The Velvet Glove

by Rebecca Stratton

'You think him very attractive?'

  Laurette nodded, though it was obvious that by admitting it she was giving more scope to Halet's already fertile imagination. 'Me and quite a few other females, I would imagine—he gave me the impression he's that kind of man.'

  'Ah!' It was incredible that such innocent-looking eyes could suggest so much, but Halet somehow conveyed a whole world of meaning in a brief glance. 'He is of the world, this cousin of yours, eh?'

  Ian was a man of the world, Laurette supposed; or he had given her that impression on the first meeting. Perhaps it would be fairer to wait until she knew him better before passing judgment, however, in case she had been wrong.

  'I honestly don't know, Halet. I think he probably is, but it's hardly fair to make a judgment on one meeting. There's no doubt that he's very confident and sure of himself.'

  Halet, with her experience limited to the very self-confident men of her own immediate circle of family and friends, looked vaguely puzzled. 'But surely you would expect a man to be so, Laurette,' she remarked innocently, and Laurette smiled.

  'Perhaps—though Nuri can shake his confidence to some extent. I noticed it the other night when they met.' Heaven knew why she had seen fit to comment on it, but the fact had intrigued her somehow, and she remembered it.

  'Nuri does not like him?'

  She made it sound less like a question than a foregone conclusion, Laurette thought, and wondered suddenly if Halet too harboured the same illusions as her elder sister regarding Nuri's attitude towards her. Oddly uneasy suddenly, though for no good reason she could think of, she got up and strolled across to the windows and looked out at the gardens, hemmed in by tall cypresses and plane trees that stirred gently against a background of blue sky—a sky that appeared strangely luminous because of the proximity of the sea below the cliffs.

  She turned her face to the breeze that blew in through the windows, warm and scented by the magnolias and roses, closing her eyes for a second. It was impossible to imagine herself living anywhere else now, and yet she would soon have to do just that. Yarev had been the centre of her world for the past eight years—a restricted world, as Ian had suggested, perhaps, but a comfortable one that she was reluctant to leave.

  Sensing that Halet was still watching her from her seat on the ottoman, she half turned from the window to answer her. 'I don't know whether or not Nuri likes him, but I do, and that's what matters as he's my cousin.'

  'And will you—'

  Halet stopped in mid-sentence, turning her head when the door opened. Nuri came just inside the room and stood with one hand on the handle while he noted his sister's presence with a nod that seemed to indicate satisfaction. Then swiftly his black gaze switched to Laurette and she realised the reason for that nod of satisfaction even before he spoke.

  'Mr Kearn is here to see you, Laurette.'

  His quiet voice somehow managed to express both disapproval and politeness, and she could see Ian standing just behind him waiting, a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. Smiling, she walked across, and Nuri stepped back to allow him into the room.

  'Hello, Ian!'

  It was a surprise, even to her, when he came straight to her and kissed her, taking her hands in his, and she distinctly heard Halet's swift indrawn breath. 'Hello, cousin!' He used the title merely to emphasise his right to kiss her, she thought, but found it hard to ignore Nuri's black-eyed gaze from the doorway.

  She looked across at him and caught his eye for a second, her heart thudding unexpectedly hard when she saw something there that would seem to suggest Latife had been right about him. It was the impression of only a second before those thick black lashes came down to hide it, but briefly she saw a fierce burning glitter of raw emotion in his eyes, and caught her breath.

  'If you will excuse me, I am required elsewhere!'

  She smiled at him, caught unaware and not quite sure of herself. 'Oh yes, of course, Nuri—thank you.'

  Ian merely nodded his thanks, smiled amiably, and murmured some polite phrase that suggested he neither knew nor cared whether he was there or not. He was nervous, she guessed, she could tell it from the clasp of his hands, but he was concealing it very well, and she was once more intrigued by the idea of him being unnerved by Nuri being there.

  Scarcely had the door closed behind her brother before Halet was on her feet, standing there uncertainly for a moment and knowing full well, Laurette suspected, that Nuri would expect her to stay for as long as Ian was with her. But Halet could on occasion show some of the independence that being with Laurette had taught her, and she was ready to leave them together, regardless of what Nuri wanted.

