`Is that why I have been put here?'
`Don't you find it attractive—and secluded?'
`It's very nice.' Her heart missed a beat at his use of the word secluded. 'I imagine it was prepared for Joyosa . . . what did you tell your grandmother with regard to her truant ward?'
`I told her Joyosa preferred another man . . . and that I preferred another woman.'
Janna stared at him, and she just had to sit down on the
tiled rim of the fountain before her knees gave way. Did she think you meant me?'
`I imagine so.' He took a honey cake and bit it neatly in half. 'Now don't look at me in such an alarmed way—I have never known a girl so unflattering as you—I have promised that you will not have forced upon you a fate you shrink from.'
She gave him a quick look, and then poured a cup of chocolate.
`You know what I mean,' he drawled. 'Bending your head so I can't read your eyes.'
"This is delicious chocolate,' she said irrelevantly.
`Rather sweeter than the thought of having Raul Cesar Bey as a husband, eh?'
There was no answer to that one, and the birds twittered in the pepper trees as Janna drank her chocolate, and let this man believe the only thing possible. Colourful bee-eaters roved among the flowers; the flame hibiscus, the white geraniums, and scented shrubberies of jasmine.
The courtyard of the favourite !
What was Raul thinking as his eyes brooded upon the scene? That if Rachael were here with him the patio would be perfect in its seclusion?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JANNA had been at El Amara a week, and this particular morning she felt like exploring the village that lay on a slope of the lion-coloured rock, small houses amid groves, and tiled minarets.
The air was heavy with sunshine and the scents of ripening fruit. There was a sound of trickling streams watering the many trees, and here and there in the groves a song was heard, old and sweetly melancholy. The secretive
little houses clung to the rock, and occasionally a door was ajar and Janna caught glimpses of stone courts, and women at work in them, the glint of silver below the hem of long dresses and the tinkle of a bell or a charm on the anklets they loved to wear. They were amber-skinned, and their dusky eyes dwelt curiously upon Janna when she gave way to impulse and glanced into the courtyards.
She smiled beneath the brim of the floppy straw hat, and very often a pair of dark eyes smiled back at her.
El Amara . . . a place to love, and she had to guard each day against falling too deeply beneath its spell. Its sunsets were glowing wonders, and the fretted minarets stood against the blue and bronze sky like carvings in lace. Ardent, dreamy, alluring desert city. Janna wandered in it, breathing its aromas as if to store them up for the future; filling her eyes with all its strangeness, knowing that her few weeks here must suffice for a lifetime.
She came at last to the village market, where the hillside peace gave way to noise and bustle, and aromas more tangy. The people knew who she was and she received polite bows from the robed men, and was not pestered at every step to purchase a bowl or a pumpkin or a leather bag. She was the young lady from the house of the Princess; the young master's lella, and if she chose to wear a straw hat and a pink trouser-suit then that was all right with them, if a little amazing. The young Bey could have insisted on the baracan and veil.
Janna knew what thought lay behind the glances that followed her into the alley of spices, where the fragrant mint was mixed with bunches of herbs and where she could have lingered an hour, just breathing the air. She wandered on, slim and nonchalant in her pink apparel, the lella of Raul Cesar Bey . . . and where was he this fine morning?
She had left him going over the accounts for his grandmother, a white shirt open at his throat, and clad still in the breeches and boots of his early morning ride on Sultan, the Arab horse of glistening red-brown, with a wicked gleam in
its eye.
Someone wandered by carrying the odd-looking vegetables of an Arabian market in the hood of his jellabah. A merchant cleaned his copper goods with lemon and sawdust, and stabs of sunlight came through the osier awning overhead and caught the sheen on the bowls and vases. Janna paused to admire a graceful tea-pot with a round body, a long elegant spout and a slender handle affixed to a lid shaped like a pagoda.
It looked magical, as if a delicious brew would pour from it. She smiled and pointed it out to the merchant. 'How much?' she asked, for these wily men knew that question in any language, and this was not the souk of Benikesh, where she had been a young tourist to be robbed.
