Читать книгу Penny Jordan Tribute Collection - Пенни Джордан, Penny Jordan - Страница 22

MISERABLY Petra pushed her uneaten breakfast away and focused determinedly on the brilliantly sunlit scene beyond the windows of the hotel’s breakfast room.

She had decided to eat here this morning rather than on her own in her room, primarily because she had hoped that the busyness of having other people around her would take her mind off the events of the previous evening—and Blaize.

Blaize! Every time she thought about him—which was far, far too often for her own peace of mind, she was swamped by opposing feelings of longing and angry self-contempt, plus a sense of bewilderment and disbelief that she could have ever got herself in such a situation. How could she possibly want him?

Petra frowned as she glanced from the informal breakfast dining area into the hotel foyer, which this morning seemed to be filled with far more uniformed and slightly on edge-looking members of staff than she could remember seeing there before.

The waiter had come to clear away her virtually untouched breakfast, and to spend time before going to meet her aunt Petra walked over to study the board outside a small private office, advertising the trips organised by the hotel. One in particular caught her eye, and she read the details of it a second and then a third time.

An escorted drive into the desert, plus an overnight stay at an exclusive oasis resort where it was possible to experience the wonder and majesty of the desert at first hand! The desert… Quickly, before she could change her mind, Petra went into the office, emerging ten minutes later having made herself a booking. A full night away from Blaize should surely give her time to assess the damage her physical reaction to him was having on her moral beliefs and get herself back in balance again—give her some ‘time out’.

As she walked towards the foyer a subtle voice whispered inside her head that there was an even more reckless and dangerous way of stopping a conflagration in its tracks: namely fighting fire with fire. But by using what? Her own sexual need to destroy itself? As in not just giving in to it but actively encouraging it, fanning it into an inferno that would turn and destroy itself?

There was just enough time for her to go to her suite and tidy up before meeting her aunt. Petra smiled at the nervous-looking group of uniformed staff hovering close to the private lift that went to the penthouse suite.

‘Everyone looks very busy today,’ she commented.

One of the uniformed men rolled his eyes and explained in a semi-hushed whisper. ‘There is a meeting upstairs of the hotel owners.’

The hotel owners. Petra’s heart did a nervous little shimmy. Did that mean that Rashid had returned? And if he had how long would it be before he sought her out?

‘Mmm… it smells heavenly,’ Petra acknowledged with a smile as she sniffed the golden nugget of frankincense her aunt was holding out to her. They were in the spice market, where her aunt had haggled determinedly and very professionally for some spices before picking up the frankincense and offering it to Petra to smell. A little wonderingly now, Petra studied the nugget in her hand.

There was something really awesome about standing here in the new millennium handling something which had been familiar to people from civilisations so ancient it was barely possible to comprehend the time that separated them. There was something about this land that did that to a person, Petra recognised as she handed the nugget back to the robed vendor, nodding her head in agreement as her aunt suggested a cooling glass of pressed fruit juice.

‘I have some good news for you.’

Petra saw that her aunt was beaming, as she handed Petra her drink.

‘Your grandfather is feeling much better and he has asked me to invite you to visit him this afternoon.’

Petra almost spilled her drink. Was it merely a coincidence that her grandfather should invite her to visit him at the same time as Sheikh Rashid had returned to Zuran? Her body stiffened defensively.

‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I… I have other plans.’ Petra was proud of the way she managed to keep her voice so calm and cool, even though she was unable to either meet her aunt’s eyes or prevent herself from turning her glass round and round in her hands.

She could sense from the quality of silence that her response was not the one her aunt had been expecting, and immediately she felt guilty and uncomfortable. The last thing she wanted to do was upset or offend her aunt, who had been unstintingly kind to her—but she knew just what her grandfather’s real plans for her were, Petra firmly reminded herself.

Her aunt was smiling, but Petra could see that her smile was a little strained.

‘Your grandfather will be disappointed, Petra,’ her aunt told her quietly. ‘He has been looking forward to meeting you, but of course if you are busy…’

‘I… I have arranged to take a trip into the desert tomorrow,’ Petra heard herself explaining, almost defensively, ‘and there are things I need to do beforehand…’

A little gravely her aunt inclined her head in acknowledgement of Petra’s explanation.

