Free City of Jasmine by Deanna Raybourn Page B

invited Aunt Dove to come along to sweeten the deal for the sponsors. She is meat for the newspapers. They can’t seem to get enough of her—no doubt because they never know what she’s going to say.”
    He gave a short cough and patted his mouth. “She is an original,” he said gallantly.
    “And so we started off, and here we are. Heading for the Caspian next and lands as yet unseen.”
    “Here you are,” he said softly. His eyes were warm, and for an instant, his hand hovered over mine. But he dropped it to the table and when he spoke, his tone was bright but forced.
    “Have you finished your coffee? Then let’s be off. There’s something I want to show you.” He fished coins out of his pocket while I tactfully turned away. Through the window I caught a flash of striped robe, but as soon as I blinked it had gone. It meant nothing, of course. There were thousands of such robes in Damascus, and doubtless hundreds on that street alone. Still, when we emerged from the coffee house, I looked about for a glimpse of a familiar profile or that slender, darting figure.
    “Everything all right?” Halliday asked.
    I slipped my arm into his and gave him a smile. “Perfectly.”
    He led the way, winding through a few small backstreets until we came to the Gate of the Sun, the Bab Sharqi, the most ancient way into the city, and from there down into the street called Straight. As we walked he told me the history of the road, how it had been built by the Greeks and improved by the Romans with arches and colonnades.
    “On this road, you will find synagogue, church and mosque, sitting cheek by jowl and getting along rather nicely together,” he explained.
    “It’s good to think such things are possible somewhere in the world.”
    He paused, propping his hand against a bit of Roman stonework. “This has been here since the time of St. Paul, when he stayed at a house in this very street. The man is long gone, and yet this bit of stone endures. Astonishing, isn’t it? How many temples and tombs outlast us all? They were put there by the hands of men, at the orders of kings and priests, and yet they stand on long after the men of power have dried to dust.”
    “‘All human things are subject to decay, and when fate summons, monarchs must obey,’” I murmured, hearing Gabriel’s voice ringing on the words as he had once spoke them.
    “What’s that?” he asked.
    I shuddered as if a goose walked over my grave. “Just a bit of poetry.”
    “It sounds familiar. What’s it from?”
    I shook myself free of the past and smiled up at him. “I can’t remember.”
    He returned the smile and extended his arm. I slipped mine through his and we walked on in the warm sunshine, the smell of jasmine faint on the air as somewhere behind us trailed a ghost who whispered poetry in my ear and teased a breeze to touch my cheek.
    * * *
    That evening we dined with Miss Green, and our companions met us in the hotel court. Aunt Dove was wearing another of her turbans, this one an Indonesian batik pinned with a great lump of turquoise while her favourite green brooch winked from her considerable décolletage. She looked like a particularly winsome peacock, and Miss Green, subdued in a stern and rusty black gown, complimented her. Halliday looked every inch the proper English gentleman in his beautifully tailored evening clothes while I had shimmied into a darling little black dress dripping with silver bugle beads. Halliday’s brows raised and stayed there when he saw me.
    “I say,” he breathed as he took my hand.
    I dimpled at him. “I shall take that as approval.”
    “Rather,” he agreed. He turned to Aunt Dove. “Lady Lavinia, resplendent as usual.”
    She gave him a fond look and fluttered her lashes a little while Miss Green organised us. She insisted upon taking us to a proper Levantine restaurant not far from the main bazaar. “Authentic fare,” she promised as our taxi alighted outside a nondescript stone building.