A price was named and after a little friendly bargaining she walked off with the tea-pot . . . the first item with which to start her teashop in that quiet seaside resort. How different was all this! Two distinct worlds, and in her heart she wanted this one far more than any other. Everything was so alive, so spicy, and unusual. She watched silver boxes being hammered in the street of silversmiths, and saw lanterns wrought from copper and fitted with panels of jewel-coloured glass. She was tempted to buy some little spiced sausages, smoking hot on a skewer, but caution prevailed and she bought instead a bag of almonds in the shell.
She strolled away from the market place and found herself beneath the swooping boughs of palm trees at the edge of the village. The desert lay beyond the rocky ramparts of El Amara, and she perched on a tawny rock and ate her almonds, crunching them in small teeth as milky as the nuts themselves. She was unaware of her own casual charm, her straw hat tilted back from her eyes, the palm trees shading her pink-clad figure.
She was aware only of this strangely beautiful place in the desert, the tangy stillness, the caress of coolness beneath the crescent branches of the trees. Some wild oleanders splashed the tawny cliffs with crimson petals, and the desert
beyond was an inscrutable golden mask. The people of El Amara were like their desert, fascinating but not easily conquered. They were fierce, and also tranquil, with a Kismet attitude to life. What was written would inevitably cast its spell.
Absorbed in her thoughts she was startled when a hand touched her shoulder. She turned quickly and found herself gazing upwards into the velvety black eyes of Don Raul's cousin, Ahmed. He was clad in a light, well-tailored suit, but he wore the traditional head-covering bound by ropes of silk. He smiled, a flash of fine teeth against the smooth olive skin and the slender black moustache across his upper lip.
`This is a pleasure, Janna, to find you alone for once. I said to myself, no one else could look so pretty and pensive at one and the same time.'
`Hullo, Ahmed.' She smiled and held out the bag of nuts. `Will you have one?'
`If you don't mind I will sit beside you and smoke a cheroot.' He suited action to his words, and she felt the lean agility of his body as he shared the rock ledge with her and took from his breast pocket an onyx case that gleamed in his long fingers. He had hands more delicate than Raul's; features more Arabian. His mother came from the city of Fez, a charming woman who loved to gossip about all things feminine. Ahmed's sister, Leila, was married with a baby, and all of them lived at the House of the Pomegranate and had their own apartments. It seemed a Moroccan-Spanish tradition to share a spacious roof with congenial relatives.
Janna, who had never known a family, found the arrangement a lively one. It was fun to live among people who laughed, and argued, and made the evenings so rich in new experiences for her. Having overcome their surprise at her arrival in place of Joyosa, they now accepted her, and Ahmed seemed especially intrigued by her English looks, and the novelty of her shyness in contrast to the boldness of Raul.
`And what have you been doing all the morning?' he
asked. 'Some sightseeing and a little shopping?'
`Yes. I was intrigued by the market place, and I bought this tea-pot to start off my tea-shop when I—' There in some confusion she broke off, for Ahmed was looking at her with narrowed eyes through his cheroot smoke.
`You intend to start a tea-shop, Janna?'
`Well, it's a sort of joke between Don Raul and myself.'
`Is it possible that you don't really wish to marry him?' Ahmed leaned forward and looked into her eyes. 'You always refer to him as Don Raul, as if you are half afraid to use his name alone. Are you afraid of my cousin?'
`No, of course not. Why should you think such a thing?'
`You seem to me to be always a little nervous of being alone with him. You are alone this morning, and I should have been delighted to show you around El Amara.'
`You don't consider me afraid of you, Sheik Ahmed?'
He smiled warmly, and looked most attractive. 'I should not want to frighten you away from me. It came as a most pleasing surprise when Raul brought you to us instead of that other girl. She was a little show-off, and I remember well the occasion when she made her pony bolt so Raul would ride after her in front of a crowd of our people. She set her cap for him from the very start.'
But I thought . . . he told me she didn't want him and that was why she ran away with someone else.'
