The Velvet Glove

by Rebecca Stratton

  'Good for you I Because I'm damned if I'm going to sit back and let him cut you off from contact with your own family the way he wants to!'

  'Oh no, Ian, that's not true!' Denying it automatically as she did, she realised a moment later, did not make it any less possible that he was right. 'I—I have to leave Yarev when Halet marries Hussein in a little more than six weeks' time, but Nuri says—'

  'Nuri says!' He cut her short abruptly, and his impatience startled her for a moment. 'I suppose he has a husband all lined up for you as well !'

  'No, he hasn't, Ian. He knows my feelings in that matter.'

  'Good God!' He was blinking as if he did not quite believe her. 'Do you mean he's actually mentioned it? They really intend to marry you off?'

  'No, of course they don't, if by they you mean Baba Refik and Nuri. None of the girls have had their husbands chosen for them, they're all very much in love. You've seen Halet with Hussein— does it strike you that she's marrying him for any other reason than that she loves him?'

  Ian refused to comment, but stuck to the one thing he could be sure of, because she had mentioned it herself. 'But he has had ideas about you in that direction? Obviously the question's been raised, Laurette, if you let him know how you felt about being married off!'

  She looked down at their hands held tightly together, unwilling to make an issue of something that had been purely between herself and Nuri. 'Why do we have to talk about it, Ian? Can't we—'

  'Because I'm not having you put up for auction, or whatever it is they do!'

  'They, Ian, you keep saying they !' She looked up at him with her eyes bright and resentful. 'You talk about my family as if they were a pack of savages! I may have been born into your family, I might have your family's blood in my veins, but the Kayamans are my family now and I won't have you talk about them as if they were nothing short of barbarians!'

  'Laurette.'' She had stunned him, it was plain, and he held her hands so tightly she thought he did not realise Just how tightly, his eyes searching her face for the meek little cousin he expected. 'I put my foot right in it, didn't I?'

  That smile, when it appeared, was as irresistible as ever, and she felt suddenly ashamed for having turned on him so fiercely, though she would do so again in defence of the Kayamans. Shaking her head, she smiled ruefully.

  'Now you know why Nuri finds me too much for him sometimes! I blow up in his face when he doesn't expect it.'

  'Poor chap!'

  'Which is possibly why he suggested that I should move in and live with one of the girls until I married! Without Halet there to take the brunt, he'd probably find me too much of a handful even for him!'

  It seemed more imperative than ever that he should understand the reason for that protective attitude of Baba Refik's and Nuri's, and she tried one more time to explain. He would probably get angry, but it would clear the air if she could make him understand them a little better, though she had not had much success with previous attempts.

  'I wish you could see it from their point of view, Ian—Baba Refik and Nuri, I mean.' She spoke slowly, looking down at their clasped hands rather than at his face. 'The Turkish male is so instinctively protective about his womenfolk in a way you couldn't possibly understand.'

  'And you count as womenfolk, do you?'

  'Well, of course I do!' She sought for other words, other explanations. 'Nuri isn't browbeating me, or being unreasonable, not by Turkish standards—the old standards. He acts the way he does because he thinks you have what Daddy would have called—designs on me!'

  'Well, he's right about that, anyway.' Ian said it quietly and his hands squeezed hers lightly while he looked deep into her eyes. 'I know I haven't known you for very long, Laurette, but there's a very good chance I shall fall in love with you, and I resent—yes, resent that black-eyed devil trying to cut me out of your life, no matter what his reasons are!'

  'Ian—'

  He bent his head and kissed her mouth, stemming the words she had no time to form. 'Don't let him do it, Laurette! Let's go out somewhere every day; let him know we mean business, and that he can't keep you under protective custody for the rest of your life!'

  It was rather like being swept along by a tidal wave, and Laurette was not at all sure whether she was finding the experience exciting or alarming, or both. She enjoyed being with Ian, but she had known him for only three days, slightly less in fact, and she could not quite believe that statement about his beginning to fall in love with her, it was much too soon for him to be thinking along those lines. Also she had a great deal to lose if she allowed him to cut her off completely from her foster-family by deliberately setting out to oppose their views.

