Night of a Thousand Stars (9 page)

At last the strange meal drew to a close. “Come,” said Armand, rising from his cushion with practised ease. “I wish to show you the fountain court by moonlight. I think you will find it very lovely.”

I turned to the colonel, but he flapped a hand, his lids heavy. “Yes, yes. You young people ought to stick together. The
comtesse
and I will only be talking about old times and that’s never amusing for others.”

The
comtesse
’s eyes narrowed and her son gave her a dazzling smile. “Just for a little while,
maman
.”

His mouth twitched as he said the words, and in spite of herself, she returned the smile. “As you wish,
chou
.”

“Cabbage,” I murmured as we made our way out to the court. “Your mother calls you
cabbage
.”

Armand spread his hands in a particularly Gallic gesture. “She still thinks of me as a child. But what can a man do?”

He asked the question lightly, and he expected no answer. He walked me to the center of the court where the fountain stood, the water trickling peacefully over the stones making a sort of music of its own. The birds were still twittering in their cages, but sleepily now. A long tendril of jasmine snaked overhead and the blossoms were white and starry against the dark, glossy green of the leaves. I pinched one off and a cloud of perfume rose, sweet and sensual.

“It’s an aphrodisiac, you know, the flower of the jasmine vine. My mother’s people are from Grasse, where the purest jasmine is grown for perfumes. And in those legendary flower fields where the most beautiful French perfumes are born, the farmers refuse to let their virgin daughters into the fields when the jasmine is ripe for fear they will be lost to sensuality.”

Armand was looking at me intently, the beautiful mouth curved into his habitual half-smile. It was as much a part of him as the Eastern clothes he wore, but it suddenly occurred to me that it seemed affected. That the lips smiled, but something darker and more secret lay behind and unrevealed.

Just then a bird called sharply and I realised I had crushed the blossom to bits in my palm. Armand turned my hand over and brushed the bruised petals from my skin. He lifted my hand, pressing his nose into my palm and inhaling deeply.

“Ah, the perfume of jasmine mingled with the skin of a woman. What could be more intoxicating? Have you heard of the golden peaches of Samarkand? So luscious is this fruit that the Emperor of China sent men across all of Asia to fetch them. They are blushing and sweet and delicious,” he said.

As he spoke, his finger stroked the back of my hand in tiny circles, almost unconsciously. I breathed in sharply and he grinned, baring his teeth in something that was almost but not entirely a smile. He flicked his eyes to the left. “Do you see that staircase, little flower? That leads to the
harim
. It was there that my ancestors kept the most beautiful, the most delectable women. It was there that they engaged in the most exquisite of pleasures. Would you like to see it?”

I squared my shoulders and gave him a friendly smile as I stepped away. “I think not, but it’s darling of you to ask.”

His jaw went slack in astonishment, and then he threw back his head and laughed, suddenly more natural than he had been all evening.

“My God, you English girls do not disappoint! How you have wounded my
amour propre
,” he said, giving me a look that was half-admiring.

“Come now,” I said briskly, “does that really work? The moonlight and the jasmine and the songbirds?”

He stroked his chin. “More often than you would think.”

“Shame on you! And in your mother’s house.”

He dropped a friendly arm around my shoulders, and this time I did not sidle away. “Forget what I said before. My mother knows that I am a man—a man who likes beautiful things.”

I rolled my eyes. “I am not a thing, Armand.”

He dropped his arm, putting his hands in front as if to ward off a blow. “How you wound me with your misunderstanding! It is as if you do not wish for us to be friends.”

“Of course I’d like to be friends. My employer is a very close friend of your mother, and I am sure we will see quite a bit of one another whilst we are in Damascus. It would be awkward if we were uncivil.”

“Uncivil! Oh, how I love the English. I could teach you a warmer word than that,” he said with a playful leer.

“I have no doubt. But I’m long practised in the art of fending off unwanted advances,” I warned him.

He dropped his head so that his lips barely skimmed my ear. “Oh, I intend to make you want them.”

In spite of the warmth of the evening, I shivered a little. There was something almost menacing in his words, in the long, slow stroke of his fingertips as they brushed over my arm, raising gooseflesh in their wake.

“I think it’s time we rejoined the others,” I managed, slipping away from him.

