City of Palms Read online

  CITY OF PALMS

  Pamela Kent

  On the plane from Paris to Bagdad Susan noticed him— a handsome stranger whose air of aloofness seemed to disguise some contempt for inexperienced travellers like herself.

  But when an emergency came, it was he who looked after her, and he who was once more to come to her rescue in the frightening wilderness of the desert.

  CHAPTER ONE

  SUSAN watched fascinatedly as they paced up and down, the handsomest couple she had ever seen in her life.

  The girl was beautifully dressed and slender, with a delicately featured face and enormous eyes that looked dark as night in her somewhat unusual pallor, and her hair seemed to flame under her captivating hat. The man towered above her, had superbly held shoulders and narrow hips, and was essentially masculine, with a masculinity that was almost startling.

  Susan realized that she wasn’t the only one waiting for a flight number to be called who was watching them with open interest. The airport lounge was well filled, and so many of the large, comfortable chairs were occupied that no doubt that was one reason why the couple preferred to promenade. But they also managed to convey the impression that they were completely indifferent to everyone around them, and that they were withdrawn into an aloofness that was almost as good as a protective armour.

  Occasionally the girl glanced sideways into the lighted squares that displayed delicate confections typical of Paris—such as sequined stoles, gloves, and bunches of gay artificial flowers. But the man had a definitely abstracted air; his haughty chin jutted noticeably, and his dark eyes stared straight ahead.

  When at last Susan heard her own number being called she forgot all about them in the excitement of joining the little group of people being shepherded by an air hostess across the tarmac. They had been delayed in Paris for over two hours, and that meant that the Baghdad flight was already two hours behind its schedule; but Susan was one of the few who didn’t really mind, because this was all so much of a variety to her that anything apart from the novelty was temporarily quite unimportant. She felt like someone who had been touched on the shoulder by a fairy-godmother—although it was actually her own father who had suddenly done something amazing—whisked away from dull mediocrity, and set upon a road which could lead to anything.

  Or nothing! ... At the end of the journey she would be better able to form a few opinions about this sudden interruption to a placid life. And in the meantime there were all the thrills of the flight ahead, and many hours in the air. Many hours of having no contact at all with the earth.

  It was not until they were actually airborne, her seat-belt was unfastened, and she was lying back both looking and feeling relaxed, that she became aware of the handsome couple, seated close beside her on the other side of the aisle. She had been so absorbed in carrying out instructions flashed on the illuminated panel in front of her, watching the last of Paris drop away below them, and trying to still the wild excitement of all her pulses, that she hadn’t even realized that they had become part of the complement of passengers.

  But now the stewardess approached them with magazines, received an order for black coffee, and smiled as if she recognized that these were experienced travellers—or, at least, the man was. He looked as if he had been born into the world for the express purpose of giving orders which someone would unquestioningly carry out with a great deal of speed, and as if he would be considerably surprised if such a magical effect didn’t always result. In the sun-filled cabin of the airliner his hair was not as fiery as that of the graceful creature beside him, but it, too, held tints like well-seasoned mahogany, and gleamed like a blackbird’s plumage where the shadows touched it. He was extremely bronzed—unless his complexion was naturally dark—with features that reminded Susan of museum marbles, and the most striking thick black eyelashes she had ever observed on a man.

  His linen was immaculate. His tailor quite obviously derived a comfortable income from keeping him faultlessly turned out, and there was something about him that suggested he was neither English, French, nor any other nationality that she could put her finger on.

  As the aircraft climbed into a blue, sunshiny world that seemed divorced from everything but space, freedom, and light, she ceased to observe the couple on either side of the aisle. Although she occasionally caught the sound of their voices—speaking, somewhat surprisingly, fluent French—her thoughts kept thinking back to the letter in her bag, and her father’s extraordinary but ill-expressed plans for her.

  Her father had been a Professor of History at Cambridge University until a couple of years previously, when he had joined a party investigating newly discovered archaeological remains in Iraq. Since then she had heard little or nothing of him. Her mother had died when she was very small, and she had been mostly brought up by an aunt, who had died recently. For the past year, loving antiques, she had been working in a little antique shop in Chelsea, and for the past six months living and looking after herself in a room over the shop.

  When she received Professor Maldon’s letter—like all his letters, quite out of the blue—she had been beginning to feel that the room was cramped, life anything but exciting, and the future rather drab-colored. But as soon as she read the letter the most amazing new prospects opened out before her.

  My dear Sue, the letter ran, you must forgive me if I seem to be a little neglectful sometimes, and allow you to slip out of my thoughts for many months at a time. But this isn’t really so. I have been wanting to get you out here, and now the opportunity has arisen. I have found you an excellent job, and we shall be able to see quite a lot of one another. I am cabling you sufficient funds for your fare, and you must fly out immediately. Notify me of time of arrival.

  And that was all!...

