Читать книгу Summer Sheikhs - Эбби Грин, Marguerite Kaye - Страница 15

THE servant led her through the palace to the foot of an external staircase running up to a large terrace backed by the dome, and left her. Desi went slowly up, gazing entranced as the vista was slowly revealed.

The sun was just disappearing behind the horizon of deep-purple desert on the right, pulling a cloak of fiery, furnace-red sky after it; to the left the last of its rays caught the mountain tops with liquid gold. Below and beyond the palace the city was lighting up, a swathe of glittering jewels cut in two by the darkness of the great river that carved its way from the mountains to the sea. As the sun’s last light faded, the tree-lined river began to reflect the myriad lights from its banks.

Desi drew a long breath as she arrived at the top and sighed it out. Magic.

Salah was standing halfway along the terrace, looking out over the city. He turned, and at once she was locked by his gaze. Desi put one foot in front of the other and, as helpless as if a magnet were drawing her, slowly moved towards where he waited.

Her hair was loose, he saw, caressing shoulders and neck; her skin was without a flaw. She was wearing seablue silk that turned her chameleon eyes to turquoise: a clingy slip top bared the smooth skin of her throat and the shadow between her breasts; flowing trousers caressed the tantalizing shape of hip, thigh and leg when she moved; a matching jacket, the collar standing up under her chin, showed purple and gold embroidery. Gold and amethyst glinted against her neck and ears. Her sandals were delicate straps of gold across her insteps.

But it was her eyes where the true beauty resided—that wide level gaze that once had shown him all the truth of her soul, the gentle sweep of mobile eyebrows under a broad, pale forehead. The curve of her cheeks like wind-sculpted sand, and the mouth—wide, full, sensuous. Her face had always held this contradiction, as if her eyes held no awareness of the sensuality promised by her mouth and body.

Long ago, he had awakened something else in that gaze. Joy, sensual gratitude and love had mixed in a gaze for him and him alone. He had believed he was the only one to see it.

Falsely, as it happened, for it was exploited by every advertiser she posed for. But men had been fools before him, and would be fools when he was dust.

And still in ten long years he had not seen beauty to match it. But he would not fall victim to that beauty again. He had been weak earlier, but he would be that much more on his guard now.

Her gaze was guarded, her beauty remote. But something more: in her eyes was more than a simple veiling of the inner. She was lying to him.

What lie? Well, he would find out.

‘Good evening, Desi,’ he said.

He had dispensed with the keffiyeh and the oil sheikh’s robes. Now he was wearing flowing cream cotton trousers and a knee-length shirt, the outfit called shalwar kamees. The shirt was open at the neck and rolled up at the wrists, leaving his dark throat and his forearms bare. His head, too, was bare, black curls kissed into gold by the setting sun.

Without the keffiyeh, he was less a stranger. She looked up into the harsh face, searching for traces of the fresh-faced boy she had loved, and wondered if he, too, was looking for the awkward, naive girl of ten years ago.

The boy was gone forever. The eyes she remembered could never have looked at her as these eyes did: hard and suspicious, even as they raked her face with a hunger so blatant she shivered.

‘It’s a fabulous view,’ she said, to defuse the sudden tension. But his jaw only tightened. She felt a sudden jolt of heat against her back—his hand, guiding her.

They moved silently along the terrace and into a roof garden. In the centre of the space was a small fountain, its splashing sounds a caress to the ears in the twilight.

He led her to an alcove surrounded by trellis, enclosed in greenery, where a low platform was luxuriantly spread with carpets and pillows. He kicked off his sandals, stepped up onto the platform and sank down on the lush carpet amongst silken pillows.

Lying back against the cushions, dark and arrogant, he suddenly looked like a sultan in a storybook.

She hesitated, without knowing why. With a regal gesture he indicated the cushions opposite him in the little enclosure. Desi slipped off her own sandals, stepped up along the soft carpet and melted down into the luxuriously comfortable cushions opposite him.

‘You are beautiful tonight.’ The words seemed choked, as if they came out in spite of his intentions.

He had said it before. Tonight—and always, he had said then.

‘Mash’allah,’ she said, with a wry half smile. He had taught her the traditional Barakati response to a compliment. Like crossing your fingers, he’d said, you have to avert the evil eye.

His eyes darkened, suddenly, like a cat’s, but his lips tightened, as if the fact that she used the expression gave him pleasure but he would not allow himself to feel it.

