Читать книгу Sheikh's Ransom - ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Страница 12

Three

Twenty minutes later she was standing in a cool, comfortable room, looking out through a glass door onto a shaded balcony and the sea beyond.

“You will want to relax, have a drink, bathe and change,” Kaifar informed her, waving at the terrace where he had instructed a porter to place a tray of ice and drinks. “I will return for you in three hours. Then we will have dinner.”

She frowned in surprise. “What do you mean? Why are you taking me to dinner?”

He shrugged. “I am a part of your prize, Miss Langley,” he said, with a smile that made her turn nervously away. “Would you like to go to a European restaurant, or do you prefer to try the foods of my country?”

What was she complaining about? She certainly didn’t want to dine alone. “Well, then, the food of the country, thank you.”

Kaifar nodded once and withdrew, leaving her on her own. Caroline went to the exotically arched patio door, drew it open, and stepped out onto terra cotta tiles delicately interspersed with a pattern in white and blue. She sighed in deep satisfaction. How good it was to get away, to be alone, to think. She seemed to have had no time for thinking since her father had first told her of David’s offer.

Far in the distance, scarcely discernible, a muezzin was calling the faithful of the city to prayer. Ahead of her stretched the fabulous blue waters of the Gulf of Barakat. Palm trees, planted in the courtyard below, stretched up to the vaulted, pillared canopy that protected half the terrace from the sun. There were plants everywhere her eye fell. A table and chairs nestled against the trunk of one of the trees, and Caroline sank down, dropped ice into a glass, and poured herself some mineral water.

The surroundings were so soothing. Her troubles and responsibilities seemed miles away. She had no choices to make, no unpleasant facts to face, tasks to perform. She was facing two weeks where she need please no one save herself.

Sayed Hajji Karim ibn Daud ibn Hassan al Quraishi reached a deceptively lazy hand out to the bowl of glistening fruit and detached a grape. He examined the grape, his curving lids hiding the expression in his eyes. The fruit was plump and purple-black, but not nearly as deeply dark as the monarch’s angry eyes, a fact which Nasir could verify a moment later, when Prince Karim slipped the juicy globelet between his white teeth and raised his piercing gaze to his secretary.

“In truth, Lord, no one save yourself and Prince Rafi and I know what your intentions are. Who could have revealed them? Only I myself have knowingly been engaged in the execution of these plans. The truth has been disguised from all the others. All has been as secretly done as you ordered, Lord.”

“And yet he did not come,” said Prince Karim.

The secretary bowed. “If I may speak plainly,” he began, but he scarcely paused for the permission the ritual question implied. He was a trusted advisor and he spoke freely in conference with his prince. “This may easily be the action of a guilty man who fears some nameless coincidence, or a busy man contemptuous of the arrangements and desires of others. It is not necessarily the action of a man who has been warned of trouble.”

“He is a man who subverted one of my own staff,” Karim said flatly. The monotone did not fool the secretary. Prince Karim advertised his anger only when there was something to be gained from a show of royal rage.

The secretary bowed his head. “True, Lord. By my eyes, he has not subverted me.”

Prince Karim lifted a hand. “No such suspicion has crossed my mind, Nasir.”

Prince Rafi spoke. “Good! Then we must operate on the assumption that there has been no leak of information, and alter our plans to suit the circumstance. All is not yet lost! The woman is here, after all!”

The sun set as she waited; the air was cooler, and a breeze moved beguilingly across the terrace. The transformation from light to dark happened quickly, a bucket of molten gold dropping down into the navy ocean and drawing after it night and a thousand stars. Now the world was magical.

She was waiting, half for Kaifar, half for a phone call to go through. She had tried and failed to call David earlier, then had given up, showered and dressed. She was wearing a green cotton sundress with wide straps and a bodice cut not too low across her breasts; a gauzy, gold-shot scarf patterned in greens with pinks and blues and yellows would cover her shoulders if necessary. Her hair was clean and obedient again, swept back from her forehead and neck as smoothly as the vibrant natural curls would allow. She wore a gold chain, gold studs, and her engagement ring.

Caroline had been absolutely astonished when her father had approached her with David Percy’s proposal of marriage. She hardly knew the man, although she was aware that he was a friend of her father’s, an antiques dealer and collector who had sold Thom Langley a few things in the old days. They had met only once or twice. She believed then that he had fallen in love with her from a distance, and she had been ready to laugh with her father over David’s middle-aged foolishness.

Then she had seen that her father wanted her to marry David Percy. And when her mother came in, Louise had made no effort to pretend her husband had not already informed her of the great news. “Oh, Caroline, isn’t it a miracle! Who would have thought that a man like David Percy would want you!” she had burst out with such relief and gratitude in her tone that Caroline understood that for both of them David Percy’s offer represented a salvation worth any sacrifice. Even a daughter’s happiness.

“But Mother, he’s so—” Caroline stopped, because she couldn’t find the words to describe the awful coldness that she felt from David. Worse, much worse, than her own father’s.

