“Nothing,” she flashed at him in quiet fury. “You’re just a machine, something that can be fed with any old thing and turn out a luxury article. And I believe I know the way you work!”
“Really?” he asked mildly. “Tell me.”
“You suppress every human instinct'. You grew up without loving anyone, and now the only sort of feeling you’re capable of is ... is the sort you have for your cousin. You’ll pay for him to be whole, but you don’t understand in the least what’s really wrong with him—the anguish of a young, active and care-free man who is suddenly cut off from everything that means most to him. How could you understand? You’ve never loved
people!”
“No?” he said laconically.
“No. If you could love, you’d be married by now.”
“That’s a startling theory; I must give some time to it.”
“Don’t bother. You
just aren’t the marrying kind.”
“Now that’s rather clever of you,” he said admiringly. “I’m
not
the marrying kind. But don’t let it get you; I’m pretty normal in other respects.” He paused. “I believe you’re angry because I prised you loose from Tony de Chalain. Ah well, life is full of small disappointments. You’ll get over this one. You know something? The more I see of women, the more thankful I am that I’ve never been tempted to probe below the surface of any of you. All women resent a bachelor.”
“Chiefly because bachelors are often so selfish and conceited that they aren’t a bit nice to know!”
“That sounds like a cue for an interesting discussion,” he told her equably. “I may take you up on it some time.” He took her key and opened the suite door, stood aside for her to enter. “Have an early night,” he said. “You need a rest. The doctor will call in at about nine tomorrow morning, and we’ll go up and see Mike soon afterwards. Don’t forget about wearing something special.”
“I’m here as a physiotherapist—nothing more!”
He looked at her, calculatingly. “Are you sure about that? Somehow I’ve gathered that you’ve something besides your job on your mind, though I can’t think what it would be, in Morocco.”
“Good night, Mr. Ryland,” she said stiffly.
He shrugged as deeply as a Frenchman. “Goodnight, Miss Yorke,” he answered carelessly. “Don’t look out at the moon—it might bewitch you into forgetting Cumberland for a minute, and that wouldn’t so, would it?”
The door closed noiselessly. Before the man could have taken a step, she slipped the bolt home with a snap he must have heard—and felt better for it. She took a few paces, so that she could see the night through the french window. Dane Ryland must have known there was no moon; Sally was fairly sure that he was also convinced that her first action would be just this—a peering into the darkness in search of a magic she would rather not find. The man was impossible!
Resolutely, she ordered a tray of coffee and a box of cigarettes. She got into pyjamas, took a book from her own supply and sank into an easy chair. But she couldn’t take in a word of print. In fact, she had never known her mind in such turmoil.
She had been here in Shiran no longer than six or seven hours, but so much seemed to have happened that she could hardly keep track of things. There was Michael Ritchie, who remained an unknown quantity; the absurd business about Tony de Chalain—why pick on Sally Yorke, who wanted nothing more than to be left alone with her job and her private problem!
And there was Dane Ryland. Was it possible that back in England she had naively imagined herself asking his help in the matter of contacting Lucette?
The whole atmosphere of the place was disquieting. The brilliance and warmth, the sumptuousness of the Mirador, the soft-footed servants, the palms and inviting sea, all created a forcing ground for highly-colored events. Try as one would to remain uninfected by the fevers of this corner of Morocco, some of the heat was bound to creep into one’s veins. Only Dane Ryland was immune, and, as she had not hesitated to tell him, he was more machine than man.
She remembered his urbane charm when the American family had passed them in the corridor, and it occurred to her, suddenly, that the same charm with heart in it might be irresistible.
“Sweet grief,” she said aloud to herself as she prepared for bed. “As if I care whether he has a heart or not! All
I want is a chance to earn my salary, and a few illuminating hours with Lucette.”
And promptly she steered her memory back to the letter from Lucette Millar, and to the years before, when Lucette had been a school friend and spent all her holidays with the Yorkes in Cumberland, because the Millar parents lived in Antibes or Lucca or Athens or Tangier, and were never in England when she needed them.
After the end of their schooldays, Sally had seen little of the gay, scintillating creature she had admired and loved, but there were letters—smudged, scented missives which sketched a continental life that Sally could hardly believe in. Then, five months ago, came the one from Tangier, a cry from the heart. It seemed that the Millars’ funds were low and the parents were trying to marry their daughter off to someone rich and repulsive. Lucette couldn’t escape because she had no money
...
