A Kiss In the Desert Read online

  “Why should anyone find out?”

  “Because, my dear, you are very beautiful and people talk. No one is going to believe that you are on board my yacht simply because you like the sea and are interested in new gadgets.”

  Irene drew closer to him.

  “Please stay with me, darling,” she begged. “It is Heaven to be in your arms and I love you more than I have ever loved any man.”

  The Earl did not answer and after a moment she said, “If I were free, do you swear that you would marry me?”

  “The question does not arise. Your husband is very much alive and there is no doubt that he will live for many more years.”

  “We cannot be certain,” Irene said almost beneath her breath.

  Then as if she had suddenly thought of it, she asked,

  “You are not taking anyone else with you on your yacht?”

  “Only a friend of mine who is as interested in machinery as I am.”

  “If I thought it was a woman, I would kill her,” Irene hissed. “If you look at any woman except me, she will die, and that is something you are never to forget.”

  “I think you are talking nonsense. As you well know, there is no other woman in my life, nor is there likely to be. You are underestimating your own beauty and your own charm, Irene.”

  “I love you so completely and absolutely that it is impossible to live without you,” Irene sighed passionately.

  She kissed his shoulder before saying,

  “We have to be together. We were meant for each other and it is only by the cruelty of fate that I am already married.”

  “But you are,” the Earl pointed out again, “and therefore there is nothing we can do about it.”

  “I can think of quite a number of things,” Irene answered slowly. “And when I am your wife, I shall be the happiest woman in the world!”

  She spoke as if every word was the truth.

  Yet the Earl could not help thinking her words would not have been said if there had not been a Ducal coronet behind his head.

  “You are depressing me,” he remarked aloud. “Let us enjoy ourselves while we can and not worry about tomorrow.”

  “But I shall worry because you are going away and I shall be counting every moment until you return.”

  “I will not be too long, but you must know what it means to install all the latest innovations into an old yacht. It always takes longer than one expects.”

  “If it takes any longer than I can stand,” Irene said, “I shall come and join you wherever you are. Promise you will write to me every day and tell me where I can get in touch with you.”

  “I am not certain myself, but I will certainly do my best.”

  He did not want to talk anymore, feeling he was on very dangerous ground.

  He therefore kissed Irene until she forgot everything but the fire and excitement of their passion.

  It was just two hours later as the Earl climbed wearily into his own bed at Brackenshaw House that he remembered Irene’s threats which he thought were absurd and unrestrained.

  He had always disliked hysterical women and they had tried many times to tie themselves to him so that there was no escape.

  At least, he thought with satisfaction, that it was impossible for Irene to join him or to correspond with him once he was on his way to Beirut.

  He had already told Charles that he had sent a messenger on ahead.

  The man had left this morning with a letter for Sheik Abu Hamid. In it the Earl had informed him that he was leaving on his yacht for Beirut the following day.

  He was bringing with him Princess Vanda of Thessaly who is, as the Sheik would doubtless remember, the daughter of the late Prince Nikos and Princess Louise, a cousin of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

  He had arranged, he wrote in his letter, for the Princess to be accompanied by two English Ladies-in-Waiting, while she was on board the Sea Serpent.

  But he considered it would be advisable for her to be waited on by two Syrian women on her arrival. He knew that the Sheik could easily provide them.

  ‘If your people are meeting us at Beirut,’ the Earl wrote, ‘I hope you will be kind enough to equip them with horses which Her Royal Highness and I, and my friend Captain Charles Kenwood, can ride.

  It is something we are all looking forward to and who could provide us with better horses than Your Highness.’

  He signed himself with a fulsome appreciation of the Sheik’s hospitality, adding that Her Royal Highness was very interested in his horses.

  Also not having visited any part of the Middle East before, she was looking forward to viewing his countryside. When the Earl had finished the letter, he was pleased with what he had written.

  He had not told the Sheik anything personal about the Royal visitor as it would make him curious.

  He would also find it difficult to discover anything about her.

  All that mattered was that the visit would go off well and then he and Charles would be able to obtain the horses they desired.

  It all seemed, the Earl thought, to be going too smoothly to be true.

  To himself he repeated the most common saying in Arab lands, ‘Insh Allah.’

  This means quite simply, ‘God has willed it so.’

  *

  It was a bright sunny day when they set off in the Earl’s comfortable London carriage from Brackenshaw House. Following them was a brake conveying their luggage and the Earl’s valet who had been with him for many years.

  Carstairs had travelled with him whenever he journeyed abroad and he was not surprised when the Earl told him he was returning to Syria.

  “I thinks as you wouldn’t be able to leave them ’orses alone, my Lord,” he said.

  “I want them desperately, Carstairs and Captain Kenwood needs them too.”

  “A good deal more than you do, my Lord, from what I ’ears,” Carstairs answered.

  “What have you heard?”

  “That the Captain’s having difficulty in making ends meet and that be nothin’ new!”