`Raul was just being gallant in saying she ran away from him. The truth is the reverse . . . in an attempt to make him look the unwanted one she found some young man to elope with. I know Raul too well. He is my cousin, and we have shared hunting trips as well as work. He never intended to be the bridegroom of any woman whom he did not choose for himself, but being deeply fond of our grandmother he made it seem as if he were willing to fall in with her wishes. She is usually shrewd about people, but in the case of Joyosa she seemed a little dazzled by the girl's fair beauty.'
Ahmed's velvety gaze stroked Janna. Now I have met you, I understand how it is possible to fall under the spell of
blue eyes. In this part of the world a man sees only brown eyes.'
`Do you think you ought to be talking like this to Don Raul's girl?' she asked lightly. 'He is very possessive, and very strong.'
Ahmed gave a soft laugh. 'You are not a girl to go running to my cousin with tales. You care too much about people to wish them harm.'
`And you think that gives you the freedom to . . . flirt with me?'
`I am only being friendly, Janna. I have seen for myself that Raul has an unnerving effect on you. I have watched you when we are all together, and you avoid being close to him, you shrink from his touch, you are a girl faced by a dilemma.'
`I—I merely feel a stranger in new surroundings,' she said defensively. 'You have no right to assume from my manner that I am scared of Don Raul. Would I have crossed the desert with a man I felt unsafe with? Hardly!'
`Are English girls shy of revealing their feelings in public?'
`Aren't the girls of your country equally shy? I have heard that many of them don't meet their fiancé until the day of the marriage.'
`That custom is dying out. Now we meet more and more, and decide our own destinies.'
`You are very modern in your outlook, Sheik Ahmed.' `Yes, more so in a way than Raul. He has a Spanish backbone.'
`You mean he has a rigid code of honour and that having set his mind and his heart on someone, he will settle for nothing less?'
`Yes, he is a believer in a lifelong love, a Latin in far more ways than Leila or myself.'
`You are a romantic, Sheik Ahmed, but he believes in one love, one union, one close tie for always with the woman he marries?'
`A little frightening, is it not, to be so intense about it? That is why I can sympathise with the doubts you may now be feeling, Janna. So demanding a man must make you quail.'
Her gaze dwelt upon the surrounding desert. She only quailed because she was not the one on whom Don Raul had set his heart, to take, to love, to hold for always in his arms. She had felt in him this intensity of purpose, this desire for a complete giving and receiving, and she thought Doña Rachael the luckiest of women. She could visualise nothing more wonderful than to be the centre and soul of Raul's life.
`Perhaps,' she said quietly, 'I feel not quite able to live up to his ideal. But you mustn't say anything to the Princess. She mustn't be told just yet that nothing is settled between Don Raul and myself.'
`I can be the soul of discretion.' Ahmed took her hand and studied the flawless Romanos emerald. 'You should wear a sapphire, not a great green stone that weighs upon your small hand. A blue stone set in pearls, to match your eyes and your skin.'
`Please ' She pulled her hand free of his. 'What I
should really like is to go and have something to eat. Your desert air makes me feel ravenous.'
`Would you enjoy a real Arabian meal?' He stood up and drew her to her feet; she reached just to his shoulder and was aware of his attractive personality, his romantic good looks, his relaxed air of being a young man who enjoyed life as it came.
`Where do you intend to take me for this Arabian meal?' she asked with a smile.
`To the Café Moresque, where the kebabs are as tender as your heart, and the quail as delectable as your smile.'
`Poor quail, netted to please us greedy humans !'
`You do amuse me, Janna.' Laughing, he led the way down the rocky incline towards the centre of El Amara. 'No one but you would feel so sorry for birds that fall prey to
the falcons anyway.'
`It is more natural,' she argued. 'They are on the wing and might get away.'
`You would sooner be caught on the wing than captured in a net?' He gave her a keen look. 'Are you planning to run away from Raul?'
`As if I'd dare do that!'
