The Desert Castle

by Isobel Chace

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Does it matter to you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ she denied. But it did matter. It mattered terribly. The Lebanon meant Denise and all that Papa Dain’s money could buy. She could see Denise’s smirking smile of triumph now and knew she never would have liked the other girl in any circumstances, but that now she was coming perilously close to hating her.

  ‘I like to spend a certain amount of time in England,’ Gregory told her. ‘Most of the time your mother will have my house to herself, but I always spend at least three months of the year there if I can.’

  With Denise? That would indeed make it impossible for Marion to live there no matter how hard her mother tried to persuade her. She would be very alone when she went back to England, She thought, exiled from all she held dear. She didn’t know how she would find the strength to endure it.

  ‘My mother will be pleased to see you,’ she said formally.

  ‘I hope so,’ he returned, and led her firmly forward through the rain.

  They had gone some way along the path that led round the western face of El Kubtha when the Silk Tomb came into view. Set well back in a deep excavation as it was, one could see the whole facade at a glance and, even in the rain, it was possible to see the fantastic colouring that had given it its name. Whites, blues, greys, salmon pinks, and plum dark reds, swirled into one another in a brilliant array of natural pigment.

  ‘Oh, I wish I’d seen it yesterday!’ Marion exclaimed.

  Gregory nodded. ‘The colour is everything. Architecturally it isn’t very interesting.’

  ‘I don’t know enough about it to tell,’ Marion admitted.

  He pointed out the main features of the various tombs, demonstrating with a stick in the sand the different traditions which had been used and developed by the Nabatean builders. There was the heavy, so-called crow-step, monumental style that had been imported from Assyria; the Persian influences that had modified the earliest styles; the Nabatean classical facades, heavily influenced by the new ideas from the western civilisation of Greece and Rome; followed by the Byzantine period and the beginnings of decay.

  ‘Didn’t the Nabateans have any ideas of their own?’ Marion asked when he had finished.

  ‘Their most original genius lay in their irrigation schemes and their pottery. Their pottery is some of the finest the world has ever seen.’

  If Marion had not believed him, when they went into the Museum she was able to see a few fragments of their pottery for herself. Most of the best pieces had been taken away to the museum in Jerusalem and, later, to the museum that was being built up in Amman, but there were some fine pieces remaining, impossibly fine and decorated with the leaves of plants in highly sophisticated patterns.

  ‘It’s as fine as porcelain!’ Marion declared. The quality was all the more dramatic when compared to the much thicker and far less elegant Roman pots that lay alongside the Nabatean plates and bowls.

  ‘It’s all the more remarkable when you consider that porcelain is turned out of a mould and these were thrown on a wheel. How did they make such flat and exquisitely thin bowls? Nobody could do it today.’

  Marion, who had thrown pots herself during her training to teach, was deeply impressed. ‘Are the Nabateans making an appearance in your book?’ she asked him.

  He laughed. ‘No. They had already moved on when my book begins. Most of my characters are land-hungry Normans looking for new estates under the guise of defending their religious sites. They had already moved into England, southern Italy, Sicily, and other places too. Europe was getting too small for them and they burst into the Middle East with enthusiasm. The Crusades were an extraordinary adventure by any standards.’

  The museum was in yet another cave, but it was cold in there, and Marion began to shiver, her clothes sticking to her as she dripped all over the concrete floor.

  ‘I think we’d better go over to the camp and get some hot food inside you,’ Gregory suggested.

  ‘It’s standing about that makes one cold,’ Marion said, her teeth chattering. ‘I was all right when we were moving.’

  But she was glad to follow him down the steps to the floor of the valley and across the Colonnade Street to the camp which had built right into the middle of the ancient, forgotten city. Towels and hot water awaited her and she stripped off her clothes and wrung the worst of the water out of them, hanging them in front of a paraffin heater to dry. She found a blanket and wrapped it round herself as though it were a sarong, fastening it over her shoulder with a large safety-pin from her handbag. When she was ready, she tested her original dress with some anxiety, but, providing she kept reasonably still, she thought it would stay up and she sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for Gregory to come and find her.

  It might have been her imagination, but she was sure there was a slackening in the rain when, hugging her blanket to her, she ran across from the tent she had been given to the dining-room beyond.

  ‘What will happen if we have to stay the night?’ she asked Gregory.

  ‘Lucasta will go spare if she comes back and finds me gone!’

  He looked amused. ‘As you did over her?’ he teased her. ‘It will do her good to worry about someone else for a change.’

  She hoped the rain would abate before then, all the same. If she and Gregory were to be alone there all night what would he expect from her? It was a searing thought; a mixture of ecstatic fantasy and the certainty that she would disappoint him, and it made her more nervous than ever in his presence. How could anyone not be aware of him sitting opposite across the table? She knew every detail of the way he looked with her eyes closed. If she had not known before she would have known now that she was very much in love with him, and she wondered how it could have happened so quickly and with such finality. There would never be another man for her—and that knowledge made her feel lonelier than ever.

