Blue Jasmine Read online

  BLUE JASMINE by Violet Winspear

  "When you are grown up," Lorna' s father had told her, "we'll travel the world together." It was a dream to which she had clung all through their years apart, but it had not been meant to come true. Now at the age of twenty she came alone to the East, and alone she would go to the Oasis of Fadna, a sort of pilgrimage to the place her father had loved. When a friend warned her of the risks she ran, Lorna scoffed, "You can't alarm me with tales of ardent and dangerous Arabs who carry off lonely girls to their harems. My father lived in the desert and he knew the bedouin. They prefer their own kind of women. . . ." But Lorna was to find that she was wrong!

  PRINTED IN BRITAIN

  MILLS & BOON LIMITED 50, GRAFTON WAY, FITZROY SQUARE LONDON, W.1

  ISBN.263.71070.X

  First published 1969

  This edition 1970

  © Violet Winspear 1969

  For copyright reasons, this book may not be issued on loan or otherwise except in its original soft cover. Made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names.

  They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THERE was a pensive air about the girl as she stood on the terrace of the hotel and gazed at the stars through the plumy crests of tall palm trees. She wore a blue silk evening dress, but she seemed withdrawn from the drifting dance music as she breathed the night air, redolent of jasmine and something wild and tangy that stole over the walls of the garden from the desert beyond.

  This was the mysterious East her father had known and talked about; the land they had hoped to visit together. Beyond those walls lay the golden sands of her dreams, and early tomorrow she would ride alone to the Oasis of Fadna, where her father had lived in a desert house and painted the dawn and sunset pictures that had made his name as an artist. Such alive and vibrant pictures, awakening in the convent schoolgirl she had been at the time a longing to see the reality.

  `We'll go, Lorna,' her father had promised. 'As soon as I'm well enough to travel, we'll go and live on the edge of the desert.'

  A bug from his travels had entered his system and Lorna had nursed him devotedly for a whole year in Paris. But slowly Peter Morel had succumbed to the fever and left his daughter alone in the world. It was true she was not penniless—Morel's artistry had made sure of that—but nothing could make up for the loss of her lean and quizzical father.

  Even at this moment she could see him, smiling lazily as he worked at his easel, or sketched an unusual face with rapid strokes of the charcoal.

  Her throat tightened, and her privacy at the far end of the terrace felt invaded as footsteps approached. They were masculine and she felt an impatient urge to dart down the nearby steps and lose herself in the garden. Even as she moved from the shadows, the young man reached her side.

  `There you are !' He gave an exasperated laugh. `You promised me a dance, Lorna.'

  The music stole out from the lighted french doors of the ballroom. The heat, the smoke from cigarettes, and the rather empty chatter had driven her out into the night, and she wondered why Rodney Grant should seek her out when there were other girls who were frankly eager for his attentions.

  `Dancing bores me.' The look she gave him was cool. 'I much prefer the fresh air and the way those stars seem almost within reach of my hand.'

  `They are not, Lorna.' His prosaic way of speaking and looking at life always irritated her. Tar better to accept what is within your reach.'

  `All the ordinary things?' she scoffed. 'Marriage and the chores that go with it, and being taken for granted after a few years?'

  `No man in his right senses could ever take you for granted,' he re-joined, and she heard that slightly gruff note in his voice which meant he was blushing. It

  amazed her that a grown man should stammer and blush because a girl happened to be presentable.

  Lorna had silvery-gold hair, deep blue eyes, and a slender heart of a face, but she had been taught at her convent school that physical attributes were irrelevant and now she was out in the world she was hardly aware that men found her attractive. She was grateful for her good health, and the fact that she could ride a horse without tumbling off.

  Suddenly there stole through the garden the plaintive sound of a reed flute, haunting and somehow beckoning in contrast to the dance music that had ceased for a while.

  `Who plays that, I wonder?' Lorna moved nearer to the terrace wall and listened with an entranced light in her eyes. 'I've heard it each night I have been here at the Ras Jusuf.'

