No Brighter Dream: The Pascal Trilogy - Book 3 (13 page)

“I have never had grandparents,” she said happily, flinging herself back into her chair. “But are you sure you wish to take in one not of your blood? You might change your mind.”

“We are truly sure, and no, we won’t change our minds,” Nicholas said firmly.

“If it reassures you, we do have some experience in loving children whose blood is not our own,” Georgia added. “We took in Andre’s father many, many years ago when he was just a boy, and he is still a very important part of our family. So you see, we are not fickle.”

“My
Handray’s father?” Ali asked with strong confusion.

“Yes, your Andre’s father. We think of him as our eldest son.”

“But I thought Charlie was the eldest, and after Charlie there was Ghislane and Willy and Kate.” She counted them off on her fingers.

“And there’s Pascal in France,” Nicholas said. “I’m sorry—I assumed Andre would have explained the connection to you before he sent you to us.”

“He did not explain anything except that I was to go away and learn to be a dreadful Englishwoman. And anyway, I—I thought his parents were dead,” she said. “He never wrote to them or even mentioned them, not as Jojan did his. He refused to speak of his family at all. Why, Nicholas?”

“It’s an old story, Ali, and a painful one. We all hope one day it will be resolved, but it’s best to leave it alone, all right?”

She nodded. “This is why Handray stays in my country?”

Nicholas scratched his cheek. “I think there is a combination of reasons why he chooses to spend most of his time in that part of the world. But as I say, let’s leave it. It’s very complicated.”

“Yes,” she said. “Just like Handray.” She suddenly jumped to her feet, her face alight with joy as the most extraordinary idea occurred to her. “But—but this means that when Handray
does
finally come home, I will be here, not lost somewhere else. Oh— oh!” She twirled around, hugging her arms around herself. “I
knew
Allah would not take him away forever. And now He has given me a nice family too.”

She looked around at the familiar room with its large windows, its comfortable furniture, the desk that Nicholas used for his work. She’d never dared to think of it as home, afraid that her heart would be broken once again when she was forced to leave. But now…

“You have no idea what this means to me,” she said, her throat suddenly tight. “I was very sad when I thought I would have to leave you. But now I promise to work very hard to please you so that you will not ever want to send me away.”

“You needn’t try to please us,” Georgia said. “All we wish is for you to be happy. To tell you the truth, I was beginning to worry that we’d find one of your relatives after all, and then we’d be forced to let you go. But now we can keep you all to ourselves, and we’re very pleased that you think enough of us to want to stay.”

“You are very silly,” Ali said, struggling against a fresh onslaught of tears. “I do not suppose I may take my crinoline off now that I do not have to be a good English girl for my relatives?”

“No,” Nicholas said, his face wreathed in a broad smile. “And you still have to practice the waltz.”

Ali danced over to him. “Poor, poor Nicholas. You are stuck with me forever.” She threw her arms around his neck again, laughing with sheer joy. “You will be trying to teach me the waltz until the end of your days.”

He regarded her with a gleam in his eyes. “Oh, but just think, Ali, if you practice very, very hard, you can waltz with Andre when he returns. Won’t he be surprised? He probably thinks you’ll never manage to become a lady.”

Ali caught her lip between her teeth. This aspect of learning all these silly English things hadn’t occurred to her, since she thought she was learning them only to be sent away. But now everything had changed.

A diabolic idea entered her mind. Handray would come home, and she, the little Turkish savage he had discarded, would be waiting for him. Oh, yes. She would be waiting. Wouldn’t he be sorry?

“Now that it’s all settled, shall we go in for dinner?” Georgia said.

Realizing that she was starving, Ali started her usual dash toward the dining room. She stopped abruptly as she reached the doorway. Turning around, she went to Nicholas and curtsied. It was lopsided, but still a curtsy.

She lightly placed the tips of her fingers on his arm. “Lord Raven, would you care to escort me into dinner?” she asked in dulcet tones, her English accent nearly impeccable.

“Good God,” Nicholas murmured. “So you can do it when you want to.”

“I can do anything I put my mind to,” Ali said happily. “Wait and see.”

Andre lay awake under the stars, his gaze tracing the outline of Perseus. How many times had he told Ali the stories of the constellations, lying under this very sky, pointing out the heavenly bodies? Countless. He’d talked her to sleep with his idiotic stories.

