The Velvet Glove

by Rebecca Stratton

'I'm not restricted in any way, Ian. I can come and go as I please, but—' She raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness, then turned once more and looked at him appealingly. 'I wish you could understand, Ian. It isn't because I'm not allowed to do certain things that I don't do them, but in deference to my host, if you like. Refik Kayaman is a good man, and he made me a part of his family, I can't act in outright defiance of his customs.'

  'Not even when they're outmoded?'

  She hated his sarcasm, her expression showed it. 'I know things are different for a woman in Turkey now; they have a lot more freedom to do as they like and behave as they like, but some families, quite a few you'll find, still follow the old traditions to some degree or other. They change more slowly—Baba Refik is one of those, but it would be ungrateful and bad-mannered not to comply with the reservations he still has.'

  'Oh, Laurette!' Ian came to her, taking her hands and holding them tightly while they stood out there in the vast auditorium where the sun turned their two bright heads to burnished copper. 'I'm not trying to influence you against your family, but sooner or later you have to break with them and their traditions, you've said so yourself, and it isn't long now, is it?'

  She shook her head, her voice small and muffled. 'Less than two months.'

  'And you'll be out on your own. I'm just trying to help the process of conditioning you. To ease you out of that cosy little shell you're in, if I can.'

  It wasn't at all easy to think clearly and sensibly at the moment, but she had to admit that some of what was said was true. Possibly she had become less independent during the past few years, although she thought Nuri would never have agreed with him, but Halet's marriage was going to change a great many things. This man with his red hair and his boisterous confidence was like her father in a lot of ways; he was family, her own family.

  There was someone other than the Kayamans with an interest in her future now, and he had more right to his interest, he was her own flesh and blood. And yet she could not bring herself to accept him as such. He was a stranger she had met at a party and liked, but he didn't have that closeness that she felt with the Kayamans, a closeness built on shared years together as a family—not yet.

  Ian raised her chin on his flat palm and she caught her breath. His smile like his voice, was more restrained than usual. 'You don't have to offend anyone, Laurette, just gradually ease away, establish your individuality, as you have to very soon anyway.'

  She raised her eyes and studied him for a moment, knowing he was right, but vaguely puzzled as to why he was taking so much trouble to concern himself with the prospects of a virtual stranger. 'Why are you bothering about me so much, Ian? I know you're my cousin,' she hastened to add, 'but you scarcely know me, do you?'

  The blue eyes that looked down at her were darkly serious. 'That is something I hope to do something about from now on.'

  'Because—'

  He bent his head and kissed her mouth, then smiled down at her with something of his former brightness. 'Because you're a very pretty girl, and because you're my cousin!' He stroked the crown of her copper-red head and grinned. 'And we're a matched pair, aren't we?'

  It was not so very much further to drive on to Side after they left the ruins of Aspendus, and Laurette had not liked to deter Ian from going on. But then neither of them could have known that the car was going to break down and delay their leaving Side for more than three hours, while a mechanic did his best to speed the repair.

  By the time they were once more driving back along the motorway towards Antalya it was well gone eleven o'clock, and they had been gone for more than eight hours, with another hour's driving still in front of them. Of course midnight was no late hour for a grown woman to be out on a date, but it was the length of time they had been gone that troubled her, for almost certainly Refik Kayaman and Halet would have convinced themselves she had been involved in an accident.

  As they sped along the highway the orange and lemon groves had a dreamlike quality in the moonlight, and the snow caps on the mountains glistened like floss above the darkness of the pine forests. It was a beautiful landscape, even at night, and Laurette wished she was more in a mood to appreciate it. Coming into the outskirts of Antalya at last, she glanced at her watch and saw that it was almost midnight.

  'Worried?'

  Ian asked the question quietly, turning his head for barely a second as he drove through the tree-lined streets, and she shook her head. She checked the time yet again as he drove along the shadowed street to where Yarev, the Kayaman home, stood back from the road among its trees and shrubs, the iron gate closed and the plume-like cypress beside it casting a long dark shadow across the wall.

