SIX months later, Leo could still feel the shock of that realisation. It could bring her awake in the middle of the night, cold with embarrassment. And, at the same time, hot with longing. Which, of course, made the embarrassment worse and did nothing at all for her self-respect.
God knows what she would have said to him, if she had come face-to-face with Amer again. But she did not. Mrs Silverstein needed to be accompanied back to the States. As Leo was leaving Egypt anyway, she jumped at the chance to leave at once.
So now she was in London, trying to restart her life. Without much success.
‘What’s wrong?’ said her friend Claire Hartley, as Leo drove her down to spend the weekend with the Hartley family. ‘Missing the pyramids?’
‘Not missing one damn thing,’ said Leo with rather more emphasis than the casual remark required.
Claire digested this in silence as Leo concentrated on getting through the one way system. Eventually they got onto the motorway and Claire said, ‘You’ve been seeing a lot of brother Simon, haven’t you?’
Leo cast her a quick look of surprise. ‘Only at work.’
‘You went to the Nightingale Ball with him,’ Claire reminded her.
Leo grimaced. ‘That’s work.’
‘Then he’s got nothing to do with your being glad to be home?’
‘I didn’t say I was glad to be home,’ Leo said patiently. ‘I said I didn’t miss Cairo. There’s a difference.’
‘Oh,’ said Claire enlightened. ‘What happened in Cairo?’ She thought about it. ‘Or should I say who happened in Cairo?’
Leo winced. An Arab prince had amused himself for an evening by offering a humble courier a night of high romance and princely luxury. Because that was all it had been for him, an amusement. Leo saw it clearly. That refusal to touch her which had set all her senses aflame and still shot through her dreams, only showed how little he cared whether she responded to him or not.
‘That just about covers it,’ she said with harsh self-mockery.
Claire had not heard that note in her voice before. ‘What happened?’
‘One minute I was an independent woman with a small local career problem and no roof over my head. The next—the aliens invaded.’
Claire slewed round on the leather seat and stared at her friend.
‘What sort of aliens?’
‘Rich, royal and thoroughly irresponsible aliens,’ Leo said bitterly. ‘Well, one alien.’ She ground her teeth, remembering.
Claire was amazed. ‘He really hit the spot, didn’t he? New experience for you, Mrs Cool.’
Leo’s smile was wry. Her reputation for indifference to the opposite sex had started long ago. At her boarding school dances to be precise. Gawky as she was, taller than most of boys and painfully shy, Leo found the best way to deal with being teased was to pretend that she did not care. Neither Claire nor anyone else ever detected the truth. They just thought Leo was too level-headed to suffer the traumas of adolescence. If only they knew!
‘Amer el-Barbary would be a new experience for anyone.’
‘Sounds like fun,’ Claire said enviously. ‘Tell.’
Leo looked at the long road ahead of them. In the sun it looked like a stream of melting black toffee. She sighed. It was going to be a long journey.
She told.
Claire was astounded. When Leo finished she sat in stunned silence for a moment. She shook her head in disbelief.
‘And you didn’t even write to him?’
‘What would I have said?’ Leo snapped. ‘Thank you for an illuminating evening? By the way, I hope this finds you as you didn’t bother to give me your real name?’
‘There could have been all sorts of reasons for that,’ protested Claire.
Leo was more suspicious than her friend. ‘Like what?’
‘Well, maybe he thought you wouldn’t go out with him if you knew he was terribly grand.’
Leo said something very rude. Claire grinned. ‘No. All right. Well how about this one—he wanted you to go out with him as a man and not his position in the world.’
Leo snorted. ‘I don’t believe in fairy stories. He just thought it was amusing to hand me a smooth line. In fact—’ for a moment her expression lightened ‘—he got very annoyed when I didn’t respond as predicted.’
‘Did he say so?’
‘He said we would meet soon,’ Leo admitted reluctantly.
Claire made an exasperated noise. ‘So you ran away to America with an eighty-year-old widow. Honestly, Leo, I despair of you.’ She added curiously, ‘Hasn’t he tried to get in touch with you?’
‘It wouldn’t do him any good if he did. All my records have gone from the Cairo office. Nobody there knew who I was. I used my grandmother’s name.’
‘The office could still forward mail, presumably.’
‘I told you,’ Leo said patiently, ‘they don’t know there’s anyone to forward it to. None of the staff there know that Miss Roberts is the boss’s daughter, Miss Groom.’
Claire shook her head, dissatisfied with this ending to the romance. ‘If you saw him again—’
‘I’d spit in his eye,’ Leo said militantly.
Claire was a good friend but she was not noted for her tact. ‘But it sounds as if you were half-way to falling in love with the guy.’