  `It's probably one of the gardeners.' Rodney came to her side, but when she felt the brush of his arm she drew away and ran down the terrace steps.

  `Let us go and find this Arabian Pan who plays so alluringly among the trees,' she said.

  `You odd girl!' But Rodney followed where she led and soon they were deep in the garden among the towering palms and jacarandas with their drooping sprays of blossom.

  `Oh,' Lorna caught at a spray and gently crushed it, `can you breathe such air and not feel adventurous?'

  `What do you mean by adventure?' Rodney teased. `Being alone with you like this makes me feel romantic.'

  `I'm not the romantic type,' she re-joined. 'Well, not

  in the sense you mean. Life should hold some wonder, some quality of magic beyond empty kisses and empty promises.'

  `Have you never flirted with a man?' He stood in her path. 'It can be fun to flirt, Lorna, and I should enjoy very much being your teacher.'

  `You wouldn't find me a very eager pupil, Mr. Grant.' Her cool young voice had ice in it. 'Unlike some of the other female visitors to the hotel I am not here to try and catch a husband.'

  `Don't tell me you came to see the desert?'

  `Don't you consider the desert an intriguing place?' She turned away from him and listened to the hidden melody of the reed flute. It held all her attention. The chatter of Rodney Grant was an intrusion, but she was too polite to ask to be left a: We.

  `They'll be playing the last dance in the ballroom before long and you'll have missed it,' she said hopefully.

  `I couldn't leave you alone—with an Arab playing a flute somewhere among these trees.'

  `I'm not in the least nervous.' She gave a laugh. `Tomorrow I shall be alone in the desert—'

  `You can't seriously mean that?' He caught at her hand, but in a second she pulled free of his touch and drew away from him as if she couldn't tolerate physical contact with a man. The only male person she had ever been close to had been her father, and only in the last year of his life had that been possible because he was always away on his travels, in search of unusual places to put on canvas.

  Lorna's mother had died so long ago that she could barely remember her, and much of her youth had been spent at convent school.

  `When you are grown up,' her father had said, 'we'll travel the world together.'

  It was a dream to which she had clung all through their years apart, but it had not been meant to come true. Now at the age of twenty she came alone to the East, and alone she would go to the Oasis of Fadna, a sort of pilgrimage to the place her father had loved, and where he had made his home for several years.

  `Now I've managed to get a good horse,' she told Rodney, 'I certainly intend to see something of the desert.'

  `You must let me come with you,' he said firmly. 'A girl like you can't go riding alone—why, parts of the desert are still untamed and lawless, and girls have been carried off and never heard of again!'

  Her laughter
rang out, a faintly scornful note in it. `I am not Dolly Featherton,' she scoffed. 'You can't alarm me with tales of ardent and dangerous Arabs who carry off lonely girls to their harems. My father lived in the desert and he knew the bedouin. They prefer their own kind of woman and consider European females a little too bony.'

  `You are just being obstinate,' Rodney said stiffly. `You could be kidnapped for ransom—oh, I'm glad you find that equally amusing! Bedouins assume that tourists are rolling in cash!'

  `Then they'll be disappointed if they abduct me.' She smiled and brushed a moth from her hair. 'I have a reasonable income from the sale of some of my father's paintings, but I'm not rich ' And there

  she broke off as the haunting sound of the Arabian flute stole nearer. She listened and then gave a dart beneath the arching fronds of the trees. She saw the glimmer of a pond on which water-lilies floated, and there beside it crouched the figure of an Arab.

  The hood of his burnous was pulled forward over his eyes, but Lorna saw the flute jutting from his lips. The melody petered out as he stared at her ... in his monkish hood he was rather sinister.

  Lorna's fingers clenched on her evening purse. She expected the usual request for baksheesh, but instead he put away the flute in the folds of his robes and gave her a dignified salaam.