  'You are worried!'

  She shook her head, though with not much conviction, apparently, for when he stopped the car Ian turned in his seat and took her hands in his. 'Shall I come in with you and explain?'

  'Oh no, please, you don't have to do that, Ian.'

  He looked at her for a moment in the dark interior of the car, then shrugged. Getting out of his seat he came round to lend her a hand. 'I will come in if it'll help, Laurette.'

  'There's really no need, no one will eat me.' She laughed, but it sounded far too much like a nervous giggle, and she did not understand the strange curling sensation she felt in her stomach at all. 'It's a bit like the fairy story, isn't it? It's almost exactly midnight.'

  Ian put his hands on her shoulders and held her for a moment, his blue eyes dark in the moonlight. 'Well, I shan't turn into a mouse or whatever it was, I can assure you, sweetheart.'

  She smiled, shaking her head. 'I'd better go in, Ian, and let them know I haven't been run over or—'

  'Abducted?' he suggested softly, and laughed at her look of surprise. 'Oh, don't think Nuri won't have thought about that too!'

  'That's silly!'

  Ian studied her for a second, then smiled and shrugged. 'Maybe you're right.' Drawing her to him, he put his arms around her and pressed his mouth to hers in a kiss that lasted much longer than she expected and left her breathless as she pushed his arms away. He looked down at her with a raised brow and a hint of smile on his mouth. 'I was allowed a kiss, wasn't I, cousin?'

  'Yes, of course. I've had a lovely time, Ian, I really have, and I'm glad I came.' She glanced through her lashes at him, her heart beating hard in her breast. 'I hope you ask me to come again.'

  'Would you come?'

  'Of course!'

  He said nothing for a moment, then he bent his head again swiftly and kissed her mouth, lightly and gently, before he released her. 'You'd better go in and let your folks know you're all in one piece. I'll call you tomorrow, if that's O.K.'

  She nodded, one hand already on the gate that barred her way, and it opened with the betraying squeak she had never realised was quite so loud before. 'Goodnight, Ian.'

  Flitting like a light-coloured shadow along the path between the magnolias and roses, she felt curiously furtive and wondered at the sense of anticipation she was suddenly experiencing, that set her heart racing fast as she reached for the door handle. Baba Refik and Nuri would still be up without a doubt, it wasn't late by their standards. She rather hoped Halet would be there too, for somehow she felt very alien suddenly in the familiar surroundings, and it was not a sensation she liked.

  In the hall the hanging brass lamps shed their yellow glow on mirrors and white walls, and blurred the patterns of the exquisitely woven rugs into soft, muted fusions of colour. Her footsteps clicked softly across the tiled floor and stopped at once when the door of the salon opened.

  The light from the room spilled like an extra bright splash of yellow across the hall floor, and along its length Nuri's shadow ran like a black dart almost to her feet. He said nothing, but Laurette automatically changed course and walked over to him, breathing an inward sigh of relief when she looked and saw that his father was seated in the room behind him. There was no sign of Halet, but Refik Kayaman was reassurance enough that she would not have to face Nu
ri alone.

  'Baba Refik!' She walked straight past Nuri, conscious of the bright glittering black eyes that followed her as she brushed against him and the tautness of his hand on the edge of the door. She sat down beside the old man on the ottoman and looked at him with big apologetic eyes. 'I'm so sorry to be back so late, but we had a mishap.'

  'A mishap?' Refik Kayaman was much like his son would be in another thirty years or so, tall and dark and fiercely proud, but with a gentleness that Nuri rarely if ever allowed to show in his character. His hair was greying, but still mainly black and cut close to his head, and his features were the same hawkish, dusky gold as his son's. 'You were involved in an accident, bebek? Are you hurt?'

  'Oh no, I'm perfectly all right—it wasn't an accident, not a real accident.'

