, and Amalia, tight-lipped, handed it to Madeline to read. The first part was gay and flippant. Raoul wanted a quick wedding, after which they would be flying to the Riviera for their honey-cÓşconverters.text.formattedtxt.charscaling.de moon. They would try to visit Tante Amalia some time in the future … life at the moment was such a whirl, with fittings for her trousseau and meetings with Raoul’s relatives.

  Then, acidly, Donette went on to comment that it was to be hoped Victor Tourelle would not allow his fine château to go to ruin, while he pandered to the maladies of his Moroccans. The vineyards attached to the château could be put into order, but already there was a rumour that he was making over the land to medical research and a laboratory was to be built on it. The man was incomprehensible ! Raoul on the other hand was so sweet to her. He adored her and had bought her so many chic things.

  Madeline stared blindly at the letter. If Donette had hoped to dictate to Victor then she must have been crazy. Why couldn’t she have been content to accept him as he was?

  She handed the letter back to Amalia and murmured that she hoped Donette would be happy.

  “The marriage won’t last,” Amalia predicted. “That girl needs firmness, not a lot of pampering. Raoul Lestrade will spoil her with presents, treat her like a toy, and bore her to tears.”

  Brook lounged at the piano and strummed a few bars of the Wedding March. “She’s your niece and my cousin,” he said to his aunt, “but neither of us is blind to the fact that she’s also a little cat with ever-ready claws.”

  “Brooke, her upbringing was most irregular —”

  “Doesn’t mean a thing, tante.” Brooke grinned affectionately at his aunt. “We’re soft, hard, or medium boiled when the shell cracks to let us loose in this jungle of a world, and there’s very little any of us can do about it. We’ve just got to be what we are, I guess.”

  Madeline dressed for the dinner-party in a state of nervous tension. Amalia had rearranged the table so that Victor would be sitting next to her. Madeline hadn’t known until half an hour ago when she had gone to the dining-room to take a look at the table, beautifully set out with white flowers, silverware, and crystal. The place cards were on little stands, and her heart had panicked when she saw Victor’s name near her own, the Comte de Tourelle. How strange it had looked, and how impressive !

  Madeline shivered as though cold and pushed back the doors of her built-in wardrobe. Automatically her hand went to the blue dress she had worn at Jezara, and she slipped into it. It might recapture for her some of the lost delight of that evening.

  She went downstairs. The villa was blazing with lights and already cars were arriving. Soon the salon was noisy with chatter and laughter, while white-coated servants were busily circulating with drinks and canapes. Brooke looked dashing in his smart evening wear and it occurred to Madeline that he would recover quickly from the wound she had inflicted on his volatile heart. She could only
envy him.

  “Ah, but you are tres charmante this evening, Madeline,”

  said a Latin voice at her shoulder. She turned in her blue georgette to meet Max’s dark eyes.

  “Hullo, Dr. Berault!” She greeted him with genuine pleasure. There was about Max that comfortable at-terms-with-life which was also typical of her father. The pangs of love were behind them and they were no longer tormented by youthful dreams or fears of failure. Like old wine they had matured and could impart to others a good, warm glow. Madeline relaxed. Her heartbeats grew more normal and she ceased to tense each time male footsteps rang on the tiles of the vestibule.

  “So Brooke is returning to the States?” Max took a drink from a passing manservant, and over the rim of the tall glass he studied Madeline with shrewd, friendly eyes. “Do you plan to join him later on, petite?”

  She shook her head and cradled her own cocktail in coral-tipped fingers.

  “Ah, so there is to be no second marriage in the Van Cleef ménage?”

  “I’m afraid not.” The marble of the mantelpiece behind Madeline made her look not unlike a blue and gold butterfly clinging precariously to a wall. “I’m taking your advice with regard to child care works, Dr. Berault. I shall train at that place you mentioned, but I shall not return to Morocco.”

  “You feel you would not enjoy working for me at Green Palms?”

  “It isn’t that —”

  “Well, we will not talk right now of the real reason.” Max set aside their cocktail glasses and cupped her elbow. “Come, dinner is being announced.”

  They went with the others into the dining-room — Victor had not arrived for the soirée.

  “He must have been delayed at the hospital,” Max said to Amalia.

  “Then be a pet and take his place at Madeline’s side,” she requested.

  “With pleasure ! ”

  As easily as that were the ranks closed at the long table, while the general comment was that being a Comte was not going to change Victor. Madeline spooned her Boeuf Bour-guignonne, which might have been warm water for all the pleasure it imparted to her.