  At the same time it was difficult for her to resist him when he constantly reminded her of her father. His blue eyes were bright and clear, just as she remembered her father's being, and his red head too was held at that same to-hell-with-it-all angle. It was his likeness to her father that was a large part of his fascination, she had to admit, but also he was attractive in his own right, and she liked him. He was family, and he could surely be trusted to have her best interests at heart— Nuri was too suspicious, or else he worried too much.

  She was jolted out of her reverie suddenly when Ian lugged at her hand. 'Suppose we start now by taking a boat trip?' he suggested as they made their way back to where the car was parked. 'I think I've seen motor launches for hire in Antalya, haven't I? Why don't we take one out for a while and I can introduce you to the thrill of a fast boat, scudding across the water in the sunshine? It's a wonderful experience, Laurette, you'll love it.'

  'Oh, I do!'

  She got a brief moment of pleasure from his look of surprise, and she was smiling when he looked down at her, vaguely suspicious, she thought. 'You do? Do you mean to tell me you've been allowed out in a motor launch—how come?'

  'I've driven one myself!'

  'I'm staggered!' He looked at her for a second with a strange mixture of expressions in his blue eyes, al-, most as if he did not quite believe her. 'How and when was that, Laurette?'

  'Oh, Nuri has a launch.' Her casual reply was deliberate, though she did not stop to consider why she enjoyed surprising him so much. 'He taught me how to steer it and he occasionally lets me take the wheel, though only when he's there with me.'

  'Good grief!'

  She was smiling, shaking her head over his reaction. 'You see you don't know him nearly as well as you think you do, Ian. He's quite human on occasion; no,' she hastily amended the hint of sarcasm, 'he's very human and very good to me, as all his family are.'

  'So you never tire of telling me.' He opened the door of the car and saw her in, then stood for a moment looking down at her. 'Just the same, will you come with me? Or don't I count as being as trustworthy as Nuri Bey?'

  'Oh, Ian, of course you do!'

  In fact she was curiously uncertain whether she wanted to go out in a boat with him or not, but she was not prepared to let him know it at the moment. Agreeing with him was exactly what he wanted, and he leaned over and pressed his mouth to hers, lightly at first, and then more ardently until she felt her heart begin a hard, protesting beat and tried to turn her head away.

  With startling clarity she had suddenly recalled the way Nuri had kissed her, just before she came out with Ian, and again merely remembering brought on a sense of breathtaking excitement that made her much less willing to respond to Ian's kiss.

  'Let's go, hmm?' Laurette nodded silently, preoccupied once more, and he got in beside her then leaned across his seat, smiling, to lightly kiss her mouth. 'I'll show you how to get Nuri Kayaman out of your hair, my lovely, just you see!'

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT was clear when they set out from Antalya that Ian would have preferred to be in sole charge of the boat they took, instead of hiring one with its own skipper. Hiring a manned motor launch had been Laurette's choice, for one thing Ian did not know the waters around Antalya as she did herself, and for another because she wanted there to
be no chance of another occurrence like the last time she went out in a boat. With someone who knew both the boat and the waters, there was much less chance of their being capsized.

  She said nothing to Ian about her reasons, but was insistent, and he at last yielded to her insistence, although he frowned over it as they left Antalya's tiny, picturesque harbour, tucked away below the old town. He seemed more irritable altogether, in fact, but she simply put it down to disappointment. Ian was not used to being thwarted, she guessed.

  Antalya seen from the water was a familiar sight to Laurette, but one of which she never tired, and she pointed out the various places of interest as they followed the curve of the coastline, starting with Antalya itself. The old town that seemed to hover above its little harbour, and the falls of water that tumbled down from the high cliffs into the turquoise blue sea like shattered rainbows.

  The sun on the water was dazzling, and they were glad of dark glasses, even though it was necessary to remove them to really appreciate the wonderful colours —pink cliffs, blue sea and a white-sanded beach that stretched, almost without break, from the beautiful bathing beach at Lara to Alanya, more than a hundred kilometres further east.