  `The lella seeks me out to have her fortune divined in the sand?' He spoke in French, which she spoke fluently herself, and his eyes gleamed in the shadow of his hood. 'I have seen the lella in the bazaar, and I have seen her wandering in this garden. I think she is seeking something in the Land of the Veil.'

  Lorna gazed fascinated at the Arab, and then Rodney spoke scornfully at her shoulder. 'Sand-divining? It's a lot of tomfoolery, Lorna. Don't waste your money on the old charlatan!'

  `The roumi fears that he will have no place in the Lella's destiny.' With great composure the Arab drew a small bag from one of his capacious pockets. He pulled the drawstring and a stream of fine sand poured out on to the path beside the pond. Lorna watched as he spread the pale sand with a dark hand and traced designs in it with his forefinger.

  `I wish the lella to blow upon the sand, but lightly,' he said.

  She was about to kneel down on the ground when the diviner, with the instinctive gallantry of desert people, drew a scarf from about his neck and spread it upon the ground for her to kneel upon.

  merci,' she smiled, and ignoring Rodney and his fumings she blew upon the strange designs in the sand. Then with bated breath she watched as the Arab studied the pattern into which the grains had formed.

  `Mektub; he murmured. 'I see written here a house set in a lonely place, where the sands of the desert have encroached and smothered the flowers upon its walls. The lella should not go to this place, but it is written that she will go.'

  `Why should I not go to this house?' she asked, intrigued but not really mystified. In seeking a good riding horse, she had also made enquiries about the house set among the trees of the Oasis of Fadna. Word could have got about that she was going there to look at the house.

  `You will go, lella.' Within the shadow of the hood the dark eyes gleamed again. 'And you will go pursued by a man with dark hair.'

  She smiled and glanced up at fair-haired Rodney. `Well, that lets you out,' she said lightly.

  `Why, what did the old rascal say?' he demanded. `Don't you speak French?' she asked.

  `No, my own tongue is good enough for me!'

  She quirked an eyebrow at his lack of humour. 'I am told that I am being pursued by a man with dark hair,' she said, a twinkle in her eyes.

  `What absurd nonsense!' Rodney scowled and gave the Arab a look of scorn. 'Give him a coin and come away, Lorna!'

  `Not before I've heard some more—it might be nonsense, but it's amusing.'

  When she glanced again at the diviner, he at once bent intently over the sand patterns. 'Who is this dark man?' she asked gaily. 'Have I met him, or is he a stranger to me?'

  `There are people whom we meet in dreams, lella. People who are strangers without being strange to us.'

  `I'm afraid I don't have dreams about tall, dark, dangerous men.' She gave her rather cool and attractive laugh. 'Can't you tell me something really interesting?'

  `Has the lella no interest in the secrets of the heart?'

  She detected a rather mocking note in the throaty voice, and an imp of defiance seized hold of her and she leant forward and blew the sand patterns out of shape. 'There, now I have blown this dark man out of my path.'

  `No, lella.' The sand-diviner indicated the hem of her blue silk dress, to which clung several grains of the fine sand. 'The only way you can escape him is to leave the desert . . . if you stay you will be pursued until the hand of this man is upon you as the sand grains are.'

  The amusement died out of her eyes and she brushed the sand from her dress. It was foolish to take the game to heart, but all the same she felt suddenly

  cold and she fumbled with her beaded purse as she extracted a coin for the Arab. He took it and stored it away in his robes. He gave her a salaam and murmured, Bilhana.'

  `Shouldn't you wish me to beware?' she quipped, and then she turned and suggested to Rodney that they hurry back to the ballroom for the last dance. The wailing of the Arab flute followed them, and she told herself she was a fool to let the old fortune-teller disturb her. No one could read the future and it was just as well!

  Half an hour ago she had run away from the noise and chatter of the hotel ball, but now she welcomed the music that drowned the sound of the flute.

  `You dance awfully well,' Rodney murmured, 'yet you profess not to like dancing.'

  `I much prefer to ride,' she said. 'There's nothing to beat a gallop on a good horse—also I do the leading when I ride.'