  'You've met Halet, haven't you, Ian?'

  He stood holding Laurette's hand, but turned a smile on Halet that obviously disarmed her. 'I met Miss Kayaman at the same party I met you, Laurette.' He took her hand and shook it, his hold lingering slightly longer than was necessary so that Halet blushed and glanced at Laurette hastily. 'It was a very delightful party,' he declared, his meaning unmistakable. 'How are you, Miss Kayaman?'

  Halet murmured polite words in her own tongue., her English deserting her for the moment, then looked at Laurette once more. 'I too will leave you, Laurette. Lütfen müsade edin.'

  She started towards the door, but Ian was quick to forestall her, his wide, encouraging smile in evidence again. 'Oh no, please don't let me drive you away, Miss Kayaman! Laurette and I are going out, there's no need for you to disturb yourself on my account.'

  Laurette had no idea what he had in mind for them, but she nevertheless hastened to add her plea to his.

  'Oh no, please don't let us drive you out, Halet.' The hand he slid under her arm felt very possessive, and yet she could not admit enough dislike of the situation to do anything about changing it. 'I don't know where

  we're going, but if Ian says '

  'I had thought you might like to show me the ruins of Aspendus; they're something of an attraction, I believe, aren't they?'

  The blue eyes below copper-brown hair seemed to be challenging her to find fault with his plan, and at the moment she saw no reason to. It wasn't quite what she had expected him to have in mind when he said they were going out, but in a way it was a relief that his plan involved nothing more complicated than showing him the ruins of the ancient city of Aspendus.

  'Aspendus is one of the well-known ones—there are quite a number in fact.'

  'And do you know enough of the subject of archaeology to act as my guide, pretty cousin?' The question sounded serious enough, but it was clear from die look in his eyes that he realised just how he was hustling her into falling in with his plans, and she instinctively angled her chin in a way that Nuri would have recognised.

  'I'm not an expert, Ian, but I think I know enough to make it interesting for you.'

  'Good!' He bent his head and looked directly down into her eyes. 'I had a feeling you wouldn't let me down somehow.'

  Her pulses fluttered warningly as she drew back a little and looked down at the pretty cotton lawn dress she was wearing. 'This dress will do, won't it? It's cool and comfortable.'

  'And almost the same gorgeous blue as your eyes.' He gave her one of his disarming grins, then turned her about with the hand he had under her arm. 'You look good enough to eat, cousin, so be warned!'

  It was quite clear that Halet found such blatant flattery breathtaking. Hussein had never put his feeling for her so boldly into words for others to hear; but then Hussein could say so much with his fine dark eyes. Laurette caught Halet's hand before Ian could bustle her out of reach, and smiled at her, understanding her reaction better than Ian ever could.

  'I don't suppose I shall be very late, Halet.'

  'But don't bank on it!' Both girls looked at him, and he grinned from one to the other, settling eventually on Laurette. 'There's no rush, is there? We might go on somewhere else afterwards.'

  'Oh—yes, of course.' Laurette was used to having Nuri make his opinion known in no uncertain way, but that was usually in the
direction of curbing her activities, not encouraging them, and she took a second to accustom herself to the change. 'Well, of course there's no need to hurry at all, although I wouldn't want to be so late that Baba Refik would start wondering if something had happened to me.'

  'Or brother Nuri?'

  The words were meant for her alone, and he whispered them against her ear. Her face flooding with sudden colour, she shook her head hastily. 'Ian, I wish you wouldn't—'

  'Oh, come on, my sweet!' Squeezing his fingers into her arm, he drew her with him to the door. 'I'm not trying to kidnap you!'

  His eyes had a bright sparkling look that in part suggested impatience, and she hastily turned to wave a hand at Halet before they left the salon. 'If you want to see Aspendus, then I'll give you the full tour!'

  Ian clipped his head and kissed her neck lightly. 'That's my girl!'

