The Velvet Glove Read online

  His short hard fingers stroked absently at the soft skin of her upper arms and he looked much too despondent for a man who had simply been told by a virtual stranger that she would not go away with him. 'So that's it, then, is it? You won't fly home with me?'

  'I'm sorry, Ian.'

  She was genuinely sorry, she told herself, even though her life was due to suffer an upheaval anyway, even if she stayed. Somehow she could not face the idea of leaving altogether. Moving away from Yarev, perhaps to live with Latife and her husband was not the same thing as going right away, and plunging into a whole new world at the instigation of a man she scarcely knew, and perhaps never seeing her family again for years. No matter how categorically Ian declared her not part of the Kayaman family, in her heart she felt she was, and that was what mattered.

  He was looking at her and using one finger to trace a pattern on the softness of her arm. 'You're a mouse, pretty cousin, do you realise that?' His smile, like his voice, had an edge of sharpness. 'You're safe in your warm little harem and you won't venture out, will you?'

  Fearing there might just be a grain of truth in what he said, Laurette did not look at him, but shook her head vaguely, and kept her lashes over the uncertainty in her eyes. 'You still don't understand, Ian, and I wish you did.'

  'Understand?'

  'How it is.' She used her hands again in that vaguely fluttering movement without realising how much it was like the form of silent communication used by the village women.

  'Oh, I understand all right!' He leaned forward suddenly and kissed her mouth with a lingering warmth that made her close her eyes instinctively. 'But I've got another couple of weeks to do something about it,' he whispered against her ear. 'I'll think of some way of persuading you to my way of thinking.'

  'I won't change my mind, Ian!'

  'Maybe!' He smiled and his blue eyes had a determined gleam that reminded her discomfitingly of Nuri's in some curious way. 'But you will come with me to Alanya tomorrow, won't you?'

  The invitation, coming so soon after more serious matters, took her momentarily by surprise, and she looked at him uncertainly, then remembered he planned for them to go somewhere each day. 'Isn't it a little soon, Ian? I mean, wouldn't it be wiser for you to wait a day or two before we go so far?'

  From his expression it was clear he read some other motive into her reluctance, and he was shaking his head, a hint of smile giving his mouth a slightly bitter look. 'O.K.,' he said quietly, 'so we'll find a little beach somewhere nearby and swim. Can you swim?'

  Sensing sarcasm, she flushed and lifted her chin, her eyes showing a warning glint that he took note of. 'Of course I can, Ian. My father taught me to swim as soon as I could walk almost.'

  'Then we'll swim!'

  She nodded, saying nothing about the need to buy a swim suit, for she had not swum for several years now, and did not possess one. Ian had enough reasons for thinking her a harem mouse without giving him further cause. 'We'll swim,' she echoed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  'IT is very daring, Laurette.' Halet was sitting on the bed in Laurette's room, her dark eyes passing judgment on the new swim suit bought especially for her outing with Ian, and her appraisal was hardly calculated to inspire confidence in the wearer. 'Will you not feel very—bold wearing such a costume?'

  Laurette knew exactly what she meant as she eyed her reflection in a full-length mirror. The suit was French inspired and would have passed virtually unnoticed on any continental beach, but amid the rather exotic splendour of her bedroom it looked terribly out of place and much more revealing than she expected.

  The trouble was that she had been in far too much of a hurry to give the purchase much thought and she had not stopped to try it on in the shop. Instead she had judged its appearance on the shop dummy that displayed it, making no allowances for the fact that an inanimate model bore little resemblance to the moving shape of a flesh and blood woman, nor did it have the same softly feminine curves.

  'I have doubts,' she confessed after a second or two. 'But it's too late to change it now, Halet; and it really isn't too outrageous by present standards.'

  'But by our standards?' Halet ventured, soft-voiced, and Laurette followed her meaning perfectly.

  The suit was red and white and covered very little of her body. In fact it was very little more than two very small pieces of material and she was tempted to keep her arms crossed over her breast, although doing so gave her a curiously hunched appearance that Ian was sure to find amusing. She knew who she had in mind when she felt that curling sense of embarrassment, of course, and it was thinking of what Nuri would say if he ever saw it that made her react the way she did.