‘Love,’ said Leo ferociously, ‘is the biggest fairy story of the lot.’
‘Most people expect to fall in love at some time or other.’ Claire’s tone was dry.
Unbidden, Amer’s triumphant voice said in her ear, ‘You mean you do want to but you don’t think it’s going to happen.’ Admittedly he had been talking about marriage not love. But Leo flushed as violently as if he had been there in the car with them and reading her thoughts.
‘Not me,’ she said very loudly.
The Trustee of the el-Barbary charitable foundation was having a bad time. Normally Sheikh Amer was more approachable than the old Sheikh. But on this visit he was proving even more difficult than his autocratic father: elusive, preoccupied and now downright irritable. He was tapping his gold fountain pen on his papers as if he could hardly bear to sit through the meeting a minute more.
‘Several matters for Sheikh Amer’s personal attention.’
Amer did not bother to disguise his impatience. ‘Give the list to my assistant.’
The Trustee did not hear. ‘Dinner at your college. Oh, I see you’ve already accepted that. Reception at the Science Museum to launch the second phase of the Antika Research Project. They have asked—’
Amer’s face was thunderous. Hari intervened swiftly.
‘Shall I deal with those?’ he suggested in a soothing voice.
The Trustee handed them over, relieved. But he was a conscientious man.
‘Antika have asked if His Excellency will contribute something to their book.’
Amer looked as if he were going to explode.
The Trustee began to gabble. ‘Fund-raising. They’re bringing out a collection of essays by celebrity sponsors. As His Excellency is Chairman…They say all the other board members have written something…’
There was a dangerous pause.
Then, ‘Get the details,’ Amer told Hari curtly. He stood up. ‘That concludes the meeting, gentlemen. I have an appointment now, but I hope to join you for lunch later. Hari will show you where to go.’
Hari marshalled them out.
Amer got up and moved restlessly round the room. When a tall, quiet man was shown in, he looked round. His visitor was shocked. There were deep new lines at the corner of the Sheikh’s eyes and when he smiled you could see that it was an effort.
‘Major McDonald.’ He held out his hand. ‘Good of you to come. I need your help.’
He explained succinctly.
‘I’ve had the sharpest private detectives that money can buy digging into it for six months. The woman has disappeared,’ he concluded.
‘No,’ said the Major with quiet confidence, ‘they have just not looked for her in the right way. You’re sure she’s English?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then let me use my contacts. I’ll find her for you.’
Amer went to the window and looked out. The city street looked like a mineral maze in the spring sunshine. He said to the pavement below, ‘If you find her, you bring the information straight to me. You don’t tell her. Or anyone else.’
The Major was surprised into indiscretion. ‘Are things so explosive in Dalmun, then?’
Amer turned back and smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. ‘It is not Dalmun which is explosive,’ he said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘It’s me. This one is mine.’
The weekend with the Hartleys did not turn out as Leo expected. She thought it was going to be a relaxed, family affair, mowing lawns and cleaning swimming pools. She could not have been more wrong.
There was a dinner party on Friday night, when she and Claire got down there; a lunch party— ‘Just close friends, darling’—on Saturday; a sailing club dance on Saturday evening to which the entire household and their guest were expected to turn up; and a drinks party for over a hundred before lunch on Sunday. In between whiles Simon’s mother, a cut-glass blonde, took her on a guided tour of the family pile. It was crumbling and, in Leo’s view, badly in need of being turned into a conference centre. Simon’s baronet father walked her through several acres of formal garden, equally neglected.
And Simon. Well, she did not know what Simon was doing at all. Except that he kept getting her on her own and telling her how well he got on with her father.
By Sunday afternoon, Leo was feeling breathless, uneasy and her wardrobe had given out.
‘Shouldn’t we be going back to London?’ she whispered to Claire.
Lady Hartley, whose hearing would have roused envy in a bat, intervened.
‘Simon, darling. You haven’t shown Leo the river. Why don’t you go now? You might see a kingfisher.’
‘Who are the Kingfishers?’ said Leo nervously.
Simon stood up, laughing. ‘It’s all right. The feathered kind. No more socialising, I promise.’
‘Thank God for that,’ said Leo.
‘Is it like this every weekend?’ she asked as they walked up the hill behind the house.
Simon shook his head. ‘Mum wanted to make sure you had a good time.’
‘Is that why I feel like I’ve been heavily marketed to?’ Leo mused. She saw Simon’s expression and said remorsefully, ‘Oh I’m so sorry. That was a stupid thing to say. Of course your mother wasn’t marketing. What would she be selling, after all?’
But Simon was a gentleman.
‘Me, I’m afraid,’ he said quietly.
Leo was deprived of speech.
Simon took her hand again and held it in a steady clasp.