  `So that's the reason?' His arm tightened about her. `You don't like being led by a man?'

  `Not very much.' She pulled out of his arms as the music died away and the dimmed lights began to brighten. Nearby a young man was kissing a girl on the ear, and Lorna gave the couple a cool look, almost as if she didn't understand the emotions that led to such an embrace.

  `Goodnight, Rodney.' She made for the door. 'I expect to be up early, so I'm off to bed.'

  `Are you still set on riding alone in the desert?' he demanded, falling into step beside her.

  `Of course.' She gave him the same cool and enquiring look she had given the kissing couple. 'Why should I change my plans?'

  `The answer's obvious.' He spoke in a low, explosive tone as they reached the foot of the stairs. 'You're too attractive to be here on your own, let alone in the desert. I shall come with you!'

  `But I don't want you, Rodney.' She stood on the stairs and looked down at him with cool blue eyes. `You would be in my way.'

  He flushed and his hand gripped the stair rail. `Have I been in your way all this week, then? Are you one of those frigid females who gets more fun out of her own company than that of a man?'

  `I'm a little bit of a lone wolf,' she admitted. `I'm sorry, Rodney, but I did warn you that I wasn't here to look for a husband in the tourist season. I am here just to suit myself, and I assure you I can look after myself. It's kind of you to offer your protection, but I'm not a helpless creature like Dolly Featherton.'

  Rodney gazed up at her, taking in her fair hair with its silvery sheen, her large blue eyes, and her slenderness in the blue silk dress. 'If you aren't careful,' he warned, 'you'll meet your match and have some of that haughty coolness kissed out of you. Beware, Lorna! If you're made of ice, then the desert might melt you.'

  She laughed, and at that moment the Feathertons came out of the lounge. Plump Dolly with her permed hair and her pursed lips. Mrs. Featherton with her nose in the air. The husband, following behind his ladies, gave Lorna the usual greedy stare that his wife never saw because he was one of those men who had

  made a habit of doing things behind her back.

  Lorna disliked the Feathertons, and with an airy wave at Rodney she went running up the stairs to her
suite. She supposed Rodney was right about her. She didn't like sharing herself with other people, though she was always the first to help anyone in trouble, especially a child or a manhandled animal.

  She switched on the light of her bedroom and walked over to the mirror. She studied her reflection and a wry little smile came and went on her lips. Rodney had accused her of a lack of feeling—but he meant the sort that responded to a careless caress or a passing kiss, and he was right in supposing that she had no desire to flirt with men. It wasn't coldness or lack of emotion. It was a total lack of interest in the kind of men she had met so far. They seemed so prosaic, so lacking in spirit and imagination.

  Rodney had offered to ride with her in the desert, but she knew full well that he preferred diving in and out of the hotel swimming-pool. Along with the other guests he seemed not to hear the call of the desert beyond the safe walls of the Ras Jusuf.

  She prepared for bed, and lay beneath the netting with her thoughts full of the desert ride she planned to enjoy in the morning. Her entire being longed to see the sands as her father had seen them, a glowing, golden ocean of waves and hillocks that ran to meet the far horizon.

  `It can be cruel and hot and menacing,' her father had told her. But there's beauty there, for those who can see it and appreciate it.'

  She thought also of the things the sand-diviner had said to her about the desert ... that she would go to the house in the oasis pursued by a man.

  It was absurd, but she was unable to control the shiver that ran over her, and like a little girl again she pulled the light covers over her head as if afraid of the darkness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WEARING cream-coloured breeches, a light shirt, and a slouch hat, Lorna made her way out of the hotel. A flask of coffee and a packet of biscuits reposed in the satchel in her hand, and her heart felt as light as the birds piping in the hedges of flowers as she made her way to the forecourt.

  Already the sun was pink in the eastern sky, and her heartbeats quickened with excitement when she saw the stable boy, Ahmet, holding the reins of the horse she had hired from the local stables.