could hear the intake of her breath at the end of each bar of the tune and almost feel the warmth and texture of her lips under his own. He imagined the tremulous way in which they would part to allow him to taste the apple-sweet juices of her mouth.
At last she set aside the brush, twisted her hair into a thick rope and coiled it on top of her head. She drew a long hairpin with a jewelled head from the lapel of her gown and reached up to secure her hair. As she did so she turned her head away and Penrod took advantage of this to step forward again.
She froze like a gazelle sensing the stalk of the leopard. He stood still and held his breath. Then she turned to face him and her eyes flew wide. She stared down at him for a moment, then swung her legs back into the balcony and sprang to her feet. Her lips framed a silent accusation: “You were spying!”
Then she whirled away through the open door and closed it behind her, with just a faint click of the latch, as though she did not want anyone else to hear. As though the fact that he had been spying on her was a secret between them. Penrod’s heart was drumming and his breath came faster. He regretted that he had frightened her away. He wished he had been able to watch her a little longer, as though he might have learnt some secret by studying her unsuspecting face.
He left the terrace and, as he mounted the main spiral staircase to his own quarters, his predatory instinct, which, for a brief interlude, had been replaced by an almost reverential awe, reasserted itself. He smiled. At least we now know where to find Mademoiselle’s boudoir, should the need arise, he thought.
Unlike her twin, Amber was unperturbed by what they had witnessed when they burst in upon their elder sister and Ryder. She was the only one of the Benbrook sisters who returned to his compound the following day. She arrived at the usual hour with Nazeera in tow and immediately took charge of the team of three dozen Sudanese women who were manufacturing the precious green-cake. She relished not having to share the authority with Saffron.
Bacheet found his master in the workshop at the harbour and whispered his report. Ryder looked up from the this’s main steam line, which he and Jock McCrump were welding. “Her sisters?” Ryder demanded. “Miss Saffron and Miss Rebecca?”
Bacheet shook his head. “Only Miss Amber.” This was not a conversation that Ryder wanted to share with Jock McCrump and the this’s stokers and oilers. He jerked his head towards the door and Bacheet followed him out.
They were half-way back to the compound before Ryder broke the silence. “What happened, Bacheet?” Bacheet looked innocently uncomprehending, but Ryder was certain that he had shared Nazeera’s mattress last night and knew every detail of what had transpired during the past twenty-four hours in the ladies’ quarters of Her Britannic Majesty’s consular palace.
“Tell me what you know,” he insisted.
“I am a simple man,” said Bacheet. “I know horses and camels, the cataracts and currents of the Nile. But what do I know of a woman’s heart?” He shook his head. “Perhaps you should enquire of these mysteries from one much wiser than I.”
“Send Nazeera to me.” Ryder stifled a smile. “I shall wait for her at the monkey cages.”
Nazeera approved of Ryder Courtney. Of course, he had the parboiled look of most ferenghi, and his eyes were a disconcerting and unnatural shade of green, but a man’s looks and age counted for little if he was a good provider. This one’s wives would never starve: he was a man strong in body and resolve, and he would protect his own. Yet there was a gentleness in him. He would never beat his women, unless their behaviour truly invited it. Yes, she approved of him. It was to be regretted that, so far, al-Jamal had not displayed equal good sense.
She came to the animal compound, and whispered to old Ali that he should stay within call but out of earshot. She might be a widow and almost forty years of age, but she was a devout, respectable woman. She had convinced herself that she was the only one who knew of her discreet friendships with Yakub and Bacheet.
She greeted Ryder, asked the blessings of the Prophet for him, touched her heart and lips, then squatted at a polite distance from him. She drew her shawl over the lower part of her face and waited for him to speak.
Ryder asked after her health, and she assured him that she was well. Then he asked after the health of her charges.
“Al’Jamal is well.”
“I am happy to hear that. I was worried about her. She has not come to help the women today.”
Nazeera inclined her head slightly but made no comment.
“Nazeera, is she angry with me?” he asked.
She drew a sharp breath of disapproval. The question lacked even a semblance of subtlety. She should not dignify it with a reply. However, this time she would make allowances for him: after all, he was an infidel.
“Al-Jamal feels that you took advantage of her trust. She was in need of comfort and counsel so she came to you as a friend, but you behaved like a lecher.”
Bacheet saw Ryder’s face crumple with dismay.
“Lecher?” he asked. “She is wrong. I bear her great respect and affection. I am not a lecher.”
Nazeera was balanced on a knife edge of loyalty. She could not tell him that the real offence was that they had been discovered not only by the twins but also by the pretty captain. But she liked him enough to give him a light word of comfort. “I love her like my own daughter, but she is a young girl and understands nothing, not even her own heart. She will change with the moon and the wind and the current, like a dhow without a captain. When she says she wishes never to see someone again, she means at least until midnight, but probably not until noon tomorrow.”
Ryder pondered this as he offered a morsel of green-cake through the bars of the cage to Lucy, the vervet monkey. She was due to give birth at any moment. She seized his wrist and licked the last crumbs from his fingers.
“What should I do, Nazeera?” He asked.
She shook her head. Men were such children. “Anything you do now will only make matters worse. Do nothing. I will tell her how much you are suffering. Most young girls like to hear that. When it is time to do so we will speak again.”
Ryder was much cheered, by this offer of assistance. “But what of Saffron? Why has she not come to help Amber?”
“Filfil feels as strongly about your behaviour as her eldest sister.” Filfil was the Arabic word for pepper, and also Saffron’s nickname. “She also has expressed an intention never to speak to you again. She says that she wishes to die.”
Ryder looked alarmed again. “A single kiss, and a fairly chaste one at that. Now she wants to die?”
“Long ago she chose you as her future husband. She has even discussed the details with me. I should warn you now that she will never allow you to have more than one wife.”
Ryder burst out in incredulous laughter. “What a sweet and funny child she is, but a child nevertheless.”
“In a few short years she will be of marriageable age,” Nazeera did not smile, ‘and she has made her plans.”
Ryder laughed again, but this time with a note of trepidation. “Nazeera, I do not wish to encourage her to believe in the impossible, but nor do I wish to hurt her. Will you give her my message? Will you tell her that there is important work for her to do? I need her here.”
“I will tell her, Effendi,” Nazeera rose to her feet and bowed, ‘but she will need more encouragement than that to forgive your infidelity. But now I must go to help al-Zahra,” Amber’s Arabic name meant ‘the Flower’. “We can never make enough of the green-cake to feed so many hungry mouths.”
After she had gone Ryder lingered a few minutes longer at the monkey cage, pondering his predicaments. Lucy perched at the bars, belly bulging between her knees, and offered her head to his caress. She loved to be scratched behind the ears, and to have her fur searched for vermin. At last Ryder sighed and made to leave the cage. Lucy seized his hand as he tried to pull it out through the bars, and sank her sharp white fangs into his thumb.
“You creature, you!” He cuffed her lightly. She shrieked, as though in mortal anguish, and shot to the top of the cage where she gibbered at him furiously.
“A plague on you, and all female wiles!” he scolded, and sucked his thumb as he left the enclosure to go down to the harbour. Today Jock McCrump hoped to complete the repairs to the hull and engine, and he was planning to take the this out on her trials.
