“Duty, I am afraid, my lovely. Queen and country.”
“How utterly boring. Get me a glass of champagne.” Penrod looked up, and a waiter in a long white galabiyya and tasselled fez appeared as miraculously as a genie from the lamp.
When the wine came, Agatha sipped it. “Grace Everington is getting married on Saturday,” she said.
“A mite sudden?”
“No, actually, just in time. Before it begins to show.”
“I hope she enjoyed the chase.”
“She tells me no, not at all, but her father is being beastly and says she must go through with it. Family honour. It is to be quiet and discreet, of course, but I have an invitation for you. You may escort me. It might be fun to watch her making an ass of herself, and of him.”
“I am sorry to say it but by then I shall be far away.”
Agatha sat up straight. “Oh, God! No! Not again. Not so soon.”
Penrod shrugged. “I was given no choice.”
“When are you leaving?”
“In three hours’ time.”
“Where are they sending you?”
“You know better than to ask.”
“You can’t go, Pen. The reception at the Austrian embassy is tomorrow evening. I have a new dress.” He shrugged again. “When will you come back?”
“That is blowing in the wind.”
“Three hours,” she said, and stood up. The movement attracted the gaze of every man on the veranda. “Come!” she commanded.
“Lunch?” he asked.
“I think not.” Her family kept a permanent suite at Shepheard’s, and Penrod rode beside her open gharry. As the door to the suite closed she pounced on him, like a kitten on a ball of wool, lithe, playful and earnest all at once. He picked her up easily and carried her through to the bedroom.
“Be quick!” she ordered. “But not too quick.”
“I am an officer of the Queen, and an order is an order.”
Later, she watched him as he dressed again while she lay stretched full length, languid and replete, inviting his appraisal. “You won’t find better than this, Penrod Ballantyne.” She cupped her hands under her breasts. They were pale and large in comparison to her girlish waist. She squeezed out her nipples, and he paused to watch her. “You see? You do like it. When will you marry me?”
“Ah! May we apply ourselves to that question at some later date?”
“You are an utter beast.” She combed her fingers through the mist of strawberry curls at the base of her belly. “Should I pluck myself here? The Arab girls do.”
“Your information on that subject is probably more accurate than mine.”
“I heard that you like Arab girls.”
“Sometimes you are amusing, Lady Agatha. At other times you are not. Sometimes you behave like a lady, and at others not at all.” He slung his dolman over his shoulder and adjusted the chain as he turned to the door.
She flew off the bed like a wounded leopard, and he only just had time to turn and defend himself. She went for his eyes with her sharp,
pearly talons. But he seized her wrists. She tried to bite his face, small white teeth clicking together an inch from his nose. He bent her backwards so she could not reach. She kneed at his groin, but he caught the blow on his thigh and turned her round. She was helpless in the circle of his arms with her back to his chest. She pressed her firm round buttocks into him, felt him swelling and hardening, and gave a breathless but triumphant little laugh. She stopped struggling, sank to her knees and lifted high the twin half-moons of her buttocks. She wriggled her thighs apart so that the nest of pink curls peeked out between them. “I hate you!” she said.
He dropped down behind her, still booted and spurred, his sabre belted at his side. He ripped open the front of his breeches, and she screamed involuntarily as he transfixed her. When he stood up again she collapsed and lay panting at his feet. “How do you always know what I want you to do? How do you always know what to say, and when to say it? That terrible name you called me a moment ago was like chilli powder on a sweet mango it took my breath away. How do you know these things?”
“Some might call it genius, but I am too modest to agree.”
She looked up at him. Her hair was tangled and her cheeks were flushed rosily. “Call me that again.”
“No matter how richly you deserve it, once is enough for now.” He went to the door.
“When will you come back?”
“Perhaps soon, perhaps never.”
“You beast. I hate you. I truly hate you.” But he was gone.
Three days later Penrod stepped off the fast steamer at the Assouan jetty. He was wearing tropical khaki uniform without decorations or regimentals. He had exchanged the busby for a pith helmet with a wide brim. There were at least another fifty soldiers and officers within sight who were dressed almost identically, so he excited no attention. A ragged porter in a filthy turban seized his kit-bag and ran ahead of him into the maze of streets of the old town. Striding out on long legs Penrod kept him in sight.
When they reached the gate in a nondescript mud wall at the end of the narrow, twisted alley, Penrod tossed the porter a pi astre and retrieved his bag. He tugged the bell cord and listened to the familiar chimes. After a while there were footsteps beyond the gate, soft and faltering, and a voice quavered, “Who is it that calls? There is nothing here for we are poor widows and deserted by God.”
“Open this gate, you houri of Paradise,” Penrod replied, ‘and swiftly, before I kick it down.”
There was a moment’s stunned silence, broken at last by a wild cackle of laughter and a fumbling at the bolts. Then they were shot back and the gate creaked open. An ancient head, like a turtle’s but partly covered with a widow’s veil peered round the jamb. The gaping grin exposed two crooked teeth widely separated by an expanse of pink gum. “Effendi!” The old woman squealed, and her entire face puckered with wrinkles. “Lord of a thousand virtues.”
Penrod embraced her.
“You are shameless,” she protested with delight. “You threaten my virtue.”
“I am fifty years too late to pluck that fruit.” He let her go. “Where is your mistress?”
Old Liala glanced significantly across the courtyard. In the centre of the garden a fountain splashed into a pool in which Nile perch circled tranquilly. Around its border stood statues of the pharaohs: Seti, Thutmose and great Rameses, lifted from their tombs by grave-robbers back in the mists of time. It never failed to amaze him that such treasures were displayed in so humble a setting.
Penrod strode across the courtyard. His heart beat faster. He had not realized until that moment how much he had been looking forward to seeing her again. When he reached the beaded curtain that covered the doorway he paused to regain his composure, then jerked it aside and stepped through. At first she was merely a dim, ethereal presence, but then his eyes adjusted and her shape emerged from the cool gloom. She was slim as a lily stem, but her robe was shot with gold thread, and there was gold at her wrists and ankles. As she came towards him, her bare henna-painted feet made no sound on the tiles. She stopped in front of him and made obeisance, touching her fingertips to her lips and her heart.
“Master!” she whispered. “Master of my heart.” Then she hung her head and waited in silence.
He lifted the veil and studied her face. “You are beautiful, Bakhita,” he told her, and the smile that blossomed over her features enhanced that beauty a hundredfold. She lifted her chin and looked at him, and her eyes glowed so that they seemed to light the dimmest recesses of the room.
“It has been only twenty-six days, but it seems like all my life,” she said, and her voice quivered like the strings of a lute plucked by skilled fingers.
“You have counted the days?” he asked.
“And the hours also.” She nodded. Roses coloured the waxen perfection of her cheeks, and the long lashes meshed over her eyes as she glanced away shyly. Then her eyes crept back to his face.
“You knew I was coming?” he accused her. “How could you when I did not know it myself?”
“My heart knew, as the night knows the coming of dawn.” She touched his face as though she were blind and
