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‘You little fool! Don’t you know any better than to run in this heat? Do you really want me to give you a reason to run from me?’
Felicia looked up at the thin line of his mouth, harshly forbidding, and a tremor of something so alien and unwanted shot through her that at first she did not recognise it. When she did the shock was so great that she could barely comprehend that she, a girl who had never deliberately set out to arouse any man, and indeed shrank from physical contact, had felt a thrill of surging satisfaction at the blazing anger in Raschid’s eyes, and a desire to push him over the limits of his control, her own fury fuelled by his.
Common sense warned her that the ensuing conflagration could destroy her totally, but she no longer cared. She wanted Raschid to experience anger as consuming as her own; to endure the lash of her contempt against his pride, as she had been forced to endure his.
‘Well, Miss Gordon?’
‘You have already given me sufficient reason, but in your arrogance you will not admit it.’
His fingers curled round the soft flesh of her upper arms, frightening in their intensity. He smiled without pity when she winced at their crushing pressure.
‘This is the East,’ he reminded her. ‘I could punish you here and now for what you have just said and no man would raise his hand against me, not even if I beat you publicly in the streets. Beware! In every man there lurks the falcon; a streak of ruthlessness and thirst for power.’
His fingers lifted to her throat, trapping the wildly beating pulse she could no longer control. All at once the fight had gone out of her, and where there had been momentary elation there now was dread. He laughed mirthlessly when she shivered under his touch, nervous as the silky-maned Arab mares of the Badu.
‘You see?’ he taunted. ‘At last you realise that a man is not an equal, but an alien force, bent on destruction when he is aroused to anger.’
‘Stop it! Stop it at once,’ Felicia begged him. ‘I won’t listen to you!’ Her voice trembled, caught somewhere between indignation and fear. ‘You don’t deceive me at all. You’re hoping to drive me away; to frighten me into giving up Faisal. You think I’ll be overpowered by that potent masculinity you’re so proud of, like a timid, shrinking Victorian heroine, caught in the trap of her own senses. Well, you’re going to be disappointed! I’m well aware of the difference between my senses and my heart.’
‘Are you indeed?’ he challenged softly, the sensuous movement of his thumb against the silkiness of her neck making her aware too late of her danger. She trembled under the deliberate provocation of the caress and he laughed, deep in his throat.
‘And what do your senses tell you now, Miss Gordon?’
It was too late to pretend that his touch left her unaffected, too late by far to wish she had never allowed fury to betray her into this hopelessly untenable position. She closed her eyes and gritted bitterly:
‘They tell me that sex without love is like the desert without water—an arid wasteland where nothing can flourish.’
‘But that arid wasteland, as you call it, possesses a magic of its own.’
His thumb was stroking along her jaw now, the steel fingers forcing her chin to tilt upwards no matter how much she fought against their pressure. She opened her eyes. His were barely inches away, darkly grey, the sensuously curving mouth smiling thinly.
He bent his head towards her, and she was like the falcon’s prey, transfixed, accepting her fate. His faint breath stirred her hair.
‘Have you experienced the potency of the desert, Miss Gordon?’
Dear God, what was happening to her? With an anguished cry she tore herself free. What was he trying to do to her? Seduce her away from Faisal? Faisal! Why had she not thought of him before now? Why had the memory of his lovemaking not protected her from responding to Raschid?
Gathering the tattered remnants of her pride about her, she stared coldly at the man towering over her.
‘The desert holds no attraction for me, Sheikh Raschid—and neither do you.’
CHAPTER SIX
TALK about the best laid plans of mice and men! Felicia thought ruefully as she dressed for dinner. A cowardly corner of her heart prayed that Raschid would be absent from the meal. She stared critically in the mirror at her too-pale face. She had known from the start that her self-imposed task was hopeless, but after this afternoon she could never hope to convince Raschid that she would make Faisal a good wife. She shrugged bravely. What did it matter, after all? He could hardly swear on the Bible that there had been no provocation! Provocation! Colour washed over her skin as she remembered the sensuous movement of his thumb against her flesh, and the peculiar weakness that had made her legs feel as though they had turned to an unset jelly.