  'Isn't it lovely?' She sought his approval with as much eagerness as if she was showing off her homeland, and Ian smiled, a little wryly, she thought.

  'Very impressive. Those waterfalls back there, I presume they come down from the mountains? The Taurus mountains, you called them, didn't you?'

  'That's right.' She hoped he was more interested than he sounded. 'Just as those delicious little streams do that pop up all over the place in Antalya itself. Only the Turks would think of letting them surface naturally and then build gardens round them!'

  'Instead of harnessing the power they could provide.' His tone made it clear that he did not altogether like her very pro-Turkish attitude, and she looked at him regretfully.

  'Oh, but it's very beautiful, Ian, and that's very important too.'

  She noticed the way he put a hand to his forehead, a gesture he had made several times during their trip. 'Oh, don't take any notice of me, love, I'm a strictly practical Scot!'

  'But surely you still like beautiful things?'

  Her response was almost a plea, for her father too had been a very practical man, but he had also had a very strong appreciation of natural beauty, indeed it had been his influence that had formed her own appreciative faculties. She did not like to think of Ian falling short in that direction.

  His smile suggested it was achieved with effort rather than spontaneous, and the way his eyes crinkled behind the dark glasses it appeared he was squinting against the sun despite the shading lenses. 'Oh, certainly I do, but mostly I like my beauty on two slim and lovely legs!'

  'Ian!'

  She glanced at the broad stocky figure of the boatman at the wheel, but supposed he was accustomed to the unconventional behaviour of the tourist in his business. He might not even have understood what was said with his limited knowledge of English as he took the boat around the coast, following the curving line of the land.

  Inland the panorama had a misty, dreamlike look of soft colours, mostly various shades of green, against the background of summer blue sky and the snow-tipped Toros Dagli that dominated the landscape from the sea, just as it did on the road to Aspendus and Side. Laurette, as she watched it, could not imagine herself living anywhere else, and a sudden urgency in her heart beat made her realise just how anxious she was for her situation not to change, Ian or not.

  'Aren't you glad I insisted on having someone take the wheel?' She smiled at him as they sat side by side at the rail, and Ian smiled, a curiously vague smile that puzzled her for a second.

  'Oh, sure,' he said. 'Why would I want to be alone with a lovely girl?' He laughed, and she looked at him swiftly, sensing something wrong, but not sure what it was at the moment. 'What's wrong, Laurette? Are you afraid I might shock your boatman?'

  He looked much more flushed than he should have done, no matter how hot it was, and there were beads of perspiration across his forehead and along his upper lip which he impatiently brushed away. Impulsively she reached up and placed a hand on his brow. His skin felt oddly chilled and at the same time stickily hot, and she frowned at him anxiously.

  'Ian, are you all right?'

  The man at the wheel, she thought, glanced briefly over his shoulder at them, and Ian was laughing unsteadily, with his hand again on his forehead. 'Oh yes, I think so, love. My head aches a bit, too much sun probably, but I'm O.K.'

  'Maybe you should get under cover for a while. You're not used to the sun, and you've been out in it rather a lot the past couple of days.'

  It was probably sound advice, but Ian was not at all willing to follow it, and she viewed his irritation more anxiously now, seeing it as part of something more than mere disappointment. 'For heaven's sake, Laurette, I'm not sickening for the dreaded tropical fever! Don't fuss, love, please—I can't stand fussy women!'

  'I was thinking more of sunstroke than fever! And I'm not fussing, Ian, I'm just being practical! Red-haired people are known to be more susceptible to sunstroke.'

  Removing the drops of moisture from his forehead with an impatient hand, he looked at her own copper-bright head. 'Then why aren't you affected too?'

  'Because I'm used to it, I've spent most of my life in this kind of a climate. Now will you please do as I ask, Ian, and get under the awning out of the sun?'