  No details of the job—nothing to give her any feeling of confidence that she would be capable of holding it down, whatever it was. Nothing to let her know whether her new employer would be male or female, young or old, a fellow-countryman or countrywoman, or someone her father had met in Iraq, a native of that country. Nothing that required specialist qualifications, at any rate, for no mention had been made of any sort of qualifications at all!

  Which was perhaps as well, for her only qualifications were a fairly sound education and a growing knowledge of the old, the rare, and the sometimes quite breath-takingly beautiful

  Just before they touched down in Rome she must have been lulled into a doze by the noise of the engines and the warmth of the sunshine falling all about her, for when she awoke suddenly she made a little clumsy movement and her handbag slid off her lap and on to the floor of the aisle.

  The man with the dark eyes bent and picked it up and returned it to her before she could make any movement to recover it herself. As he placed it lightly on her lap, his eyes looked into hers and she was conscious of a distant sensation of shock, for in the midst of the curiously opaque darkness there were tiny lambent lights, like flames, leaping up and down. Or that was the impression she received.

  She also received the impression of curiosity that flickered over her undisguisedly, taking in her slightly ruffled hair—pale, like a primrose, and soft as floss-silk—her flushed cheeks and blue eyes fringed with golden-tipped eyelashes, and flower-like mouth. She knew, too, that he took in her slenderness and the unostentatious perfection of her trim suit. But whether he approved or disapproved she was unable to tell, for the eyes merely seemed to her to become rather cool and mocking.

  “I think you must have fallen asleep,” he remarked, in perfect English. “I noticed some little while ago that your bag was in danger of slipping.”

  “Th-thank you,” Susan replied, not knowing what else to say, for it added to her confusion to realize that he had been in a position to observe her while s
he was unconscious even of his presence.

  His eyes seemed to mock her just that little bit more.

  “Your book, too,” he said, and rescued it quickly before it could hit the carpeted floor with a thud. As he handed it back, and she noticed what beautiful, long-fingered hands he had, the fly-leaf open, and he read the message inscribed on it in a bold but precise masculine hand.

  For sweet Sue, in the hope that she will remember me when she dips into these pages!

  Much love, Nick.

  Susan thrust the book safely away between her and the window side of her seat, and she knew that she didn’t dare look at the dark face so near to her this time, because she could almost feel the amusement that had crept into it. And she knew that he was silently turning over the words “sweet Sue” in his mind—turning them over with a kind of detached interest—and trying to decide whether the man who had described her thus could have any possible justification for such a description, and why it was that he wanted to be remembered by her.

  As she kept her face averted, and felt the color burning it painfully, she could have told him that Nicholas Arnwood, who had purchased the book especially to beguile the tedium of the journey for her, was an old friend of her father, and that she had been “sweet Sue” to him ever since she could toddle.

  After Rome—where, of course, they arrived another couple of hours late—there were no more stops until Beirut, and they left Beirut at that breathless hour of a star-filled night when dawn seems just about to insert an eager left hand in the sky. Susan was feeling too keyed up to sleep in the sound way some of the passengers managed, and she watched the gradual putting out of the light of the stars, and the glow in the east that heralded the approach of a new day, without actually realizing that they were flying over desert.

  But when the light strengthened, and a rush of crimson and gold poured in from the east, she looked downwards and felt the breath catch in her throat, because below her there was a sea of gold, also.

  At first it was broken gold, without any shadows, because there were no trees to cast them, and only depressions to hold vague patches of purple. And then the red sun lit the lifeless, dark-blue surface of a salt lake fringed by reeds and thickets of wild palms, and later a rounded hill came into sight, crowned by cave-like dwellings, and topped by a minaret. And after that, for a long while, there was nothing but sand—sand and an occasional wilderness of palms.

  The passengers awoke gradually, one by one, and the stewardess brought Susan a highly welcome cup of tea. Then she went along to the powder room and refreshed herself with a completely new application of make-up, and when she returned to her window the sun was high in the heavens. Her next-door neighbor looked at her with a kind of indolent interest, as if he knew there was a bubble of excitement deep down inside her because very soon now they would be coming in to land, where entirely fresh fields awaited her, and she was a completely inexperienced traveller.

  Not for the first time she noticed that, although his mouth was beautifully cut, the line of his lips was thin and supercilious—even cruel. And one eyebrow lifted disdainfully above the remote amusement in his eyes. She felt both young and stupid when she encountered that amusement, and was glad to look away quickly. She made up her mind that she didn’t like him.

  Beside him his companion kept her eyes closed, as if she was too bored to look about her, and although her face was smooth and exquisite and that of a mere girl in her teens, it was not a happy face.

  Ever since they left Paris the flight had been remarkably smooth, and altogether without incident, but now all at once the regular rhythm of the engines was interfered with by a kind of rending, tearing noise that bored its way through the eardrums. When Susan looked out of the window she saw that the propeller of one of the engines had stopped dead, and at the same time it struck her that they were losing height—that the golden-brown earth was even coming up to meet them.