`If you are thinking of flight, then I might agree to help you. I don't like to see you so on edge, so obviously nervous of him You are afraid, Janna, of marriage with a man who would make you his netted quail.'
`We both agreed that he believes in a marriage of love.' `You are saying that he does not love you?'
`You have keen eyesight, Ahmed. You must have seen for yourself that he doesn't.'
`Perhaps I have been looking more at you, a girl so nice that I took it for granted he wanted you. Why else, Janna, did he bring you to El Amara?'
`To make up to the Princess for not bringing Joyosa. He was afraid she would be disappointed, perhaps angry with Joyosa's family. I—I understand that she can be very angry when her will is crossed.'
`Too true. The Princess is in a position of authority, and we have always spoiled her and bowed to her whims. Yes, she might well have given way to temper, and to do so is not good for her heart. She had a slight failure of the heart a few months ago and was ill for some time. When she recovered she began to worry Raul to take a wife. And he, worried in case she made herself ill again, departed for France with the promise that he would bring Joyosa home with him—if she would come. I knew already that on a previous visit to the Côte d'Azur, when he went to arrange a financial matter for Doña Rachael Corleza, whom he may have mentioned to you, he saw Joyosa and made it plain that he had no feeling of any sort for her. Raul can be frank to the point of pain, and he can also be secretive. Joyosa could take the truth, but he loves the Princess. A jolt to her
delicate heart and he might lose her. He loves her as only a Latin can—intensely. There is much he would do to make her content, but I doubt if he could have brought himself to marry her flighty young ward. A pretty creature but empty-headed. You are the opposite to her in many ways.'
He seemed to say this significantly, and it was a relief when they reached the palmy centre of El Amara A few minutes later they paused outside the Café Moresque, a large attractive café with tables set beneath a shady awning, where several European visitors were enjoying the Eastern cuisine and taking an interest in the passers by. Janna felt their gaze as she and Ahmed sat down at one of the tables, which was the immediate centre of bowing waiters.
`Shall I order for you?' asked Ahmed, looking very much a personage with his fine face, his impeccable clothes, and the attention of the staff without the raising of his smallest finger. Janna wondered what the tourists were thinking as they glanced from her fairness, as she removed her hat, to the Arabian headwear of her companion.
She smiled at him. 'Order me something I shall remember.'
He met her eyes for an intent moment, then he consulted with the waiters and she was free to let her thoughts roam over the things he had said about Raul.
He had confirmed her own anxiety . . . that in order not to cause further distress to the Princess he might fulfil her wish to see him married as soon as possible . . . and Janna was actually here in El Amara, while Doña Rachael was miles away.
Marriage with herself would not give Raul what he truly wanted, but it would please his grandmother. And despite Janna's love for him, she had no desire for a marriage of pure convenience. Raul was a Latin, for whom marriage was for always, and she would be his regret rather than his reward.
Something had to be done, and Ahmed had reawakened
her desire to flee from El Amara before Raul persuaded her to stay and marry him she knew he could, because she knew her own heart and how much she longed to be with him. But without the woman of his heart he would never be happy, and above all things Janna wanted him to find joy and contentment. She would sooner slip out of his life than stay to be the bride he chose for his grandmother's sake rather than his own.
If she ran away it would simplify the situation. The Princess would not wish another flighty girl upon him she would accept Rachael and realise when she saw them together that he had made the only right and happy choice.
In a quiet mood she ate saffron-tinted cous-cous, then lamb kebabs with tiny marrows and green beans, and finally fruit with date cream.
`That was delicious, Ahmed.' She conjured a smile, but her heart felt heavy at the thought of leaving a place such as El Amara. She felt at home here. She liked the people, the hot sun gilding the dome of the mosque, the tiled doorways, and the shadows of the palms. She felt alive here, and of some account, but in order to ensure Raul's future happiness she had to leave it all behind and return to the loneliness of a bedsitter and a typewriter. There would be no tea-shop after all; she couldn't bear the thought of accepting money for having come here. She would leave secretly, with no goodbyes, and Raul would guess that she left him free to marry Rachael.
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