“but, oh, Sally darling, how I long to get away from them all! If you were here with me we could run away together, but a girl alone wouldn’t stand a chance in this country. I don’t seem to have anyone at all that I can turn to for help, and you’re so very far away. But I won’t marry the horrid old thing! Only what am I to do? Sally, couldn’t you please get a holiday and come out here? I know it would be expensive, but I do have a bracelet I can give you. You could sell it when you get back to England. Please, Sally.
Please.”
Naturally, Sally had been distressed, but there had been nothing she could do. No holidays were due, and she was loath to leave her small charges at the Beckmoor Home. She had written to Lucette, pointed out that she was twenty one and free to sell her bracelets and travel to England on the proceeds ... but there had been no reply, none at all. And as the weeks passed Sally had become alarmed.
The older Yorkes had never cared much about Lucette, so Sally decided it would be better not to mention her dilemma at home. But more and more often she wondered if she couldn’t have done something for her friend. She wrote again, several times, and finally there was the note from Mrs. Millar. An extraordinary few lines which stated the impossible—that Lucette was naughty to have ignored
Sally, but that was her way, and it would be better if Sally returned the treatment!
Lucette, as Sally knew, was effervescent and flighty, capable of heaps of gay lies and lacking in wisdom; but she would never, for any comprehensible reason, drop Sally Yorke completely from her mind. Sally was the only close friend she had ever made. Therefore the deduction was obvious. Sally’s letters had been intercepted, and eventually, to ensure that none slipped by and into Lucette’s hands, Mrs. Millar had decided to put an end to them. To Sally, the knowledge was quite unnerving.
She had found herself scanning travel advertisements, and watching for the magic mention of Tangier. Then her eye had caught the word Morocco in an advertisement in
The Times,
and she had discovered that Shiran was about two hundred miles south of Tangier. In a dreamlike state she had written to Dane Ryland
...
and here she was, a little excited, a little apprehensive, but determined not to be intimidated.
Tomorrow she would get someone to type Lucette’s address on an Hotel Mirador envelope, and send off a letter in it. With luck, and the Shiran postmark, it would get past Mrs. Millar. After its despatch, Sally would have to work and wait.
She got into one of the huge beds, snapped off the light and lay listening to the monotonous fluting of insects and a distant, unearthly wailing noise, which probably came from a holy man at prayer. She thought of houris with sullen, mysterious eyes showing above a veil, of handsome Bedouins and tents in the desert. And inevitably she thought of Dane Ryland, who was tall and careless and commanding, and definitely not the marrying kind.
And then, because she was young and healthily spent, Sally went to sleep.
CHAPTER
TWO
DAWN in Shiran was sudden. At one moment the sky was dark but tinged in the east with an arc of glowing pink; then a blend of milky blue and flamingo p
ink
spread quickly across the heavens, followed by a clear and startling azure. The sun was up.
Sensational, Sally admitted, as she looked down from her balcony at the palms and ginger bushes rising from the long strip of emerald green lawn beyond the esplanade. Behind the greenness stretched the sea, calm and silvery and edged with white where it lapped the pale gold sand. A very inviting sea.
Though it was so early, a few men strolled the paved paths which led across to the beach. They wore swimming briefs and gay sports shirts, with a towel hung carelessly about the neck. All were dark and were, no doubt, Frenchmen in the army or government service. Their wives were presumably still in bed. Which vexed Sally a little. She would have loved to bathe in that serene blue and silver sea, but she couldn’t possibly be the only girl among so many men. Later on, she determined, she would find some secluded spot and enjoy herself in the waves.
She showered and was served with a continental breakfast of crescent rolls, golden butter and coffee. After it, she took her time over dressing in a lavender linen frock which was collared with white, used a dusting of powder and rub of lipstick and felt sufficiently keyed up to face the languid, moneyed world of the Mirador.
Down in the vestibule she unwittingly drew glances. The short bronze curls framed a clear pink and white face, the blue eyes looked upon the brilliant world with calm innocence, and her red lips were slightly parted, as if she were drinking in the atmosphere and hadn’t quite the capacity for so much glitter.
“Ah, good morning, mademoiselle!” Pierre de Chalain came from a door which was half-hidden beyond the corner of the reception desk. “You slept well, I am sure. You make our morning look stale!”
“Thank you, monsieur.” She took in his delight and reflected a little of it. “This morning, I like your city!”
“That is splendid. You have plans for the day?”
“Yes, I think so.” She smiled at him, thinking how simple and kind he was. Strange to feel such things about a man of more than fifty, but Pierre de Chalain had, no doubt, always been an uncomplicated, easily hurt human being. It was difficult to believe, in the searching light of morning, that he had entertained queer ideas which linked her with his son. “I’m supposed to be meeting the doctor with Mr. Ryland.”