  Driving through the fertile countryside gave Laurette the opportunity to show her knowledge of the country she had come to regard more and more as her own. Ian kept their speed down to a pace that enabled him to follow her descriptions, but even so the thirty-four kilometres between Antalya and the ancient site of Aspendus was swallowed up in a surprisingly short time.

  Inland slightly and driving east they ran through acre upon acre of citrus crops after they left the town behind them. Oranges, lemons and grapefruit grew prolifically in the fertile soil, and the ubiquitous olive sprawled its ghostly grey branches against the blue sky and the towering majesty of the Taurus mountain range, the impressive Toros Daglari that dominated this part of Turkey.

  The lower slopes of the mountains were thick with dark pine forests that swept down from below the snow line to the curiously patterned foothills, and gave only occasional tantalising glimpses of the falls of clear water rushing down from the mountain snows.

  Stone walls divided each smallholding from its neighbour, and rows of tall cypresses acted as wind-breaks as well as contributing to the beauty of the landscape. Little houses with their small portions of land, set like sections of a mosaic over the vastness of the Anatolian plain.

  In no time at all, it seemed, they were turning off the main highway and on to a secondary road to Aspendus. Like most ruins of its kind, the ancient city was on a hill with a river not too far away, and its location was evident for some time before their arrival, indicated by the tall towers of its once effective aqueduct striding across the countryside from the mountains.

  The town itself was mostly Roman, that much Laurette knew, and she hoped she was going to prove as effective a guide as Ian obviously expected. The theatre was the main attraction, and it was there that she took him first, making unhesitatingly for the entrance in the central facade, a fact that Ian noted and remarked on as he followed her through in to the huge auditorium.

  'You do know your way around, don't you?'

  She smiled at him over her shoulder and nodded. 'Quite well, I suppose.'

  'Are you by way of being an archaeologist?'

  She laughed, shaking her head. 'Heavens, no, but Nuri's quite a well-known amateur one, and he's always ready to talk about it. I've always been fairly interested.'

  'Did he bring you here?'

  Once more she shook her head, but this time unaccompanied by even a smile. 'Nuri comes with other archaeologists—I'd get in the way.'

  'I see!' Ian was chuckling, as if the idea amused him, and she was driven to wondering if he was quite as different from Nuri as might at first appear. 'But you have been before, I gather?'

  'Occasionally.'

  Laurette led the way round, pointing out the many well-preserved features of the nearly two-thousand-year-old building. Ian listened, he might even have taken some of it in, but she thought he was more interested in how she had acquired what knowledge she had.

  'You come alone?' he asked.

  'I have been alone.' She made the admission reluctantly, as if it was not something she felt she should admit. 'But I've also been a couple of times with some American friends of Baba Refik's—they knew I was interested, and they asked me if I'd like to come along. Baba Refik was quite happy to let me go with them, he wouldn't have liked to think of me walking around here alone.'

  She pointed out an inscription in Latin and Greek that gave the name of the architect as well as those of the patrons and the gods to whom the theatre had been dedicated, but Ian was more interested at the moment in the fact that it was frowned on for her to come alone. He was looking at her curiously, a gleam in his blue eyes that she did not quite understand.

  'Do you mean you're not allowed out alone? Not even to look around a ruined city?'

  'Well, of course I'm allowed out, Ian, it's just that he'd worry if he thought I was out here on my own.'

  They were in the entrance to one of the side passages that flanked the stage on either side, and she stopped in the cool shade and leaned against a wall for a moment, wondering if he would ever really understand the way things were. It was so much harder than she would have believed to get him to see things in their proper perspective, and not be annoyed at what he saw as restrictions on her freedom.

  'I've told you, I have been here alone, Ian. Though I've never been when there's been anything going on—I would rather like to come then.'

  Briefly distracted, Ian looked around at the huge, well preserved and restored auditorium. Divided into two by an aisle, it would have seated thousands, though scarcely in comfort, and it was spanned by a gallery of elegant arches which would have taken yet more people. It was vast and impressive but not really beautiful.

  'Do you mean to tell me that this place is still used?'

