Rapture of the desert Read online

  "Humph, I'm glad you're not that innocent, for Jeremy's sake! " Chrys spoke tartly. "The damned decadent Adonis is looking right at us. He knows full well we're talking about him . . . who is he, Dove?"

  "Well, as I said, it isn't right for you to call him a card-sharp." Dove was now so nervous that she was tearing a paper napkin to shreds. "He's Prince Anton de Casenove, and I really don't know whether to be thrilled or frightened that he bowed to me. He has Russian royal blood in him, and they say he attracts women like a magnet. Oh, heavens, even I can feel the pull of him, and I'm engaged to Jeremy! "

  "Don't let it upset you, pet," Chrys said drily. "Both the devil and the divine have this pull on the female of the species. I'm sure if milor suddenly rose to his feet and came over here to kiss your hand, you would run like a pretty hare."

  "And what would you do?" Dove spoke huffily. "Slap his face?"

  "I might," Chrys drawled."I'd hate to be kissed by a man with his kind of face. I can't make up my mind whether he's wickedly good-looking, or gaunt and interesting. I'm sure all that suavity is only a thin veneer over a basic savage."

  "Chrys, that's putting it a bit strongly." But Dove giggled, as if it excited her own basic niceness and timidity that a wicked-looking prince should bow to her. "I wonder why he's all alone? D'you suppose he's waiting for a woman?"

  "No." Chrys was amazed that she felt so sure. "He's the type that keeps women waiting. I believe he's sitting

  there with the deliberate intention of putting the pair of us into a flap. He's hoping we'll either make a bolt for the lift, or one of us will give him the eye in the hope that he'll come over here. I bet if I gave him the eye right now, he'd shrivel me with a frosty look and enjoy doing it. That one believes in the harem, not in the liberation of feminine libido."

  "Would you dare?" Dove spoke so excitedly that she forgot to whisper.

  Immediately, from the corner of her eye, Chrys saw that dark cigar make a downward stab into the ashtray. That devil was waiting for her to dare something. Being a foreigner he obviously believed that European women were fast, and he was waiting for her to prove him right.

  As if nerving herself for that moment when a dancer runs from the wings into the many eyes of the stage lights, beyond which are the thousand human eyes of her audience, Chrys slowly turned her head so that she was looking directly at Prince Anton de Casenove. He was looking at her and there was challenge in every graceful line of him; in the way he held his haughty head and revealed his eyes by the sudden rapid lifting of his lashes

  Deep grey, almost smoky eyes ... shockingly beautiful eyes!

  Never as a dancer had she been a victim of stage fright ... but now fright took hold of her and she was the one who felt like bolting like a hare for the express lift. There was something about those eyes that stripped her of all her assurance and made her feel that she was a girl of sixteen again, who had never been out of England, and never been kissed.

  With a sense of total surprise she realized that it was true about the kissing part . . . only male dancers had ever set their lips to hers, and only because it was all part of the ballet ... Albrecht with Giselle and nothing more.

  "I think we'd better be going, Dove." She looked round for the waiter and quickly beckoned him over.

  Dove was looking a little let down.

  "Scared of him?" she asked.

  "No, but it suddenly seemed a foolish game, like a pair of schoolgirls imagining that a grown man would be interested in their nonsense. I'll pay the bill and we can be off."

  Chrys avoided her sister's stare as she settled up with the waiter and pulled on her gloves. They walked across to the lift, and she knew he was still there on the black leather seat, perfectly at his ease, and perfectly aware that she was running away. She was glad when the lift door closed and she could feel the steel enclosure swooping herself and Dove to the ground floor. They stepped out and made for the swing doors leading on to the street.

  They were outside and she was about to hail a cab when Dove clutched at her arm. "My parcel," she wailed. "My wedding shoes! I collected them just before we met for tea, and I've gone and left them up in the lounge. Oh, Chrys! " Dove glanced wildly at her wristwatch. "I'm meeting Jeremy and we're driving over to Hampstead to see his mother. I daren't be late. Jeremy's an angel, but Mrs. Stanton is a bit of a tartar. Look, can you go back for my shoes? I must grab that taxi and be off ! "

  "You are the limit, Dove." Chrys gave a rueful laugh. "You're so cockeyed about that young man that you'll lose your head before the great day arrives. Run, then, or that cab will be snapped up. The busy hour is just starting."