“Ah. Already you think of your business here!”
“I have to, monsieur. Do you have the English newspapers?”
“They arrive by plane this afternoon. I will send one of each to your room.”
“Thank you very much. Do you know, I’m beginning to wish
you
were my employer here in Shiran.”
“I wish it myself,” he answered gallantly. “I can imagine nothing better than to have some relative of mine in need of your assistance; if I were Dane, I would keep you here indefinitely, on a large salary!”
She laughed, murmured something and walked out into the hot shade of the terrace, feeling rather surprised that she, Sally Yorke from the farm, had been able to deal so casually with the Frenchman. Amazing, the speed with which one was able to handle relationships in this climate. Sally, who had known singularly little personal contact with men outside her own family circle, was aware of a heady pleasure in her own small accomplishment.
She walked along the terrace and round to the side of the hotel, where people in gay cottons and beach-wear were sitting at tables under umbrellas, while a few swam lazily in the magnificently tiled pool and other sunned themselves on bright foam rubber loungers. Someone placed a chair for her and she looked up to thank him. Oddly, some of the happiness which was beginning to pulse in her veins seeped away.
“Good morning,” Dane Ryland said, in those crisp, forthright tones she remembered. “Like a cool drink?”
“Thank you, but it’s too soon after breakfast.” She sat down, and felt him lower himself to another chair. “It’s quite a playground you have here.”
He shrugged. “People have to relax—even rich ones. I suppose you always spent your holidays at
a home?”
“Yes, but the farm is only about thirty miles from the sea.”
“Cold sea, too much sand and a whipping breeze?”
She looked at him, surprised. “Do you know our coast?”
“I’ve travelled, little one,” he said, his smile sardonic.
“I may even have driven past your farm,
some time or other.” A pause. “What’s so wonderful about that place where you grew up?”
She answered casually, “You’d see it only as an old farmhouse that’s crumbling in places, an expanse of pasture, out'-buildings and sheep.” She laughed suddenly. “No, the house wouldn’t go down with you at all. You’d be annoyed with the small windows, the low beams
—
they’d certainly give you a crack or two on the head before you got used to them I And you’d hate the steep narrow stairs that' rise straight out of the living room—and having to pump up the water over the sink. There are
bulges in the bedroom walls, an
d in the attic room where I sleep you can stand up straight only right in the centre.” He smiled, looked at her speculatively. “What else? There must be something good about the place or you wouldn’t go dreamy-eyed when you speak of it.”
“Well
...
it’s really a beautiful old farmhouse. The walls are two feet thick, the floors are dark and shining, the rooms are big, even if the ceilings are low, and the front door is carved oak and even older than the house itself. We have a herb garden and a river with stepping
-
stones, and if you walk up the ridge behind the house you can see the moor and a lake on one side, and a flourishing market town far away to the left. And there’s a scent,” she ended softly, “which you don’t get anywhere else in the world.”
“That’s probably true of any place,” he said laconically.
She agreed. “I did notice the smell of Shiran as we arrived. It was sweetish with a bitter, tobacco-like aroma in the background. I seem to have become acclimatized, because I can’t smell it now. But this hotel is somehow unreal, like something in a glossy advertisement.”
“Really?” he said, cool and mocking. “That must be because you’ve stayed at home all your young life.”
She regarded him candidly. “You don’t like criticism, do you?
I mean, you like it even less t
han most people do.”
“I can get along with a capable critic any time,” he answered, “but I can’t say that I take to having a girl with a childish stare throwing her opinions about. After all, your yardstick is a disintegrating farmhouse in Cumberland
...”
She broke in swiftly, “Our house will be even more lovely than it is now when this gilded palace is out of date! This may be a home to you, but that’s probably because you’ve never known a real home. And then, of course, you created the whole atmosphere of the hotel; it means something to you.”
“It means nothing at all—I simply happen to be part owner. To me, the hotel is merely a business proposition.”
“Then why do you live here?”
He gave her the experienced but slightly jaded smile. “My dear child, a man has to live somewhere, and if he’s logical, he lives where he can do as he pleases, at any hour of the day. Here I have a suite, service and excellent cooking, and I’m absolutely free of all entanglements. What more could any man desire?”
To Sally, of course, he was incomprehensible. She said, a little carelessly, “It’s as well for us women that all men don’t think that way. Most of us have the normal instincts.” He nodded tolerantly. “Marriage, and all that
.
Picked anyone out yet?”
“Good heavens, no.”
“But you mean to marry?”
She sat up straighter. “You make it sound like one of your business propositions. I suppose you’ve managed everything in your life that way, but I haven’t. I let things happen.”