God, he missed her. He missed her silly little songs, her even sillier pronouncements on everything from her precious Allah to the next day’s weather report. He even missed arguing with her. Odd. She had driven him mad with her constant chatter, and now the silence was deafening.

There were times he forgot, when he returned to camp absorbed in the day’s work, expecting to see her shining face. What met him now was the wrinkled face of Hussan, not the same thing at all. It never failed to depress him.

He hoped to God she was safe and well, not too unhappy. It had tom him to pieces to put her on the steamer, to see her heartbroken face as the boat had pulled away. But it had nearly killed him when he’d heard her last anguished words cast as if she’d been trying to throw a lifeline between them.

I will always belong to you … Allah has ordained it.

Andre pushed his forearm over his face, blotting out the stars. “No, Ali,” he whispered. “You belong to yourself. Only to yourself. Forget about me, little one. Forget all about me.”

H
er lessons finally finished for the day, Ali flew out the back door of the library and across the lawn to her favorite spot by the big lake, Sherifay bounding along in front of her.

She liked summer, when the trees were in full leaf and flowers grew everywhere, although she could have done without Matthew following her around, now that he was out of school for the summer.

She supposed he had nothing better to do, but it really did grow tedious having him constantly hanging about.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like him, for she did, very much. And she had to sympathize with his gawkiness for she suffered from the same complaint. They both resembled overgrown foals, he a large and lanky colt, she a smaller, slighter filly, both of them equally knobby of knee and awkward. That in itself gave them a bond, plus the fact that they were closely matched in age, being only a year apart.

It was just that he wasn’t Umar. Or Jo-Jean. Or Andre. Matthew treated her like a girl. An English girl. He didn’t like it when she threw her shoes and dress off and went wading into the water to fish in only her shift. His ears went red. That, of course, only made her laugh, which made his ears go redder still.

And he didn’t like it when she talked about Turkey. She could tell—it made him uncomfortable, as if he resented her belonging to someone else’s country. But he liked it least of all when she spoke of Andre.

Oh, his ears really went red then, along with his face and neck. She didn’t really understand why, other than he said that Andre was a terrible person who only knew how to hurt people, although he’d never say why.

That only made her own face go red, and they’d had some terrible arguments. In the end, they’d agreed not to speak of it at all. And that suited Ali well. She much preferred to keep her other life to herself.

England still wasn’t anywhere near as beautiful as Turkey, she thought for the thousandth time, flopping down onto the grass. Turkey had no crinolines, or white gloves, and you never had to curtsy.

She splayed her arms over her head as she drank in the warmth of the sun, then closed her eyes and wished a camel or two into the background, and Andre, of course, while she breathed in the familiar tangy scent of wild thyme.

She drifted off on the wings of her imagination, weaving a long involved story about Andre and herself chasing across the desert on camels after retreating Turkomen whom they’d frightened away with guns. Ali backtracked in the interest of correctness and removed the pistol from Andre’s hand, since he never carried one. She gave herself two lovely ornamented pistols instead, smoking from her brilliant aim.

Now. Where were they going to put their tents, and what were they going to have for dinner…

Little Sherifay’s insistent barking interrupted her just as she’d decided to cook a savory kid.

“That’s enough,” Ali called, but the yapping continued, coming from farther away now. Ali finally sat up to see what the puppy was making a fuss about, shading her eyes with one hand and squinting against the sun.

Andre. It was Andre walking toward her, Sherifay leaping about at his heels. But that was impossible. Andre was in Turkey. And this man had no beard. She rubbed her eyes and looked harder, thinking her daydreaming had finally scrambled her brains, as Hadgi had always said it would, for the man was still there.

She shakily got to her feet. And then as the glare of the sun left her eyes she realized it was not Andre at all, but someone whose dark hair, height, and high-bridged nose had created the illusion.

“You must be Ali,” he said, approaching her, the richness of his voice nearly identical to Andre’s.

Ali could only stare. The man that stood before her might have been Andre in another twenty years or so. It was only his eyes that were different. They were dark, very clear and dark, and they were peaceful.

“Yes, I am Ali,” she said, collecting herself, knowing now without any shadow of a doubt that this was Andre’s father, the duke.

“I have been most anxious to meet you,” he said, taking both her hands and smiling down at her. “I am Pascal de Saint-Simon.”

“But I did not know you were coming,” she cried. She knew she looked like precisely what she was, a half-tamed Turkish girl with twigs in her hair and her hem hanging unevenly. “Oh,” she wailed, completely flustered. “I wanted to look so
civilized
when I finally met you!”