  He was not easy to convince, and it crossed Laur-ette's mind as she sought to persuade, him that Nuri would have seen his stubbornness as a Kearn family trait, for he had accused her of the same thing many times in the past. Her appeals, however, eventually persuaded Ian to do as she suggested, and she saw him seated under the limited shade provided by a striped awning, but once having surrendered, he seemed to give in and his limpness made her so anxious that she turned and appealed to the man at the wheel.

  'I think we'd better turn back; my cousin is ill.'

  'Günes çarpmasi? The opinion was volunteered unhesitatingly, though it was little consolation to have her diagnosis confirmed so promptly and with such authority. 'The bey has had too much of the sun, hanim, he should see a doktor at once!'

  'Then we must get back to Antalya.' She felt a dismaying sense of helplessness, and was briefly startled to find herself wishing that Nuri was there to help. 'That will be the quickest thing, won't it?'

  The man was shaking his head. The boat was already heading for the shore, she noticed, and felt a flutter of uncertainty. 'This is the village of Tatlisu, hanim, and I know that here is a very good doktor?

  'There is?' She looked at the cluster of squat little houses sprawled across the background of a tiny incurved section of beach, and wondered if she ought to insist. 'You're sure there's a doctor here?'

  A smile sat briefly on the wrinkled brown face, like a row of yellow-white fangs, and he nodded confidently. 'Oh, evet, hanim, he is my nephew!'

  It seemed unlikely that a village too small to even appear on the map could provide the best medical attention, but any doctor was better than none in her present predicament, and she could hardly tell the man that she did not trust his nephew. Ian was taking very little interest in anything at the moment, but leaned back against the cockpit with his eyes closed. His forehead was damp and sticky and she was worried about him.

  When he opened his eyes and looked at her it seemed as if he had difficulty in focusing. 'It's all right, Ian, we're getting you to a doctor.'

  'Oh, for God's sake, I'm not ill!' His voice had a rasping harshness, but he fell back with a groan when he attempted to sit upright, his hands clutching his head. 'Maybe you're right, love.' He gave her a sickly smile, then hastily closed his eyes again. 'Crikey, I feel awful!'

  'Just sit still.' She dabbed his forehead with her handkerchief and wished she had something cool to bathe it with. Voices reached her, flat and barely distinguishable on the warm air, and she glanced over her shoulder as the boat was steered cl
oser inshore. 'We're putting in to a little village called Tatlisu. It's very small, but the boatman says they have a doctor here.'

  'Then what?' Ian asked, his eyes still closed. 'Do I get abandoned to the mercies of the locals?'

  Laurette hesitated, not yet even sure herself what was to follow his seeing the doctor. At the moment the only solution she could think of was to get help from home. There seemed no other way of transporting a sick man from the village back to Antalya.

  'Then I find the nearest telephone and get someone to come and fetch us.'

  In normal circumstances she felt sure he would have grasped the significance of what she said in a matter of seconds, but his reactions were much slower at the moment and it took him a while to see what it implied. 'Oh no!' He struggled up despite a throbbing head, and frowned at her stubbornly. 'I'm damned if you do, Laurette! I'm not having Nuri Kayaman coming out to rescue me like some blessed maiden in distress!' He clutched his aching head and groaned, sinking back once again, his eyes closed. 'Oh, God, I feel awful!'

  'Poor Ian!' She brushed back the thick red hair from his brow and shook her head. 'There isn't much choice but to get someone to come and fetch us in the car, Ian.

  You're in no state to go clambering on and off boats, you'll be much better off in a car.'

  'Not Nuri Bey's car, I won't!' She sensed the boat man turn his head as he brought the launch closer to the small stone jetty that extended from the white-sanded beach out into deeper water. 'No, Laurette, I won't let you—I won't be—'

  'Ian, be sensible! I can't manage on my own—you're ill and I can't cope with you alone, I need someone to help.'

  'All right, all right!' He put both hands to his head when the boat scraped against the jetty, and groaned. 'Just get me something for this head, it's making me feel sick!'

  'We're here now—the doctor will see you.'

  He opened his eyes again and looked at the dusty, sprawling village with its few thin trees and squat stone houses, and pulled a face. 'It isn't exactly Istanbul, is it?'