“What does that mean—that you’ll marry the first man who asks you?”
“Probably—because he wouldn’t propose unless I’d encouraged him, and I wouldn’t do that if I weren’t in love with him.”
He laughed, lazily. “You’ve a long way to grow up. To you, romance means a subtle magic between two people and the inevitable wedding bells. What comes after—a houseful of youngsters, and slippers and a pipe for hubby?”
“Perhaps not quite in that order,” she said, her smile bright and demure. “But it sounds awfully pleasant.”
“And you sound horribly inexperienced,” he said tersely. “I can imagine nothing more grim than being tied to a
wife and children for the rest of my life. I’d sooner live in bachelor quarters at the phosphate mine!”
Not a whit put out by his forceful tones, Sally smiled cheerfully. “Well, few of us think alike, do we? For that matter, being married to you would hardly be a picnic, in any case.” Inconsequentially, she queried, “Where is this phosphate mine that you rescued?”
“About seventy miles away.” His smile was amused but narrow. “You think I’d make a rotten husband?”
“Well, you’re pretty self-sufficient, aren’t you? You seem to have grown up without any aptitude for love. Who runs your mine?”
“The mine doesn’t belong to me—I’m merely a director of the company.” He sounded impatient and a little sarcastic. “What’s your definition of an aptitude for love?” She rested an elbow on her knee and her chin on her fingers, and gazed thoughtfully at the floating bodies in the swimming pool. “I’ve never really thought much about it, but it seems to me you have to keep a sort of freshness in your mind and a feeling of harmony with other people. That way, you’re ready for bigger emotions when they turn up.”
“You t
hink
I’ve forgotten how to be fresh?” he enquired.
Sally laughed. “I daresay you have your moments,” she commented, “and I’m quite sure you could charm a woman into believing herself in love with you—if you wanted to, that is. How in the world did we get on to this topic?”
His mouth had a mocking slant. "It’s a perennial between the sexes. With a woman, one could start out discussing fertilizers or nuclear physics and still end up by dissecting love and marriage.”
“I expect you’ve gone over the ground a good many times?”
“Afraid so. We get all kinds here, but most of them are single-purposed; they’re after something unusual in the way of a husband.”
“Sounds horrid. I don’t wonder you’re warped.”
Sally had spoken idly, but a moment later she knew she had managed to put her foot in it. There were people laughing and chattering in several languages; there were
Moors serving wines and mint tea, a good-looking uniformed boy carrying a tray of cigarettes, the splashing of water in the pool, faint music from the lounge, where older people were taking mid-morning refreshment. In fact, there was everything one might expect of a sumptuous hotel on the hot coast of Morocco. Yet she felt an icy breath of wind about her and knew it had nothing to do with the elements.
Quickly, she looked his way. Dane was a hard-faced man with sea-green eyes, a hooked nose and a formidable jaw. He was selecting a cheroot from a platinum case, slipping the case back into the pocket of his white linen jacket.
“Sorry to upset one of your theories,” he said, “but with me you don’t quite pull off that atmosphere of harmony you mentioned. Like a cigarette?”
She declined, and was relieved to see that they were being joined by a greying Frenchman in a tropical beige lounge suite. Dane introduced him as Dr. Demaire, and the man bowed and seated himself, looked Sally over both professionally and otherwise, and said he was glad she had come.
“I have only a few minutes, I am afraid. You have some questions to ask me about the patient, mademoiselle?” She looked at Dane, then at the other man. “Aren’t I working under you, Doctor? To some extent I was primed by the doctor in England, but he told me I’d be working upon your instructions. That was what he understood.”
“Yes, naturally. But I am not an orthopaedic man, mademoiselle. Michael Ritchie himself has his X-ray films and the file from the hospital, but I knew enough about the case to give Mr. Ryland the details to send to England. When it is convenient, you and I will go through his file together—if you can persuade Michael to part with it.” He turned to Dane. “You are going to see your cousin this morning, with Miss Yorke?”
Dane nodded. “Why not come along with us?”
“I am unable to do that, my friend. Your cousin has asked me never to go there unless I am called. While he is in such a frame of mind I can do him no good.” His smile at Sally was very French. “I
think
you do well to bring a pretty girl for Mike. In time she may succeed with him.”
“You’re not much help,” Dane said. “I want you and Miss Yorke to work together and get Mike on his feet.” The doctor shrugged. “Tell your cousin, Dane. When he agrees to it, I will be happy to place myself at' his disposal. In any case, for a day or two it would be best for Mike and the mademoiselle to get to know each other, without prejudice. If I were you, I would not tell him that Miss Yorke is a physiotherapist”