Thomas Langley had always disapproved of his elder daughter’s “emotional extremes,” her capacity for deep feeling and unguarded responses, so unlike his own nature or even that of his wife’s. Whether she was touched by the plight of a stray cat in a Caribbean resort, or moved to tears by a painting in an Italian church, her father frowned. Caroline had grown up under the constant pressure to contain her laughter, restrain her tears, to walk sedately and talk quietly.

“Darling, it’s not forever,” Louise had hastily assured her. She had talked fast, not giving Caroline time to express objections. “David won’t expect you to stay married to him for long. He knows better than that. You’ll be divorced by the time you’re thirty!”

Caroline shuddered. “And who will get custody of the children?”

“Darling, you’re looking for problems! David may not even want children. And at thirty, look where you’ll be. You’ll have serious money—you can trust your father to see to that—and you probably won’t look a day older than you do now. The cosmetic aids you’ll be able to afford! The massage, the clinics! Whereas I’m aging a little more with every day that passes.”

“Being eternally young isn’t really high on my list of priorities,” Caroline responded dryly, but her mother overrode her.

“Caroline, you’ll have money. Don’t underestimate it. Money is the power to do whatever you like. You will have total freedom, Caroline.” She emphasised each word of the last sentence.

Caroline had frowned as something whispered in the back of her mind that she would have total freedom now if she left her parents to the fate which their own foolish actions and constant living beyond their means had brought upon them.

And as though she sensed that, Louise had added quickly, with a pathetic catch to her voice, “We’ll have freedom, too, Caroline. You can purchase our freedom as no one else can. And think of Dara. She’ll be able to go to university, and I know you want her to be able to do that....”

But she would not have agreed to the engagement if she had not believed that David wanted to marry her because he loved her.

David had begun taking her to museums to introduce her to his way of life and her future, and one fine day he had introduced her to “herself”—a marble bust thought to be Alexander the Great. And that was when she discovered just what it was about his fiancée that David loved: Caroline looked like a Greek statue.

In profile her broad forehead sloped down into a finely carved nose with scarcely any change in angle; her slim eyebrows, set low, followed the line of her large, wide-spaced, grey eyes; her cheeks and jaw, though delicately moulded, curved with a fullness that was nothing like the fashionable gaunt hollowness of a Vogue model; her upper lip was slender and beautifully drawn, her lower lip full, curving up at the corners. And in addition there was the riot of curls over her well-shaped head and down the back of her neck. Her only flaw, if you were looking for physical perfection, was the slightly crooked front tooth.

The bust was, in fact, eerily like her. She was looking at her own death mask—or, she told herself, because the sculptor had been a great artist and the statue was certainly “alive,” herself frozen in the mirror of time.

David had insisted on buying her a wardrobe suited to her new position as his fiancée. Caroline by then had felt out of control of events; she had been unable to protest at the arrangement, let alone the way that David dictated her choices. She had some very smart, and rather original, ivory and cream outfits in her wardrobe now. And a gold upper arm bracelet and heavy gold necklace that had cost as much as her year’s salary.

When he had effected a certain amount of transformation, David threw a midsummer masquerade party to celebrate the public announcement of their engagement. For that he had designed Caroline’s costume himself. Or, had hired a designer to execute what he wanted.

And what he wanted was Caroline looking as much like a Greek statue as possible. Intricately pleated ivory silk toga with flowing folds, ivory leather sandals, a wreath of ivory-coloured leaves in her hair, her skin painted to look like marble...when she stood perfectly still, she really had almost looked like marble.

“Don’t smile with your teeth tonight, Caroline,” David had ordered, with no apology for his air of command. “It spoils the illusion. Serenity, my dear.” It was then that she had finally put all the pieces together. David did not love her. He didn’t even imagine that he did. What he wanted was to add her to his collection. He wanted to own her.

In that moment she wondered whether it would be possible to recover from the personality changes David would exact from her.

A steady voice in her head had whispered, Get out now. Tell him you’ve changed your mind tell him not to make the announcement tonight. But Caroline had stifled the thought. Her mother was right. A few years of sacrifice was not too much for her family to ask.

Of course, the couple’s photograph had illustrated the story of the engagement in the newspaper. David Percy Adds “The Jewel in the Crown” To His Private Collection was the headline.

When she had learned, while she was in the midst of packing her bags for this trip, that David would not be coming, Caroline had taken out of her case all the clothes he had bought her and packed instead her own clothes, bought at a discount where she worked. She would not have much chance to wear them once she was married.

Caroline liked colour. She was fairly sure the ancient Greeks had, too. Lots of the statues she had seen during her recent crash course in classical art under David’s tutelage had obviously once been painted in very bright, intense colours, and she had read somewhere that it was possible that even what David called “the elegant proportions of the Parthenon” had been covered in bright red and turquoise and gold leaf. And as for emotions, in the ancient legends the Greeks seemed anything but serene. Even their gods had been wildly passionate and overly emotional... but she did not put that point of view to David.

Caroline sighed and slipped into the present. David was not here now, and if the phone didn’t ring soon, she wouldn’t have to talk to him. She was suddenly wildly grateful that David had not come on this trip. He would have insisted on New York standards everywhere. She wanted to see, to experience the East, its beauty, its passion, its legendary contradictions.