‘I won’t pretend any nonsense, Leo. I respect you too much for that. Anyway, you’d see through it. The family fortunes have pretty much hit rock bottom, you see. The only way out is an injection of capital from—well—’
‘Me,’ said Leo. She still felt bewildered. ‘Do they want to sell? I mean, I can see this place has potential. But would your parents really like to see it as part of the Groom Hotel chain? Anyway, they’d be better talking to my father or the Head of UK Operations than me.’
Simon looked down at their clasped hands. His expression was rueful.
‘It’s not the house they want to sell.’ And as Leo still stared at him, brows knit in confusion, he said roughly, ‘They want me to ask you to marry me.’
‘What?’
Simon dropped her hand. ‘There’s no need to sound so shocked. You must have realised.’
‘I—’ Leo felt a fool. What was it Amer had said? You don’t know how to play this game, do you? Oh boy, was he right. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t know.’
Simon looked wretched. ‘I thought at least your father would have hinted…’
‘My father—?’
And then she saw, quite suddenly, what it was all about. Why Gordon Groom had brought Simon to Cairo; why her mother had asked about her feelings for him all those months ago; why ever since she got back she had been pushing files around her office trying to find the job that her father assured her was there.
Fool. Fool. Double fool. If you want a son and heir and all you have is an ugly duckling daughter, buy her an amenable husband and go for the next generation.
‘There never was a career for me at Grooms, was there?’ said Leo. She was not talking to Simon. ‘It was just to keep me quiet until I got married.’ She did not know which was worse, the hurt or the humiliation.
Simon did not seem to notice. He nodded, relieved. ‘Will you?’
She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to rage at the Heavens. She wanted to tell her father exactly what she thought of him before stamping out of his house and his nonjob.
But none of that was Simon’s fault and Leo was fair minded to a fault.
‘No, I won’t marry you,’ she said quite gently.
Simon was taken aback. After all, thought Leo savagely, he worked for Gordon Groom, too.
‘I won’t give up hope,’ he assured her kindly.
And then she did scream.
‘Well,’ said Amer in quiet satisfaction, ‘you said you’d do it and you have. I’m impressed.’
Major McDonald shrugged. ‘I put my team on it. The statistician pointed out that Leonora is so unusual it doesn’t even get recorded in most profiles of first names. Add that bit of information to someone who was able to hide her identity from the start of her arrival in Cairo, and you’ve got a spy, a criminal or an offspring of the seriously rich. Fortunately for you, she is the latter.’
‘Fortunate indeed,’ agreed Amer affably.
He showed his teeth in a smile that made the Major wonder what Leonora Groom had done. He liked and admired Amer but, just for a moment, he felt almost sorry for the woman.
Amer flipped open the file.
‘Leonora Groom,’ he said. He rolled it round his mouth like a fine wine. ‘Leonora Groom.’
‘There’s only one picture,’ the Major pointed out. ‘At the Antika opening. She seems to keep out of the photographers’ way, even at these charity receptions. It’s almost as if she wants to stay anonymous.’
‘As you say,’ Amer agreed suavely.
He was very angry. How dared she lie to him? She had strung him along like some negligible tourist.
A small voice reminded him that he had been less than candid with her, too. He had not even told her his full name, after all. He ignored it and closed the dossier decisively.
‘Hari will settle your account. Goodbye and thank you.’
Hari handed over a substantial cheque and showed the Major out. He came back to Amer. He was surprised to find that he was bent over his desk writing fast and he did not like the look of his friend’s expression at all.
‘What are you going to do?’ he said in trepidation.
Amer narrowed his eyes at the paper in front of him. He gave a soft laugh. It made Hari’s blood run cold.
‘Need you ask? Make her come to me, of course.’
Leo intended to have the whole thing out with her father as soon as she got back. Only she had forgotten that he was away on an extended trip trying to rescue his Far East operation. In his absence it almost seemed as if she had a real job after all.
So she stayed.
May came, sending long tendrils of engulfing wisteria all over the front of the Wimbledon house. In the morning Leo sniffed the heady scent in pure pleasure. But at night, in the dark, it recalled another night, when you could see the stars and the only scent was a man’s skin and unfamiliar cologne. She would remember that cologne for ever.
‘Don’t think about him,’ she told herself fiercely. ‘Just—don’t—think.’
But it was not easy with Simon calling regularly, pointing out that she liked him—didn’t she?—and she wasn’t committed to anybody else. He did not phrase that, Leo noted wryly, as a question. And anyway, she could hardly say that she was haunted by the shadow of a man whose body never touched hers.
