The Desert Castle

by Isobel Chace

  ‘I hope she’s worth it,’ she said out loud. She wriggled her shoulders under his hands. ‘How do you know she won’t bore you after a while?’

  His fingers bit into her flesh. ‘Never! I may wring her neck out of sheer exasperation, but I don’t expect to be bored—’

  She shook herself free and walked away from him, back to the safety of the wall of the terrace where Moses was supposed to have stood. ‘I hope you won’t be!’ Her voice said she hoped he would be bored stiff, but she couldn’t help that. ‘She’ll probably expect you to join the jet-set and won’t be in the least bit interested in your books!’

  He put his hands on his hips and he laughed at her, his face creasing into lines of amusement that made her crosser than ever.

  ‘Well, if you don’t like my Promised Land, what is yours?’ he challenged her.

  She had no answer ready for him. How could she have? It came into her mind that she had no ambitions for conquest in her own right. She wanted someone to take the trouble to conquer her, if conquest there had to be. She wanted to be his land, and to give up the riches within her to him in the mock battle of love. She stared at him with puzzled eyes.

  ‘I’ll never reach my Promised Land,’ she said. ‘I’m more like Moses than I knew. Did you know he stammered?’ she added on a forlorn note. ‘He was afraid people would laugh at him when he spoke to them, so God told him to take Aaron to speak for him.’ She could have done with an Aaron now, someone with a golden voice, who could speak for her, hiding the discovery she had just made about herself from Gregory’s observant eyes. She simply could not bear it if he were ever to feel sorry for her!

  ‘You should have more faith,’ he told her. ‘Do you want to see the old church over there, or shall we go on to the Dead Sea?’

  She chose to go on. She was no longer in the mood for sightseeing. More than anything she wanted to go home and have time to bury her discovery so deeply within herself that it would never be found again. And going home meant going back to Gregory’s castle. It never even crossed her mind that it could mean anywhere else. If she had, she would have despaired that she could be so irrational as to suppose that the best place to hide from Gregory was in his own private stronghold in the middle of the desert, the one place where she couldn’t get away from him.

  There were stones beside the road telling than when they had descended to sea level, a hundred metres below, two hundred, and lastly three hundred metres below the Mediterranean. A faint shimmer veiled the further bank, blurring the geographical features and the dark splodges that might have been merchant ships, loading and unloading their cargoes.

  The waters of the Dead Sea were not as still as Marion had expected. Gregory drove into what looked like an amusement park which, abandoned for the most of the week, was full of people from Amman, making the most of the Moslem day of rest. Even so, the stony beach was emptier than it would have been anywhere in Europe, and there was plenty of room for Marion to lack off her shoes and walk along the edge of the warm water, marvelling that it should feel more like oil than water against her bare skin. The sun beat down on them, hotter than she would have believed possible, and after a while, the surrounding peace seeped into her troubled spirit and she felt quite content to allow events to take their own course without kicking too hard against the pricks. Denise was not yet installed in the Castle of the Cisterns, and nor was anyone else!

  Marion began to look for pebbles that she thought would polish well. It had long been a hobby of her mother’s, turning out polished stones as pieces of modern jewellery and selling them at local Oxfam bazaars and other such functions. There were several pebbles that she thought would come up well, some in a very pretty green colour and others of a marbled brown.

  Gregory smiled down at her intent face as she searched, dipping her hands through the lazy, breaking waves that just covered her feet.

  ‘For your mother?’ he asked.

  She sat back on her heels. ‘How did you know?’ she demanded.

  ‘She told me she had made that barbaric necklace you were wearing at that evening class of yours.’

  The beginnings of a frown appeared between her eyes. What a cosy gossip they must have had about her even to have discussed the details of what she had been wearing!

  ‘Yes, she did,’ she said.

  Gregory spread himself full length on the pebbles and shut his eyes. ‘If you didn’t want it to be noticed you shouldn’t wear it,’ he pointed out reasonably enough.