All sheer magnetism, of course. She wielded her hairbrush fiercely for a few seconds until the auburn curls framed her small face in a silky cloud. Raschid had done it deliberately—there could be no doubt about that! Playing on her fears and uncertainties, unleashing the powerful aura of his masculinity. And how near she had come to succumbing!
Slowly she put the brush down, staring at her trembling mouth and wary eyes. There was the crux of the matter. She had been dangerously affected by Raschid’s caresses; so much so that shame scorched her as she made herself relive those seconds in her arms. She had deliberately encouraged him to unleash his anger against her, but she had never dreamed it would take such a damagingly sensuous course, or that she herself would be swept away in its fierce tide. In vain she told herself that it was merely an automatically feminine reaction, trying desperately to drive away the tormenting image of Raschid’s taunting smile by replacing it with Faisal’s loving smile. But for some reason she found it impossible to reconstruct his boyish features; the memory eluded her, as though overpowered by Raschid’s stronger personality. The harder she tried to cling to the memory of Faisal, the more difficult she found it to superimpose his features over Raschid’s. Honesty had always been one of her strong points, and now she was forced to question the strength of her feelings.
Could there be a grain of truth in Raschid’s accusation that her love for Faisal was founded on what he could give her—Oh, not wealth, that mattered little—but security, warmth, the affection and companionship of a family. The more she contemplated this point, the more plausible it became. Faisal had surrounded her in warmth and love, and she had sunk into its security without deeply questioning her own feelings. It had been enough merely to be loved. But would it always be enough? And wasn’t she cheating Faisal as surely as though she had merely wanted him for his money?
She was glad when the dinner gong put an end to these useless speculations. She was bound to have doubts, second thoughts, but once she and Faisal were together again…. Not even in the tiniest corner of her heart was she willing to admit that her real doubts sprang from the untenable discovery that while Faisal’s lovemaking affected her hardly at all physically, Raschid had merely to touch her to send her pulses racing, her body flooded with sexual awareness.
Dislike could be as powerful an emotion as love, she reminded herself, as she zipped up her dress and added a quick touch of lipstick to the soft curves of her mouth. It toned with the pink in her dress, swirls of pink and pale green chiffon, an unusual combination for a redhead, but one that brought an indefinable touch of the exotic to her appearance, darkening the colour of her eyes and highlighting the richness of her hair. A lacy white stole covered her shoulders, although the dress had small cap sleeves and a neckline that was discretion itself. Untouched on the dressing table was the perfume Raschid had given her. She refused to open it; for a moment tempted to dispose of it in the same way as she had disposed of the glass paperweight, but acknowledging that the perfume had come from the perfume-maker and not Raschid. Even so she was reluctant to discover what sort of woman he had thought her, and she pushed the small package to the back of her drawer, unwilling for Zahra’s curious eyes to alight on it.
She was the first downstairs, and on impulse she hurried into the gardens, to where she had thrown the blue leather box. It had been stupid to try to destroy a thing of so much beauty out of momentary pique, but although she searched diligently among the rose bushes she could find no trace of the package and surmised that the gardener must have disposed of it.
Tonight the delicious spicy aromas coming from the dining room did nothing to tempt her appetite. Her stomach muscles knotting with tension at the thought of having to face Raschid, she felt as though the merest morsel of food would choke her.
Zahra greeted her in her normal ebullient fashion, smiling approvingly at the cool picture Felicia made; the fresh green colours of an English spring flowering in the desert.
‘Uncle Raschid will not be joining us tonight—he is entertaining business acquaintances,’ Zahra explained as they sat down.
Felicia relaxed with relief. So at least one of her wishes had been granted. Now all she needed was for her good fairy to wave her wand twice more—once to bring Faisal home and a second time to dissipate Raschid’s dislike—but such wishes were hardly likely to be granted, not if Raschid had anything to do with it.
‘Did your sightseeing tire you?’ Zahra asked solicitously. ‘You look very pale.’