  With one hand on her hip and her shoulders pulled back, she walked across the bedroom with a swaying gait that exaggerated a model girl's strut. Her chin dipped, she looked across at Halet with a bright, seductive smile on her face and fluttered her eyelashes.

  'Oh, hayir, hayir, Laurette!' Halet looked at her in alarm, even though a glimmer of suppressed laughter showed in her dark eyes. 'If you behave so in that costume men will think you are—'

  'You mean Nuri would think I was no better than I ought to be,' Laurette corrected her, and laughed a little wildly as she once more surveyed herself in the long mirror. 'He would get a bit of a shock, wouldn't he? Though most men these days wouldn't turn a hair.'

  'Will not your cousin, Ian, also be shocked?' Halet enquired innocently, and Laurette smiled at her reflected image musingly.

  'Actually their reactions probably wouldn't be all that different—but Ian would be more honest about it.'

  As if she feared it might be put to the test, Halet regarded her anxiously. 'You will not let Nuri see you?'

  Shaking her head as she pulled her dress on over the bikini, Laurette laughed. 'Not if I can help it! Knowing Nuri he'd probably have me confined to my room for the rest of the week!'

  'He would not like it,' Halet affirmed, and Laurette thought that in her quiet way she was almost as much a goad to her conscience as Nuri was.

  She smoothed her hands down over the dress that now concealed the controversial swim suit and sighed. 'Oh well, with a bit of luck he'll never know anything about it. Now I'd better go before Ian comes hammering on the door demanding to know where I am.'

  Laurette had little idea where they were, except that they had turned off the main highway when Ian spotted what he decided was an ideal place for them to bathe from. There were any number of little sandy beaches along this coast and some of them, like this one, were completely deserted.

  She had no complaint about his choice, for it was quite idyllic and offered everything one could ask of a bathing beach. Trees grew right down to the water's edge and gave the romantic illusion of a desert island as well as giving shade from the sun, and the land curved gently to form a shallow bay so that they seemed to be in a small world of their own.

  To add to the air of romanticism, right at the tip of one curve of the bay a ruined castle stood outlined against the bright blue sky, its ragged walls running right down into the sea, like the broken teeth of a giant animal. A stark reminder of the past that was never very far away in Turkey, and even beautiful in its own way, though possibly dangerous to the incautious.

  There were natural rocks in plenty too, thrusting up through the sand, ideal places for use as changing rooms, although in fact Ian laughed at the idea of the necessity of using them when they both had their costumes on under their clothes.

  Laurette rather self-consciously pulled off her dress and looked down at the new red and white bikini with even more misgivings. It looked every bit as provocative here on this small deserted beach as it had at home in her bedroom, and already she sensed Ian was taking an interest in it.

  It had seldom before struck her how much lighter-skinned he was than Nuri and her foster-father, and she noticed it now with some surprise as he stood stripped down to a pair of dark trunks. Of course he was new to sunny climes and his skin less accustomed to the h
ot sun, hence his vulnerability to sunstroke on their last outing. But somehow it seemed to make him even more of a stranger to her and that was oddly discomfiting in the present situation.

  He made no attempt to conceal his approval of the red and white swim suit and, although she anticipated it, it nevertheless gave her a curious sense of shyness to be so openly admired. 'You look terrific, cousin!' He took her hands and drew her towards him, but she resisted and that obviously surprised him. It showed in his blue eyes and the suggestion of tightness about his lips. 'I won't eat you, love, though you look good enough to eat!'

  Her def ensiveness was an instinct, born of those endless exchanges with Nuri, and she looked at him with bright blue eyes and a flush on her cheeks. 'I'm not objecting, Ian, but I—'

  'You're not used to wearing a bikini!' He laughed softly, as if the realisation amused him, and he was shaking his head. Still holding her hands, he swept his gaze over her flushed face until it came to rest on her mouth, then he smiled. 'You should wear one more often, Laurette, get used to the feeling of freedom. You're certainly worth looking at in that scrap of nothing.'

  'I feel—brassy.'