  "Angel! I'll see you later on. The shoe box is a pink one in a Fereaux bag. See you! " Dove darted to the cab and climbed in, and the next moment it was gone and Chrys was standing alone on the pavement. It was now past five, and the shadows of the church across the road, and the buildings round about had a smear to them, they were stretching as the sun slid down the sky, going pink and unreal. Chrys tilted her chin and walked back into the hotel.

  Once again she rode up swiftly to the lounge, its fittings and its carpet bathed in a pink glow as she walked across to the seat where she had taken tea with Dove. She didn't look left or right, but just kept on going... only to find the parcel gone!

  Now she had to look around for the waiter, only to find the lounge deserted but for a tall, tall figure who was coming inexorably towards her On his feet he was even more elegant, with that silent way of walking which she had felt was the requisite of Russian male dancers, as if the soles of their feet were padded with velvet, and springy as the paws of the leopard.

  She stood very still, a tall girl herself, with coiled gold hair, pure pale features, and eyes spooned out of a pure blue sky. Her suit of tawny wool fitted her without a wrinkle, for she had learned long ago the ballet dancer's art of always looking neat. She was silent and still and strangely trapped, high above London, it seemed, with a man in whom she had detected a savage flame, uncooled by civilized living, and the sartorial elegance of the man of the world.

  "Your pardon, madame, but can I be of service? You appear to have lost something?"

  "A parcel." The words seemed to scrape her dry throat. "A pair of wedding shoes which were in a paper bag on this seat."

  "Shoes for a wedding, eh?" He slowly raised a black brow. "I expect the waiter has carried them away, and if we ask at the desk they may be there awaiting collection. Shall we see?"

  "I don't wish to bother you."

  "It would only bother me if I could not help a bride-to-be to find her wedding slippers. Come, let us ask, and do stop looking so anxious. Are they golden slippers?" He smiled briefly as he spoke and then gestured her to walk ahead of him among the low tables to the aisle leading to the porter's desk facing the row of express lifts. She obeyed him, and felt him close behind her, head and shoulders above her, lean and lethal as one of

  those fine and glittering swords which she had seen in a museum in Moscow . . . the type that officers of the Czarina's guard had worn long ago with their handsome uniforms that fitted them like a glove, from their wide shoulders down over the lean hips and the long supple legs.

  She almost cried out when lean fingers gripped her elbow and brought her to a standstill in front of the porter's desk. "The young lady wishes to know if a parcel was found on that long seat over by the windows?" he said, and his English seemed extra striking because of his accent, tinging the words with a sort of mystery, as the golden arc of the falling sun was misted at its edges with exotic colour.

  "Would this be the young lady's property, sir?" The porter took something from a shelf under his desk and transferred it to the counter. A decorative paper bag containing Dove's precious shoes. Chrys had noticed that Prince Anton had referred to her as the bride-to-be, but she didn't intend to correct him.

  "Oh, good! " She spoke with all the intensity of relief which would have been Dove's and accepted the package from the porter, while the man at her side han
ded him a generous tip.

  "Thank you, sir."

  "We cannot have the young lady walking barefoot up the aisle, can we?" The prince looked at Chrys as he spoke, and once again she was made aware of how amazingly beautiful were his eyes, and utterly male in their regard despite the length of his lashes and the shadows they threw on to the high-boned contours of his face.

  "And now may I escort you to the ground floor?" he asked.

  "I don't want to drag you away." Her fingers clenched the handle of the shoe bag. "I really can manage to press the button that will transfer me and my shoes to the street. Thank you —"

  "I am going down myself, so we might as well go together. Come! "

  It was impossible not to go with him, and as the lift door opened and she stepped past him into the enclosure, she felt again the height of him, and the darkness, and all the exotic differences deep within his bones. The door slid shut and they were alone together . . . alone for the few moments it would take for the lift to reach the level of the ground. She felt strangely tense, and wondered what Dove would say if she could see her alone like this with the man whom she had called' dangerous.

