Penny Jordan Tribute Collection

‘I haven’t known him long enough to form an opinion,’ Felicia countered diplomatically, but Zahra was not deceived, and chuckled, explaining,

‘When we heard you were coming, I think Mother was frightened that you would fall in love with him. All my friends think he’s wonderful, and when he was at university in England he had many girl-friends.’

I’ll bet he did, Felicia thought sourly, and she could just imagine his lordly reaction to them.

‘He is very good-looking, isn’t he?’ Zahra murmured judiciously. ‘Much more so than Faisal.’

‘But not as gentle or kind,’ Felicia responded before she could stop herself.

Zahra’s brown eyes twinkled with amusement.

‘Zut! Kindness! Is that what you look for in a man? I think Uncle Raschid is wrong when he says you are experienced in the ways of men, otherwise you would know that kindness is not necessary between a man and a woman, where there is love.’

She said it so seriously that Felicia could not contradict her, although her own love-starved childhood had taught her that kindness was a precious virtue. Perhaps the harshness of their desert climate bred the need for it out of these people, she reflected. To her amusement Zahra was dressed in jeans and a thin T-shirt, her long hair caught back off her face with a ribbon, and as they entered what was obviously the family dining room, Felicia noticed the younger girl’s mother frowning rather despairingly as her eyes alighted on her daughter.

‘Raschid, you must speak to this child,’ she protested. ‘Look at her!’

‘Mother, everyone at the university wears jeans,’ Zahra laughed, ‘and Uncle Raschid will not forbid me, because he wears them himself,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I have seen him.’

Faisal’s mother looked at her brother, as though seeking confirmation, and although his mouth twitched a little he betrayed no embarrassment.

‘Maybe so,’ he allowed, ‘but not at the dinner table. Tonight we shall excuse you, but in future, unless you come to dinner properly dressed you will eat alone in the women’s quarters.’

Zahra pulled a face, but subsided a little, obviously accepting that Raschid would put his threat into practice if she defied him.

‘Come, we must eat. Miss Gordon….’

‘Oh, call her Felicia, Mother,’ Zahra cried impetuously. ‘And she must call you Umm Faisal.’

Felicia was about to demur, conscious of Raschid’s cool scrutiny, and her own tenuous position in the family, when Faisal’s mother looked anxiously at her, and said something in Arabic to her brother.

‘My sister begs you not to take offence at Zahra’s impetuosity, Miss Gordon,’ he said sardonically. ‘She had intended to ask you herself to do her the favour of calling her “Umm Faisal”, but Zahra has forestalled her. She also reminds me that as I am head of our family it is my duty to welcome you to our home, and beg you to treat our humble dwelling as your own for as long as it pleases you to remain with us.’

While there was no doubting the sincerity of Faisal’s mother’s welcome, Felicia stiffened, knowing that Raschid did not mean a word of what he was saying. His expression told her that much. However, before she could say anything, Zahra caused a minor disturbance by remarking teasingly,

‘Miss Gordon! You cannot call her that, Uncle Raschid, not when she is to…not when she is such a close friend of Faisal’s,’ she amended hurriedly. ‘You must call her Felicia—mustn’t he?’

She turned to Felicia for corroboration, unaware of the cold antipathy in her uncle’s eyes as they skimmed the slender figure of the girl standing in the shadows. Personally she did not care what Raschid called her, although she was sure he had adopted the formal ‘Miss Gordon’ to remind her that he wanted to keep her at a distance. Fortunately no one else seemed to be aware of the antagonism pulsating between them, and Felicia was invited to sit down and help herself to the food set before them. Despite the variety of dishes pressed upon her, she could barely touch a morsel. She did her best, glad of Zahra’s distracting chatter, and answering her many questions as best she could. A curious dreamlike state seemed to have engulfed her, and it was all she could do to keep her eyes open. Her heart felt weighted with despair, and nausea churned her stomach—a legacy of her long flight, and the confrontation with Raschid, she acknowledged wearily.

Once or twice during the long meal she suffered the disturbing sensation of the room blurring and fading, although on each occasion she managed to jerk herself back to awareness.

‘Are you feeling all right, Felicia?’ Zahra asked in some concern, observing the other girl’s increasing pallor, but Felicia shook her head, not wishing to draw the attention of cold grey eyes to her predicament.

Later she was to regret this foolish pride, but as she struggled to swallow another mouthful of almond pastry and drink a cup of coffee she was concentrating all her energy on merely quelling her growing nausea, from one moment to the next.

At long last the ordeal was over. Shakily Felicia got to her feet, swaying slightly as faintness swept her, and from a distance she heard Zahra cry anxiously,

‘Quick, she’s falling!’

And then there was nothing but the blessed peace of enveloping darkness and the strength of arms that gripped her, halting the upward rush of the beautiful crimson Persian carpet she had previously been admiring.

CHAPTER THREE

‘WILL she be all right?’