  'You said a mishap.' Nuri's voice held that sound of suppressed anger that she knew so well, and he came and sat in a chair facing her, his eyes unwavering as he fixed them on her, as if he dared her to account for her lateness without resorting to lies. 'If you have not been involved in an accident, what other reason could you have for letting your family worry about you for all these hours?'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'Not so sorry that you did not take yet more time to stand with Ian Kearn in the street outside before you came in!'

  'Laurette!' Refik Kayaman's hands pressed hers gently and brought her back from the brink of yet another quarrel with Nuri. 'Tell me what happened, bebek.'

  Ignoring Nuri's harsh challenging gaze, she gave her attention to his father. 'We went from Aspendus on to Side. It was silly, I suppose, to go on to anywhere else, but—' she shrugged and ventured a small apologetic

  smile at the man beside her, 'Ian wanted to go, and we would have been back much sooner if only the car hadn't broken down in Side.'

  'Ah, the car had the mishap, hmm?' Refik Kayaman smiled at her, and patted her hand understandingly. 'I am glad that it was not you who was hurt, bebek, but we have been very concerned about you being gone for so long. If you had telephoned—‘

  'Oh, Baba Refik!'

  She gazed at him in stunned realisation. The solution had been at her fingertips the whole time and she had not even thought of it. Possibly the idea might have occurred to her if she had not been so concerned with watching the mechanic and thinking that every minute he was going to tell them everything was right again and they could be on their way. It should have occurred to her, but it simply hadn't.

  The sound that Nuri made with his mouth was impatience, anger, all manner of uncomplimentary opinions, and he got to his feet again, as if by doing so he could express himself more forcefully. As he towered over her, his mouth was a tight angry line in the chiselled harshness of his face.

  'It did not even occur to you to telephone? Are you so foolish, Laurette, that you did not realise we would be concerned when you were gone so long with a strange man for company?'

  'Ian isn't a stranger, he's my cousin!'

  'You have seen him only once before, you little fool !

  Do you trust yourself to every stranger you meet in the same way? Because he tells you he is your cousin—'

  'He is my cousin!'

  She wished she did not feel so small sitting there while he towered above her like some gigantic Nemesis. He had no right to speak to her the way he was, and she would let him know it. Getting to her feet, she stood in front of him, her red hair shining like burnished copper in the lamplight, and her blue eyes blazing.

  'And you have a lot less right to yell at me than he has! I won't be treated like a—runaway schoolgirl every time I go on a date with Ian! I have a right to go with whom I please and for as long as I please !'

  'Even though we wait to hear that you have been hurt or worse because you have been so long?'

  'I'm sorry !' She rolled her hands tightly, breathing hard and fast as if she had run a very long way. 'I wouldn't have deliberately done anything to worry Baba Refik and he knows that—he isn't yelling at me! I'm not your sister, Nuri, and you don't have the right to bully me the way you do Halet!'

  'You little—'

  'Nuri!'

  His father's voice recalled him, speaking quietly in his own tongue, and he stood for a moment almost trembling with anger, his black eyes more blazingly furious than Laurette had ever seen them. Facing him aroused a curious kind of reaction in her that was neither fear nor excitement, but a confusing mixture of both. She did not remember ever holding his gaze so firmly before, but she did so now for a full half minute before he turned swiftly and went striding across the room and out of the door.

  His tread rang firmly on the tiled hall floor before it was deadened by the carpeted stair treads a few moments later, and Laurette stood with her hands rolled lightly as she listened to it, her eyes wide and unbelieving. When she let out her breath it came in a long sigh and left her body trembling so that she sank down on to the ottoman again beside her foster-father.

  Viewed in the cool light of reason., she supposed, she had no cause to feel as she did. Nuri had lost his temper and berated her and she had retaliated, but now, as always, she was regretting having quarrelled with him. Perhaps more than usual, for she could still see that blazing fury in his eyes, and shiver.

  'Oh, Baba Refik, what have I done?'

