Desert Nights. Penny Jordan

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СКАЧАТЬ a manservant came in with coffee cups and an elegant silver coffee pot, pouring the thick, steaming liquid into the fragile cups and handing them round.

      Felicia had brought her gifts downstairs and hidden them under her chair. She had intended to distribute them after the meal when, she hoped, Raschid would retire to his own quarters, but to her annoyance he seemed determined to linger, leaning back in his chair, with a tigerish grace she had never seen in a European, his hair blue-black under the light of the chandelier. She wondered if he had ever sat cross-legged in the tents of his tribe, eating from the communal dish and drinking from the communal cup as Arabian hospitality demanded. In his expensive hand-made silk suit he looked every inch the sophisticated businessman, but she sensed that under the suave façade lurked a man as elemental as the desert which was his natural home.

      While Umm Faisal and Zahra chatted, Felicia’s eyes strayed again and again to the shuttered face of the man seated opposite her. The betrayingly passionate curve of his lower lip caught her attention, as it had done before, and she shivered involuntarily, imagining what it would be like to feel that hard mouth against her own; that warm golden skin next to the creamy paleness of her own.

      A shudder racked her. What on earth was she thinking? In vain she tried to conjure up the protective image of Faisal’s softer features, as though they were a talisman to ward off the potent effect of Raschid’s masculinity. What was wrong with her? she wondered despairingly; Raschid stood for everything she most despised, and yet here she was comparing him to Faisal, and finding the harsh features had somehow insinuated themselves into her memory, superimposed over Faisal’s more gentle image. It was not to be tolerated. In vain she tried to recall Faisal’s warm smile and liquid eyes, but as though he had worked a spell upon her, all she got back was a mirror image of Raschid’s cold grey eyes and derisory smile. Like one in a trance she tried to shake off her tormenting thoughts, dismayed by her momentary awareness of the man seated across from her. Hurriedly she bent down to retrieve her gaily wrapped packages, her colour high.

      ‘I’ve brought you both a little something from England—a small token of my gratitude for your hospitality.’

      Umm Faisal inclined her head graciously, but Zahra was far less inhibited.

      ‘A present?’ she exclaimed with shining eyes. ‘Oh, Felicia, how lovely—but you shouldn’t have.’

      ‘Nothing very exciting, I’m afraid,’ Felicia warned her, remembering the deprecatory words Faisal always used before giving her some shockingly extravagant treat. It was an Arab trait to deprecate their possessions, stemming from the days when to boast of one’s achievements could call down the ‘evil eye’ upon the bragger, and she knew it was still the custom for an Arab to welcome a visitor to his ‘humble’ home, even if that home were a palace.

      A little apprehensively she watched Zahra open her present, but the younger girl’s gasp of pleasure obliterated her fears that it would not be well received. Even Raschid was commanded to admire the contents of the make-up box, although he did so with typical male indulgence for so purely a female delight.

      Umm Faisal’s pleasure was a little more restrained, but genuine none the less, and Felicia was pleased that she had taken the trouble to ask Faisal what sort of perfume his mother preferred.

      ‘It’s gorgeous!’ Zahra exclaimed, sniffing the bottle. ‘It reminds me of the one al-Azir mixed for you the last time we were in Jeddah, Mother—do you remember?’

      ‘I certainly do,’ Raschid interrupted drily. ‘It was extremely expensive.’

      Felicia smiled politely at his little joke, and looked up to find Zahra watching her expectantly.

      ‘Where is Raschid’s present, Felicia? Or are you keeping it from him until he apologises for this afternoon?’ she teased with a smile.

      Felicia felt her colour come and go. How could she say that she had not brought a present for Raschid? She bit her lip and then remembered the paperweight she had bought for Nadia, Faisal’s elder sister.

      ‘It’s upstairs,’ she improvised hurriedly, hating the guilty blush that mantled her cheeks. ‘I wasn’t sure that Raschid would be eating with us.’

      ‘You have forgiven him, then. I knew you would. Do go and get it,’ Zahra urged Felicia, before turning to her mother, her eyes twinkling. ‘Uncle Raschid was unkind to Felicia this afternoon, Mother. She didn’t realise she could have asked him to cash her travellers’ cheques and she had gone into the bank alone!’

      The shocked expression on Umm Faisal’s face told Felicia that Raschid had spoken no less than the truth when he warned her about her behaviour, and she used the diversion created by Zahra’s announcement to excuse herself and slip upstairs to collect the paperweight.

      Fortunately it had been wrapped in a silvery striped paper suitable for either sex, and hating herself for the deceit, she hurried downstairs with the small package. When she had decided against bringing a gift for Faisal’s uncle, she had not bargained for being faced with a situation such as this evening’s!

      As she handed Raschid the small square box her fingers trembled, accidentally brushing his, the brief contact sending alarm bells jangling along her nervous system, her eyes wide and dismayed in her small heart-shaped face. She knew that it was too much to hope that the man thanking her so urbanely for her thoughtfulness had not noticed the small, betraying gesture.

      Nothing escaped those smoky-grey eyes, now sardonic with comprehensive amusement, and Felicia slipped hurriedly back into her chair, wishing that she had waited for a more propitious moment for her present giving.

      ‘Go on, then, open it!’ Zahra commanded her uncle, her eyes on the package. ‘I’m dying to see what it is!’

      ‘Then I had better unwrap it quickly, before Miss Gordon accuses me of further cruelty to my family,’ was Raschid’s cool comment as lean fingers made nonsense of the sealing.

      When the paper fell away to reveal the dark blue leather box, Zahra expelled an impatient sigh.

      ‘Raschid, do hurry—it looks very exciting!’

      In the growing darkness of the Oriental room with its plain white walls and luxurious, richly coloured Persian carpets; its priceless antique furniture with its glowing patina, the pure beauty of the blue-green glass was a poignant reminder for Felicia of the country she had left behind. The glass was Caithness, from Scotland, where craftsmen took a pride in fashioning the heavy paperweights, imprisoning within the depths of the molten glass, small flowers; petals; sea anemones so that their beauty would live for ever. The one Felicia had chosen held a blue-green sea anemone, and it had been one of a limited range and consequently frighteningly expensive, but she had fallen in love with its cool, remote beauty.

      As she watched, her breath caught in her throat, Raschid lifted it out of its white satin bed, balancing it on his open palm. The silence that followed was a tribute to the craftsmen who had conceived and made it.

      ‘It’s beautiful,’ Zahra whispered, touching it with a delicate forefinger. ‘So cool and fresh—like you, Felicia.’

      ‘It is a gift any Arab would treasure, Miss Gordon,’ Raschid’s deep voice agreed. ‘The glassblower has captured the quality and colour of the sea in our gulf, and nothing is more precious to our race than water.’

      ‘It can be used as an ink-holder, or just a paperweight,’ Felicia told them, dismayed by the faint huskiness in her voice. For some subtle reason which she could not define, СКАЧАТЬ