  It wasn’t the necklace, it was what else he might have noticed that bothered her. She was beginning to think that nothing escaped those sharp eyes of his.

  ‘It would look better on Denise—’

  He came to life with a speed that rooted her to the spot. His long arms scooped her up from the edge of the water and deposited her beside him, high and dry on the beach.

  ‘I told you what would happen if you mentioned her name this afternoon!’ he threatened her. To her astonished ears he sounded as though he were very much enjoying himself. She struggled upwards into a sitting position and smoothed down her skirt with an agitated hand. ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘I’m going back to the car,’ she muttered.

  ‘Don’t you like it here?’ he teased her, his fingers brushing the white salt from the sea from the backs of her hands.

  ‘I did, but you’ve spoilt it,’ she said baldly. ‘I don’t like being pounced on!’

  He sat up too and raised her hands to his lips, kissing them lightly before he released her completely.

  ‘I’m sorry, love.’ He stood up. ‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’

  She was caught between relief and a sharp disappointment that he should take her at her word. She trailed after him back down the beach, hardly noticing the hard pebbles beneath her feet.

  ‘Gregory,’ she called after him. ‘I was wrong. I didn’t mean—’

  He waited for her to catch up with him. ‘But you don’t trust me either, do you, Marion?’

  Was it him or herself she didn’t trust? She didn’t know. But she didn’t want to quarrel with him either. For some reason that hurt her to the quick.

  ‘Please, Gregory,’ she said, ‘don’t make things more difficult!’

  He touched her cheek with a gentle hand, but the harshness stayed in his eyes as he looked down at her. ‘You’re making it difficult for yourself,’ he told her. ‘Real life isn’t a dream, or a picture on a wall, my dear. You have to take the rough with the smooth, and sometimes it’s the rough that makes the whole thing worthwhile in the end.’

  ‘You mean that texture is as important as colour?’ she hazarded.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Something like that. You can spoil things for me too, more easily than you know. Men have their dreams too—’

  Yes, someone like Denise! She already knew that! She put up her hand and caught his in hers, pulling it away from her face.

  ‘Then you ought to know better than to make use of substitutes!’ she lambasted him. ‘It never works! Even I can tell you that!’

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’

  Marion hoped Gregory hadn’t noticed the sulky note in Denise’s voice. The French girl had worked herself into a fine rage and was looking very handsome as she faced her host across the width of the drawing-room.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Gregory returned the question. If Denise were wise, Marion thought with a shiver, she would drop the subject for tonight at least. Gregory was in no mood to be questioned by anyone about his movements or anything else. Marion was still smarting from his scathing comments on her well-meant attempt to tell him that she understood he was using her as an understudy for his real leading lady, but that she couldn’t approve of his desire to rehearse what she felt was already a perfect performance.

  ‘I thought you were going to work!’ Denise went on, her voice raw and ugly. ‘You deliberately tricked me into going to Jaresh with Gaston and Lucasta. You know I’d never have gone if I thought you—’
r />   ‘I’m not interested,’ Gregory cut her off.

  Denise crossed the room at a run, throwing herself against his broad chest. Marion shut her eyes and tried to pretend that the searing pain within her was not jealousy because she would never have the courage to make such a move towards Gregory herself. She turned her back on them and walked slowly down the corridor towards her bedroom. Denise obviously knew how to handle her man. She wouldn’t panic when he kissed her, but then she would know that it meant something between them, that it wasn’t just a game that men and women play to pass the time until the right, the one and only, partner came along.

  There was someone in her room. Marion paused at the threshold, schooling herself to face Lucasta and to hear all about her day out with Gaston. But when she opened the door it was not Lucasta but Zein who was waiting for her, standing motionless in the middle of the floor. There was no indication as to how long she had been there, but she looked up and smiled when Marion came in, bursting into voluble speech and pointing towards the wall and the little houri Marion had spent the morning painstakingly cleaning.