‘A little.’ But it wasn’t her tour of the shops and town that had left her feeling so drained, it was her clash with Raschid and the disturbing thoughts it had aroused. Now wasn’t the time to question the strength of her feelings for Faisal, but for some reason she was finding it increasingly difficult not to compare Faisal to his uncle. Raschid would never allow anyone to dictate his way of life! She was being unfair, she reminded herself. Faisal had very little choice in the matter. Raschid had the whip hand!
‘Has Zahra told you that my elder daughter and her family are to pay us a visit shortly?’ Umm Faisal asked, as Selina heaped Felicia’s plate with savoury saffron rice.
Felicia shook her head and looked enquiringly at Zahra.
‘Yes, it is true,’ the younger girl acknowledged. ‘Nadia is to join us at the oasis. You will like her, Felicia, she looks very much like Faisal.’ She smiled understandingly when Felicia flushed; which only increased her own feelings of guilt, for it had been of Raschid’s darkly sardonic features of which she had been thinking and not Faisal’s.
She toyed listlessly with her food while Umm Faisal and Zahra discussed the arrangements which had to be made for the trip to the oasis. Was the memory of this afternoon’s unpleasantness destroying Raschid’s appetite? Did a mental image of her face torment him? Somehow she doubted it.
Refusing coffee, Felicia excused herself. Her small white lie that she had a headache was not entirely untrue. The beginnings of tension in the back of her neck had spread to her temples and she was glad to lie down on her bed and let her mind wander at will, relaxing under the hypnotic hum of the air-conditioning and the perfumed velvet of the Eastern night.
A tap on the door roused her, and she sat up and smiled reassuringly at Selina when she poked her head round the door.
‘The Sitt is wanted downstairs in Sheikh Raschid’s study.’
At first Felicia thought the girl had made a mistake, and knowing that her English could not always be relied upon, she shook her head kindly. ‘Sheikh Raschid is entertaining some friends, Selina, I do not think he would want me to join him.’
‘Friends all gone,’ Selina replied firmly. ‘Sheikh alone now. Everything quite proper. If the Sitt will come.’
It was obvious that she intended to wait and escort her downstairs, Felicia realised in exasperation. Her dress was slightly creased where she had been lying on it, but there was no time to worry about that now, nor to drag a comb through her unruly curls and wish that tiredness did not give her face such a look of soft vulnerability.
What could Raschid want? A further reiteration of his disapproval? She hesitated, and Selina paused enquiringly at the bottom of the stairs. Giving herself a mental shake, Felicia followed. After all, what could Raschid do? Eat her?
Raschid’s apartments were reached by a corridor linking them with the harem quarters of the house. They had their own private entrance and a large square hall furnished with soft Persian carpets and an intricately carved brassbound chest, plainly of great antiquity. Old-fashioned oil lamps threw a soft glow across the well polished floor.
There was richness here, and simplicity too, the one harmoniously blending with the other to give a feeling of timeless serenity which had the immediate effect of soothing her ragged nerves. The tall, narrow windows were open to the night, and the sharp scent of the lime trees stole in with the dusk.
‘This is the Sheikh’s study, sitt,’ Selina said respectfully, motioning her towards an iron-studded wooden door. Felicia gave her a wan smile, uncertain as to whether she should go straight in or knock. The decision was made for her when the door opened abruptly.
In the half light Raschid seemed to tower above her, and Felicia bit back a gasp. She would never have recognised him. He was wearing a dishdasha—the traditional white flowing robe of the Kuwaitis—his headdress hiding the night-black hair, a dark cloak lavishly embroidered with gold thread worn casually across his broad shoulders.
‘What is the matter, Miss Gordon?’ he asked urbanely as he ushered her into the room.
‘N-nothing,’ Felicia stammered, but her eyes remained glued to the undeniably impressive figure he made, outlined against the starkness of the white walls.
‘When dealing with my compatriots I find it better to wear the traditional garb of our country. In point of fact the dishdasha is more comfortable by far than Western-style suits.’
‘And far more impressive.’ She could have bitten her tongue out, when he turned and stared coolly at her. A frisson of awareness tingled across her skin, and she shivered slightly, despite the warmth of the night.
‘And what, I wonder, does that remark imply? That you think me a posturing fool, practising for a part in The Desert Song?’
