Читать книгу Sleeping with the Sultan - ALEXANDRA SELLERS - Страница 8

“Look, it’s Reena!”

“She looks so different in real life!”

“What a dress!”

“Wow, she’s practically naked!”

Dana Morningstar paused at the top of the short flight of steps leading down into the bar as the whispers ran in a little ripple around the rapidly filling room.

“Isn’t she wearing anything under it?”

“She’s so beautiful!”

“My dear, you are a ravishingly wanton nun tonight,” said a gravelly, perfectly produced voice at her elbow, and she turned with a smile to greet one of the great theatrical “Sirs” of the old school who had entered just behind her.

“Hello, Sir Henry, how nice to see you.”

“And how lovely to see you, Dana. Who, if I may ask, designed that very dashing frock for you?”

The very dashing frock consisted of a double layer of shimmery, sheer white fabric with a high, straight neckline, wrist-length sleeves, and a long skirt. By a trick of the light playing on the two layers of fabric, it looked opaque, and very demure, but at moments, with certain movements, it became almost fully transparent. Her warm mocha skin glowed through the fabric, and underneath she was wearing only a skin-coloured thong.

Dana smiled and put her hand on the arm Sir Henry offered, stepping down into the bar at his side as people gazed entranced. “Kamila,” she told him in an undervoice. “A new designer launching here in the autumn. She says this dress is going to make her name.”

Dana’s black hair, long and thick, fell like a cloak around her shoulders and down her back. Her makeup was expertly applied to enhance her dark, heavy-lashed eyes and high, strong cheekbones. She wore delicate tan-coloured sandals and carried a tiny bag.

“On anyone but yourself it would be a dismal failure, but she is perfectly right. Every woman in this room will be knocking on her door tomorrow, foolishly hoping to be made to look like you.”

Dana was five foot eleven with a perfect figure, curved and long, with high breasts, athletic legs, and a firm musculature. Her smoky skin usually meant that as an actress she was cast in “ethnic” roles—whether First Nation rebel, exotic outworlder, or Arab princess. Or her current soap role—Reena, the bitchy, repressed, high-flying South Asian lawyer.

“Would you like some bubbly, Dana?” Sir Henry asked, neatly whisking a glass of champagne from a waiter’s tray and offering it to her. “Not for me, dear boy, my heart, you know,” he added, waving one pale hand with studied elegance. “Do you think you could find me a scotch?—double, no water.”

“Oh, yes, Sir John! Of course!” said the waiter, enthusiastically if inaccurately, and headed for the long bar, behind which men and women in black and white bustled to provide for the guests of the charity function.

“They are so young these days,” Sir Henry complained mildly. “They don’t show my Lear in the schools anymore, of course.”

“I don’t think they teach King Lear at all,” Dana sympathized. “Not accessible enough, Shakespeare.”

A man was staring at her from across the room. The whole room was manoeuvring, overtly or covertly, to get a look at the dress; she had been prepared for that. But this man was different. He looked disapproving. Dana flicked a careless eyebrow at him and turned her attention back to “the best Lear the world has seen this century.”

“Ah, the new barbarians,” he was saying. “And why are you here tonight, my dear, giving a view of your body to the masses? A particular interest in Bagestani Drought Relief, or merely part of the general celebrity sweep? I understand they’ve pulled out all the stops for this one.” He glanced around the crowd with studied disdain. His mouth worked thoughtfully. “Too far, perhaps.”

She laughed, as she was meant to. “A little of both. They did scoop the cast of Brick Lane, but I would probably have been targeted anyway—I’m half Bagestani, Sir Henry.”

She glanced at the disapproving man again: he had a dark intensity that made him magnetic. She was annoyed by the compulsion, but couldn’t resist it. For a moment their eyes met. Then, dismissing her, he dropped his gaze to someone who was speaking to him.

Who the hell did he think he was? Dana looked him over. He was wearing a dark red, matte silk, Eastern-cut jacket over ivory silk shalwar trousers, and some pretty impressive jewellery, as well as what looked like war medals. He also seemed to have a chain of office. Although by his looks he might be a Bagestani, no representative of the Ghasib regime would be at this function.

“Really?” Sir Henry replied, his eyebrows raised. “I was under the impression that you were Ojibwa—was that just studio publicity?”

Dana had played the small part of a First Nation woman brought to England from Canada during the early nineteenth century in a film in which Sir Henry had had the starring role.

“My mother’s Ojibwa, my father Bagestani,” she said shortly. She glanced around the room. People were still nudging each other and talking about her dress, but the dark man was now apparently unaware of her existence. “Usually they play up whatever side suits the publicity machine.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, eyeing her up and down. “Astonishing how beautifully some races mix. Makes one wonder why the great prejudice grew up against interracial marriage. I am sure we—”

“Sir Henry,” Dana said abruptly, “that tall man over there was looking at you. Do you know him?”

He turned his head absently. “If a man was looking this way, my dear, and I am sure they all are, he—oh, good evening, Dickie,” he interrupted himself as an actor of his generation accosted him. “Still kicking, then. Do you know Dana Morningstar?”