  The aircraft seemed suddenly possessed, recovering its loss of altitude for a short while by banking steeply, and then imparting a sensation like being on a scenic railway to the passengers by rushing desertwards again. The stewardess made her appearance in the aisle, having just emerged from the crew’s quarters, and she straightened her cap with a jaunty movement as she leaned against the door and told them, smiling a calm smile, that she had received instructions to ask them to fasten their seat-belts, because the pilot had decided upon an unscheduled landing. But, she reiterated more than once there was absolutely no danger.

  Susan felt, rather than saw, eyes grow anxious on all sides of her—except immediately across the gangway, where the pair whose nationality she found it impossible to decide upon betrayed no emotion whatsoever. The man leaned across the girl and helped her with her safety-strap, but there was nothing about her that suggested that she couldn’t have coped with it herself.

  Susan fumbled with her own strap, and eventually got it fastened, and by that time there was no question about it—the earth was simply leaping up to meet them. The stewardess had vanished to strap herself into her own seat, and Susan was filled with dread for the first time in her life.

  An unscheduled landing? ... What sort of a landing was that? A forced landing ... A crash!...

  Did this mean that she was never going to see Baghdad after all? That she was never going to see her father again?...

  Panic-stricken, she looked across the aisle, and met the eyes of the dark man. There was something in them that instantly quelled the panic, especially as he actually seemed to be leaning a little towards her. His lips moved; as if he was attempting to say something to her, but what that something was she couldn’t possibly hear above the discordant noise that filled all the space about her.

  And then she shut her eyes, because it seemed the only thing to do, and something hit her sharply on the head.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE first thing Susan realized, when she opened her eyes again, was that someone was trying to lift her out of her seat. Her seat-belt had been unfastened, and a man was bending over her, his hands urgently grasping and lifting her, and while she was still wondering what it was that had hit her on the head he bore her swiftly out into blinding sunshine.

  It really was blinding—searing was perhaps a better word. It made her gasp, as if something had struck out at her unexpectedly, and she turned her face into the shoulder of the man who was carrying her so easily, and quivered from her first contact with the power of the sun in Iraq. He set her down in the shade of a group of palms, where the girl with the flaming hair was already deposited, and the latter half rose into a kneeling position to look at her.

  “Is she all right?” she asked, her English almost without trace of an accent, just as was the man’s. “I think she probably knocked herself out on the seat in front of her.”

  “Quite,” the man agreed curtly. He ripped off Susan’s suit jacket for her, so that she felt less as if she was literally dying from heat, and then produced a silver spirit flask from his pocket and poured her a little into the cup. “I think,” he said, “that if you just take a sip of this you’ll feel better.”

  Susan was amazed to find that all around her people were lying limply in the shelter of the palms, and that the huge bulk of their aircraft seemed to be partially embedded in sand. Later she was realize that it was the sand, hard-blown by one of the freak winds of the district, that had saved them from a far worse shock than had been theirs when the wheels of their undercarriage had made contact with the earth, for it had been like sinking into a soft cushion, and the skill of the pilot had done the rest. At that moment he was directing operations involving the recovery of as much of the luggage as possible before the ever-present danger of fire—especially in a temperature that seemed to be practically sizzling—became a reality.

  But no one appeared to have been hurt—no one, that is, apart from herself, and apparently she had more or less knocked herself out. She felt a little sick from the blow, the shock, and the subsequent bewilderment, an
d she looked quite colorless in the shelter of the palms—so colorless that the man beside her urged her to drink more of the neat spirit, whilst keeping a supporting arm about her.

  His companion looked quite cool and composed in her Paris clothes, and in spite of her elegance and faint air of unapproachability was unexpectedly friendly and concerned. She produced some frozen eau-de-Cologne from her handbag and offered it to Susan, and the latter smiled at her gratefully.

  “I seem to be the only one causing any trouble,” she said.

  “That’s because your seat-belt wasn’t securely fastened,” the man told her. He looked at her out of those strange eyes of his, with the queer, greenish-golden lights in them that looked as if they could so easily become tiny flames, and seemed to be studying her reflectively. “Is this your first trip by air?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “I thought so,” he told her, and smiled slightly.

  “As a matter of fact,” she confessed, “it’s my first trip abroad.”

  The smile became somehow inexplicable, and very white-toothed.

  “When I caught sight of you in Paris before we boarded the plane I thought you looked a little—ready for adventure, shall we say?” he remarked, surprising her considerably because she would have been prepared to swear that he hadn’t even noticed her in spite of the many times he had passed close to her seat in the airport lounge.

  A thin color struggled into her cheeks, and he removed his arm from her shoulders.

  “In that case, I—I seem to have found it, don’t I?” she murmured ruefully, touching the place on her head, under the soft gold hair, where a bump was already forming.