Anger underwrote the cold words. Horrified, Felicia stammered a denial. No European could ever have worn the flowing garment with the grace of his Arab counterpart, and her surprise had sprung merely from the fact that this was the first time she had seen Raschid dressed in the traditional manner. Although she would not have admitted it to a soul, when he opened the door to her, for a moment he had embodied every single one of her romantic teenage dreams.
And now to crown all her other follies she had offended Raschid’s pride, touching the most sensitive spot of his personality. She bit her lip, wishing they were on good enough terms for her to explain that he had misunderstood.
‘What? Nothing to say for yourself?’ he asked harshly, surprising her with the raw anger she sensed beneath the words. He moved with the stealth of the desert fox and the sureness of an Arab stallion, coming to stand at her side and spinning her round to face him.
Felicia moistened her lips, wetting them with a nervous tongue, the movement instantly stilled as Raschid’s gaze pounced on the betraying gesture.
‘Why did you send for me?’
He released her, and she could feel her nerve ends quivering with relief as the tension eased.
‘Merely to give you this,’ he replied, handing her an envelope bearing an airmail stamp.
Her heart lurched. It was from Faisal; it must be! With eager fingers she reached for the envelope, and her hand brushed against Raschid’s as she did so. It was like receiving an electric shock. She shrank back, recoiling from the contact, her face pale as she gripped her letter.
‘You may cease the charade, Miss Gordon,’ Raschid mocked. ‘The ordeal is over. You have your letter, which you can take to your lonely bed to read and perhaps remember the nights you have spent in my nephew’s arms. Faisal is no stranger to the delights of the flesh, but then I have no need to remind you of that, have I?’
‘No, you have not,’ Felicia agreed, suppressing her instinctive denial of his accusations. For some reason allowing Raschid to believe that she and Faisal were lovers made her feel safer, although why she could not have said.
She saw his face darken, tightening with anger and contempt. No doubt she had just confirmed his initial impression of her, but she no longer cared. Secretly in the hidden recesses of her heart she was beginning to doubt her own ability to make Faisal happy, but her pride would not allow her to admit her discovery to Raschid. Time enough to know that he had been right when she was safely back in England, away from those mocking grey eyes.
By the time she reached her room she was trembling with a mixture of anger and pain. Feverishly she ripped open Faisal’s envelope, withdrawing the letter with a fast-beating heart. Surely here she would find the reassurance that she so badly needed? Surely the written words of Faisal’s love for her would banish all her doubts?
The letter was depressingly short, barely more than a few scrawled lines, with none of the tender reassurances she had hoped for. Indeed, it struck Felicia, as she read the letter for a second time, that Faisal too might be having second thoughts. He had written more as though to a friend than a lover; the phrases stilted and cautious; one betraying sentence almost leaping off the paper.
‘…. New York is much more fun than I had imagined….’
With a sinking heart Felicia remembered what Raschid had told her about Faisal’s propensity for falling in and out of love. At the time she had thought he was merely trying to upset her, but now she was not so sure. Faisal’s letter was not that of a man deeply in love and committed to that love. Now, when it was too late, Felicia wished passionately that she had not allowed him to persuade her to come to Kuwait, and worse still, to spend her hard-earned savings. With a feeling of sick despair she acknowledged that had it been possible she would have gone straight to the airport first thing in the morning and booked her flight home.
She even toyed with the idea of contacting her aunt and requesting her help with the fare, but she knew she could not. It seemed ironical that the one person who would have been more than glad to finance her return to England was the one man in the world she would never ask.
No, distasteful though it was, she would have to write to Faisal and sort things out. Once he knew that she was no longer expecting to become his wife, he would probably be delighted to pay for her ticket, she thought wryly.
As she switched off the lamp and slid down between the cool sheets, she wondered morosely why the discovery that Faisal no longer loved her should affect her so little. Less than a week ago he had formed her entire world; now all she wanted was to return home. And yet she would miss this land, she admitted. Despite its alienness it had touched her heart, and she felt that she could have adapted had her love for Faisal been strong enough.
Her last thought before sleep claimed her was that at least she was having a small measure of revenge against Raschid. While she slept in the knowledge that she and Faisal would never marry, Raschid was probably lying awake thinking of ways to part them. Strangely enough the thought brought her precious little comfort.