  Marion shook her head, trying to get across to the Bedu girl that she couldn’t understand a word she was saying. Zein babbled happily on, leading Marion towards the dressing-table and the looking glass that stood on it with a gesture of triumph she pointed towards Marion’s reflection in the glass and then at the houri on the wall. Her excitement knew no bounds and, after a few moments, Marion understood why. No wonder the houri had had a familiar look to her. She could well have been a portrait of Marion herself!

  CHAPTER VI

  Lucasta was speaking. She was bored without Gaston’s company and although she suspected that Marion was equally bored with hearing about him it was the only subject that interested her at the moment.

  ‘Denise would have spoilt everything if she could. That was a dirty trick of that uncle of mine to send her off with us. Well, we’ve made jolly sure that it doesn’t happen next week-end! Gregory is going to her place on the express invitation of her father. Gaston saw to that!’

  Marion frowned at the wall in front of her. It was ridiculous to go to pieces just because he was going away. If she were going to live with herself at all, she would have to do better than that!

  ‘But Gaston is coming here?’ she managed to ask.

  Lucasta half-closed her eyes, an expression of bliss on her face. ‘I shall have him to myself for three whole days!’

  Marion made a great effort and put her own problems to the back of her mind while she tried to face up to her responsibilities where her charge was concerned. If anyone had gone with Gaston and Lucasta to Jaresh the week-end before it should have been her. She ought to have made it her business to have found out a great deal more about this young French engineer, no matter what Gregory had said. She stopped what she was doing and turned round to face Lucasta.

  ‘How much do you like this Gaston?’ she asked her.

  Lucasta was startled into opening her eyes wide. ‘Very much. Well, not liking exactly.’ She smiled up at Marion, looking very like her uncle. ‘He sends me more than any man I’ve ever met! It’s much more fun than I had supposed to be the object of someone’s devotion. He’s sweet!’

  ‘Then it isn’t serious?’ Marion said with relief.

  ‘Of course it’s serious! Only I haven’t made up my mind yet exactly how serious.’

  This was worse than Marion had thought. ‘It’s very easy to confuse what is really a passing infatuation with the real thing,’ she proffered hopefully.

  Lucasta merely looked smug. ‘Is that what happened to you when you were seventeen?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ Marion said firmly.

  Lucasta laughed. ‘Meaning that you’re not telling me! I don’t blame you, darling Marion. You have enough on your plate just now!’ She eyed the elder girl with blatant curiosity. ‘Is it infatuation with you?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Marion gasped, the cold, sinking feeling in her middle spreading down to her knees.

  ‘I’m talking about Uncle Gregory,’ Lucasta drawled. She stood up, looking for all the world like a little cat grown tired of playing with the toy of the moment ‘Oh, don’t worry about it! I shouldn’t think anyone else has noticed—certainly not the great man himself!—but you do go soft inside every time he comes on the scene, don’t you? I recognise the signs. I feel exactly the same whenever I see Gaston.’

  ‘I like your uncle—’ Marion began. How extraordinary, she thought, that anyone’s heartbeat should quicken over anyone as ordinary as Gaston Brieve.

  ‘Oh, Marion!’ Lucasta mocked her. ‘Like? You’re potty about him! You don’t like him at all either. You’re too far gone to like him, nothing So simple! Men do complicate things, don’t they?’ She sighed heavily. ‘Still, it’s nice to know that one doesn’t have to be seventeen to make a fool of oneself. You’re still at it at twenty-something and, if anything, you’re more badly smitten than I am!’

  ‘I am not!’ Marion denied indignantly. ‘And I do like your uncle. I like his books!’

  ‘Do you?’ Lucasta sounded impressed. ‘Do you know, I like hearing about Gaston’s work too, and it’s the most boring thing imaginable! He works out stresses and strains by mathematics, and horrible things like that!’

  ‘I liked Gregory’s books before I’d ever met him!’ Marion insisted with a blind disregard for the actual sequence of events. How terrible that she should lie about anything so stupid!’Well, before I’d met him properly,’ she amended.

  ‘I know, one look was enough!’