  The Earl had travelled alone with Carstairs for so many years and he recognised that the older man looked after him as if he was still a boy.

  He always talked to him frankly as he would not have talked to any other servant.

  ‘It is rather like having a nanny,’ he thought.

  Carstairs was overwhelmed by Vanda when he met her.

  “That be the prettiest lady that has come inside this ’ouse ever since I’ve been ’ere,” he said to his Master. “Seems a pity there’s no more like her.”

  “What is wrong with those who have come earlier?” the Earl asked.

  Carstairs’s opinion on people always amused him.

  “If you be speakin’ of her Ladyship, I wouldn’t trust her an inch further than I can see her. Beautiful she may be. At the same time she’s too pushy for my likin’, and her stops at nothin’ to get her own way.”

  This was indeed something that the Earl had already found.

  It was of comfort to know that Carstairs was not deceived by Irene’s ‘honeyed tongue’ as he called it.

  “She says one thing and thinks another,” Carstairs rambled on. “From what I makes out all the servants in his Lordship’s house be frightened to death of her.”

  “Why should they be?” the Earl wanted to know.

  He knew it was bad form to talk of other people’s servants, but with Carstairs it was different. He had got him out of a lot of trouble one way and another.

  “I warned you before, my Lord,” Carstairs answered, “and I’m warnin’ you now, that Lady won’t do you no good and the sooner you be rid of her the better!”

  The Earl laughed but he did not answer.

  He was aware that Carstairs was brave enough to say what he was thinking himself.

  *

  They joined the Sea Serpent a little way down the Thames from the House of Lords.

  The engines began to turn and the Earl was thinking with relief that the yacht was c
arrying him far away from Irene.

  He even hoped against hope that she would forget him, but felt it was unlikely, but because she was so attractive there would be a number of men only too willing to take his place.

  But he had an uneasy feeling that she would wait for his return and would pounce on him once again before he could escape.

  At least for the moment he had secured some breathing space.

  He told himself hopefully that something might turn up in his absence, although somewhat cynically a part of his brain was telling him that prospective Dukes were few and far between.

  Although she undoubtedly desired him as a man, Irene was also insatiably ambitious and of course she wanted to end up a Duchess and to wear the Brackenshaw jewels.

  It would make her the winner in the most testing social race ever run.

  The Sea Serpent was now moving down the river and the Earl felt he was on his way to freedom.

  He was leaving Irene behind.

  He could only pray that she would forget him and he wanted to forget everything she had said to him last night.

  ‘It was just hysterical talk,’ he told himself.

  Vanda, who had seen her luggage taken into a very attractive cabin, came running up on deck and joined the Earl who was standing at the rails.

  He was watching the Houses of Parliament fade into the distance.

  “We are moving!” she cried. “We are leaving England and I still cannot believe I am not dreaming!”

  “You must wake up, because we have quite a long way to go,” the Earl replied.

  “It cannot be too long for me and you know how wonderful it will be for Charles to be seeing, even if he cannot buy them, the wonderful Arab horses you have told me about.”

  “He will enjoy them as much as I do,” the Earl replied.

  “But I want to thank you for including him in your enterprise. It is very, very kind of you and it is the most marvellous thing that has ever happened to me.”

  “Perhaps when we arrive you may find it all disappointing.”

  “That will be impossible. If Charles is interested in Arab horses so am I. After all they are very much part of English history and it is only right that they should be winning our races as they did when the Roman Emperor Severus held races in Yorkshire.”

  The Earl looked at her in surprise.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Strangely enough, I was reading about it only a month or so ago, Severus organised races with real Arabs early in the third century AD.”

  The Earl was amused.

  He was not used to women who talked about Roman Emperors when they might have been talking about him.

  “What else do you know about Arab horses?” he enquired.

  “So much I can hardly tell you in a few minutes,” Vanda replied. “But I expect you know that Henry VIII took a personal interest in breeding from Eastern sires, and Cardinal Wolsey was so keen on horses with Eastern blood that he took for himself an Arab stallion which had been sent to the King by the Duke of Urbino.”

  “Now you are making me very interested. I suppose I must have heard these stories before, but I had forgotten them.”

  “Then it is time you and Charles learned all about them again,” Vanda said almost severely. “There is quite a bit in the history books about the Norman horses at the Battle of Hastings being much lighter, because they had Arab blood in them, than the heavy stallions which had been imported from Flanders by King Harold.”

  “Now I know I am back at school,” the Earl professed. “And I have the uncomfortable feeling that I am at the bottom of the class!”

  Charles joined them and he remarked,

  “Her Royal Highness is taking me to task for being an ignoramus.”

  For a moment Charles looked at him in surprise before remembering their plan of action that Vanda was to be ‘Her Royal Highness’ from the moment they left Park Lane.

  “I am sure that it is very clever of Her Royal Highness,” he said after a pause. “But surely she is not telling you, my Lord, anything you did not know already.”