  The old man reached for her hand and gently held it in his for a moment. 'You have offended Nuri's pride, and he is very angry at the moment, child, but he will forgive you.'

  He sounded so confident and she wanted to believe it, but it was too hard to forget the look in Nuri's eyes when he strode from the room. 'He might not. I—I think I've really upset him this time, and I really don't mean to.' She looked at him anxiously, her eyes seeking reassurance in the face that so much resembled Nuri's, yet showed so much more understanding and compassion. 'Baba Refik, if I say I'm sorry I spoke as I did, and—'

  'You both spoke in anger, bebek. In the morning you will both be more calm and you will both say that you are sorry—it will all be over, hmm?'

  'Nuri won't, I know him !'

  Refik Kayaman squeezed her hand and smiled, his dark eyes filled with gentle laughter. 'And I too know him, little one—trust me to know him better, eh?'

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT was not going to be nearly so easy making it up with Nuri this time, Laurette realised, not after last night's incident, and the thought troubled her intensely. Usually their quarrels were ended by mutual consent and with very little being said. A murmured apology, and Nuri would regard her for a second or two before showing that hint of a smile that sometimes softened his straight firm mouth, and it was all over.

  Somehow in her heart she felt it was going to be different this time. She had a premonition that things had changed in a way she could not yet define, and she approached the idea of facing him with much more caution than usual.

  At present Nuri was alone in the salon, she knew. He always took time to go through the morning papers before he started the business of the day, and he would be in there now, doing just that. But at any moment the closed door was likely to open and he would come striding out, on his way to the offices in Antalya, and the opportunity would be lost to her.

  Halet was upstairs, and Refik Kayaman about some business of his own, so that she would never have a better opportunity. She was no more than half way across the hall when the door of the salon opened and, just as she anticipated, Nuri came striding out. Catching sight of her, he paused and would probably have spoken, but she feared he might instead go off without saying anything, and she called out to him.

  'Nuri !'

  His black eyes watched her as she hurried across to him, and she felt again that disturbing sense of uncertainty, that things were not as usual. She would have spoken then, asked him to give her a few minutes before he left, but he stepped back and pushed open the door of the salon again, indicating that she should go in.

  Walking past him, she felt much the same as she had when she came home last night, for he held the door open as he
had then, and his black-eyed gaze followed her in the same way, except that their expression was more carefully guarded this morning by thick dark lashes.

  It was by instinct that she made for the big comfortable ottoman on the far side of the room, and sat on it with one foot curled up under her and the other on the floor. The fat cushions plumped up around her so that she looked smaller even than she actually was, and with Nuri standing, as he had last night, she felt curiously anxious.

  She had anticipated it being harder than usual after last night, but she was dismayed to realise just how difficult it was. She had never felt so distant from him before, and she disliked the sensation far more than she cared to admit. With her body held unconsciously stiff and straight and her head down, from where he stood Nuri could see only the crown of her copper-red head and the vulnerable curve of her neck as she sat with a hand either side of her, flat-palmed on the cushions, not looking at him.

  'Please—won't you sit down too, Nuri? I—I feel rather as if you're towering over me while you're standing there.'

  Rather surprisingly, he made no demur about it, but dropped down beside her on the ottoman instead of using one of the chairs as she hoped. 'You wish to— talk, hmm?'

  It was not an easy opening, for it threw the onus on to her, and she was much too unsure of herself at the moment to know quite how to begin. 'Nuri, last night—'

  'Last night you were angry.'

  'So were you!'

  She looked up quickly, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, then as hastily looked down again. The retort had been impulsive but unfortunate, and she waited to see whether or not he was ready to accept that he too had been at fault. Somewhat unexpectedly3 he did.

  'We were both angry, we will agree on that, Laurette, if on nothing else.'

  The quiet way he spoke was unexpected too in a way, and she looked at him briefly again, trying to determine his mood, but those concealing lashes still hid his expression from her. She could not even guess whether he was actually as cool and calm as he appeared to be.