  ‘I don’t think Mrs. Hartley will think I’ve made a very adequate chaperon,’ she volunteered on a sigh. ‘Lucasta is sure she’s in love with Gaston. I wish I were as certain a match between them will meet with success.’

  ‘But you don’t think so?’

  She shook her head. ‘Gaston won’t sell out his independence easily.’ She remembered belatedly that it was his sister and brother-in-law she was talking about and said no more.

  ‘I agree with you,’ Gregory said. ‘But you needn’t worry that they’ll blame you. It will be something else to be laid at my door.’ He grinned. ‘My sister has always wanted to run my life for me and she’s never been able to understand why her fingers have been burnt every time she tries it.’

  An answering smile lit Marion’s face. ‘Judith?’ she prompted him.

  ‘There have been others too. Felicity has a vast acquaintance all over the world and I have suffered accordingly.’

  ‘I can’t see you as an easy martyr,’ Marion teased him.

  ‘I try to keep things pleasant—on the surface at least. Blighting unrealistic hopes can be a painful experience, though.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Marion agreed. ‘Poor Judith.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about Judith at that moment,’ he responded. ‘I was thinking of someone much nearer home.’

  Herself? But he couldn’t possibly know how she felt about him! Yet there was nobody else that he could mean. The humiliation of the moment swept over her and she tightened her hold on her blanket in an unconscious gesture of defence.

  ‘You might be flattering yourself,’ she pointed out in a small voice. ‘Or does every girl you meet fall in love with you?’

  The glint in his eyes destroyed what remained of her confidence. ‘It isn’t only love that makes a girl think she might like to marry,’ he told her cynically. ‘Love is something quite different’ He leaned forward. ‘Tell me, Marion Shirley, if I wanted a girl to fall in love with me, do you think she could withstand me for long?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she managed to whisper.

  ‘But you must have some
opinion on the subject,’ he prompted her.

  She pulled at her hand, but he wouldn’t let her go and she was more afraid than ever that the blanket and she would part company. She gave a final tug to it with her free hand, clutching the edges together as if her life depended on it.

  ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she cried out.

  ‘Nothing about love at all?’ He leaned nearer still. ‘Shall I teach you about love, little Marion?’

  She couldn’t answer. She simply couldn’t! She stared at him, her eyes wide and alarmed. ‘No!’ she blurted out.

  He sat back, letting go her hand, and managing to look very pleased with himself. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said almost casually. ‘This is neither the time nor the place. Are you hungry? Shall we eat?’

  She nodded her head, maintaining a dignified silence. But she didn’t feel dignified at all. She wished with all her heart that she had had the courage to have said “yes” instead of “no.” Tears blurred her eyes and it no longer seemed to matter whether the blanket stood up or not.

  ‘I’m not very hungry.’ She bent her head. If he saw that she was crying, he would despise her, she thought, but the tears kept on coming and her dignity disintegrated into racking sobs that shook her whole body.

  Gregory’s arms were very gentle as he gathered her up from the chair and drew her down on to his knee.

  ‘Darling, must you?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’m not your darling! I’m nothing to you!’ she wept.

  His laughter was very disturbing. ‘Having just said you know nothing about it, I shall ignore that remark,’ he said, stroking the back of her neck just where the roots of her hair began to grow. ‘Marion, if you don’t stop it I shall kiss you!’

  She gulped back a laugh, remembering how much she had been going to enjoy her day, stolen by the rain for her, with only him to share it with her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying—Gregory! Don’t do that! This blanket comes apart very easily!’

  ‘Would that matter?’ he mocked her.

  ‘Indeed it would. I haven’t a stitch on underneath and I haven’t any desire to do a striptease for your benefit.’

  ‘Pity,’ he said, his face full of laughter. He set her on her feet and wound her blanket more tightly around her. ‘Feeling better?’

  His eyelashes were the longest she had ever seen on a man. How many of his girl-friends had envied him them? She longed to put up a hand and touch his hair where it curled into his neck, but it would never do for him to know how much he disturbed her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘For sparing your blushes? I find you beautiful whatever you have on, as you very well know.’ He ducked his head and kissed her cheek. ‘One day—’

  ‘Mr. Gregory! Mr. Gregory! The water, it is going down!’

  Marion thought he looked far from pleased at the interruption, but it must have been her imagination, for he greeted Fawzi with a genial smile and, putting an arm round his shoulders, drew him out of the door and out of sight of Marion herself.

  ‘How long before we can get out?’ he asked.

  ‘Very soon now,’ Fawzi’s voice replied. ‘It is better to go now before you have your food because the rain will start again in an hour or so. The horses are ready to go quickly.’

  Gregory glanced down at his watch. ‘We’ll be ready in ten minutes.’

  ‘I shall be ready too!’ Fawzi assured him. ‘The lady is all right?’

  ‘She’ll do,’ Gregory said drily. He turned his head and laughed directly at Marion. ‘Pluck to the backbone!’ He stood in the doorway until Fawzi had gone and then came back to her. ‘Can you brave that horse again, or shall I take you up with me?’