His face broke into a broad smile. “Ali. You are exactly as Joseph-Jean described you, but even better, I think. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when Andre sent you here, although I trust Nicholas and Georgia implicitly. I see they have kept you entirely intact.”

“But—but how did you know … you know Jojan?” she finished even more foolishly.

“Yes,” he said. “I do. I’ve known him all of his life, and I owe him a great debt. He wrote me many letters about you. He also told me what you did for my son, about how you looked after him. It seems I owe you a great debt as well.”

“Oh! Oh, no. It is I who owes your son a debt. He saved my life, you see,” she said earnestly, feeling strangely comfortable with this man. She wondered if it was because he reminded her so strongly of Andre.

“Yes, I know. I’m delighted that he did, just as I’m delighted that you are now here with us. Tell me, how was my son when you last saw him, Ali? Was he well? Happy?”

“He was well,” she said. “I would not say he was happy. He was improving, or at least I thought he was until he decided to send me away. Then his heart turned back to ice.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Pascal said.

“I suppose he cannot help it,” Ali said. “It is all because of his fairy-child, I think.”

“His fairy-child?” Pascal asked, puzzled.

“Yes—oh, you do not know? I’m not supposed to know, either, but Jojan told me by mistake. Handray loved her more than anything in the entire world, and then she died.”

That sounded rather flat to her ear and didn’t nearly make the point, so she decided to embellish. “You see, she was one of those creatures not entirely of this world. Allah only gave her to Handray for a brief time, to shed the beautiful light of her love on his life, and then He called her back to Him. Poor Handray was left to wander the four corners of the earth, calling to her spirit to return to him, but of course it could not.” She stopped, terribly pleased with the ring of her story. Now
that
sounded like a tragedy.

“I see…” Pascal said, his mouth twitching at the comers. “Is that what Joseph-Jean told you?”

“Well … not exactly,” she admitted. “It was just how I thought it must have been.”

“Do you know, Ali, oddly enough you’re not so far from the truth?”

“I am not?” she said, her face falling in dismay. “Oh. Oh, how dreadful for poor Handray.”

“Yes, it was,” he said. “It was. And it was equally tragic that there was nothing any of us could do for him. But from what Joseph-Jean tells me, you somehow managed to put the light back in his eyes.”

“He is very stubborn, your son. He had made up his mind never to smile again, and it was not easy to make him change it.”

“No, I can imagine,” Pascal said, kneeling down to scratch the puppy’s ears. “And who is this?”

“This is Sherifay,” she said proudly. “Nicholas gave her to me for my very own. She sleeps on my bed.”

“Yes, I know how that is,” Pascal said with a laugh. “I’ve shared my bed with a terrier for all of my married life. Nicholas gave Lily and myself our first as a wedding present, and little Bean moved right under the covers as if she had every right to be there.” He shook his head. “Every terrier we’ve had since has asserted the same privilege as if it were a divine right.” Sherifay put her paws on Pascal’s knees and vigorously washed his face.

“Is Handray’s mother here too?” Ali asked hopefully.

“Indeed she is. We would have come sooner to meet you, but we had business in America that couldn’t wait. We came the very first chance we had, though. I wanted to welcome you to the family personally.”

“Thank you,” Ali said solemnly. “It is a very fine thing to have a family.”

“I know just what you mean,” Pascal replied. “Lily is up at the house, waiting impatiently to meet you.”

Ali flushed with pleasure, but looked at him uncertainly. “Are you sure she will want to? Last Sunday the wife of the vicar came for tea, and she was not pleased to meet me at all.”

“Oh?” Pascal asked. “And why was that?”

Ali looked down at the grass. “I probably should not say.”

Pascal regarded her with interest. “Really? This sounds interesting. Here, sit on the bank with me and tell me about it. I know Mrs. Eliot, and personally I think her a very silly woman.”

“You do? Well, then maybe you will not think me as evil as she did. She—that is I…” Ali wasn’t sure how to phrase it. “She asked me why she had not seen me at the church, and I said that I could not listen to the prayers of infidels, for Allah would be very angry.”

To Ali’s surprise, Pascal roared with laughter. “Oh,” he said, when he’d finally regained control. “Oh, I do wish I’d been there.” He wiped the tears from his eyes. “What did Mrs. Eliot say?”