Her aunt insisted on accompanying Petra back to her hotel, but once there refused Petra’s suggestion of a cup of coffee.

Her aunt was on the verge of stepping into the taxi the concierge had summoned for her when, on some instinct she couldn’t begin to understand, Petra suddenly hurried after her, telling her huskily, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I… I will come and see my grandfather…’

Petra sank her teeth into her bottom lip, mortified by her own weakness as her aunt beamed her approval and gave her a warm hug.

‘I know this cannot be easy for you, Petra, but I promise you your grandfather is not an ogre. He has your best interests at heart.’

A tiny little trickle of warning ran down Petra’s spine as she absorbed her aunt’s unwittingly ominous words. But it was too late for her to recall her change of mind now.

‘Your grandfather rests after lunch, but I shall arrange for a car to collect you and bring you to the villa to see him. The driver will pick you up here at four thirty, if that is convenient?’

There was nothing Petra could do other than nod her head.

She had been half expecting that Blaize would try to make contact with her—after all she had as yet still not paid him anything for his services—but there were no messages waiting for her, and no Blaize either!

Petra tried to tell herself that the lurching sensation inside her chest was simply because she was anxious to discuss the day’s developments with him—on a purely business basis, of course—and to determine what course of action should follow. It was only natural, surely, that she should feel both anxiety and a sense of urgency now that Sheikh Rashid had returned. And as for last night—well, what was a kiss, after all? If she had blown both it and her reaction to it a little out of proportion, only she knew it! She wasn’t so naïve as to deceive herself that kissing her had meant anything special to Blaize.

So why hadn’t he been in touch with her? And why hadn’t she insisted on him furnishing her with a means of getting in touch with him?

It was gone two o’clock, but despite the fact that she had not been able to eat her breakfast she did not feel hungry. Her stomach was churning in apprehensive anticipation of her coming meeting with her grandfather, and her tension was turned up an unpleasant few notches by the added anxiety of Rashid’s return and the lack of contact from Blaize.

It was time for her to get changed, ready for her meeting with her grandfather. Petra hesitated as she surveyed the contents of her wardrobe. The linen dress and jacket would be a good choice, modest but smart, or perhaps the cool chambray… or… Her hand trembled slightly as she removed a plain dark trouser suit from the cupboard. Simply cut in, a matt black fabric it was an outfit that would always be very special to her. It was the suit her mother had bought her just weeks before her death—a good luck present to Petra for her pre-university interviews.

Instead of wearing it for her interviews, Petra had actually worn it for her parents’ funeral. But whenever she touched the soft fabric it wasn’t that bleak, shocking day she remembered, but the teasing love in her mother’s eyes as she had marched her into the boutique and told her that she was going to buy her a present—the happiness and pride in her smile as she’d insisted that Petra parade in front of her in virtually every suit in the shop before she had finally decreed that this particular one was the right one.

This suit held her very last physical memory of her mother’s touch and her mother’s love, and sometimes Petra would almost swear she could even smell her mother’s scent on it—not the rich Eastern perfume that had always been so much a part of her, but her scent, her essence.

Sharp tears pricked Petra’s eyes. Her mother might not be here with her now, but in wearing this suit Petra somehow felt that she was taking a part of her at least with her—that they were both together, confronting the man who had caused her so much pain.

The suit still fitted, and in fact if anything was perhaps slightly loose on her, Petra acknowledged as she studied her reflection in the mirror.

It was almost half past four. Time to go down to the foyer.

Her business-like appearance attracted several discreet looks as she made her way to the exit. Once again a red carpet was very much in evidence, leading to where several huge shiny black limousines were waiting, flags flying.

Petra studied them with discreet curiosity as she waited for her own transport to arrive, but her interest in the limousines and their potential occupants was forgotten as a sleek saloon car pulled up in front of her and her cousin Saud got out of the front passenger seat, grinning from ear to ear as he hurried towards her.