Behind me, he laughed in the shadows but did not follow. I smelled the mossy, greenish scent of the fountain water as I passed, and beeswax and hot metal from the lamps, but always afterwards it was the smell of jasmine that conjured that strange night for me in the fountain court and my first meeting with Armand.

* * *

The next morning I rose and washed and presented myself at breakfast to find the colonel sitting alone with a stack of newspapers and a pot of coffee. An empty basket still held a few crumbs of bread rolls, and as soon as I arrived, the waiter whisked the empty basket out of sight and brought fresh rolls with a pot of quince jam and coffee.

The colonel looked up from his newspapers in disgust. “It’s vile stuff, that coffee. Turkish and thick as honey. Full of grit, too,” he warned me. I slathered a roll in jam and bit into it. Heaven.

“What do you mean to do today, Colonel?”

He tossed aside a newspaper and retrieved another, skimming the headlines with a distracted air. “Hmm? Tour of the city. Always best to get the lay of the land, so to speak, as soon as one arrives. A spot of sightseeing is just the thing.”

“What do you want to see?”

His woolly caterpillar eyebrows jerked upwards in surprise. “Not me, child. I’ve seen every hole in Damascus twice over. I meant you. The
comtesse
’s driver, the fellow with the bull neck—Fareeq? Whatever his name is. He’s to take you and young Talbot around.”

I said nothing, wondering what had happened to Armand’s plan of showing me the sights of Damascus. Perhaps he’d decided English
sangfroid
was not as attractive as he’d initially thought. Or perhaps he had business to attend to. Whichever, if I wondered about his absence that morning, Talbot most certainly did not. We settled ourselves into the
comtesse
’s plush motorcar with Faruq behind the wheel, and Talbot gave a sigh of relief.

“Thank God,” he murmured. “I heard the little
comte
offered to take you to see the city and I have to say I didn’t much like it.”

I grinned. “The colonel’s been telling tales out of school. But whyever should you mind? He’s a lovely fellow.”

“He’s a cad,” he said brutally. “He’s trying to muscle in on you, and I don’t care for it one bit.”

I tried to lift a brow at him, but I think I only ended up wriggling it a bit. “Muscle in? You’ve seen too many pictures. You’re talking like an American gangster.”

He shrugged. “I don’t think much of him.”

“He’s very handsome,” I teased.

Talbot was in no mood to joke, but he must have realised then how grim he was being. He covered my hand briefly with his own and gave me a dazzling smile. “Forget it. I just think, well, you know what I think. And I can’t say I like other men thinking the same thing about you. Although I do certainly understand it.”

I pulled my hand away gently. “Let’s forget all about the count and enjoy ourselves, shall we?”

“I would enjoy myself more if you could bring yourself to call me Hugh,” he suggested. “Not when anyone else is around, of course, but like this. When we’re alone.”

I nodded towards the back of Faruq’s head. “Not quite alone.”

“You know what I mean,” Hugh said in a conspiratorial whisper. I knew exactly what he meant. Faruq was a servant, and as such, didn’t matter. It was a curious attitude for a valet to take, but if anyone understood the way things worked, it would be Hugh. A superior servant like a valet or lady’s maid or driver saw everything and talked about nothing, at least that was the expectation. I could call Hugh by his given name or even let him put his arm through mine and Faruq wouldn’t care.

But as tempting as it was to stroll arm in arm with Hugh, hanging on to his firm muscles, I resisted. It was a foreign country, after all, and we were representing England in a fashion. I knew the customs of Syria were different; here the women went veiled and walked sedately behind their menfolk. And in motorcars, the women sat apart. It seemed prudent to respect their ways as far as I understood them, and so I walked a few feet apart from Hugh most of the time as we trotted obediently after Faruq.

He was a fount of information, all of it delivered in a plain monotone. He was an enormous, muscled fellow, with a neck as thick as a bull’s, and wherever we parked, he looked around, giving threatening glances at any street urchins who dared to so much as look at the motorcar. Hugh and I took ourselves around the sights while Faruq stood guard, polishing the vehicle with a bit of chamois skin and the air of a fanatic. To my distinct pleasure, the tour included a visit to the Protestant cemetery to see the grave of Lady Jane Digby.