  ‘It wasn’t, you know,’ Marion contradicted her, feeling a little calmer. ‘I disliked him excessively when I first saw him!’

  ‘Good for you!’ Lucasta exclaimed. ‘It must have been that that caught his interest because he doesn’t usually bother with the hoi-polloi, any more than my mother does, only he’s more polite about it. Not being rude, but you’re not in the same class as our Denise, are you?’

  ‘No.’ It was a murmur of despair, but Lucasta showed no signs of recognising it as such.

  ‘Actually,’ she opined, ‘you’re much better looking than Denise, and whole streets nicer, but Daddy’s money gives her a head start with Gregory. Well, I mean, who wouldn’t be flattered to have their bird flying in every week-end without fail and hanging on his every word?’

  ‘It must be more than that! She’s very much in love with him—’

  ‘Rubbish. Denise is incapable of loving anyone but herself, as anyone with half an eye could see. Only men never can add up where women are concerned. It excuses Gregory in a way. But if you can’t see it, you must be a fool!’

  Marion felt the time had come to protest. ‘Lucasta, I will not be spoken to like that. Even if I am a fool, I’d rather you kept the fact to yourself!’

  Lucasta gave her an exasperated look which included a certain affection that she herself found surprising. Like the rest of her family, she did not suffer fools gladly.

  ‘Meaning that you hadn’t seen it,’ she stated implacably. ‘Do you deliberately go round in blinkers, or can’t you help it?’

  ‘Lucasta!’

  ‘Oh, Marion, really! And you were all set to give me a nice little lecture on the dangers of being impressionable and giving way to an adolescent infatuation over Gaston. Did you really think it would do any good? At least I see Gaston as he is, warts and all! I’m much less likely to get hurt than you are. You make me fed positively old!’

  ‘Lucasta, I don’t!’

  ‘Old,’ Lucasta repeated with ruthless candour. ‘If you want Gregory you’ll have to do more than spend your time washing down his walls. Why don’t you stun him by staging some dramatic coup?’

  Marion’s sense of humour got the better of her and she smiled, her whole face lighting up with laughter. ‘Are you mad?’ she demanded. ‘Gregory wouldn’t turn a hair if I sat down at his table stark naked.’

  Lucasta giggled. ‘He’s not easily thrown,’ she agreed.
‘You’d be far more embarrassed than he.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Marion said. ‘So I think I’ll go on washing down his walls and leave the field clear for Denise.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Lucasta. ‘I’d prefer having you in the family. Tell you what, I’ll ask Gaston to bring somebody down for you this week-end with him. He says there are lots of spare males hanging round the site where he works.’

  ‘Thanks very much!’ Marion raised her eyebrows, trying to look stern, but the legacy of laughter still lingered in her eyes. ‘I shall be working this week-end. As it is, I’m never going to finish even these frescoes, let alone the main ones. It takes much longer than I had supposed.’

  ‘You can’t work all the time. You’re meant to amuse me too and, frankly, if Gaston and I have to have someone around, and at the moment that’s the way I want it, until I’m quite, quite sure that I want to take the next step with him, I’d much rather it were you than anyone else.’

  Marion tried not to smile. ‘I suppose I’m easily managed,’ she put in. ‘I may surprise you yet!’

  ‘At least you won’t die of shock if you catch us kissing one another,’ Lucasta said frankly. ‘To hear Denise talk you’d think the end of the world had come.’

  Marion began to look anxious again. ‘It depends on the circumstances. I think most people in a Moslem country are more circumspect than we are at home. It wouldn’t do to upset them.’

  ‘Right,’ said Lucasta. ‘That’s exactly what Gregory said.’ She made her voice sound passably like her uncle’s. ‘Do what you like, as long as you don’t live to regret it, but don’t shock the natives while you’re doing it.’ She smiled suddenly, ‘Poor Marion, you do like to worry about nothing, don’t you? Gregory trusts me to behave myself, and I’d do anything sooner than lose his respect, so you really don’t have to worry about me. You’d better try trusting me too.’