City of Palms Page 18

  But when he caught the sound of her footsteps behind him he turned at once, and although his face was impassive his eyes seemed all at once to come to life. He remained absolutely still for a moment, and then the cigarette hissed in the marble basin and he went quickly to meet her.

  “Susan!” His arms opened wide to receive her, and with a glow like the sunrise in her eyes she fairly flung herself into them. He could feel her small fingers clutching at him, and he buried his lips in soft gold hair that strayed over his jacket. “Susan, my little one, did you sleep well?”

  She put her back her head to look up at him, and her eyes were just gently accusing.

  “You didn’t go to bed yourself until it was nearly morning,” she rebuked. “I know, because I heard you pacing up and down under my balcony! Oh, you made hardly any noise, but I knew it was you, and I know why you were there!” She buried her face against him again, “Oh, Raoul, I know you think I feel safer so long as you’re there, but you can’t go on doing that sort of thing. You must have proper sleep.”

  “I did have proper sleep, as you call it,” softly stroking her hair. “I handed over to Ibrahim about four o’clock this morning, and I had a good hour’s sleep. And it won’t have to go on much longer, because tomorrow your father arrives, and the day after that we are to be married! And after that we’re off to Paris, and I won’t need to stand under your balcony, my little one!”

  There was a gently teasing look in his eyes as he saw her flush, and the teasing look grew as she tried not to meet his eyes.

  “Unless, of course, you’d prefer to have a balcony for me to stand under?”

  One upward glance at him from under her gilt-tipped eyelashes and his mouth was on hers, and after that neither of them was capable of speech for quite a time. Susan was trembling when at last he lifted his head, and in spite of his deep coating of bronze he was paler than usual. He looked down into her eyes with something intense and possessive and almost mesmeric in his.

  “I love you, I love you!” he breathed. “Do you understand, Susan, that there will never be any other man in your life, and there will never be any other woman in mine? You are mine for all time, just as I am yours! We belong!...” She could feel his fingers shaking as they twined themselves in her hair. “I think I knew it the instant I saw you, but I couldn’t be sure of you, I had to be careful because you were unlike any woman I’d ever met before, and you were inclined to shy away from me like a nervous horse. ... I don’t think you even trusted me!”

  “I did. But I was a bit afraid of you...”

  “Afraid of me? Why?” His fingers beneath her chin, he forced her face out into the open and regarded her searchingly. “I would never have hurt you!”

  “I know, but”—imploring him to forgive her with soft, adoring eyes—“you were unlike any man I’d ever met before, and I didn’t understand you,” she confessed. “You could be very fierce and frightening sometimes, and then there were occasions when you seemed to find me stupid. You treated me to rather a fine form of contempt at times.”

  “Not contempt, but you amazed me and irritated me sometimes because you were so inclined to defy me—you, a slip of a girl I should have been able to control with ease!” He smiled at her suddenly. “Will you always try to defy me when you want your own way, Susan?”

  Her eyes grew dark and deep as she looked at him, her mouth curved with softness, and she shook her head almost violently.

  “No, because I never wanted to defy you in the beginning, and because I love you so much that whatever you want me to do and be will be all I want to do and be! I only want to be the woman you love, Raoul!”

  “That is just as well,” he told her with complete soberness, “for I will never permit you to be anything else! There may be times when you will want to defy me, in spite of your love, but I won’t let you, Susan—ever! I will be the master of your life, and I will cherish you and guard you against every form of unpleasantness, but my will will always be law—you understand that? You must understand it, Susan, before you are finally and irrevocably mine!”

  “I do understand it,” she whispered, and as he felt her swaying towards him his arms drew her close.

  “And accept it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That, too, is just as well,” he breathed, before he kissed her in a way that seemed to draw her soul out of her body to meet and embrace his, “because your fate has already been decided, and for you there is no going back! As I said, you are mine!”

  He placed her in one of the comfortable basket chairs while they waited for the others to return, and as he sat beside her, watching her with a strange, quiet smile in his eyes, she suddenly remembered something she badly wanted to have explained to her.

  “Raoul”—even now when she said his name she said it shyly, and colored delightfully as she did so—“why did you tell me, that night in the desert before we arrived at the Oasis of the Sparkling Wells, that you were going to Mosul to see someone who would employ me when Ayse was married?”

  His smile grew suddenly much more amused.

  “Did I really say I was going to see someone who would employ you? I was actually going to I see your father, and get his permission to ask you to marry me, and it was because I hadn’t his permission that I tried to behave as I knew I ought to behave towards you and resist every temptation to make love to you. You see, sweetheart,” taking her hand gently, “I knew I wanted to marry you even in the beginning, and you were in a very vulnerable position. That night I kissed you here in the patio—in a way I’m never likely to kiss you again!—was something I felt bitterly ashamed of afterwards.”

  But Susan knew she would never regret that night, and she would never regret any moment of their association since their first meeting at the airport in Paris. And in a couple of days they would be on their way back to Paris, with Ayse and Arnwood travelling with them as far as the French capital, after which Ayse would go on to stay with her fiancé’s relatives in England. But Susan would by that time have become the wife of Raoul Mehmet Bey, and although she knew he would make demands that no Englishman she might have married would probably ever have made on her, she had absolutely no fears, and no shrinking at all from the future.

  She had every confidence in the future, and she loved Raoul, She loved him as he loved her, and she was ready to meet his demands. And when she thought of his tenderness to her in the desert, the way he had dealt with her bruised wrists and blistered skin, comforted, soothed, and watched over her—and watched over her constantly ever since!—she knew that she need have no fears.

  He might not always be easy to handle, but he would never fail her. She would never cease loving him!

  As she sat listening to the pleasant tinkling of the fountain, flower scents floated in the warm air around her, she felt utterly content. Utterly content because he was holding her hand, and because they would always be together. Whether it was in Iraq or Paris, or any other corner of the globe, they would always be together.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked, as he watched her, and his eyes were intent and serious.

  She smiled up into those eyes.

  “I was thinking of some words you used to me once insh’-Allah! That means God willing, doesn’t it? Insh’-Allah, we will always be together!”

  THE END