Daughter Of Hassan. PENNY JORDAN
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Название: Daughter Of Hassan
Автор: PENNY JORDAN
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
isbn: 9781408998977
isbn:
‘It may be permitted. I shall ask my father,’ he muttered in a low voice, and then the car was sweeping away through another archway decorated with a continuous frieze of arabesques and into a courtyard enclosed on all four sides.
A door in one wall opened inwards, and feeling rather Alice in Wonderlandish, Danielle realised that she was supposed to get out of the car and enter the building.
She did so like someone in a dream, aware of activity behind her as another door in the adjacent wall opened and the car boot was opened and her luggage removed.
As she stepped through the open door, the scent of jasmine immediately enveloped her, together with a welcome coolness which she realised was stimulated by the powerful air-conditioning whose hum she could just faintly hear.
‘If the Sitt will follow me.’
The girl was draped from head to foot in black, her voice low and melodious, and Danielle could just catch the faint chime of ankle bracelets as she swayed down the corridor in front of her. At the bottom she opened a door and indicated that Danielle was to follow. She found herself in a small square room with a low divan under one window and a small sunken pool just beyond it.
‘If the Sitt will permit.’
Gently but inexorably Danielle was pushed down on to the divan, her high-heeled sandals removed. She was glad that she was not wearing tights when the girl promptly proceeded to wash her hands and feet with water from the pool, again scented with some elusive perfume which drifted past her nostrils and refused to be properly identified.
The girl’s movement were deft and sure, her hands delicately hennaed and her eyes modestly downcast all the time. She must be a maid, Danielle reflected when she walked across to the other side of the room and returned with a pair of soft embroidered slippers.
‘It is necessary to wear these in the presence of the Sheikha,’ the girl explained. ‘It is the custom to kneel and approach, and then to leave the room backwards, but in your case it is necessary only to kneel. For you the Sheikha has waived the normal formalities…’
The girl’s English was perfect, so perfect that Danielle felt ashamed of her own lack of Arabic. She had learned it from her father, she explained when Danielle questioned her, and had been fortunate enough to get her position in the Sheikha’s household because of it, because the Sheikha wanted all her daughters and granddaughters to speak it.
‘It is necessary when they go to school in England,’ she added. ‘The Sheikha wishes the women of her family to have the benefit of a good education. She says it is important that the women of our race do not cause our menfolk to have a contempt of them because of their ignorance. I shall take you to her now, if you will please follow me.’
The room they were in was an ante-room leading into a huge chamber with a vaulted, carved and painted ceiling, the intricacy of the arabesques and stylised carvings on the ceiling taking away Danielle’s breath; and the colours! Never had she seen such a multitude of rich, jewel-bright colours all in one room before, and yet as her eyes became accustomed to the richness she realised that they were carefully and subtly arranged so that turquoise ran into lilac and rich purple into crimson, into royal blue and back to turquoise, the skilful blending shown to its best advantage on the plain off-white divans placed around the room and covered with multi-coloured silk cushions.
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