“She said that I was a godless little heathen, and she hoped that Georgia would take me in hand before I disgraced them. Georgia was very nice about it, but I could see she was upset.”

“Well … if she was, it was probably because you’d forgotten the story she and Nicholas created about your background to protect you from just this sort of thing. If I’m correct, they don’t have too many Muslims in Switzerland.”

“I forgot,” she said miserably. “It is very difficult to adjust to being a Christian infidel. I was baptized a Catholic, Nicholas said, which means I belong to the Christian church, but if I go to it, I am sure to offend Allah. It is a terrible dilemma.”

Pascal nodded sympathetically. “Yes, I can see that it would be. But I don’t believe that Allah is quite as easy to offend as you might believe.”

Ali frowned. “How would you know? You do not know anything about Him.”

“Well, I know about the five pillars of Islam, and I can tell you something about Mohammed’s teachings.” Pascal launched into a brief but detailed description of the Muslim religion.

Ali gazed at him in wonder. “But how is it possible that you know these things? Are you Muslim?”

Pascal took one of her hands in his own. “Look, Ali. This is your hand that Allah made, yes?”

She nodded and he held up his free hand. “And this is my hand that Allah also made, yes?”

She nodded again.

“They look the same, don’t they? Aside from the fact that yours is small and smooth and younger than mine, which is large and has hair growing on the back.”

Ali grinned. “But it is not unattractive.”

“Thank you. But the point is that Allah made us all essentially the same, no matter what the small differences are, and no matter where in the world we were bora, for Allah is everywhere, even though He goes by many different names.”

Ali’s eyes narrowed. “I do not understand how you can say this when you know that Allah alone is God without second.”

“Yes. And all over the world people acknowledge His presence and offer Him prayers of gratitude and love. The Hebrew religion calls him Yahwell, the Christians call him God, or sometimes Christ—”

“But this is not the same as worshiping Allah,” she protested.

“Why not? Are you any different if I call you Alexis instead of Ali? Are you any different here in England following the English customs of eating and dressing and bathing than when you were in Turkey and followed the customs there? I don’t mean on the outside, but on the inside where it counts.”

She slowly shook her head. “No. But I was more comfortable being Ali. I liked being Ali. I do not like being Alexis.”

“Because you are not yet accustomed to being Alexis. Trust me, Ali, I do know what it’s like to be forced to go through a metamorphosis or two. It’s very difficult, but one learns to adjust.”

Ali plucked at the grass. “I do not mind so much being asked to change the way I dress, even if I do not like it. But I do not see how I can change the way I think of Allah, even if I was born an infidel.”

“But why must you change the way you think?”

“How else am I to be a correct Englishwoman? Look at what Mrs. Ehot thought of me.” She threw her handful of grass away in disgust. “But if I become a Christian, Allah will never speak to me again. And that I could not bear.”

Pascal looked away for a long moment, and Ali had the distinct impression that he was trying not to laugh.

“What is so funny?” she asked with annoyance.“

Only the notion that Allah would be so judgmental.” Pascal picked up a pebble and turned it around in his fingers. “Look, Ali.” He threw the pebble into the lake, and it sank with a little plop, leaving only a spreading circle of ripples on the surface to show its passage.

“When a great teacher or prophet comes to earth to pass along God’s word,” Pascal said, “his message is like those ripples that spread and spread. The teacher is the messenger who, like the pebble, makes an impact and then disappears. But the message stays.” He looked over at her. “There have been many messengers, not to mention the archangels God has sent with his word. And there’s a point. I don’t think God can be overly concerned with people practicing different faiths if He sent his archangels to the Christians, the Jews, and the Muslims.”

“Jibril visited the infidels?” Ali asked breathlessly, her head spinning with wonder that it might be so.

“Yes. Although in the Christian religion he is known as Gabriel. Just as he appeared to give Mohammed the Qur’an, Gabriel also appeared to Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, to tell her she was going to have a child who was to be the Son of God.”

Ali shook her head, dazed. “But these two things are very different.”

“On the outside, maybe. It all goes back to what I was saying earlier. I, like you, was baptised a Catholic, Ali.” He smiled at her look of surprise. “But you see, it’s never made any real difference to me what religion I practiced. In all the places I have been in the world, in all the different temples and mosques and churches I have visited, I have worshiped Allah, or God, or whatever He happened to be called. I may have followed the local customs regarding prayer, but wherever I was, I was still the same man worshiping the same Almighty.” He paused for a moment. “Does that make sense?”