  Suddenly there was a jarring sensation, taking her so much by surprise that she was thrown against him and aware in an instant of the muscular control and resilience of his body... so like that of a male dancer, and yet so unalike, for the face that looked directly down at her was not a mask painted on but a detailed, utterly masculine, aware and dangerous face.

  "What's happened?" She retreated away from him, to the steel wall of the lift cage.

  He pressed buttons, thumped the door, but there was no response. All was still and silent as he turned to look at Chrys. Then he pronounced the alarming words. "We appear to have come to a halt midway between the floors. Something has evidently gone wrong with the mechanism, so I had better put my finger on the alarm button, eh?"

  "Right away," she said, and her eyes were immense in her face as they dwelt on him and watched his long, lean finger stabbing the button that would set ringing the alarm bell on the ground floor. "Oh, what a nuisance! What a thing to happen! "

  "You are in a hurry, perhaps?" His eyes dwelt with total composure on the shoe bag. "You are meeting —someone?"

  "Yes," she lied, when in truth she was going home to the flat she shared with Dove to cook herself a steak and to watch a television play, and maybe come to terms with the halt in her dancing career. "Yes, I have a date."

  "Then let us hope that the engineers will not be too

  long in freeing us from our predicament." He lounged against the steel wall, and the overhead light gleamed on his thick, well-groomed hair. "It was your sister, of course, with whom you were taking tea? She is very pretty."

  "Thank you." Oh lord, she thought, it was a devil of a thing to happen, as if his dark magnetism had caused the lift to stop like this between floors. She wished he would stop looking at her, as if he knew her thoughts and was deeply amused by them. Where did she look to escape his eyes? At the roof of the lift? At the floor? At his perfect tie against the pale grey silk of his shirt?

  "Tell me," he drawled, "if you are to wear the bride shoes, why is your sister the one who wears the engagement ring?"

  "What?" Chrys stared at him, and felt so trapped.

  "I had a Cossack grandmother and she handed on to me her keen eyesight." His smile was infinitely mocking. "I noticed while you drank tea and your sister ate cream cakes that your hands were ringless and hers bore a ring. The shoes are hers, are they not ?"

  "Yes — so what?" Chrys gave him a defiant and slightly annoyed look. "She's always forgetting things."

  "But why did you return for them?" he asked, and his eyes suddenly held hers so that she couldn't look away. "Did you wish to see me again?"

  "Really! " Chrys felt quite staggered by the suggestion. "You must have a pound on yourself if you think I came back for the shoes because I couldn't resist another look at your face. Dove had to meet her fiancé, so I — really, I'll be darned if I need to explain my actions to you. I couldn't care less about men! "

  "Oh?" He arched an eyebrow in that infuriating mannerism he had, as if he rarely believed a word spoken by women. "Are you frigid, then?"

  "You," she gasped, "live up to the way you look! " "And may I know how I look in your eyes, matushka?"

  "I'm not a child," she retorted.

  "You speak like one if you say you don't care for men. The woman who says that cannot care much for life."

  "Really?" she said again. "Are women the great barren steppes until a wonderful man deigns to notice their existence?"

  "Why not? Can a garden grow by itself? I think not, unless you like a garden of stones."

  "My likes and dislikes have nothing to do with you, milor." She said it sarcastically. "I shall be glad when they get this lift working again. It would have to happen —'

  "You could have been alone," he cut in, "and that would have been even more alarming. As it is we can talk and pass the time. Won't you tell me your name?"

  She sighed and listened for the reassuring sound of the lift's mechanism at work again, but all was still, all was silent, except for the quick beating of her heart.

  CHAPTER II

  "My name is Chrys Devrel," she said, above the beating of her heart.

  "And mine is Anton de Casenove." He bent his head and clicked his heels, and all the time his eyes studied her face. "You have a boy's name," he added drily.