On Dana’s other side a woman took advantage of the interruption to approach her and claim her attention.

“I have to confess that I watch Brick Lane regularly! And I think the show is going to be absolutely destroyed without Reena. I love you in that—you are so cool and bitchy, you never let Jonathan get away with it!” she enthused. “Everyone I know was so upset to hear you were being written out!”

Dana smiled with the charm that always made people comment on how different she was from bitchy Reena, and murmured politely.

“No, it’s absolutely true! You make that show!” the woman overrode her, much more interested in her own voice than her idol’s. “Do you know yet how it’s going to happen to Reena? Is it going to be murder or anything like that?”

Dana had done her final day of filming last week, but—“I’m sworn to secrecy, I’m afraid,” she apologized with a smile.

She heard much more in the same vein as the next hour progressed. For an hour the celebrities, major and minor, were rubbing shoulders in the bar with the paying guests, who had parted with substantial sums of money for the privilege, and would be parted from more during the course of the evening.

A magazine photographer’s assistant was working his way through the crowd asking the celebrities, two at a time, to go and pose for shots under the special lighting that had been set up in one corner. A photographer from a newspaper was walking around the room taking candid shots.

Sometimes she thought she felt the man’s gaze brushing her again, but when she glanced over she never caught him looking her way. Maybe she was imagining it. She irritably rejected the idea as soon as she thought of it—he was the last man in the world she would obsess over. She knew what he was like without exchanging one word with him.

She was sure that if she asked anyone about him he would notice, and she was determined not to give him the satisfaction. He was certainly on the “celebrity” side: women were drooling over him with the special fixity reserved for men who are rich, handsome, young and famous all together.

Not that he was all that handsome, Dana told herself critically, watching as he dutifully took his turn posing for the photographer. His face was composed of angles too strong and stern for handsomeness. There was too much strength in the set of his jaw, the discipline of the wide mouth. He had square, thick black eyebrows over black eyes that seemed to set icy fire to whatever they touched. He was slim and spare, his shoulders square under his jacket. There seemed to be a weight of responsibility on him, and she could only guess his age at between twenty-five and forty.

She didn’t like him. She didn’t like him at all.

But it occurred to her that she always knew exactly where he was in the room. Of course it was only because she was the tallest woman in the room and he was at least six-two, but still…

“Ladies and gentlemen, in a moment we’ll be moving into the ballroom,” one of the organizers announced, and she surfaced and realized that she had spent the past five minutes in a daze, with no idea what she had said or what had been said to her. “If you don’t yet know your table, please check the charts by the entrance.”

“Have you found yours yet, Dana?”

Jenny, the actress who played her roommate, Desirée, on the show, was at her elbow.

“Clueless,” Dana replied cheerfully, as they kissed cheeks.

“I’m sure you’ll be at Table G with the rest of us.” The two women linked arms and moved towards the crowd around the chart beside the wide entrance to the ballroom.

“That dress is going to cause a riot, Dana,” Jenny murmured, completely without envy. She was Dana’s opposite in nearly every physical feature—she was a curly-headed blond, with a round, cheerful, motherly face and a short dumpy shape. But she was fun, loyal and a good friend, as well as an excellent actress, and she never seemed to envy anyone anything.

Dana laughed. “Is it shocking?”

“You have no idea, my pet! You turn your head or lift an arm and suddenly you’re naked! I’ve seen more than one spilled drink!”

“Well, that’s the idea,” Dana observed. “It’s supposed to get me noticed.”

“And who is that broody alpha male you’re carefully not exchanging glances with?”

Dana’s cheeks got warm. “Who do you mean?”

Jenny laughed and squeezed her arm. “You know very well who I mean. First he looks at you, then you look at him, and you’re both careful never to be caught at it. Darling, have you had a complicated affair with a handsome sheikh and managed to keep it secret?”

Dana jerked upright. “I don’t even know his name, and I certainly don’t want to learn it! Where did you get the idea I knew him?”

“Oh…just a certain sizzle in the air,” Jenny said, mock dreamily. “The air between you is distorted, sort of like when heat is rising over the desert sands….”

A man with a clipboard stopped them before Dana could argue.

“It’s quite all right, I can check for you, Miss Morningstar!” he said, so obviously smitten that Jenny laughed. He riffled through his pages. “Table D,” he announced. “That’s about five o’clock on the inner circle if you take the dais as twelve.”

This cryptic comment made sense a few moments later when they moved into the ballroom. Against the centre of the back wall was a raised octagonal dais where a Middle Eastern ensemble, including the traditional tar, setar, nay and santur, as well as zither and violin, was tuning up. Around the dais was a polished octagonal dance floor, and around that were arranged tiers of round tables, each seating eight people.

The band began playing as the guests entered and spread out to find their tables—a haunting melody that Dana recognized. It was a traditional Bagestani song called Aina al Warda?—“Where is the Rose?”—which had taken on a special resonance for the expatriate Bagestanis, all so bitterly opposed to Ghasib’s terrible regime. Her father had played it to Dana and her sister throughout her childhood.

“I wonder why you’re not at Table G with the rest of us?” Jenny moaned after accompanying her to Table D and discovering, contrary to both inclination and expectation, that the man with the clipboard was right.

