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      CHAPTER ONE

      THE restaurant was well known and expensive, and Felicia had to pretend to be unaware of the waiter’s contemptuous appraisal of her shabby coat as she hurriedly surveyed the occupants of the tables.

      Her spirits lifted when she saw Faisal, and the waiter, plainly reviewing his opinion of her when he saw with whom she was to dine, cleared a path for her with an alacrity which she secretly found amusing. It spoke volumes for the power of money, she reflected, as Faisal pushed back his chair and stood up, an appreciative smile lighting his handsome features.

      ‘I’m sorry I’m so late,’ she apologised as they sat down. ‘I was late leaving the office.’

      ‘The office! Zut! Have I not told you before to give up this worthless job?’ Faisal demanded with an arrogance that slightly dismayed her.

      An attractive girl, with auburn hair that curled on to her shoulders and sombre green eyes that hinted at a natural reserve, Felicia was unaware of the assessing glances of some of the other diners. Although her neat ribbed sweater and toning tweed skirt instantly placed her apart from the elegant creatures in silks and furs who sat at the other tables, she had a lissom grace which automatically drew the male eye.

      That Faisal was aware of this was obvious from the jealous looks he gave these other men who dared to look upon his Felicia; but Felicia herself was completely unaware of the slight stir caused by her entrance.

      She had known the young Kuwaiti for just six breathless weeks. A mutual interest in photography had led to their initial meeting at night school classes and one or two casual dates had grown into regular thrice weekly meetings, and more latterly dates most nights of the week as Faisal grew increasingly possessive.

      With Faisal’s insistence that he take her out to lunch most days of the week, and dates nearly every night as well, it had proved impossible to keep their romance a secret from the other girls in her office. At first they had teased her unmercifully, until they realised that the affair was becoming serious. Then their lighthearted teasing had turned to warnings of a more serious nature as they repeated direful tales of what could happen to European girls foolish enough to take the promises of rich males too seriously. Felicia kept her own counsel. She was sure that Faisal respected her too much to hurt her in the way that they were suggesting, but even so, she had been surprised and then flattered when he began to talk about marriage.

      During these talks he had told her a good deal about his family, just as she had told him about her parents, dying so young and so tragically when she was little more than a baby, and leaving her to be brought up by Aunt Ellen and Uncle George in their bleak granite house on the Lancashire moors.

      Her childhood had not been a happy one. Uncle George had been a strict and unbending guardian, whose constant rejection had built up in her a lack of self-confidence coupled with the feeling that in failing to gain his love she had somehow failed as a human being. Consequently, in the warmth of Faisal’s readily expressed adoration she had begun to bloom like a plant brought out of the frost into a tropical conservatory.

      Faisal’s stories of his own childhood enchanted her, and she often reflected upon how fortunate he had been to be brought up surrounded by the love of his mother and sisters. If only she too might have been part of such a happy family!

      She readily admitted that Faisal had swept her off her feet. They had not known one another nearly long enough, she protested when he talked beguilingly of marriage, but Faisal swept aside her protests. They were made for one another. How could she deny it? How could she, when he wrapped her in the protective warmth of his love? She had said nothing of this to the girls at work. Faisal merely wanted her as a playmate to while away his time in London before returning home to make a ‘good’ marriage, arranged by his family, they warned her, but Felicia knew that this was not so.

      She and Faisal were not lovers. He had been at first reproachful, and then approving of her refusal to give in to his pleas that she spend her nights with him as well as her days.

      Her refusal had nothing to do with being prudish, or a calculated holding out for something more permanent than an affair. The truth was that Felicia was half frightened of such as yet unknown intimacies. In her teenage years Uncle George had been far too strict to permit her to indulge in the usual sexual experimentation of her peers, and as she had grown older she had developed a fastidious hesitancy about committing herself to any purely physical relationship. The first