Beyond the trellis and greenery, sky and sunset created a backdrop of magnificence. Intimacy closed around them like a velvet paw, trapping them for the gods’ amusement.

The desert was deep purple now in the darkness. A soft breeze lifted her hair as she gazed at the scene, tossed it lightly across her face. Shaking it back, Desi sighed in pure delight. A feeling of peace invaded her bones, and she searched for something innocuous to say. She did not want to fight with him.

‘This must be the most unusual dining room in the world.’

‘Princess Jana designed it for private use. It is Omar’s favourite retreat. No state business is ever conducted here.’

‘I hope food is coming soon! I haven’t eaten since London, and I’m ravenous.’

‘I apologize. Fatima should have offered you lunch.’

‘She did. I wasn’t hungry. Then.’

‘And you didn’t eat on the plane?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t usually.’

There was a curious amplified clicking noise, and then down in the city the haunting voice of the muezzin began to recite the call to prayer. The reciter’s deep tones, half singing, half chanting, poured out over the city, echoing in the distance. They sat in silence, listening, trying not to remember how, long ago, he had lovingly described this sound to her…

A waiter came, spread a tablecloth on the platform between them and set down a couple of jugs and four goblets. He half filled the goblets and disappeared again.

Allahu akhbar. Allahu akhbar. Hayya alas salaat.

‘What is he saying?’

‘God is great. Come to prayer,’ Salah translated softly.

‘Curious to hear so many echoes! Does the desert do that?’

‘Echoes?’ A smile twitched one corner of his mouth and he shook his head. ‘Each mosque has its own muezzin, so that no one lives beyond reach of the call. Up here we hear them all.’

The last note sounded as darkness covered the sky. Desi leaned back and looked up through the tracery of trellis and leaves at the stars just beginning to appear.

‘This is magic,’ she breathed again, and then, with a little frown, ‘It reminds me of somewhere! What is it? That sky is pure velvet. I can’t think when I last saw such a—Oh!’

Heat burned up her chest and into her face like a flash fire, and she instinctively jerked upright.

‘What is it?’ Salah said.

‘Nothing.’ She coughed unconvincingly. ‘Something in my throat.’

‘You are reminded of something? A place? A time?’

‘No, not really.’ She coughed again and reached for a glass.

‘Yes,’ he said harshly, as all his intentions for the evening went up in smoke. ‘The island. I, too, Desi. The first time I sat here under the trellis at night I remembered those nights under the dock. We looked up at stars glowing with endless beauty, telling us it was the right time, the right place, the right one.’

Desi gazed at him, frozen, the glass halfway to her mouth.

‘You remember, Desi?’

‘Do I?’ she asked bitterly. Tears were ripping at the back of her throat, but she was damned if she would give him that victory.

‘Yes!’ he said fiercely. His face was shadowed in the candlelight, his eyes hidden, his mouth hard. ‘Yes, you know how our love was! Tell me! I want to know that you remember.’

‘Why, since you forgot?’

‘I thought the stars would die before my love for you. I told you that, didn’t I? When each of those stars is a blackened lump, my love will still be burning for you. Isn’t that what I told you?’

Her throat closed tight. She set the glass down again without drinking. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said, her eyes shadowed and grey.

‘Ah, that is well. Because I was wrong. My love did not last.’

‘No kidding. And are you proud of that fact? I’ve always wondered.’

‘Proud?’ His eyes flashed. ‘Why should I be proud? I was shamed, for you and for me. My love did not die honourably, like a star, consuming itself in its own burning. You know how it died.’

‘Your love died because it was fantasy from day one. The stars going out? It wouldn’t have withstood a hiccup.’

The waiter appeared out of the night, shocking them both into silence, and set down a basket of bread and another filled with sprigs of greenery before disappearing again.

‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘they will bring us the foods I told you of, in those starry nights when we lived a dream.’

She closed her eyes and breathed for calm as memory smote her. ‘Why?’

‘Because it was a promise. A man keeps his promises,’ he said. ‘Even ten years too late.’

A kiss with every mouthful.

She had not expected this. Of all the reactions she might have imagined in Salah, the last would have been that he would actually want to bed her. Flames burst into life in her stomach. No. No.

‘Just so long as you don’t expect me to keep mine,’ she said grimly.

He smiled. ‘But I know well that you do not keep your promises, Desi. Who knows better than I? That other one you promised to marry and then did not?’

The bitter memory was bile in her throat. ‘I changed my mind there.’