As she hugged him, Petra was vaguely aware of a sudden stir amongst the limousine chauffeurs, and the emergence of a group of immaculately robed men from the private entrance. But it was Saud who stopped to gaze at the group, grabbing hold of her arm as he told her in an excited voice, ‘There’s Rashid—with his great-uncle.’

‘What? Where?’ Her heartbeat had gone into overdrive, but as Petra craned her neck to look in the direction Saud was pointing the last of the robed men was already getting into the waiting limousine.

‘Have you met him yet?’ Saud demanded as the cars pulled away ‘He’s cool, isn’t he…?’

Petra suppressed her grim look. It was becoming plain to her that her young cousin hero-worshipped her proposed suitor.

‘No, I haven’t,’ she answered him, getting into the waiting car. But as they drove away from the hotel a sudden thought struck her. ‘So, was Rashid wearing robes?’

‘Yes that’s right,’ Saud confirmed.

‘Despite his Western upbringing?’

Saud looked baffled. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, then smiled. ‘Oh, I see! Rashid’s father and his uncle—who is a member of our Royal Family—were very, very close. Rashid’s great-uncle has acted as a… a sponsor to Rashid since his parents’ death—they were killed when their plane crashed in the desert. I do not remember, since I was not even born then and Rashid himself was only young, but I have heard my father and my grandfather talk of it. Rashid was away in England at the time, at school, but his great-uncle welcomed him into his own family as though Rashid were his son. It is a great honour to our family that his great-uncle favours Rashid’s marriage to you. It is just as well that you are a modest woman though, cousin, because Rashid does not approve of the behaviour of some of the tourists who come here to Zuran,’ Saud told her.

‘Oh, doesn’t he?’ She demanded with dangerous softness. ‘And what about his own behaviour? Is that—’

‘Rashid is a very moral man—everyone who knows him knows that. He has very strong values. Zara, my friend and second cousin, says that she feels embarrassed for her own sex when she sees the way that women pursue him. He is very rich, you know, and when they come to the hotel complex and see him they try to attract his attention. But he is not interested in them. Zara says that this is because…’ He paused with a self-conscious look in Petra’s direction, but she was too infuriated by his naïve revelations to pay much attention.

‘Rashid is a very proud man and he would never permit himself or anyone connected with him to do anything to damage the name of his family,’ Saud continued solemnly.

At any other time Saud’s youthful fervour and seriousness would have brought an amused and tender smile to Petra’s lips, but right now his innocent declaration had really got her back up and reinforced her fast-growing animosity to this as yet unmet man, who had patronisingly deigned to consider her as a potential wife.

Well, he was going to discover in no uncertain terms, and hopefully very soon, that she was exactly the type of woman he most despised!

In fact, Petra reflected grimly, the more she heard about Sheikh Rashid the more she knew that there was no way she could ever want to marry him!

They had reached the family villa now, and Petra held her breath a little as they drove through the almost fortress-like entrance into the courtyard that lay beyond it.

Her grandfather insisted on remaining in what had been the family’s original home when Zuran had been a trading port and the family rich merchants—although, as her aunt had explained to her, in recent years Petra’s uncle had persuaded him to add a large modern extension to the villa. In this older part, though, traditional wind towers still decorated the roofline.

The family no longer adopted the traditional custom of separate living quarters for women, as Petra’s mother had told her had been the case when she was a girl, but her aunt quickly explained to Petra, once she had been ushered inside to a cool, elegantly furnished salon, that her grandfather still preferred to keep his own private quarters.

‘Kahrun, his manservant, will take you to him,’ her aunt informed her. ‘He has been very ill, Petra,’ she continued hesitantly, ‘and I would ask that you… make allowances for… for his ways, even though they are not your own. He loved your mother very much, and her death…’ She paused and shook her head whilst Petra forced herself to bite back on her instinctive fierce need to question what her aunt was saying.

A maid arrived with a welcome drink of strong fragrant coffee. Her mother had never lost her love of the drink, and just to smell it reminded Petra so much of her.

Several minutes later, when Petra had refused a second cup, a soft-footed servant arrived and bowed to her, before indicating that she was to follow him.