“How did you know I wanted to see this?” I demanded as Faruq negotiated with the caretaker to open the gate for us.

Hugh gave a modest shrug. “I saw you reading a book about her on the voyage out. I don’t know much about her, but she seems your type of personality.”

“I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted,” I told him. The caretaker accepted the coins Faruq pressed on him and opened the gate, waving us through and pointing in the general direction we were to take. We picked our way carefully over the stones and stood at the foot of the simple granite slab. The top was marked with a cross and inscribed on the stone at her side were the words:

Jane Elizabeth Digby, daughter of Admiral Sir Henry Digby GCB.

Born April 3rd, 1807. Died August 11th, 1881.

“It isn’t enough,” I said mournfully.

Hugh had come to stand at my elbow. “What isn’t?”

“Such small words to hold such a large life. She was a force of nature,” I told him. “And a famous beauty, the loveliest woman in Europe by all accounts. She was an English aristocrat and had four husbands and twice as many lovers, including the King of Bavaria. But her real claim to fame is that for the last thirty years or so of her life, she lived as the wife of a Bedouin sheikh, a Mezrab, one of the tribe who guard the desert between here and Palmyra.”

“She married a native fellow?” he asked, his brows arching upwards.

I nodded to the pink slab of limestone at her feet. “It’s a rock from Palmyra. And that is her real epitaph.”

Hugh leaned closer to read aloud, “‘Madame Digby el Mezrab.’”

He straightened. “Fancy that. All the English blokes to choose from and half of Europe and she ends up with a desert chieftain.”

I tamped down a flicker of irritation. “He wasn’t just a desert chieftain,” I protested. “He was a very well-educated, highly respected fellow.”

“If you say so.” He gave me a grin. “But as far as these native chappies go, give me Saladin any day. He’s one of the colonel’s favourites, you know.”

He clearly was not interested in the exploits of Lady Jane Digby, so I gave it up as a lost cause and picked up the thread of conversation.

“You’re fond of the old fellow, aren’t you?” I asked. “The colonel, I mean.”

He shrugged. “In my way.” He was modest, but I had seen how quick he was to jump to the colonel’s side with a brandy flask when the old gent grew agitated and needed a bit of settling down. He was forever fussing with travelling rugs and water bottles and walking sticks, and I realised there was something terribly attractive about a man who could take care of others.

As if sensing my mood, he tucked a hand under my elbow as we left the cemetery. “Stay close, if you don’t mind,” he said quietly. “I told Faruq I thought we could walk just a bit, but I don’t want you wandering too far afield.”

“I thought it best if we kept our distance. We aren’t related, after all. I wouldn’t like to offend anyone. Besides, the city seems calm enough,” I told him.

He shrugged. “For now. But it’s a powder keg, Poppy. The slightest spark will set it off and there will be hell to pay. And they won’t mind us walking together. They don’t expect us to abide by the customs. They know we’re different.”

We wandered into a neighbouring
souk
, where I was entranced to find a scene straight out of ancient history. As they had for centuries, merchants and craftsman created and sold their wares here, everything from silks to spices, although I was later to learn that each trade had its preferred
souk
. The markets were crowded with people and animals, and the noise was staggering. Canopies of silk and wool had been tacked overhead to provide shelter from the sun, and the twisting streets and alleyways doubled back on one another in a labyrinthine sort of configuration. As closely as I had studied my maps, I only had the general outline of the main streets. The narrow alleyways of the
souks
were hopeless. We walked for some time, before deciding to turn back to the motorcar and Faruq. I had not paid much attention to the direction we took, but we wound through a few rather unsavoury passages, and after a moment or two I was rather certain Hugh was lost.

“Of course I’m not,” he said testily. “I just thought we’d go back another way. Get a bit of local colour.”

I smiled to myself. No man ever admitted he was lost, and I had just resigned myself to an afternoon of sore feet and worn shoe leather when a beggar loomed out from the shadows.

He was sinister looking, with his robes streaked with filth and a long, twisting scar that started at his brow and puckered his eyelid, scoring his cheek almost in two. I felt my stomach churn at the sight of him, and one soiled hand reached out as he gabbled something at me. He moved closer still and I could see only one disgusting foot peeping out from under his robe as he leant heavily on his stick.