The Sheik Retold(7)

"You've been a confounded long time." Aubrey's voice shattered the spell.

I was late of course, and Aubrey liked his meals punctually. I advanced to where he lounged on one deck chair with his feet propped on another.

"Don't be such a bear, Aubrey. It's all very well for you. You have Stephens to lather your chin and to wash your hands, but thanks to that idiot Marie, I have to look after myself."

Aubrey took his heels down from the second chair and pitched away his cigar. He then screwed his eyeglass into place with usual truculence and regarded me with patent disapproval. "Are you going to rig yourself out like that every evening for the camel drivers?"

"I am not in the habit of 'rigging myself out,' as you so charmingly put it, for anyone's benefit but my own. You changed for dinner yourself. What's the difference?" I asked.

"All the difference," he snapped. "There is no need for you to make yourself more attractive than you are already." He flicked his gaze to Arbuthnot, who shifted in discomfort.

"Since when has it occurred to you that I am attractive?" I asked. "Perhaps you have a touch of the sun."

"Don't quibble. You know perfectly well that you are good-looking—too good-looking to carry through this preposterous affair. Indeed, I've been doing some hard thinking today, Diana. Were you the boy I always wished you were, it would be a different matter, but you are not a boy, and the whole thing is impossible—utterly impossible. There is no avoiding the fact that you are a young and attractive woman, and there are certain things a young woman just cannot do."

"He's right," Arbuthnot interjected. "You must see for yourself, now that you are face-to-face with the thing. How can you think to wander for the next month all alone in the desert?"

His words made me seethe. "Et tu, Brute?"

I pinned Jim with my iciest stare and then flung myself on a chaise longue. I lit a cigarette, my fingers trembling with suppressed rage. "If I had not lived with you all my life, Aubrey, I might be impressed with your sudden brotherly solicitude; I might even think you really meant it. But it is only your own inconvenience that troubles you and not real anxiety on my behalf."

"Balderdash!" he exclaimed. "Diana, listen to reason! Though my legal guardianship has terminated, I still have some moral obligations towards you."

"Really, Aubrey?” I pursed my mouth and blew smoke. "Then, why have you waited until tonight to voice these brotherly qualms?"

"In Biskra it was impossible to argue with you. You went ahead with your arrangements against my wishes, so I left it. I came this far convinced that the impossibility of it all would be brought home to you once we arrived here and that you would see for yourself that this is entirely out of the question. Diana, give up this insane trip."

"I will not."

"I've a thundering good mind to make you."

I gave an unladylike snort. "You can't," I said flatly. "You have no claim on me. I'm my own mistress. I will not go back to Biskra."

"If you are afraid of being laughed at—"

"I am not afraid of being laughed at! Only cowards are afraid of that, and I am not a coward. I have said my last word, Aubrey. It is only your own considerations and not mine that are at the bottom of your remonstrance. You do not deny it because it is true."

I knew exactly the grievance he had been nursing. Maybe he finally suffered some small pricking of conscience, but I had no doubt that concern for his own comfort troubled him most. Though he traveled perpetually and often in remote and desolate places, Aubrey enjoyed his creature comforts and was accustomed to putting himself out for nothing—everything had always fallen on my shoulders. My certainty of this was not conducive to any kinder feeling toward him.

Aubrey always had been, and always would be, supremely selfish.

He was particularly eager for my company on his hunting trip to America because it was a wife and not big game this time that compelled him across the ocean. The inevitable and somewhat unpleasant necessity of producing an heir had been in his mind for some time. Although the idea of marriage was distasteful to him, a son to succeed him was imperative to the estate the family had held for hundreds of years. Women in general bored Aubrey, but of all he had ever met, Americans were less irritating to him—so it was to America that he turned for a wife. He had proposed to take a house in New York for a few months and later one in Newport, and for that my company was considered indispensable. I would save him endless trouble. This was why he was so exasperated.

We stared each other down across the little table until his eyeglass fell with a sharp tinkle against his waistcoat button. I observed his angry flush of color with a wave of amusement. It was a true spectacle to rouse the lazy Aubrey to wrath.

"You're a damned obstinate little devil!" Aubrey exclaimed.

"I am what you have made me—as hard as yourself—so how can you quarrel with the result? It is illogical. This is your fault, not mine, but I don't want to wrangle with you anymore. My life is mine and I will deal with it exactly as I wish. I will do what I choose when and how I choose. I will never again obey any will but my own."

Aubrey's mouth tightened and his gaze narrowed. "Then I hope to heaven that one day you will fall into the hands of a man who will make you obey."