Her heart thudding but her head held high, Petra did so. They seemed to traverse a maze of corridors before he finally paused outside a heavily carved pair of wooden doors.

The room beyond them was cool and shadowy, its narrow windows overlooking an enclosed garden from which Petra could hear the sound of water so beloved by desert people. The air inside the room smelled of spices—the frankincense she had breathed in this morning, and sandalwood, bringing back to her vivid memories of the small box in which her mother had kept her most precious memories of her lost home and family.

As her emotions momentarily blurred her vision it was impossible for Petra to fully make out the features of the man reclining on the divan several feet away from her.

She could hear him, though, as he commanded, ‘Come closer to me so that I may see you. My doctor has forbidden me to overtire myself and so I must lie on this wretched divan on pain of incurring his displeasure.’

Petra heard the small snort of derisive laughter that accompanied the complaint as she blinked away her emotional reaction.

Her mother had described her father in terms that had conjured up for Petra a mental vision of a man who was cruelly strong and stubborn—a man who had overwhelmed and overpowered her mother emotionally—and now that her vision was clearing she had expected to see all those things reflected in him now. But the man in front of her looked unexpectedly frail. One long-fingered hand lay on top of the richly embroidered coverlet, and Petra could see in his profile the pride her mother had described to her so often. But in the dark eyes whose scrutiny seemed to search her face with avid hunger she could see nothing of the rejection and anger that had hurt her mother so badly.

‘I don’t look very much like my mother,’ Petra told him coolly.

‘You do not need to look like her. You are of her, and that is enough. Child of my child! Blood of my blood! I have waited a very long time for you to come here to me, Petra. Sometimes I have feared that you would not come in time, and that I would never know you with my outer senses. Although I have always known you with my heart. You are wrong,’ he added abruptly, his voice suddenly stronger. ‘You are very like my Mija. She was the child of my heart—my youngest child. Her mother was my third wife.’

Angrily Petra looked away.

‘You do not approve. No, do not deny it—I can see it in your eyes. How they flash and burn with your emotions! In that too you are like your mother.’

Petra couldn’t trust herself to speak.

It had shocked her, though, to realise how frail he looked. She had known that he would be old—he had been in his forties when her mother had been born—but somehow she had convinced herself that he would still be the strong, fierce man her mother had remembered from her own childhood. Not this obviously elderly white-bearded person whose dark eyes seemed to hold a mixture of compassion and understanding that unsettled her.

Somehow the curt words she had intended to speak to him, the demands she had planned to make to know just why he had wanted to see her, the cynicism and contempt she had planned to let him see, refused to be summoned.

Instead… instead…

As she lifted her hand the gold bangle caught the light. Immediately her grandfather stiffened.

‘You are wearing Mija’s bracelet,’ he whispered. ‘It was my last gift to her… I have a photograph of her here, wearing it.’

To Petra’s astonishment he reached out and picked up a heavy photograph album which Petra hadn’t previously noticed, beckoning her to come closer so that she could see what he wanted to show her.

As his frail fingers lifted the pages Petra felt her heart turn over. Every photograph in the book was of her mother, and some of them…

She could feel her eyes starting to burn with tears as she recognised one of them. It was a photograph of herself as a very new baby with her mother. Her father had had exactly the same picture on his desk, in the room which had been his office when he’d worked at home!

Immediately she put out her hand to stop him from turning any more of the pages, unable to stop herself from demanding in a shaky voice, ‘That photograph—how…?’

‘Your father sent it to me,’ he told her. ‘He sent me many photographs of you, Petra, and many letters, too.’

‘My father!’ This was news to Petra, and it took her several minutes to absorb it properly. It was hard enough to accept that her father could have done such a thing, but what was even harder was knowing that he had kept his actions a secret from her. And from her mother? Petra felt cold. Surely not? What could have motivated him when he had known how badly her mother had been hurt by her father’s actions?

As her glance met that of her grandfather Petra knew that he could see what she was thinking.

A little awkwardly he beckoned her to move closer to him. When she hesitated, he told her, ‘There is a box, over there. I would like you to bring it to me.’

The box in question was sitting on an intricately carved table, its surface smooth and warm to Petra’s touch. She could tell just by looking at it that it was very old.