ALTHOUGH SHE FELT no guilt at deceiving Raschid, it was far harder having to pretend with Zahra. She would have liked to have the younger girl as a sister-in-law, she acknowledged, as Zahra waylaid her on the way to breakfast, bouncing up and down in excitement.
‘Look what Raschid has given me as a pre-birthday present!’ she exclaimed, waving a cheque in front of Felicia’s bemused eyes, and gloating gleefully over its size, enlarging enthusiastically on how she intended to spend it.
‘There’s a shop in Kuwait that sells the most dreamy lingerie!’ She rolled her eyes dramatically. ‘How about coming with me this afternoon?’
Felicia hadn’t the heart to refuse her, and Zahra’s grateful hug when she nodded her head was more than reward enough.
Ali drove them into Kuwait, dropping them in the area of Fahd Salim Street, where Raschid had taken her the day before.
As Felicia had half expected, Zahra tended to linger over the glittering displays of jewellery.
‘Those pearls come from the gulf,’ she told an interested Felicia. ‘Until oil was discovered, pearls were Kuwait’s richest source of income.’
Ali hovered protectively behind them, reminding them that they had not come to window-gaze. As before, Felicia was impressed by the graceful boulevard with its trees and flowers.
‘Our government is spending a great deal of money on irrigation schemes and desalination plants,’ Zahra told her. ‘In the fruit markets you will find all manner of fruits and vegetables grown on specially developed farms. The sun, once our greatest enemy, is being harnessed to provide the energy to grow perpetual crops. Saud is studying agriculture at the university,’ she added by way of an explanation for all her knowledge. ‘His family own lands near to our own at the oasis and he and Raschid are hoping to develop a fruit farm there eventually.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘I’m not sure what he loves best—me, or his precious greenhouses.’ She touched Felicia’s arm, motioning towards one of the shops. ‘In here. Ali will wait outside for us.’
The shop was small—no more than a boutique really—the walls hung with pale green silk panels, tiny gilt chairs covered in the same fabric, standing on an off-white deep-pile carpet. No pretensions to Eastern origins here; the boutique was blatantly Bond Street, or Fifth Avenue.
A mouthwatering selection of satin and lace underwear was produced for Zahra’s inspection, and as she fingered a peach satin nightdress lavishly trimmed with coffee lace, Felicia reflected rather enviously on the advantages of possessing a wealthy and generous uncle. Not that she would want Raschid to pay for her trousseau. The thought made her go hot and cold, and the peach satin dropped from her fingers as though it had burned.
‘Something wrong?’
‘What? Oh no—nothing. I think you should have the peach, Zahra, and the pale blue nightdress and negligee set.’
‘What about this one?’
Felicia examined the nightdress she was holding up for her inspection. It was a filmy mist of sea-green shifting to jade, in a silken shimmer of the finest gossamer chiffon.
‘It’s lovely,’ Felicia admitted.
‘And most suitable for a bride,’ the sales assistant pressed.
‘Would you not like something like this for your own marriage?’ Zahra asked, much to Felicia’s embarrassment. She closed her mind to a vision of herself clad only in the whispering chiffon, held in the arms of. Not Faisal, that was for sure, she told herself, shaking her head and handing the nightgown back to Zahra.
Ali was still waiting patiently outside, and something about the set of his shoulders suggested that they had been gone rather a long time.
‘Anything else you want?’ she asked Zahra, and the other girl shook her head.
They were crossing the wide pavement when Felicia saw the familiar figure striding towards them, and her heart gave a double somersault before hammering urgently against her ribs.
‘Isn’t that Raschid?’ she asked Zahra, surprised when the younger girl compressed her lips and immediately turned in the opposite direction.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Didn’t you see that woman with him?’ Zahra hissed.
Felicia had. The woman was tall and dark, dressed with an understated elegance, wrapped in an aura of wealth. Felicia had guessed her age to be somewhere in her late twenties.
‘She must be his mistress,’ Zahra decided. ‘She cannot be a woman of good family, otherwise she would never walk openly in the street with him.’
