Love Is Dangerous Read online

  “We should have been here twenty minutes earlier if it had not been for Moulay Ibrahim’s men at El-Guelb,” Bing said. “They had a sort of ambush rigged up, but fortunately our friends in Marrakesh had telephoned to those who were loyal and they took us round the village over a camel track.”

  “They shall be rewarded,” the Minister said. “If you will give me a list of everyone who has helped you, Bing, you can rely on my gratitude not only now but for ever.”

  “Thank you, Mohammed,” Bing said. “I was certain you would say that.”

  “My boy! My little boy!” the Minister murmured. “If I had to give everything in the world I possess, it would not be enough.”

  “He is safe now, anyway,” Bing said in a matter of fact voice as if such emotionalism was slightly embarrassing.

  “He is safe enough for the moment,” the Minister agreed “but who knows when Moulay Ibrahim will strike next?”

  “Where are you taking us, by the way?” Bing enquired still in the cool conversational tone that seemed to bring everything down to the ordinary and commonplace.

  “To my house, of course,” the Minister replied. “I thought you would stay with me tonight. Tomorrow you must both leave the country. You will be a marked man, Bing, as you well know, and Miss Lindsay’s life will also be in danger.”

  As he spoke, the car drove into a big courtyard and they stepped out to walk through a beautifully carved doorway into the cool scented beauty of a house that was half Moorish and half French.

  “What would you like to do first?” their host enquired.

  “Personally,” Bing replied, “I want a bath and some decent clothes and I expect Melina would like the same.”

  The Minister snapped his fingers.

  A maid appeared. She was a Frenchwoman and she led Melina upstairs to a magnificent bedroom with windows overlooking a flower-filled garden beyond which was a view of the sea.

  “I think Madame’s dresses will fit you, ma’mselle,” she said, looking at Melina appraisingly. “And His Excellency says that you are to choose anything that you desire.”

  “Thank you,” Melina answered, beginning to pull the djellabah off and realising, as she did so, what a freak she looked with the kohl smudged round her eyes and the bridge of her nose red from where the yashmak had cut it.

  It was unbelievable pleasure to sink into the hot scented bath and, when she had soaked her tired limbs, she washed her hair and saw again the dancing lights of gold and red as the thick dust was washed away.

  She must have stayed in her bath for nearly an hour until she found her head nodding and she knew that she was almost falling asleep. Self-preservation made her climb slowly out.

  ‘I should look silly if I drowned myself now,’ she thought with a little smile as she rubbed herself dry in the big pale pink bath towel that matched the bathroom.

  She walked back into the bedroom to find that the bed was turned down invitingly and a light meal of eggs, fruit and milk was waiting beside it on a tray.

  “His Excellency has suggested that you should rest, ma’mselle,” the maid explained. “He asked me to say that he and Monsieur Ward had matters to discuss and it would be better for you to sleep a little and relieve your fatigue.”

  “I am tired,” Melina admitted, thinking how little she had slept the night before and how early they had risen.

  “Dinner is not until nine-thirty,” the maid said, “but in case ma’mselle is hungry now the chef has made her a special omelette.”

  Melina ate a little of the omelette, drank the milk and then almost as her head touched the pillow she was asleep.

  *

  She was awakened, it seemed to her to be hours later, by the sound of curtains being drawn and she felt a kind of radiant happiness because everything was all right.

  It was so different from the feeling of fear and apprehension that she had experienced at every other awakening recently. Now there was only happiness and the knowledge that in a very short time she would see Bing again.

  She let the maid arrange her hair in a new and, Melina secretly thought, exceedingly becoming fashion. She allowed herself to be dressed in one of the gowns that hung in profusion in the wardrobe.

  It was a dress of pale blue chiffon embroidered with tiny diamanté stars and it clung to her figure making her look very young and ethereal.

  Melina could not help feeling glad that Bing would see her like this. She had never possessed a dress that had cost so much and she knew that there was a special radiance about her as she ran downstairs to where she had been told Bing was waiting for her in the salon.

  He was not in the big room filled with flowers and exquisite gilt furniture and she stood for a moment, irresolute by the door, until she saw him sitting outside the big French windows that opened onto the garden.

  The Minister was with him and as Melina appeared they both rose to their feet.

  “I hope my poor house has been able to provide you with everything that you needed,” the Minister said ceremoniously, as he raised her hand to his lips.

  “Everything, thank you,” Melina answered, but her eyes were on Bing, noting the sudden admiration in his face, feeling happier than she had ever done in her life before.

  She settled down at the glass-covered table and accepted a glass of champagne brought to her by a servant in elaborate livery. From the same tray the Minister took a small glass of apricot juice, for his religion forbade him alcohol.

  He rose to his feet and raised the glass in his right hand.

  “To your health and to your happiness!” he proposed. “God bless you both!”

  He drank and smiled at them benevolently.

  “You must forgive me, Miss Lindsay, if I leave you,” he said. “I have an appointment this evening and it is very important that I should turn up apparently unconcerned by the events of this afternoon.”

