“I have been unkind to you.” She ignored his denial. “I behaved like a little girl. You of all people I should have treated more kindly. Without you we might long ago have perished.”
“You are being kind to me now. That makes up for everything,” he said.
“The green-cake is just one of your valuable gifts to my family. I do not think it an exaggeration to say that with it you have saved our lives. We are healthy and strong in the midst of starvation and death. I can never repay you for that.”
“Your friendship is all the payment I could ask for.”
She smiled at him and the worry lines were smoothed away. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was, but he bit back the words. She reached across the desk, spilling a stack of silver coins, and took his hand. “You are a good friend and a good man, Ryder Courtney.”
For the first time she studied his face quite openly. He is not as beautiful as Penrod is, she thought, but he has a strong, honest face. It’s a face one could see every day and not grow tired of. He would never leave me, as Penrod has. There would be no native girls hiding in a back room. He is a man of substance, not ostentation or pretence. There would always be bread on his table. He is a rock of a man and he would shelter his woman. The hand holding hers was powerful and competent, hardened with work. His bare arm reaching towards her was like the pillar of a house. His shoulders under the cloth of his shirt were broad and square. He was a man, not a boy.
Then, suddenly, she remembered where they were. Her smile crumpled. The precariousness of their lives rushed back upon her. What would happen if Ryder sailed away in the this and left her and the twins here? What would happen to them when the Mahdi and his murderous army stormed into the city? She knew what they did to the women they captured. Tears swamped her eyes and clung to her lashes. “Oh, Ryder, what will become of us all? Are we all going to die in this awful place? Dead before we have lived?” She knew in her woman’s heart that there was only one certain way that she could bind a man like him to herself for ever. Was she ready to take that step?
“No, Rebecca, you have been so brave and strong for so long. Don’t give up now.” He stood up and moved quickly round the desk.
She looked up at him as he stood over her, and the tears ran down her cheeks. “Hold me, Ryder. Hold me!” she pleaded.
“I do not want to give you offence again.” He hesitated.
“I was a child then, a mindless girl. Now I am a woman. Hold me like a woman.”
He lifted her to her feet and took her gently in his arms. “Be strong!” he said.
“Help me,” she answered and pressed close to him. She buried her face against his chest and inhaled his scent. Her terrors and doubt seemed to recede into insignificance. She felt safe. She felt his strength flowing into her, and clung to him with quiet desperation. Then, slowly, she was aware of a new, pleasant sensation that seemed to emanate from the centre of her being. It was not the divine and consuming madness that Penrod Ballantyne had evoked. It was, rather, a warming glow. This man she could trust. She was safe in his arms. It would be easy to do what she had contemplated.
This is something I must do not only for myself but for my family. Silently she made the decision, then said aloud, “Kiss me, Ryder.” She lifted her face to him “Kiss me as you did before.”
“Rebecca, my darling Becky, are you sure what you are about?”
“If you can speak only to ask daft questions,” she smiled at him, ‘then speak not at all. Just kiss me.”
His mouth was hot and his breath mingled with hers. Her lips were soft and she felt his tongue slip between them. Once that had frightened and confused her, but now she revelled in the taste of him. I will take him as my man, she thought. I reject the other. I take Ryder Courtney. With that level-headed decision she let her emotions take control. She slipped the leash on all restraint as she felt something clench deep in her belly. It was a sensation so powerful that it reached the edge of pain. She felt it throbbing inside her.
It is my womb, she realized, with amazement. He has roused the centre of my womanhood. She pushed her hips hard against his, trying to ease the pain or aggravate it, she was not certain which. The last time Ryder had embraced her she had not understood what she had felt swelling and hardening. Now she knew. This time she was not afraid. She even had a secret name for that man’s thing. She called it a tam my after the tamarind tree outside her bedroom, which Penrod had climbed that first night.
His tam my is singing to my quimmy, she thought, and my quimmy likes the tune. Her mother, the emancipated Sarah Isabel Benbrook, had taught her the quaint word. “This might be the last day of our lives. Do not waste it,” she breathed. “Let us take this moment, hold it and never let go.” But he was diffident. She had to take his hands and place them on her breasts. Her nipples seemed to swell and burn with his touch.
She twisted the fingers of one hand into the hair at the back of his head to pull it down, and with the other hand she opened the hooks down the front of her bodice. She freed one of her breasts and as it popped out she pressed it into his mouth. She cried out with the sweet pain of his teeth on her tender flesh. Her essence welled inside her and overflowed.
She was overcome with a desperate sense of urgency. “Quickly -please, Ryder. I am dying. Do not let me die. Save me.” She knew she was babbling nonsense, but she did not care. She clasped both her arms round his neck and tried to climb up his body. He reached behind her, took a double handful of the hem of her skirt and lifted it up round her waist. She wore nothing beneath it, and her buttocks were pale and round as a pair of ostrich eggs in the gloom of the shuttered room. He cupped them in his hands and lifted her.
She locked her thighs round his hips, and felt him burrowing into the silken nest of curls at the fork of her legs. “Quickly! I cannot live another moment without you inside me.” She pressed down hard, screwing up her eyes with the effort, and felt all her resistance to him give way. She dug her fingernails into his back and pushed down again. Then nothing else in the world mattered: all her worries and fears dissolved as he glided in, impaling her deeply. She felt her womb open to welcome him. She thrust against him with a kind of barely controlled desperation. She felt his legs begin to tremble, and stared into his face as it contorted in ecstatic agony. She felt his legs juddering beneath them, and she thrust harder and faster. He opened his mouth and when he cried out, her voice echoed his. They locked each other in a fierce paroxysm that seemed as if it would bind them together through eternity, but at last their voices sank into silence, and the rigid muscles of his legs relaxed. He sank to the floor on his knees, but she clung to him desperately, clenching herself round him so that he could not slip out and leave her empty.
He seemed to return at last from a faraway place, and stared at her with an expression of awe and wonder. “Now you are my woman?” It was half-way between a question and a declaration.
She smiled at him tenderly. He was still deep inside her. She felt marvellously powerful, deliciously lascivious and wanton. She tightened her loins, and gripped hard. She had not realized she was capable of such a trick. He gasped and his eyes flew wide. “Yes,” she agreed, ‘and you are my man. I will hold you like this for ever, and never let you go-‘
“I am your willing captive,” he said. She kissed his lips.
When she broke off to draw breath he went on, “Will you do me the great honour of becoming my wife? We do not want to shock the world, do we?”
Suddenly it was all happening very swiftly. Although this had been her intention, she could not think of a response both demure and yet binding upon him. While she considered it there was a loud knock on the blockhouse door. She pushed him away and hurriedly stuffed her breasts back into her bodice, looking anxiously towards the door. “It is locked,” he reminded her in a whisper. With hundreds of pounds in coin lying on his desk, he had taken no chances. Now he raised his voice: “Who is it?”
“It is I, Bacheet. I have brought a news bulletin from Gordon Pasha.”
“That is not important enough to worry me when I am busy,” Ryder retorted. Gordon issued his bulletins almost daily. They were designed to comfort the populace of the city and to bolster their will to resist. Thus his compositions were subject to wide literary licence, and were often separated from the truth by a considerable distance.
“This one is important, Effendi.” Bacheet’s tone was excited. “Good news. Very good news.”
“Push it under the door,” Ryder ordered.
He stood up and lifted Rebecca to her feet. They both adjusted their clothing: he buttoned the front of his breeches and she straightened her skirts. Then Ryder went to the door and picked up the crudely printed bulletin. He scanned it, then brought it to her.
