City of Palms by Pamela Kent

Author:Pamela Kent
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

THEY returned to Mehmet Bey’s house that same day. Although she was still looking and feeling exhausted, Ayse expressed a wish to be taken home as soon as possible, and Susan was heartily glad when Raoul agreed with his sister that she would be happier in more familiar surroundings.

Jacqueline tried to look as if the disturbance during the night had not upset her in the least—although while the excitement and anxiety were at their height she had expressed the utmost concern for Ayse. But now, at the moment of their departure, apart from a suggestion of being tightlipped, she was merely the polite hostess giving voice to regret because the week-end had not been an entire success.

“Next time you come,” she said to Raoul, “you must endeavor to persuade Miss Maldon that her horsemanship is not yet up to joining the rest of us, and we’ll hope that Ayse, poor darling, will escape being taken ill.”

Raoul, at the wheel of the car, did not look at her as she stood waving beneath the pillared portico of the front entrance. She was looking particularly lovely in a flowered silk dress that left her honey-colored back and shoulders bare to the kiss of the sun, her curls almost blue-black in the same white light, but for some reason he had been completely preoccupied ever since the beginning of the grim hours of the night before. Susan had been amazed by the extreme tenderness he had lavished on his sister, and the way she had clung to him. And it was only because she had clung to him that he had refrained from fetching the doctor himself. But, whether because of his concern or not, he was looking somewhat unlike himself this morning. He looked grim, for one thing, there was a certain tautness about the set of his lips, and his bronze was not quite so noticeable.

If he and Ayse had been twins, Susan thought, she might have understood it better.

She was glad when they swept out of sight of the figure standing waving to them in the front of the house, and she was glad when she had Ayse comfortably installed once more in her own room, with her own familiar things about her.

The doctor had said that he didn’t anticipate any recurrence of the trouble, and that unless he was sent for he would not visit her again, but that she was to rest and take things very easily for a few days.

Susan constituted herself her nurse, and was strongly tempted to have everything brought to her in the way of food carefully examined before she permitted her to eat it. And then she told herself that she was no longer beneath the roof of the Villa of Stars—and that was as far as she went in probing a matter that secretly frightened her.

On the fourth day after their return, Ayse was looking much more like herself. She insisted on joining the others in the patio, and she was there reclining in a long cane chair, looking pale but exquisite, when Dr.

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