  “I am trying to pretend I had long forgotten it.”

  Charles laughed.

  “You will have to be up early if you are going to get the better of Van- I mean Her Royal Highness. She has read ever book in our library and I am quite certain she will read every one in yours.”

  “I do hope you have brought some books on board,” Vanda enquired.

  “I do not think you will be disappointed in the books you will find on the bookshelves in the cabin I use as my study,” the Earl responded. “My father never thought of such a thing, but I decided, if I was to be at sea for any length of time, I not only needed books but somewhere comfortable to write. So this is perhaps the only yacht which has a cabin which is not for sleeping but for reading.”

  Vanda laughed.

  “I think that is a wonderful idea! I was only thinking when I looked over my luggage this morning that we might have spent a little time in a bookshop.”

  “We have spent quite enough money,” Charles intervened sharply, “and I was only thinking after I went to bed that what we have forgotten is white gloves which you will be expected to wear on every formal occasion.”

  “Once again I go to the top of the class. I packed at least six pairs of Mama’s and I cannot believe, whatever you say, that I have to wear white gloves all the time in the desert!”

  “They are worn only on formal occasions,” the Earl advised gravely, “and anything you have forgotten we can always buy in any port where we stop.”

  Vanda smiled at him.

  “You really are a magician. You have waved your magic wand and Charles and I are here in a dream boat on the way to a magical Kingdom where I am quite certain even the horses have wings.”

  The Earl laughed.

  “I only hope you will not be disappointed.”

  “How could I be? And please, before we do anything else, can we explore your wonderful yacht? And could you show me all the improvements Charles tells me you have made.”

  “I should very much like to do that.”

  Then Vanda looked over her shoulder as if to see that no one was listening.

  “I think,” she said in a low voice, “if the Princess was behaving properly, she would ask to be introduced to the crew.”

  “You are quite right,” Charles jumped in before the Earl could speak. “That is one up to Her Royal Highness and do not forget it.”

  “I will not do so and I am extremely impressed,” the Earl admitted.

  The way he spoke seemed very funny to Vanda and they were all three laughing as they moved towards the bridge.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Vanda was introduced to the crew as they moved around the yacht. They all seemed pleased when she shook them by the hand and told them how interested she was in what they were doing.

  The two women who were to be her Ladies-in-Waiting curtsied correctly and looked relieved when Vanda told them that she hoped she would not need them very often on the voyage.

  “I am having a complete holiday,” she confided, “because I have had a very difficult time lately at home and I need to rest.”

  Everyone thought this was a good idea.

  Vanda only hoped, when they laughed so much at dinner, that they did not think she had been making a mountain out of a molehill.

  The sea was, as usual, very rough in the Bay of Biscay and luckily Vanda had always believed that she was a good sailor. She proved it by not feeling the least seasick, but she did hear that the Steward’s wife had taken to her berth.

  Vanda was in fact so thrilled by everything that was happening to her and even the waves towering over the bow of the yacht were an irrepressible delight.

  The Earl thought that no one could be more charming or easier to entertain. If Vanda was not talking and laughing with him and her brother, she was reading.

  She was very pleased with the books she found in his study and she found o
ne volume on horses which contained a long dissertation on the Arab breed.

  When they stopped at Gibraltar, the Earl went ashore and bought Vanda a beautiful Chinese shawl embroidered with flowers.

  She was charmed with his present and claimed she had never owned anything so beautiful.

  “You are so kind,” she enthused, “and you have already spent so much money on my clothes.”

  “That was business,” the Earl replied. “What I have given you now is pleasure.”

  She smiled at him.

  He thought that no one could be more unselfconscious than Vanda about her looks.

  He was so used to women always fussing about themselves, if they were sitting in the sun, if the wind was blowing their hair or if they were disarranged in any way.

  None of this seemed to bother Vanda at all. It did not occur to her she should do anything about her looks.

  She was up early in the morning and on deck, fascinated either by the sea or any land they were passing.

  When they reached Malta she did not feel like going ashore. The Earl had rather expected her to go shopping, but she stayed happily on board until they set sail again.

  *

  The Earl, before he left, had been forced to tell his secretary the truth about his intentions.

  “I am going to be away for quite a long time, Wilson, but you have to assure anyone who enquires for me that you expect me back in a week or so.”

  He saw by the expression on the secretary’s face that he realised he was in an oblique way referring to Lady Grantham.

  “I do not want any letters sent after me,” the Earl ordered, “and they must await my return. Except that you must inform me if anything important happens in the family.”

  He was of course referring to his father’s health, although there was no reason to think that the Duke would die in the next month or so.

  “If there is anything really important you can send me a letter to Beirut by special messenger and I will doubtless receive it in a few days. Equally I do not wish to receive any communications unless they are absolutely necessary.”

  “I understand my Lord,” Mr. Wilson replied, “and I will be as tactful as possible with those who make enquiries about your return.”