The Shape of Sand Read Online Free PDF Page A

his lips, and they surveyed one another, for a moment not smiling. His eyes assessed the woman before him: Beatrice, on the eve of her forty-fourth birthday, was still a beauty, exquisitely dressed in cream shantung, cool and smelling of lily-of-the-valley, gracious and welcoming, the society hostess personified. She saw Valery Akhmet Iskander as the others must see him: milky-coffee skin and a pair of sharp, light-blue eyes, high cheekbones and tight, dark curls, a sloping profile and a wide, white smile, a handsome though unexpected combination due to his mixed Russian and Egyptian parentage. Unusual but, given the melange of nationalities in Cairo, not unheard of. He had put on a little weight since she last saw him. No one would have guessed how uncomfortably hard her heart was beating as she led him forward. “Welcome to Charnley. Come, let me introduce you to the others. I see you and Kit have already met.”
    â€œAt the station,” said Kit, stepping forward to greet her in his turn, taking her long white hand in both of his, and dropping a light kiss on her scented cheek. “Had we known, we could have travelled down together.”
    As their hands touched, Beatrice experienced as always the tender rush of emotion for the orphaned small boy Kit had been when first she had seen him and drawn him into the bosom of her family. She almost reached out to smooth the wayward black hair that fell in a comma over his forehead. He
raised his intensely blue eyes to her face, eyes of a blue that was very like her own, and with lashes that any girl would have envied, not disguising his obvious admiration for her, and causing a distinct but not unpleasant flutter of pleasure in the region of her breastbone. Rather quickly, her hand was withdrawn from his clasp. She patted his sleeve in a motherly fashion, and turned away. Iskander was led to the tea-table and presented: “Valery Iskander, an eminent Egyptologist whom I met some years ago while wintering in Egypt.”
    Smiling, the newcomer bowed his head over the hands of several young ladies in straw boaters and high-necked, long-sleeved muslin blouses with cream serge skirts, shook hands with gentlemen still in tennis whites, who nodded a little stiffly and watched him covertly. It was difficult to say how old he was, though certainly not more than in his mid-thirties, which seemed young to have reached the eminence Beatrice had stated. She was perhaps simply being polite. His dark suit was just a little too impeccable in this gathering, his collar too stiff, his moustache narrow and sleek above the full, sensuous lips. But then he was, after all, a foreigner.
    Introductions over, a place was found for him next to his hostess, more tea was ordered, more scones, and, as the conversation resumed its generality, Iskander was given time to study his new acquaintances. The bevy of young women resolved itself into no more than three, all of them Beatrice’s daughters: there was Harriet, the eldest, in no way a beauty but striking, tall like her mother, and with a crooked smile and a pair of serious brown eyes under level dark brows: a clever girl, no doubt. Little Vita, the prettiest of the three – endearing pansy face, small white teeth, carnations-and-cream complexion, wearing a large diamond cluster on her engagement finger, indulging in playful asides with her young man, Bertram Rossiter, rosy and rather self-satisfied, who was seated next to her. The other man was a neighbour, a fattish, damp young fellow called Teddy Cranfield, the effect of whose exertions on the tennis court could only be guessed at.
    At that moment Cheevers arrived with replenishments, and an urgent question for Beatrice from Mrs Heslop, apparently about the fish for dinner. With a little cluck of annoyance,
Beatrice rose and stepped aside to deal with the matter, while the conversation round the tea table continued.
    â€œMr Iskander, how fortunate that you will be here for