The anxious question hovered somewhere on the outer periphery of her subconscious, registering in a dim and distant fashion even while its import eluded her. The voice was familiar, though, and Felicia struggled to recognise it. Mercifully, someone else took on the responsibility of replying, a male voice, deep, crisp, with faintly indolent overtones; a voice that sent small feather tendrils of fear curling insidiously down her spine, so that she was tempted to curl up into a small ball and hide away from it.

‘Don’t worry, Zahra. It’s a combination of exhaustion and temperature change, I suspect, coupled with too much rich food on an empty stomach. Now you know why your mother forbids you to go on these ridiculous slimming diets.’

‘Felicia doesn’t need to slim,’ Zahra objected. ‘She looks so pale, Raschid. Don’t you think we ought to send for a doctor?’

Raschid! Now she remembered! Felicia opened her eyes, wincing in the electric light, forcing away the darkness that reached out for her and struggling to sit up. She was in her bedroom—she recognised that much at least—and Umm Faisal was hovering anxiously in the doorway, while Zahra and Raschid stood by her bed.

‘I don’t need a doctor,’ she croaked, disconcerted when all three pairs of eyes focused at once upon her.

‘You’ve come round!’ Zahra exclaimed thankfully. ‘We were so worried about you. What could we have told Faisal if you had fallen ill?’

‘I’m sure Faisal would have agreed with me that Miss Gordon should have told us she was feeling unwell,’ Raschid interrupted unsympathetically. ‘Zahra, find one of the maids and get some fresh fruit juice for our patient. After her long flight she is probably somewhat dehydrated, and perhaps a sleeping pill will help Miss Gordon to get a good night’s sleep, Fatima?’

‘Didn’t anyone warn you that jet travel can be extremely dehydrating?’ Raschid asked her severely as his sister and niece hurried to do his bidding. Felicia closed her eyes, turning her face to the wall, dismayed to hear him drawl mockingly,

‘Still hating me, Miss Gordon? How wise of you not to try to deny it. Your eyes smoulder in a most disconcerting fashion when you are angry, but you had best not let my sister see them. She comes from a generation that believes implicitly in the absolute supremacy of the male.’

‘Then you must be a throwback!’ Felicia muttered unwisely under her breath, shocked when, without warning, Raschid’s fingers grasped her chin, forcing her face round so that she was obliged to endure his cool scrutiny.

‘What can have happened to all your good intentions?’ he mocked unkindly. ‘Were we not agreed that for Faisal’s sake you must seek my approval or are you perhaps foolish enough to believe that this is the way to do so? Allow me to disillusion you. Do not continue this foolish and pointless defiance. I am not renowned for my patience, Miss Gordon, but neither am I the monster of your imaginings. Faisal is an extremely wealthy and spoilt young man. I am his guardian—for my sins—and although I cannot stop him marrying where he chooses, I do have the means to delay that marriage if I am not convinced that it is right for him. If you really seek his happiness you must see the sense of what I am saying.’

‘Is it so difficult for you to accept that his happiness lies with me?’ Felicia countered shakily, determined to withstand the fierce onslaught of his gaze. ‘You talk to me of sense and reason, and yet you condemned me without knowing the first thing about me. Whether you admit it or not you don’t want Faisal to marry me. And yet why? By what right do you take it upon yourself to choose for him? You know nothing about me. How can you say that we won’t be happy?’

‘Zut! Either you are an imbecile or a stubborn fool, Miss Gordon. Faisal is a Moslem—an Arab, with all that the word encompasses. You are British. Even today the two worlds lie far apart. Marriage to Faisal would make you his possession, every bit as much as his car or his home.’

‘Perhaps I want to be,’ Felicia retorted, refusing to be quelled.

Raschid’s expression was sardonic. ‘You may want him to possess your body, Miss Gordon,’ he stated baldly, ‘but, as you will discover if you do marry Faisal, he will own you body and soul.’

‘I thought women weren’t supposed to have souls,’ Felicia commented rather unwisely. ‘I thought they were just men’s playthings; bearers of children. You won’t frighten me by telling me these things. If you honestly believe a woman to be an inferior being, why do you let Zahra attend university?’

‘We are not talking of my beliefs, Miss Gordon,’ he reminded her coolly, ‘but those of my nephew. Do not deceive yourself. For all his outward Westernised views, Faisal is every bit as conservative as his father, and his father before him. He may not expect you to go into purdah or veil yourself, but he will not countenance a loss of face because you, his wife—his possession—refuse to acknowledge his superiority.’

His ears, sharper than hers, caught the sound of feet on the stairs, and he frowned warningly. A hectic flush stained Felicia’s previously pale face. She was so angry that she trembled beneath his suave gaze.

‘This is neither the time nor the place to discuss these matters,’ Raschid told her. ‘We shall talk again when you are rested, but I warn you now that nothing you have said so far has done anything to convince me that you could make Faisal happy. Marriage is a serious business, Miss Gordon, not to be undertaken on a mere whim.’

‘How would you know?’ Felicia muttered bitterly, as Zahra bustled in. ‘You’ve never been married, have you?’

He turned on his heel, ignoring her taunt, and when he had gone Zahra cast a nervous glance at the closed door.

‘Felicia, you have been quarrelling with Raschid, haven’t you?’ she whispered.