  She admitted it defensively, and Ian laughed, shaking his head to deny it. 'Not you, cousin! I'll admit you're a definite temptation in that bikini, but then you're a temptation done up to the neck in a nice modest little dress—you're just that sort of a girl!'

  Her heart was beating anxiously fast and she felt strangely isolated suddenly, and rather alarmingly excited, a combination she neither understood nor trusted. There was an earthy quality about Ian that she had never noticed quite so much before, and he held her hands tightly, almost as if he suspected she might turn away and run.

  His copper-bright head gleamed İn the hot sun above those blue eyes that so often reminded her of her father's, and yet now looked nothing like him. Holding her at arms' length for a second, he sent a swift and unmistakably appreciative gaze over her slim rounded figure, then he leaned forward suddenly and lightly kissed her mouth.

  'O.K., let's swim and relax a little, shall we? That's what we're here for.'

  With Ian pulling her by the hand, she went down the sandy beach after him, and she had to admit that she had never enjoyed the water more. It seemed such a long time since she had done any swimming, but she found she had lost none of her skill, and she gave Ian a lively time trying to keep up with her as she dived and swam in the soft blue ocean.

  He was quite a strong swimmer, but she was quick and lithe as a seal in the warm waters of the Mediterranean, and for the most part she managed to evade his attempts to catch her. 'You're too fast for me!' He made the admission in a voice flattened by distance and the density of water, shaking back his red hair that now looked much more dark. A stroke or two brought him closer, and his teeth gleamed in a smile as he came within reach. 'You're as evasive as a mermaid, cousin; give me a chance, will you?'

  Going with the tide, they had drifted nearer to the ruined castle on the further side of their little bay, but it still appeared only as a starkly ragged outline against the blue sky, and she scarcely paid it heed as she laughed at his plea.

  Glancing back briefly to see if he was likely to be quick enough to catch her this time, she dived down into the warm blue water once more, her head turned, looking for Ian. She could see nothing of him beyond a slight disturbance in the blue water in her wake as he dived down in pursuit of her, and it was the last thing she remembered for quite a while. She turned back only a fraction of a second before her head came into contact with the hidden bastions of the old castle below the surface of the water.

  For quite some time nothing meant anything more than a jumble of sounds and vague sensations, and when Laurette eventually opened her eyes it was to see a friendly but completely strange face bending over her. A Turkish face, she had no doubt, but obviously a woman of authority, and wearing a white overall coat. A stethoscope, only half concealed in a pocket, gave a further clue, and Laurette frowned at her curiously.

  'Are you feeling better?'

  A standard question the world over, but Laurette took a moment to gather her wits, and the tip of her tongue flicked hastily over dry lips as she coped for a moment with a curious sense of unreality.

  'I—I think so, thank you.'

  'That's good!' A cool, efficient hand rolled back one eyelid and a torch was shone into the pupil dazzling her for a moment before the process was repeated with the other eye. Evidently the examination was satisfactory, for the examiner nodded and repeated her verdict. 'Good, good!'

  Laurette looked around her at the small, clinically neat room, and came to the obvious conclusion. 'This is a hospital?'

  'This is the Lemiz Clinic, and I am Doctor Alcilic, Miss Kearn.' A brief warm smile crossed the smooth face and only just failed to disguise the curiosity that lurked in the dark eyes. 'You have had a very lucky escape.'

  Laurette thought very carefully for a second. Her heart was thudding hard and she felt strangely lightheaded, but she could not think how she came to be in a hospital bed. Her head hurt and she suspected it was bandaged, though she had not so far used her hands to confirm it.

  She surely should be able to remember how she had been hurt, but somehow she could not, and the sense of helplessness that gave her brought panic flooding in its wake, so that she looked at the doctor with eyes that showed the stark, blank look of fear.

  'I—I don't know what happened to me!' Her voice too echoed the way she felt, and the doctor's cool, matter-of-fact assurance did nothing to relieve the feeling. 'I can't remember—I can't remember anything about it!'