“It’s a bore,” Dana agreed, but there wasn’t going to be a seating change now.

“Who are you with, then?” Jenny bent to the cards on either side of Dana’s own. The band was giving Aina al Warda? all it had, and as people around the room sank into their seats, Dana saw another stern dark man looking her way. He was dressed in the Western style, black tie, and looked as though he was wondering whether to cross over to her.

Her father.

Where is the Rose?

When will I see her?

The nightingale asks after his beloved….

She stared at him. Well, this put a whole new complexion on the fund-raising evening. This was no mere Drought Relief Campaign. Her father would not have come to any ordinary charity fund-raiser for Bagestan. He was convinced that, in spite of everyone’s best efforts, most of the money raised in good faith in the West went straight into President Ghasib’s own coffers and the poor scarcely saw a penny.

Dana took a fresh look around at the other guests. They were top bracket; the tickets to this affair had been very pricey. Only about half of them were the usual run of charity supporters and celebrity hunters, though.

The other half were wealthy, educated Bagestani expats—mostly those of a certain age who had been rich enough to get out of the country in sixty-nine, but sprinkled with a few who had come as refugees in the years since and made good. The next generation, the foreign-born sons and daughters like herself, were also well represented.

The women were mostly in traditional Bagestani dress of beautifully decorated shalwar kamees and trailing gold-embroidered scarf, and a number of the older men were in immaculate white djellabas. More than one of them, hearing that music, now had eyes that were brighter for tears.

Her father was still looking at her. She wondered if he had seen her dress. She hoped so. She was suddenly filled with a dry, dead fury, as if her father had somehow manipulated her presence here. Logic told her that was impossible.

“Hellooo,” Jenny carolled.

Dana surfaced, nodded a cool acknowledgement to her father and turned away. “Sorry, what did you say?”

“Sir John Cross,” Jenny repeated, pointing to the card at the place setting to one side of Dana’s. “Who’s he?”

“A diplomat, I think. Or, he was.” She had a vague memory of her father’s voice. “Wasn’t he the British Ambassador to Bagestan at the time of the coup?”

“Search me!” Jenny shrugged. “Poor Dana! And Sheikh Ashraf Durran,” she read from the card on her other side. “One of those boring old farts in white skirts, I bet. My poor darling, it’s going to be a long night for you.”

“It is going to be a very successful fund-raising night,” Dana told her with dry sarcasm, unable to hold down her irritation.

“Is it? How do you know?” Jenny asked with a smile. She wasn’t big on world affairs, Dana reminded herself. And her interest in such things as mind manipulation techniques began and ended with using her disarming, housewifely smile in fabric softener commercials.

“Because it may say Drought Relief on the banners, but the real story behind this little event is Line Our Pockets with Gold and One Day We’ll Restore the Monarchy in Bagestan!” she told Jenny through her teeth. “God, these people make me sick!”

Jenny blinked. “What do—”

“Listen to that music! They’re deliberately playing on everyone’s insane hopes for Ghasib to be overthrown and a new sultan to come riding in on his white horse and turn back the clock to the Golden Age! It’s not going to happen, but they will get a fortune from the deluded tonight! It’s unspeakable!”

Jenny was looking at her in surprise. Dana wasn’t often like this, except when she was on the set playing the overexcitable Reena.

“But, Dana, wouldn’t you rather see Ghasib kicked out? Wouldn’t it be a good thing if one of the al Whatsit princes could be found and restored to the throne?”

“You’ve been reading the Sunday papers, Jenny. It’s nothing but ink and hot air. There are no al Jawadi princes! Ghasib had them all assassinated years ago. If anybody kicks Ghasib out, it is going to be the Islamic militants, and that’s just going to be a case of out of the frying pan, isn’t it?”

“But what about that one in Hello! magazine a couple of weeks back, who had amnesia? He was so gorgeous, too. He’s a grandson of the old sultan, and it said—”

“Najib al Makhtoum is not a viable candidate for the throne, even if he is who they say he is, which I doubt. They are all completely deluded, these people, and somebody is making sure they stay deluded.” She belatedly noticed the alarm in Jenny’s eyes, heaved a sigh and smiled.

“Sorry, Jen, but I got this stuff all my life from my father, and I hate it. You’re right, they are a bunch of boring old farts who want their palaces and oil rigs back and can’t accept that it isn’t going to happen. God, I wish I hadn’t come! It might be tolerable if I were sitting with you and the others. This way—” she gestured at the label that read Sheikh Ashraf Durran “—in addition to everything else, I’ll have to listen to a whole lot of demented ravings about how we’ve got Ghasib on the ropes at last.”

“Never mind,” Jenny murmured mock-placatingly, “you can always marry him. He’s probably got lots of money, and that’s what really matters.”

“Not if he were the last sheikh on the planet!” Dana vowed.

Jenny laughed, leaned to kiss Dana’s cheek again and moved off. Dana turned her head—and found herself looking at the harsh-faced stranger from a distance of a few feet. By the look on his face, not only was he an al Jawadi supporter, he had overheard every word of their conversation.