Love Is Dangerous Page 15

  It was then she realised how desperately tired she was, after more than twenty-four hours without sleep save for the catnaps she had taken with a nodding head on the journey.

  She tried sitting with her back against the pillars and her legs stretched out in front of her, but it was too uncomfortable. Finally, she curled herself up on the top step of the temple and laid her aching head on her folded arms.

  ‘I never believed that I would want to sleep on the ground,’ was her last thought before she slept.

  She was deep in a dreamless slumber in which every muscle and nerve in her body were utterly and completely relaxed when she felt herself being lifted into someone’s arms.

  She was not afraid and some instinct stronger than thought told her that it was Bing.

  Without opening her eyes and still far away from consciousness, she felt him carrying her somewhere, his feet walking surely over the ground, his arms strong and protective and infinitely comforting.

  She must have drifted away into oblivion because, when he set her down very gently, she had forgotten that he was carrying her. She was on something softer, something that gave beneath her body and yet was not a bed.

  She had a sudden feeling as his arms drew away from her that he was going to leave her and she wanted to cry out to him, to beg him to stay with her, to leave his arms around her and never let her go. But she was too tired, too far away to make the effort and only the thought was there amongst the clouds of slumber.

  Then, as she felt herself alone and without him, she suddenly felt a pressure on her lips. It was gentle, sweet and undemanding, but like a streak of lightning the leaping flame that she had known before burnt within her and she knew a sudden ecstasy that made her feel as though the stars had dropped from the sky and settled in her eyes.

  Her lips longed to hold onto his with passion and an insistence he could not refuse, but she was too far away. She struggled against the sleep that possessed her and as she did so the moment passed and his lips had gone.

  She wanted to cry out for what she had lost, for the emptiness that was all that was left her, but she realised that he was settling himself beside her, his shoulder against her arm.

  His hip touched her hip and then his arm was thrown protectively across her. She could feel it there, heavy and yet giving her a sense of security such as nothing else could have done.

  Instinctively she turned towards him. She laid her cheek against his shoulder and without conscious thought of what she was doing, cuddled her body against his.

  He drew her a little closer and then he too slept –

  *

  It must have been a cock that awakened her, a cock crowing triumphantly with all the strength and power of its tiny lungs. Melina opened her eyes and saw above her not a ceiling but the branches of trees bright with blossom, amongst which birds moved and fluttered and sang their morning song of delight.

  She turned her head and saw that Bing lying close beside her was still sleep. For the first time she realised how young he was and now that he was off his guard she saw that he was also both sensitive and vulnerable.

  There was something very gentle in the curve of his lips. There was something boy-like in the hollows of his cheeks in the sharp curve of his jaw.

  His arm was still flung across her. Melina realised that to move would awaken him, so she lay still, looking at him, wondering why out of all the men in the world she had had to give her heart to someone who loved another woman and for whom she herself only existed as a useful tool.

  As if the scrutiny of her eyes aroused him, Bing was suddenly alert. He awoke as men always do who live in the shadow of danger.

  His eyes opened and every nerve in his body awoke at the same time.

  “Melina!” he exclaimed. “We should have been awake before this.”

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  Bing glanced at the sun with its rays already percolating through the branches of the trees to turn the sandy ground beneath them into a carpet of gold.

  “About six o’clock, I should think,” he replied and rose to his feet.

  Melina saw that they had been lying on a heap of grass such as the natives cut for their animals and which is carried in great high bundles on the backs of incredibly small donkeys.

  She too rose and noticed a little distance away at the end of the garden the tomb from which Bing must have carried her the night before.

  It was then that she looked beyond the garden walls and she saw a sight that made her eyes widen, an exclamation of astonishment fall from her lips. The Atlas Mountains, snow-capped and indescribably beautiful against the pale sky, were shining in all their majesty.

  “They are the most breathtaking mountains in the world,” Bing said, following the direction of her eyes.

  The contrast between the vivid, gleaming snowcapped peaks and the scarlet and purple bougainvillaea that ran riot over the walls of the garden was too glorious for description.

  “I have seen them,” Melina said softly. “At last I have seen them!”

  As if he had no time to be ecstatic over the beauties of nature, Bing put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a little push.

  “You will find a broken fountain a little to the right of you,” he said. “Do not drink the water but you can wash in it and then we will go in search of breakfast and our friends who have failed to come to our assistance.”

  Melina obediently turned in the direction he had pointed out.

  “Don’t forget to put back your yashmak,” he called after her as she left him.

  She was not away a long time. Only long enough to wash her hands and face and ease her bruised feet in the stone bowl of the fountain into which a trickle of water still poured ceaselessly from a broken dolphin.

  She would have liked to undress and bathe completely, but she knew that such an act was unthinkable and was only too grateful that at least her hands and feet were, for the moment, clean and free of the dust that had caked them, making the skin even darker than Rasmin had stained it.