  'That is perfectly natural, Miss Kearn. There is no cause for alarm at all—believe me that it will come back to you in the normal course of things. You must rest and remain quiet, that is all. The head wound is small and no cause for concern, but you have to rest.'

  'Head wound?' Laurette reached up and gingerly felt the patch of adhesive plaster that seemed to cover half her forehead. A small wound it might be, but it throbbed violently, and made her feel slightly sick. 'I —I hit my head?'

  'On a submerged wall, apparently. I have heard only the outline of the story, my main concern was to treat you.' The doctor straightened up, her smile confident and professional. 'If you feel able to see a visitor, there is someone to see you. Do you feel well enough?'

  She expected it to be Ian, though she was not quite sure why, but whoever it was Laurette would be glad to see someone she knew. Her confidence was in need of support and she felt alarmingly vague about everything. 'I want to see someone, please, doctor. I—I want to see my family.'

  Kindly but businesslike, the doctor smiled. 'You will have to make do with Madame Ocak for the moment, I am afraid—she is here and waiting to see you.'

  'Latife?' Relief enveloped Laurette, bringing her close to tears. She needed someone like Latife at the moment. The eldest Kayaman daughter was very much like her mother had been, with the same gentle and motherly manner towards her young foster-sister, and she could have wished for no one better. 'Oh, please let me see her!'

  The white coat moved silently to the door, and a moment later the dark, pretty face of Latife Ocak peeped round at her, a smile on her face that did not quite reach her eyes. 'Bebek!' A light kiss brushed her aching brow and Latife's exotic perfume enveloped her for a second or two when she bent over her. Clucking sympathetically, Latife sat beside her bed holding her hand consolingly. 'How is your poor head, bebek, hmm?'

  'It aches!' Touching the plaster gingerly, Laurette tried a laugh that did not quite come off, but sounded instead as if she was about to burst into tears. 'I—I don't know what happened to me. Latife; I can't remember anything about it.'

  'Suna has told me, but she also says that there is nothing to worry about, that it will come back to you before very long.'

  'Suna?'

  Latife smiled. 'Suna Alcilic. You met her at the party the other night, do you not remember? The same party at which you met your cousin, Ian. Her hu
sband is a business acquaintance of Furedin's.'

  'I don't remember.'

  It was obvious that nothing was of any real interest to Laurette at the moment except the puzzle of her own situation, and Latife squeezed her hand reassuringly. 'I have spoken to Suna, Laurette, and she is quite adamant that the loss of remembrance is temporary. You must not concern yourself with what happened at the moment, only with getting well.'

  'Yes. Yes, I suppose so.'

  It must be reaction, of course, but she felt horribly tearful and there was nothing she could do about the fat rolling tears that coursed down her cheeks. Latife was on her feet in a moment, bending over her, anxious and solicitous.

  'Oh, Laurette bebek, please do not cry. You will soon feel well again, I can promise you.'

  'I'm—I'm sorry.' She bit her lips, but the tears continued to roll dismally down her cheeks, and Latife gently dabbed them away with her handkerchief. 'I don't even remember where I was when I was hurt, or even if I was with Ian. I think I was, but I can't be sure.'

  'You were, bebek?

  She answered promptly but so quietly that something in her voice struck a response in Laurette's chaotic brain. 'Is he all right? Was he hurt too?' She clutched her aching head and closed her eyes in another desperate attempt to remember. 'Oh, I wish I could remember!'

  'You will, bebek, you will.' Latife's cool hand smoothed the hair back from her brow and once more the perfume she knew so well enveloped her. 'It was your cousin who called Baba and told him what had happened.' A small, rueful smile touched her mouth for a moment as if she recognised lan's feelings too. 'I think he was a little frightened and needed someone to share his fear, poor man.'

  'Baba Refik has been told?' There was something in the back of her mind that kept evading her. Something to do with Baba Refik, or Nuri, or perhaps both of them, but she simply could not remember what it was.

  Latife nodded, but there was a hint of curiosity in her eyes for a second, as if she suspected there was something on her mind. 'Your cousin did right to let us know, of course, bebek, but if he had not Suna Alcilic would have contacted us as a matter of course. We are still your recognised family, even though you now have this new cousin.'