  She was shocked by the very idea. ‘I’ll ride my own horse!’

  He came nearer still. ‘I’d share more than a horse with you, if you’d let me, Marion Shirley. More even than my frescoes and castle. Will you ever want to share anything with me?’

  She hid her face from him, shaking her head. ‘I’d want to have exclusive rights,’ she said thickly. ‘Zein—’ She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘I wouldn’t be happy like that!’

  ‘Are you telling me you’re jealous?’

  She was completely shattered that he should have drawn such a conclusion. And it was the truth. She was torn apart with jealousy, and that seemed less than admirable and she didn’t want him to know about it.

  ‘Why should I be jealous?’ she countered.

  ‘My sweet Marion, I should ask yourself that question. Oh, damnation, why couldn’t it have gone on raining for a little longer?’

  ‘Gregory—’

  ‘You’d better get dressed,’ he said in quite different tones. ‘I told Fawzi we’d be ready to go in ten minutes.’

  The moment to approach him had gone, Marion realised, and it might never come again. Once they were back at the Rest House, Lucasta and Gaston would be there, and she saw so little of him at the castle and then there was always someone else there. And at week-ends there was Denise!

  It had indeed stopped raining when she went back to the tent where she had left her clothes. There was even the faint glint of gold in the sky as the sun tried to penetrate the heavy curtain of black cloud that hung over the hidden valley. The sooner they were gone the better.

  Her clothes were still damp and steaming from the heater. They seemed to have shrunk, they were so difficult to get into and, once she was dressed, they clung to her like a cold compress and were rather more revealing than her blanket had been.

  She blushed at the appreciative gleam in Gregory’s eyes. ‘The worst of it is that I haven’t even got a change of clothing at the Rest House. These are definitely tight after the soaking they’ve received.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he agreed, ‘they show your figure off to perfection. Very nice too!’

  Marion looked down at herself, pulling a face.

  ‘There isn’t much to show.’

  ‘That’s what you think! It’s all in the eye of the beholder!’

  Was it possible that he thought her beautiful? Oh, she knew she wasn’t bad-looking, but compared to someone like Denise she thought she was easily overshadowed. ‘I wish I were taller,’ she sighed.

  He looked amused. ‘Do you? I find you enough of a handful as you are!’ He lifted her and put her on her horse with an ease that left her breathless. ‘It isn’t too late to change your mind—if you’d rather come with me?’

  She found it safer to ignore any such suggestion. What would the Bedouin drivers think if one of their horses had to bear a double burden? Nor could she trust herself with Gregory’s arms about her not to want more than he would be prepared to give. Before they had gone a hundred yards she would want his kisses too!

  The hooves of the horses clattered over the loose stones, sending the water flying in all directions. Gregory, in better control of his mount, led the way at a brisk trot, turning round every now and again to make sure that Marion was following as closely as possible. There was no hope of her keeping up with him, however. Her driver pulled on the bridle and uttered fierce imprecations, but the horse had his own ideas and chief amongst these was his dislike of getting his feet wet.

  ‘You’d better go ahead,’ Gregory said as they were about to enter the Syq. He uttered a sharp command to the driver, who began to run again, tightening his hold on the leading rein. The water gushed through the narrow channel, not now very deep, but fast enough to worry the already agitated animal who clung to the edges, beneath the overhanging sides, bumping Marion badly as he went.

  ‘Ou’a!’ Gregory shouted at the driver. ‘Shway, shway!’

  ‘What did you say?’ Marion called back to him.

  ‘I said take care and go a bit slower. He’ll have you off if you’re not careful!’

  But the warning came too late. Now badly frightened, the horse tossed his head, dragging the leading rein from the driver’s hand, and made a rush forward, seeking sh
elter at all costs. Marion could see the bulging rock ahead of her, but there was nothing she could do to avoid it. It hit her on the shoulder, knocking her clean out of the saddle and into the path of Gregory’s oncoming mount. She thought that there was no way in which he could avoid her as she staggered to her feet, but even as she was expecting to be ridden down, his hands reached out for her and lifted her clear, holding her tightly in front of him.

  It was a long, breathless canter through the pass. Water cascaded down the purple sides, joining the stream that flooded the rough floor. Now and again, the horse beneath them missed his footing, caught himself up with a deep, snorting breath, his nostrils flaring with hatred for this incomprehensible phenomenon, which he had never experienced before and never wished to again.

  ‘I got my way in the end,’ Gregory said, laughing. ‘Let that be a lesson to you, Marion Shirley. It will do you no good to hold out against me!’

  She tried to ease the burden of her weight from the arm that held her, but he refused to give way, tightening his grip so that she could hardly breathe. She was wet and uncomfortable, but it was also a heaven of sorts to be held so closely against him that she could feel the hardness of his body, the ripple of each muscle as he moved in time to the horse’s gallop, and the quickening beat of his heart that was only exceeded by the high rate of her own.

  When they gained the dam, he slowed his horse’s pace to a trot and then to a walk, allowing her to sit up a little straighter.