  "I do not." Temper sparked in her blue eyes. "You have heard of the chrysanthemum, haven't you? If my mother had had her way I should have gone through life with that label attached to me."

  "I see." A smile glinted deep in his smoky eyes. "So you are the golden flower, eh?"

  "Don't mock everything I say." Her fingers tingled and she thought of Dove's remark about slapping his face. How easy to just lift her hand and accomplish the deed ... if only she didn't feel so sure that his retalia-

  tion would be of a kind also inherited from his Cossack grandmother.

  "I don't mock you," he rejoined. "I find the name most suitable for someone so lissom and golden."

  The words struck her speechless and she knew that if the lift door had opened in that moment she would have fled from him like a young hare and not stopped running until she arrived at the safety of the flat, where she could shut out the world and the dangerous face of this foreign prince. But the lift door did not open, and even as she wondered how effective her fingernails would be if she had to defend herself, he made a soft growling sound in his throat that was, presumably, his way of laughing.

  "How could I know that when I awoke this morning in London I would find myself tonight trapped with a girl halfway between the sky and the earth? It is quite a situation, eh? The story is bound to get into the newspapers and you may find yourself — compromised."

  "In this day and age?" she scoffed. "Virtue no longer has that kind of value."

  "Not even to yourself ?" He spoke in a dangerously soft voice. "You think you would enjoy the notoriety of being a girl who spent hours alone in a lift with Anton de Casenove?"

  "Are you so notorious?" She made herself speak lightly, but inwardly her heart flamed with a certain fear, and a touch of resentment, for she had always prided herself on being a girl who had made her way in the dancing profession without relying on the patronage of a man; whose talent and dedication had been enough to lift her out of the corps de ballet into the realms of solo dancing. Not once had she needed to use feminine wiles in order to advance her career.

  It had always pleased her that she could go home to Westcliff and remain the nice girl her parents were so proud of. A risque story in the newspapers would upset them, and she reached out nervously to press the buttons again, but nothing happened. The lift stayed stat-

  ic, and only her heart sank a little lower.

  "Well, are you so terrible?" she demanded. "Can't you be seen with a girl without causing people to talk about her ?"

  "No,
" he drawled, "not since an irate Frenchman put a bullet through me when he caught me on the balcony of his sister's bedroom. It was a story that made all the newspapers, mainly because I survived the injury. The bullet passed through my heart."

  "Your heart?" she exclaimed.

  "Yes." He smiled in an infinitely sardonic way, as if really he was more angry than amused. "It is a good thing you have a sister and not a brother, eh?"

  "I — I might have a boy-friend," she fenced.

  "You?" His eyes moved slowly and deliberately over every inch of her face. "You told me a while ago that you didn't care for men, which is hardly the remark of a young woman in love. Tell me, Miss Devrel, do you ever make a bet?"

  "Do you mean — gamble?"

  "Yes." He inclined his head. "Just to pass the time shall we make a bet? It should be amusing if nothing else."

  "And what do we gamble on?"

  "Ourselves. If this lift is enabled to move within the next hour, then you and I will shake hands and part. But if the lift keeps us trapped until midnight, then you give me a promise that you will dine with me tomorrow night."

  "Oh, I don't think that would be very wise."

  "Do you always allow wisdom to be your guide, Miss Devrel?"

  "I have found that it pays better dividends in the end, especially for a single girl with a career she cares about."

  "Ah, so you have a career?" His eyes flickered over her, taking in the slenderness of her body, and her slim legs with the pronounced arch to her feet in the soft leather court shoes that were her one outstanding ex-

  travagance because they were hand-made. Her first maitre de ballet, the famous Maxim di Corte, had drilled into her the good sense of always caring for her ankles and her feet. His own wife, the enchanting Lauri di Corte, never danced unless Maxim had made her slippers as supple as possible with his own hands.

  Chrys smiled a little to herself as she recalled that dancing season in Venice . . . the di Corte marriage worked, in her estimation, because the couple were both involved in the art of ballet. Unless a dancer found such a man, she did better to remain single.