“The woman is very much younger than he,” Nasir reported. “It is said that he paid her father a large amount of money for her.” He passed a faxed copy of a newspaper photograph to the two princes.

“ ‘The jewel in his crown!’ ” Karim read the caption headline.

“Ah, a Mona Lisa!” exclaimed Prince Rafi with interest.

Karim gazed at the photo. It showed a pale, grave-eyed young woman in costume half smiling at someone beyond the camera, beside a smooth-skinned man of middle age. He looked up and met the eyes of his secretary. “And this is what he thinks of this woman?” he asked, indicating the headline. The secretary only bowed his head. “He adds her to his collection?” Karim pursued.

“Allowances must of course be made for the inaccuracies of gossip and the liberties taken by the press,” the secretary offered diffidently.

Prince Karim nodded, his black eyes glittering. His face took on the harsh look of a desert tribesman riding to battle as he turned back to the photograph. “Excellent! It may be, then, that Mr. Percy would like to make an exchange.”

Nasir showed no surprise, but nothing ever did surprise him.

“The jewel of my collection for the jewel of his,” went on Prince Karim. “First, of course, we will have to gain possession of Mr. Percy’s jewel.”

When Kaifar appeared at her door, he was wearing a suit of white cotton trousers and shirt that was “neither of the East nor of the West” but looked as though it would be comfortable anywhere. But still, with his dark skin and black beard, he looked richly exotic to her eyes. On his strong bare feet he wore the kind of thong sandals that she had earlier noticed men and women in the city wearing.

They stood for a moment in the doorway, not speaking. Then Caroline dropped her gaze and said, “I’ll get my bag.” Her voice came out sounding weak, almost breathless. Leaving the door open, she turned and went back into the sitting room, where her scarf and evening bag lay on a chair.

The phone rang.

Kaifar stepped inside the room, closed the door, and picked up the receiver. For a moment he spoke in Arabic, then was silent, waiting.

Surprised at this autocratic action—had he given out her room number as a contact for himself?—Caroline frowned, but he smiled blandly at her and turned to speak into the mouthpiece. “Good evening, Mr. Percy! This is Kaifar speaking! We are very sorry that you are in New York and not here in our beautiful country.”

Caroline gasped. “Give me the phone!” In two quick steps she was beside him. He was tall; her eyes were on a level with the curling black beard that covered his chin. “Give it to—” she began again, but an imperious hand went up and in spite of herself she was silenced.

Suddenly his teeth flashed in a wide grin, and she involuntarily fell back a step, as if a wolf had smiled. But the smile was not meant for her. “My name is Kaifar, Mr. Percy,” he repeated with a curious emphasis. “Doubtless we shall speak again. In the meantime, here is Miss Langley.”

“Hello, David,” she said, taking the phone with a speaking look and then turning away as she pressed it to her ear.

“Caroline? Where are you, my dear?”

And she lied. When she should have said, In my hotel suite, out of a purely instinctive reaction she said instead, “In the lobby of the hotel, David.” She had simply no idea how David would react to the thought of a strange foreigner in her hotel room answering her phone, and she shrank from knowing.

“And who was that man? I understood they were putting me through—”

“Kaifar is the guide whose services I won as part of the prize.” There was a curious pause as the word “services” echoed slightly, and then David spoke again, as if he had decided to ignore whatever impact he had felt from her last statement.

“Did you have a good night?”

“Very comfortable.”

They chatted only a few moments, just long enough for David to ascertain that she had arrived safely. Caroline never had very much to say to David, but she would have kept him if she could. She was suddenly afraid of what would happen when she put the phone down. But there was no way to prevent David bidding her a calm goodbye and hanging up.

Caroline held on to the phone for a long moment afterwards, pretending to listen, but at last she said a feeble goodbye to the dial tone and hung up.

Then she lifted her head and met Kaifar’s eyes, knowing that the lie to David had been a terrible mistake.

He was staring at her. He said, “Your dress is the colour of the emeralds that come from the mines in the mountains of Noor. They are the most beautiful emeralds in the world.”

The words struck her like an unexpected wave, leaving her breathless. The lamp cast chiaroscuro light and shadow on him, his face and his hands richly toned, perfectly painted by the master, his eyes mysterious as they watched her, the rest of him shadowed. She felt that the whole universe was waiting for something; as if her whole future might be written in the next moment. Nothing outside the circle of light that embraced them had any relevance.

Something she could not name seemed to course between them. Her gaze moved from his shadowed eyes to his hands, and then, drawn by the magnet of his focus, back up to his eyes again. Her breasts rose and fell with her shallow breathing. There was another rhythm, too, under those of heart and breath and feeling: a deeper, mysterious rhythm as of life itself.

In the silence he stepped around her to pick up her scarf. It fell gracefully in his grasp, the gold threads glittering in lamplighted shadow. Caroline’s lips parted in a small, audible breath as he lifted his hands to drape it around her shoulders. His touch was sure but light. His hands did not pause to rest on her bare skin beneath the gauzy silk.

“This way, Miss Langley,” he said, and opened the door.