  Thankful to have interested him in something other than her own situation with the Kayamans, she smiled. 'Oh yes, occasionally. They hold folk music festivals here sometimes, and wrestling matches.'

  The way Ian was looking at her told its own story. 'There wouldn't happen to be a festival on about now, would there?'

  The idea of coming with him to see a festival was one that intrigued her, and it was plain when she shook her head that she regretted the loss of opportunity. 'You're too late, I'm afraid, Ian. There was one last month, but there's nothing now.'

  He knew exactly how much she would have liked to come with him, it showed in the way he smiled, and he reached for her hands and squeezed them lightly, looking down into her eyes as he spoke. 'Nothing? Not even some Turkish gladiators wrestling each other? What a pity!'

  'Oh, but there—'

  She stopped hastily, foreseeing the problems it could cause if she went on and hoping he would not follow up her impulsive, half-formed sentence. Ian lifted her chin, taking note of the flush in her cheeks and the thick lashes that hid her eyes from him. His fingers stroked her skin, coaxing her to look up.

  'But?' he prompted her gently, and she looked up at last. 'What is on in this ancient ruin, Laurette? Something so barbaric that you'd faint away at the sight of it?'

  'Oh no, of course not! But—well, it's wrestling, Ian, and women don't attend wrestling matches.'

  'They do, you know. They attend them all the time in England, and shout louder than anybody in support of their heroes!'

  'I—I don't like it.'

  'Have you ever seen it?' She shook her head, and he smiled. 'Well, there you are, then—how do you know you won't enjoy it? We could pass as a couple of tourists if you're squeamish about the Kayamans' reputation.'

  Laurette broke his hold, eased her chin from those stroking fingers and walked off a few steps, and when she moved from the shadowed passage and into the sun, it caught her hair and turned it to flame. Her creamy skin took on a creamy gold look with dark shadows where her lashes lay on her cheeks, and to the man in the shadows she looked slightly unreal.

  It was one of those moments when her two worlds came into conflict, and she felt alarmingly unable to cope for a second or two. For her part she would have been willing enough to come with Ian to watch the wrestling, but her foster-father's reaction would be another matter. Baba Re
fik wouldn't be angry, that would be Nuri's reaction, but he would be concerned, and Nuri would bring home his father's concern to her without hesitation. She had become one of them almost to the extent that Baba Refik actually thought of her as a daughter, and he would never have considered allowing Halet to go. Perhaps to Ian the idea was unreasonable, but it was a fact.

  'Ian, it's—it's different here. It isn't that I don't want to come with you, but I know that, while he wouldn't stop me from coming, he wouldn't be happy about it either.'

  'Nuri?' He said it so softly that from her place in the sun she scarcely heard him.

  'I'm talking about Baba Refik, not Nuri, you know that, Ian!'

  He said nothing more for a second or two while he leaned against the ancient stone with his face in the shadows, his blue eyes fixed on her with disturbing steadiness. 'You set great store by the opinion of Father Refik, don't you, Laurette?'

  'I love him.' Her own statement took her somewhat by surprise, although she realised it was quite true. During the eight years that Refik Kayaman had taken ' her under his care, she had become as fond of him as she had been of her own father. 'He's been very good to me, and I don't like to do anything he doesn't approve of, Ian. I don't think you can understand.'

  Taking a cigarette from his case, he lit it, then leaned back once more, blowing smoke from between pursed lips until it formed a hazy blue screen in front of his face. 'I understand one thing, Laurette. I understand very well that you're fast becoming far too much of a harem maiden, and less and less Angus Kearn's daughter. And I can't believe he meant that to happen.'

  'No!'

  Her eyes showed as much confusion as anger at the charge, and she wished she was more sure of herself.

  How could both he and Nuri be right about her? Nuri thought her far too brashly outspoken more often than Dot, and Ian saw her as over-protected and so sheltered that she did nothing without her foster-father's approval. Something in between must surely be the truth, but she looked at him for a second or two in confusion, then turned and walked a short distance along to the centre aisle.