In the effort of not thinking about that, Leo ripped through all the work she could find and looked around for more. This turn of events terrorised her secretary to such an extent that when a cardboard parcel arrived by courier, Joanne rushed it into her office as if it was a communication from Mars.
Leo considered it without interest. ‘Looks like a souvenir programme of some sort,’ she said indifferently.
‘But biked over,’ said Joanne, impressed.
Leo shrugged.
‘Okay. Open up and see what it is.’
But Joanne was doomed to disappointment. ‘It’s just that book of essays the Antika Project were putting together. Mr Groom got one of the PR writers to do it for him.’ She flicked through the index. ‘Yes here it is. “Gordon Groom on how to ruin a hotel.” It was funny.’
Leo was mildly interested. Her father was not noted for his sense of humour.
‘That’s what they asked for,’ explained Joanne. ‘Everyone was supposed to write a piece sending themselves up.’ She ran her finger down the index. ‘“Food Poisonous Food” by the Chef of the Year. “Come With Me To The Casbah” by Sheikh Amer el-Barbary. “Heartthrobs Don’t Get Measles” by Jeremy Derringer.’ She looked up. ‘What?’
‘Run that by me again,’ said Leo. She was very pale, suddenly.
‘“Heartthrobs Don’t Get Measles”’, said Joanne obligingly. ‘Do you know Jeremy Derringer then? Gosh, he’s gorgeous.’
Leo did not answer. She put out a shaking hand for the book. Joanne gave it to her. Leo did not even notice when Joanne left the room.
Amer had enjoyed writing the article. He had started it in a white hot rage with Leo. How dared she challenge him like that when all the time she knew she was deceiving him about her identity? And then to run away, covering her tracks so totally that he had the devil’s own job to find her! She knew he had intended to see her again. How dared she disappear, without so much as a word of regret? He was going to bring her back on her knees.
But then, as he wrote, Amer’s fury began to dissipate in sheer amusement. He finished it at a tearing rate. Then he sent it off before he could have second thoughts.
Leo, of course, did not know that. But she did know Amer. As she read, she could hear his gleeful voice. That arrogant cynicism stretched a mocking arm off the printed page and tweaked her nose until tears started.
“Rudolf Valentino has much to answer for,” Amer had written enjoyably. “He gave women what they wanted. Then said it was to be found in men of the desert. For those of us who carry this terrible responsibility, I suggest a few tips.”
What followed was a precise outline of his strategy for their evening together. He had forgotten nothing. Not lifting her into the boat. Not her reluctant capitulation to the comfort of the cushions. Not putting his jacket round her shoulders. Leo shivered to remember it. That made her even more furious. Not—oh God, her heart beat in an agony of shame as she remembered—her mesmerised unsophistication.
‘You really don’t know how to play this game, do you?’ he had said. And there it was in black and white.
“Never forget you are taking them on an exotic journey through their own fantasies.”
‘Oh no,’ moaned Leo.
“Stay in charge. They will accept any rules you lay down, however lunatic. It is what they secretly want. Only they cannot bear to admit it.”
Leo put the article down. ‘I’ll kill him,’ she said aloud. For a moment she could almost believe she meant it.
She flung the book so hard across the room that its spine split. Good, thought Leo. She was shaking and very cold. She felt as if he had stripped her publicly.
How many women had he taken on his Nile fantasy? she thought savagely. How many had he looked at in that way until they started to shake with tension? While all the time he was laughing at them.
Leo hugged her arms round herself protectively. It was like the worst of her adolescence, all over again. The painfully acquired assurance counted for nothing. Suddenly she was awkward, clumsy, unsubtle and plain. No man would look at her, ever.
Except Simon. He might not be in love with her, but he liked her. He even respected her, for God’s sake. And he was honest about it.
Leo picked up the phone.
Amer took breakfast in the conservatory of his Mayfair house. He basked in the warmth of sun filtering through glass, while he sipped orange juice and leafed through the morning papers. He was not, he assured himself, waiting for anything. Just because Leo would have had the booklet with his article in it four days ago was no reason to stretch his ears for the burr of the telephone.
Still, the Embassy had been briefed that Miss Groom was, exceptionally, to be given his private London number. And no one could say that the papers were gripping. Amer reached the ‘Forthcoming Marriages’ column without interest and was on the point of turning that page, too, when—
The crystal glass fell from his hand, scattering shards and orange juice all over the marble floor.
She could not have done it; she was not stupid. She could not.
But it was there. Irrefutably. “Leonora Jane, only daughter of Gordon Groom of the Wisteria House Wimbledon and Mrs Deborah Groom of Kensington, W8 to Mr Simon Hartley, eldest son of Sir Donald and Lady Hartley of Seren Place, Devon.”
She had got herself engaged.
‘I’ll kill her,’ yelled Amer.