‘This belonged to my own grandfather,’ her grandfather said as she took it to him.

‘He was a merchant and this box went everywhere with him. He said that it had originally been made for one of the sultans of the great Ottoman Empire.’ He gave a small smile. ‘He was a great story-teller, and many times as a small child I would neglect my lessons to sit at his feet and listen to his tales. Whether they were true or not!’

As he was speaking he was reaching for a heavy bunch of keys, searching through them until he found the one he was looking for.

His fingers, obviously stiffened by old age, struggled to insert the key in the tiny lock and then turn it, but once he had done so and pushed back the lid Petra was aware of the mingled scents of sandalwood and age that rose from its interior.

She couldn’t see what was inside the box, but waited patiently as her grandfather sighed and muttered to himself, obviously sifting through its contents until he had finally found what he wanted.

‘Read this,’ he commanded her brusquely, handing her a worn airmail envelope.

‘It is your father’s letter to me, telling me of your birth.’

Hesitantly Petra took the envelope from him. She wasn’t sure she was ready to read what her father might have written. All her life she had looked up to him as a man of strong sturdy morals and infinite compassion, a man of the highest probity and honour. If she should read something that damaged that belief…

‘Read,’ her grandfather was urging her impatiently.

Taking a deep breath, Petra did so.

The letter was addressed to her grandfather with true diplomatic formality, using his titles.

‘To he who is the father of my beloved wife Mija,

I have the felicitation of informing you that I am now the proud father of the most beautiful baby daughter. I had thought when Mija came into my life that there could be no place in it to love another human being, so great and all-encompassing is my love for her, but I was wrong. I write to you now as one father to another to tell you of the most wonderful, precious gift we have received in Petra’s birth, and to tell you also that we now share common ground—we are both fathers—we have both been granted the unique privilege of being gifted with daughters.

And it is as a father that I write to you begging you to reconsider your decision regarding the exclusion of Mija from your family—for your own sake and not ours. I have made a solemn vow that I shall surround Mija with all the love she will ever need. We have each other and our beautiful daughter and our lives will be filled with love and joy. But what of you? You have turned away your own daughter and denied yourself her love and that of the grandchild she has given you.

I beg you to think of this and to put aside your pride. I know how much it would mean to Mija to have word from you, especially at this time.

Whatever your decision, I have made a vow to my daughter that I shall ensure that you, her grandfather, and the rest of the family are kept informed of her life.

The letter bore her father’s formal signature at its end, but Petra could barely focus on it as the paper trembled in her hand and her eyes stung with tears. It shamed her that she could have doubted her father for so much as a single heartbeat.

As he took the letter from her, returning it to its envelope and replacing it carefully in the box before relocking it, her grandfather said gruffly, ‘Your father was a good man, even though he was not the man I would have chosen for my Mija.’

‘My father was a wonderful, wonderful, very special man,’ Petra corrected him proudly.

Had her mother known what her father had done? If so she had never spoken of it to her, but then neither had her father! Suddenly, despite her private knowledge of her grandfather’s secret purpose in wanting her here in Zuran, she was glad that she had come!

‘He understood my feelings as a father,’ her grandfather acknowledged.

Petra had to close her eyes to conceal the intensity of the emotions that rushed over her.

‘You say that now! You claim to have loved my mother. But you never made any attempt to contact her—to…’ Petra refused to say the word ‘forgive’, because so far as she was concerned her mother was the one who had the right to extend that largesse, not her grandfather! ‘You must have known how much it would have meant to her to hear from you!’

Impossible for her to hold back her feelings—or her pain—any longer. Petra knew that her grandfather must be able to hear it in her voice just as she could herself.

‘When she left you told her that you would never permit her name to be spoken in your hearing ever again. You said that she was dead to you and to her family, and you forbade them to have anything to do with her. You let her die—’

Petra heard herself sobbing like a lost child. ‘You let her die believing that you had stopped loving her! How could you do that?’

As Petra fought for self-control she could see the pain shadowing her grandfather’s eyes, and suddenly it seemed as though he shrunk a little, and looked even older and more fragile than he had done when she had first walked into the room.