  He glanced at them both for a moment and added with a twinkle in his eyes,

  “I daresay you will not miss me so tremendously!”

  Almost as soon as he was gone, dinner was served in a room also overlooking the garden, with the windows wide open and the tinkle of the fountain, which was like music in their ears.

  Afterwards Melina could never remember what she ate – she was too happy.

  She only knew that it was not the champagne, but the excitement of being with Bing, which made her feel as if everything they said was witty and enchanted.

  She could see his eyes looking at her, she could see the expression on his face and that was headier than any wine that she could have drunk.

  When the meal was finished, they walked into the garden and sat amongst the roses and the honeysuckle with the fountain as the only sound to break the silence that came between them.

  Melina felt as if her voice was constricted in her throat before, at length, she managed to say,

  “What time do we leave tomorrow?”

  “You leave at eight-thirty,” Bing answered. “The plane goes to Paris. You change there for London.”

  Melina felt as if a bomb had shattered something between them.

  “But you – ! Aren’t you – coming with me?”

  She managed to stammer the words.

  Bing shook his head.

  “But, Bing!” she expostulated. “You – you must! You heard what the Minister said. It is not safe for you to remain here.”

  “I know that,” Bing answered, “but I have to go back.”

  “But, why? Why?” she asked plaintively.

  He turned round in the seat to face her. The sun was sinking somewhere out of sight and there was in the sky the glorious glowing colour that was intrinsically part of the East.

  But she saw the pain in his eyes.

  “I love you, Melina!” he said quietly. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t think you – you cared for me?” she murmured.

  “Oh, my sweet darling!”

  He reached out and took her hands, crushing them
between his until she could have cried out at the pain of it.

  “I love you so completely, so absolutely,” he said, “that I would never have believed I was capable of such emotion.”

  He paused for a moment and looked down at her hands and the marks he had made on them.

  “Someone once said that love is dangerous,” he said. “I believed that and I was determined never to fall in love again. I have been hurt once, damnably hurt. I wanted nothing to do with women – any of them.”

  He bent his head and kissed her fingers and she felt herself thrill to the touch of his lips.

  “Then I met you,” he went on. “I could hardly believe at first that you were as sweet as you are. I didn’t know that there was a woman in the world who would be so quick and intelligent, who could face danger without complaining and who would do what I asked of her without argument.”

  He put his hand down as if he could not bear to touch her.

  His eyes were glowing as he gazed into her face.

  “I have been a brute to you in many ways,” he continued. “I have told you nothing and made you obey me without question and without explanation. It was because I could not credit you with being so absolutely marvellous, so utterly and completely all that a man could demand of a woman when they were in a desperate situation together.”

  “Oh, Bing – you make me so proud!” Melina whispered.

  “That is what your father must be wherever he is at this moment,” Bing replied. “Somehow I feel that he knows and is glad that he brought you up the way he did.”

  “He would have loved you too,” Melina said.

  Bing started at the sentence.

  “Do you mean that you love me?” he quizzed a little hesitantly, almost shyly.

  “I have loved you for days – although it seems like years,” Melina told him, the colour rising in her face. “I have loved you – since that moment you kissed me when the searchlight was seeking us out on the hillside.”

  “I don’t know what made me do it,” he said, “except that already I was beginning to understand what you meant to me. I knew that I ought to send you away, that I should not let you go on taking the risks that I was taking, gambling your life to help someone you had never met, someone you had never even heard of.”

  “If you had tried to send me away I would not have gone,” Melina retorted and knew even as she said it that she would have had no choice in the matter.

  “I ought to have left you with Rasmin in Fez,” Bing sighed. “But I didn’t for one reason, and one reason only – I wanted you to come with me.”

  “I am glad – so very glad,” Melina whispered.

  “I suppose love comes to everybody. They don’t expect it, they fight against it and suddenly it’s there. You cannot escape it. Melina, I love you! With all my heart and with all my soul.”

  Impulsively she put out her hands towards him, wanting him to take her in his arms, longing with every nerve of her body for the feel of his mouth against hers.

  To her astonishment he ignored her gesture, turning his head sideways as if he could not bear to look at her.

  “What is it, Bing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know how to tell you,” he answered.

  “What has – happened? What has gone – wrong?”

  She heard the desperate tone in her own voice as she asked the question.

  “I planned, as we were traveling to Marrakesh, during that exhausting journey in the bus, that if we came safely out of this, that if we survived in the pursuit of our enemies and brought the child back to his parents, I would ask you to marry me.”

  “And are you not – going to do that?” Melina enquired hesitantly

  “I somehow knew that you would look as you look tonight,” Bing went on as if he had not heard her question.

  “I imagined us together in a garden such as this. I told myself I would put my arms round you and say, ‘You haven’t known me very long, Melina, but I swear to you that I will make you a good husband and that if it lies within my power I will make you the happiest woman in the world’.”

  Bing’s voice had died away and then suddenly he had pulled her into his arms and was holding her so tightly to him that she felt as if he crushed the very breath out of her body.