  She was very thirsty, but she obeyed Bing’s instructions not to drink the water, not even daring to wet her lips in case typhoid or some other dread disease should be waiting to attack her.

  It was then that she remembered who had kissed her lips last night as she lay drugged with sleep and exhaustion and a thrill ran through her at the thought that, once again, she had known the touch of his mouth.

  On neither occasion had it been the kiss of a lover, but it was enough for her aching heart that Bing had given her his lips.

  Melina had a sudden urgent desire to hurry back to him, but when she reached the pile of grass they had slept on, she saw that Bing was not alone.

  She stopped still, frightened and disconcerted.

  The man was young and he wore a robe of striped grey cotton. There was a red fez stuck jauntily on his head and on his arm was the official brown armband of a Government-appointed guide. The youth, for he was little more, and Bing were in deep conversation.

  Melina stood irresolute until, as if he sensed her presence, Bing turned and saw her and beckoned her. She hurried towards them and saw the Arab’s eyes appraising her closely, which told her that he knew she was not a Moslem but a European and therefore could be stared at.

  “This is Ahmed,” Bing said by way of introduction. “He could not come to us last night because his father felt that it would be unlucky to enter the sacred garden.”

  Ahmed smiled, showing a flash of gleaming white teeth.

  “My father is old and full of superstition,” he said in good English. “I know, because I am young and better educated, that such things are nonsense. The dead do not rise from their tombs and there are no ghosts, but my father still holds the money bags and so I must obey him!”

  “It is enough that you have come today,” Bing said courteously. “Do you bring me news?”

  Ahmed shook his head.

  “We have no idea where he whom you seek can be found. Those who ser
ve Moulay Ibrahim are well paid and also afraid. They do not talk.”

  “Someone must know,” Bing said. “Do not tell me that the East has lost the cunning of the serpent or that things can happen that the marketplace will not be chattering about within a few hours.”

  Ahmed glanced over his shoulder.

  “There are persons it is unwise to ask questions to,” he said.

  “Surely someone has seen the car arrive,” Bing insisted. “Even if they did not see the boy, there were two men in the car, which was a big expensive Mercedes, glittering with the badges of many countries. How could they pass unnoticed?”

  Ahmed shrugged his shoulders.

  “Undoubtedly it would have been seen, sir, but who would be brave enough to ask questions of those who would carry tales of their curiosity?”

  It was obvious, Melina thought, that the youth was afraid. However willing he might be to help Bing, he had a sense of preservation which was not going to allow him to put his head in a noose by asking pertinent questions.

  Bing obviously realised the same thing, because there was a long pause before he spoke again and then he said,

  “Moulay Ibrahim himself has not arrived?”

  “No, of that I am certain,” Ahmed answered. “It is easy to speak of him. He is a personality. Someone of great stature. He is generous too, to the dancers and beggars. They would have told if he had arrived.”

  “We can but wait and hope that when he does come,” Bing said reflectively, “he will go to where the boy is.”

  Ahmed shrugged his shoulders again.

  “When Moulay Ibrahim comes to Marrakesh there are many places where he stays. He is building a villa, I understand, a very large important one, but it is not yet ready. He has friends. He stays with them, sometimes with one, sometimes with another.”

  “Then keep a watch out for when he does arrive,” Bing ordered him.

  “I will do that, sir. My father asked me to express his regret that we can do so little for you, but were you to come to our house, poor and frugal though it is, there would be much talk. You understand?”

  “I understand,” Bing said.

  Ahmed salaamed and Bing ceremoniously replied.

  Then the youth went swiftly away, not leaving the garden through the hole in the wall through which Melina and Bing had come the night before but travelling along the wall in the opposite direction as though he wished to cover his tracks in case anyone had seen him arrive.

  Bing’s mouth was a hard line of disappointment.

  “What are we going to do now?” Melina asked.

  “God knows,” Bing replied. “These people are spineless and afraid, yet one cannot blame them. Moulay Ibrahim is powerful and their King is far away.”

  “You are sure the child is here somewhere?” Melina enquired.

  “Sure of it,” Bing said positively. “Casablanca is too new a City and too French for Moulay Ibrahim to have the power and influence that he has here. No, I am convinced that he would keep to his own haunts. The difficulty is to find out where they might be.”

  He walked a few paces up and down the garden and then said,

  “Go and sit on the steps of the temple, Melina. If anyone comes when I am away, do not speak, hold out your hands supplicatingly as if you are a beggar. I shall not be gone long and I will bring you back food and something to drink.”

  “I am so thirsty,” Melina said, “that if you don’t bring me back something I shall drink from the fountain.”

  “That’s blackmail,” Bing replied lightly, “because to have you ill at this moment would be an inconvenience I cannot possibly afford.”

  “Then bring me something quickly,” Melina smiled.

  “Look after yourself,” Bing said quietly.

  He looked down as he spoke into her eyes darkened by kohl. He had no idea until now how blue they were.