‘There is nothing I can say that will ease your pain. No words I can offer you will lighten either your burden—or my own,’ she heard him saying sombrely. ‘It is still too soon. Perhaps in time… But at my age time is no longer either a friend or an ally. I am sorry that we have not been able to make you properly welcome here in your mother’s home, Petra, but now that that old fool my doctor has ceased his unnecessary fussing I shall give instructions that a room is to be prepared for you. We have much to discuss together, you and I.’

Like his desire to see her married to the man of his choice? Petra wondered suspiciously, abruptly back on her guard; he might look frail and sorrowful now, but she couldn’t forget the cunning and deceit which history had already proved him capable of.

And once she was living here beneath his roof she would virtually be a prisoner. With no passport she had no means of leaving the country! Which meant it was imperative that she persisted with her plan to have Rashid refuse to consider her as a wife.

Even if that meant seeing Blaize again and the risk that could entail?

Unable to give herself a truly rational answer, Petra diverted her own thoughts by telling her grandfather, in a cool voice she intended would make him fully aware of her determination to retain her independence, ‘I have made arrangements for an overnight trip into the desert tomorrow, so—’

‘The desert!’ To her surprise, his eyes lit up with pleasure and approval. ‘It is good that you wish to see the land that is so much a part of your heritage. I wish that it was possible for me to go with you! But you shall tell me all about it! I shall inform your hotel that Kahrun will be collecting you to bring you here once you return.’

He was beginning to look tired, but instinctively Petra sensed that his pride would not allow him to admit any weakness. Whatever else she had been lied to about, Petra could see now that so far as his health was concerned he had genuinely been ill. It was there in the greyish tinge to his skin, the vulnerability of his frail frame. An unexpected—and unwanted—emotion filled her: a sense of kinship and closeness, an awareness of the blood tie they shared that she simply had not been prepared for and which it seemed she had no weapons to fight against. He was her grandfather, the man who had given life to the mother she had loved so much, a potential bridge via which she could recapture and relive some of her most precious memories.

Swallowing against the lump in her throat, Petra got up, and as her grandfather reached out his hands to her, Petra placed hers in them.

‘Beloved child of my beloved child,’ he whispered brokenly to her, and then the door opened and Kahrun, his manservant, arrived to escort her back to the hotel.

It was only when she was finally being driven back to her hotel by Kahrun that Petra mentally questioned just why she had not challenged her grandfather with her knowledge of his plans for her. Had the emotions he had displayed been genuine and as overwhelming as they had seemed? Or had he simply been manipulating the situation and her for his own ends? Surely she wasn’t foolish enough to be influenced by her own unwilling acknowledgement of his frailty, a long-ago letter from her father, and a few emotional words?

But there was more to the situation than that! A lot more! In his presence, in the home which had once been her mother’s, Petra had abruptly been forced to recognise and acknowledge a deep subterranean pool of previously hidden emotions.

Her parents’ deaths had forced her to grow up very quickly, to become mature whilst she was still very young, and in many ways had forced her to become her own parent. Her godfather, kind though he was, was a bachelor, a man dedicated to his career, who had had no real idea of the emotional needs of a seventeen-year-old girl. Had she been a different person, Petra knew, she might quite easily have gone off the rails. Her godfather’s lifestyle meant that she had been allowed a considerable amount of unsupervised freedom, and she had been called upon to make decisions about her life and her future that should more properly have been made by someone far more adult. The result of this had been that she’d had to ‘police’ her own behaviour, and to take responsibility for herself, emotionally and morally.

Now, today, in her grandfather’s room, she had suddenly realised just what a heavy burden those responsibilities had been, and how much she had yearned to have someone of her own to carry them for her—to counsel and guide her, to protect her, to love her! How much, in fact, she had needed the family which had been denied to her! And how much a small, weak part of her still did…

That was where her real danger lay, she recognised. It lay in her wanting the approval and acceptance of her ‘family’ so much that she could fall into the trap of allowing herself to exchange her freedom and independence for them!

The weight of her own thoughts was beginning to make her head ache.