‘Yes,’ he said with emphasis. ‘You changed your mind.’

Why was he doing this? What did he want? She was miles from understanding him. For years she had waited for his call, hoping against hope. Until her love died and nothing was left but dust and ashes. He must know that. The choice had been his.

‘And you didn’t, I suppose?’

He stared at her for a long, electric moment during which his eyes seemed to pierce her soul. A hard, angry gaze that was nothing like the boy she had loved. Then he tore off a bit of bread, plucked up a sprig of the greenery, wrapped it expertly in the bread, and held it out to her.

‘This I told you of. Sabzi-o-naan. This is traditional in the mountains.’

Desi took it and put it into her mouth. The pungent taste of a herb she didn’t recognize exploded in her mouth and nostrils, sweet and fresh, and she made an involuntary noise of surprise.

His eyelids dropped to hide his eyes for a moment, then his dark gaze burned her. ‘I taught you to make that sound,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I thought it would be the music of all the rest of my life.’

Heat rushed through her at his words, tearing at defences she now saw were pitifully weak. ‘Stop this,’ she said.

He reached for the herbs again, pulling off a sprig that he put into his own mouth.

‘Stop?’ He handed her another little bouquet of naan-wrapped herb. ‘How, stop? You are here in my country, where you promised to come. Now I keep my side of the bargain. I promised you would delight in these herbs. Do you?’

She took it from him again, and put it in her mouth, because there was nothing else to do. Not even in her nightmares had she imagined such ferocity as this.

‘Very nice,’ she said woodenly.

‘The freshness in your mouth. I told you then that I would kiss you after every bite.’ Her lips parted in a little gasp. ‘A kiss with every mouthful. You remember, Desi? Shall I keep that part of the promise, even though ten years have passed?’

‘No, I don’t,’ she said woodenly, and ‘No,’ again.

‘No?’ he said. She couldn’t see his eyes. ‘That is not what you came for, my kiss? But then, what did you come here for, Desi? Why do you come to my country, to the heart of my family, if not for this?’

He offered her another little twist of bread and herb, but she shook her head and reached into the basket herself.

‘Why did you get involved?’ she countered. ‘There was no need!’

‘But yes!’ He lifted a palm. ‘My father was determined to allow you to visit. The rest followed.’

‘He said he would arrange a guide. Why should it be you?’

‘Who else? You know what I owe your family—so many years of hospitality! You know that such hospitality must be reciprocated.’ A fleeting instinct told her there was something else here, but she was too bombarded to be able to pin it down. ‘So, Desi, I say to you that you knew your guide would be me. Our meeting was inevitable. And I ask again, why are you here? What do you want from me?’

‘I want nothing from you, Salah.’ She opened her mouth to tell him that she would hire someone else to be her guide, thought of Sami, and closed it again. He was right, after all. This was all according to plan. He was only mistaken in whose plan it was.

‘Why do you lie? What you come for is no shame. A woman has a right to experience pleasure. If her Western lover can’t give it to her, she must look for one who does.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she countered. ‘But believe me when I say I really don’t need to search so far afield.’

He lifted his hands. ‘How can I believe it, when you are here?’

A puff of irritated laughter escaped her.

‘And even if I did, you are the very last person I’d come to.’

‘No,’ he said, with such certainty she almost believed he could read her mind.

‘Trust me, Salah,’ she said. ‘You are imagining this. Every part of what you imagine is the product of your own fantasy. I am not remotely interested in reviving old times with you.’

He laughed and before she could stop him, clasped her wrist. She felt her pulse hammering against his thumb. She thought he was going to pull her against him again, it would be so easy, but abruptly he let go.

‘It is in your blood. In every part of you. As in me,’ he said, with a kind of angry self-contempt. Her heart kicked.

He waved a sultan’s wave and a waiter came from nowhere and cleared the little baskets away.

Now there was nothing but space between them. He lay resting on one elbow, looking at her. He didn’t move, but he seemed to come closer. Drawing back was agonizing to her, an iron filing trying to move out of the magnet’s powerful field.

‘Shall we make love here, Desi, as we did under the dock?’

‘Don’t be—’

‘I can tell them to go. We will blow out the candles. There will be only you and me and the stars.’

‘And your conscience.’ She felt desperate, grasping at anything that would keep him away. ‘Wouldn’t that get in the way?’

‘My conscience?’

‘Aren’t you engaged to Sami?’ she said.