  “I wanted to say that,” he muttered in a kind of agony. “I wanted to say that. And now I can’t.”

  “But, why – why not?”

  Melina looked up at him and realised that his mouth was very close to hers. Acting instinctively she put her arm round his neck and drew his head down to hers.

  She felt Bing’s self-control give as their lips met, felt the fiery passion of his kisses – on her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes and, finally, on the little pulse beating in her throat.

  It was wild, delirious and crazy and she surrendered herself utterly to the desire and emotion that seemed to have utterly swept him off his feet.

  Then with a groan that seemed to come from the very depths of his being, Bing released her and, leaving her breathless and shaken on the seat, walked away across the garden to stand with his back to her, staring down into the fountain.

  After a second she rose and walked after him.

  “Please explain – what is the matter, Bing,” she said quietly.

  “I’ll try,” he answered. “But for God’s sake don’t tempt me, don’t drive me mad. Come out of this damned garden. I can’t stand it.”

  He walked ahead of her into the salon.

  The lights from the silken-shaded lamps glittered on the diamanté on Melina’s dress as she seated herself, white-faced, on one of the needlework-covered sofas by the fireplace.

  Bing leant against the mantelpiece.

  “If I touch you, I cannot tell you what has happened,” he said grimly. “So keep your distance.”

  Melina had held out her hand to him to draw him down beside her. Now it fell into her lap.

  She raised her puzzled, bewildered face towards his and waited.

  “You know that we had no idea where the child was hidden in Marrakesh?” Bing said and his voice was harsh.

  “Yes, of course, I knew that,” Melina answered.

  “We might never have found him,” Bing said, “for Moulay Ibrahim had been extremely clever in his choice of a prison which no one would suspect as being one. Fortunately, one person, and one person only, could give me the information that I needed.”

  “Who – was that?” Melina asked, and somehow she knew the answer even before Bing said it.

  “Lileth!”

  “Mrs. Schuster! But how should she know?”

  “She motored down to Marrakesh with Moulay Ibrahim. I saw them arrive when I was standing outside The Mamounia Hotel. Moulay Ibrahim had a good reason for inviting her to accompany him. He had seen her dancing with me or one of his menials had reported that she had done so. He questioned Lileth closely about me, especially about my appearance. Only she could identify me for him. He knew that she was indispensable to him.”

  “But, surely she must have guessed that he had a reason for questioning her?”

  “She told me that she thought it was just idle curiosity,” Bing said with a little twist of his lips.

  “And in return he told her where the child was hidden?” Melina asked incredulously.

  “No, of course not,” Bing answered. “But Lileth always had a retentive memory for detail, perhaps it was part of her training as a stenographer. Anyway, when I went to see her in the hotel she told me of everything that had transpired on their trip in the car.”

  “You didn’t tell me you were going to see her,” Melina said with a flash of jealousy that she could not prevent.

  “I didn’t know myself,” Bing replied wearily. “I just saw her arrive in Moulay Ibrahim’s car and I climbed up from the garden onto her balcony.”

  He paused for a moment as if remembering what had happened, before, with an obvious effort, he continued,

  “Moulay Ibrahim had not suspected that Lilet
h would be interested in anything that he did or said. He knew that she had danced with me, but I don’t think she told him that we had once meant a great deal in each other’s lives. Anyway, I don’t think for one moment that he ever suspected we would get together again, as he knew that I was on the run, hiding from him.”

  “But why did he tell her where the child was hidden?” Melina persisted.

  “He didn’t,” Bing replied. “But outside the ramparts of Marrakesh the car was stopped by an Arab apparently begging for alms. Moulay Ibrahim searched in his pocket for a small coin to give him and as he handed it to him the Arab said in a voice that was meant to be a whisper, ‘Dar Al-Hamama!’ As he spoke in Arabic, Moulay Ibrahim had never anticipated that Lileth, sitting beside him in the car, would understand Arabic.”

  “And does she?” Melina enquired. “She always told me she didn’t speak any language except her own.”

  “That’s true,” Bing agreed. “But she knew one word of Arabic, the word hamama, because it means dove and it was an endearment I sometimes used to her.”

  His face flushed a little as he spoke and again Melina felt that stabbing dagger of jealousy turn over in her heart.

  “It was just one of those long arms of coincidence that are always far more true in real life than in fiction,” Bing said. “I was learning Arabic long ago in New York when we first knew each other and I told her that one day I would build a house for her and call it Dar Al-Hamama – The House of the Dove.”

  He made a little gesture as he spoke, as if he thrust aside those memories of the past.

  “And, when Lileth told me what the Arab had said, I knew that Moulay Ibraham, when he had hurried the child away from Fez, had not known exactly where the two men who escorted him would take their tiny prisoner. He must have had the choice of several houses in Marrakesh, but they had decided on Dar Al-Hamama and that was where he was.”

  Bing drew a deep breath before he continued,

  “Once I knew exactly where I could find Suki, it was imperative to extricate him before tomorrow, when his life was to be forfeit as an act of vengeance for the two traitors who will die at dawn.”

  There was silence and then Melina said,