  Just for a moment it seemed to Melina that he was about to say something of significance and then as if he thought better of it, she merely heard him whisper half beneath his breath,

  “Allah take care of you, my dear!”

  She wanted to reply to him, she wanted to say that it was he who must be taken care of, not her, but in a few strides he was out of earshot and she saw him push his way through the shrubs towards the hole in the wall.

  It was then that she sank down on the cut grass they had slept on together all night and prayed, not to Allah but to God to whom she had said her prayers ever since she was a child.

  ‘Please, God, take care of him. Don’t let anything happen to him and, oh God, make him love me a little.’

  She felt the tears trickle through her fingers with the intensity of her cry and she went on praying for a long time in the quietness and still of the garden.

  Chapter 10

  Lileth Schuster, sitting in front of the dressing table, scrutinised her face carefully in the mirror. The new cream she was using, although fantastically expensive, was not achieving the results she had expected.

  The manufacturers’ brochure had promised that wrinkles would vanish in a fortnight and that a woman’s skin would look like a girl’s of eighteen in a month.

  Lileth had conscientiously followed the instructions, but there were undoubtedly tiny wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the hard line from her nose to her mouth was still there.

  And yet she was a beautiful woman. She turned her face first this way and then the other and decided that she was lovelier now than she had been five years ago when Bing and then two millionaires, one after the other, had found her irresistible. They had not been the only men to acclaim her beauty, but they had been the only three who had interested her.

  She thought of Bing and gave a deep sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of her beautifully shaped body.

  With a sudden gesture she pulled aside the soft nylon wrap she was wearing and stared at her nakedness with the same critical eye that she had appraised her face with.

  She was remembering those long hot nights in New York when Bing had held her closely and sworn that he would never let her go.

  She was remembering the wild ecstasy of their passion together and the way that her heart would beat faster at least an hour before they met in Central Park after her day’s work as a stenographer had ended.

  “Bing! Bing!”

  She could hear her voice, young and tremulous, saying his name over and over again before his lips, hungry and possessive, silenced her and she was lost in a red mist of desire and unutterable joy.

  Why had she been such a fool as to let him go? She knew the answer even as she asked herself the question, knew it as her hand reached out toward the gold-topped bottles from her fitted dressing case, knew it as she saw the glitter of diamonds and rubies from her open jewel case, knew it in the profusion of expensive dresses that hung behind her in the wardrobe.

  She wanted money! God, how she had wanted it!

  “We have each other,” Bing had said to her, not once but a hundred times.

  And, with her body quivering against his, she had tried to believe it was enough, but she had known that some cold, critical part of herself stood aside and answered, ‘I want more’.

  She had hated her work as a stenographer and she had hated almost as much, although it was more interesting, her work as a model. She had changed her occupation merely because she believed, and rightly, that modelling would give her a chance to meet rich people. What she had meant, although she hardly dared put it into words even to herself, was that she would meet rich men.

  She had been right. That was exactly what had happened. She could see Carl Fulton’s eyes now as he had sat in the salon choosing a dress for his granddaughter. She had known instinctively, as she walked towards him swaying her hips that he was interested in her and not in the gown she was showing. Almost mechanically, as she had turned, she had glanced at him sideways under her long false eyelashes and been startled by the expression on his face.

  He had meant to have her fro
m that moment, just as he had meant to have railroads and the shipyards that had made him a millionaire long before he was thirty, nearly fifty years ago.

  “I want you! You’re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen. What shall I give you?”

  It was a question he had asked before with success, but even he had been surprised by Lilith’s reply.

  “Something very simple,” she had answered. “A wedding ring!”

  She had not really expected that he would agree so easily, but he was infatuated as only an old man almost in his dotage could become infatuated with a young woman.

  “We will be married,” he said without hesitation.

  It was Lileth who had hesitated then, when she was alone and knew that she had to break the news to Bing. She had known in her heart of hearts that it was not a question of making a decision as she had already made it. But she could not help looking dispassionately at what she was doing and having a vague idea of what it was going to cost her emotionally.

  Bing had come to her lodgings that night. Since they had become lovers they had given up meeting in Central Park. Instead they grudged every moment they must spend in public away from the intimacy they could enjoy alone the kisses that seemed so much more interesting than any conversation.

  She heard Bing open the door with the latchkey she had given him and she took a last look round the tiny sordid room for which she paid a disproportionate amount of her salary every week. She knew every lump in the hard bed, the way the wallpaper was peeling in one corner, the worn carpet and the ugly curtains that failed to hide the dirt on the windows.

  She had hated the small stained bath more every time she used it. She never went into the tiny kitchenette without feeling resentful that the stove was so old and the sink needed replacing.

  Just for a second she shut her eyes and saw the big, cool, pillared hall of Carl Fulton’s house. She saw the Renoir hanging on the wall, the flowers that scented and decorated every room and which cost more each week than she earned in a month. She knew then that the die was cast.