Hugo’s gaze fixed on Mary like a beam of sunlight escaping storm clouds. She was seated opposite him. Normally she dressed demurely, but tonight she seemed to have loosened the neck of her dress, and at the same time cinched in the waist more tightly. It showed off her figure and emphasised her breasts, in a way that had Susan pursing her lips in disapproval.

  ‘The last time I saw him I was ten years old.’

  ‘And now you are . . . twenty?’ Hugo guessed.

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘I would not have thought it. You are a fully formed woman.’

  Was it a gallant remark? At the head of the table, Gert’s face was tight with fury. Susan frowned; Marcus looked ready to spring out of his chair. Mary herself was less offended. She gave a smile, taking it as a compliment.

  Hugo ignored the discomfort around him.

  ‘Now you are grown-up, you must think what to do with your life.’

  ‘She stays here,’ said Gert.

  ‘That would be a waste. A woman of your beauty could go anywhere she chooses. There would be no palace in Europe that would be closed to you. Kings and dukes would vie for your hand. I am certain if you asked, the gallant Captain Talbot would be willing to give you passage on his ship, at least as far as Cape Town. What do you say, Talbot?’

  Before Talbot could reply, Gert pushed back his chair and stood. He had been drinking more than usual that night, and it made him unsteady.

  ‘My daughter is going nowhere!’ he shouted. ‘Either hold your tongue or get out of my house.’

  Hugo didn’t move. ‘I was merely paying a compliment to your daughter. I am afraid in Calcutta I am quite starved of the company of accomplished young women.’

  Gert stared at him. Hugo held his gaze, unyielding. Talbot fiddled with his napkin, while Mary looked bewildered between the men.

  ‘Sit down,’ George told Gert. ‘You are making a damn fool of yourself.’

  *

  Paul endured the meal in complete misery. Not understanding what was said, he had to watch the way Hugo stared at Mary, and the way she seemed to delight in his frank attentions. The sight of her in her low-cut dress – a way she had never showed herself before – drove Paul mad with thwarted longing. He mashed his food between his teeth and nursed the injustice. Hugo was rich and important. No doubt he came from a fine family. He could speak to Mary in her own language and make her laugh. Why would she not prefer Hugo to Paul – a penniless castaway, a man who did not even have his own tongue.

  Paul thought how he must appear through Mary’s eyes. A loathsome cripple, a gibbering pauper. He burned with shame for his disfigurement. For the first time, he wished Sana had left him to die in Gondar. Even being torn apart by the hyenas would have been a better fate than suffering a life without love or dignity.

  In his misery, he paid little attention to the conversation. If he had, he might have noticed how often in the stream of unfamiliar words the name ‘Courtney’ was mentioned. He might have been struck how similar it was to the name he had assumed in the French army – ‘Courtenay’; he might have thought back to the battered edition of Moll Flanders he had found inscribed with his mother’s maiden name, Constance Courtney. He might have begun to ponder how common that surname really was.

  Sana heard the name, but it meant nothing to her. She was watching Paul. After their time together, she could read his thoughts in every twitch of his face. She could see how he was suffering, now that the bitch with the golden hair had found someone she liked better. At last Paul could see what Sana had known all along: that this girl was vain and inconstant.

  It was good that the ship would take them away. She would have Paul to herself again.

  She reached out and squeezed his hand under the table. He looked at her in surprise. She smiled, to remind him he was not alone, and he returned it with a look that spoke of the pain in his soul.

  *

  The dinner ended early: no one wanted to linger over their food. Talbot and Hugo returned to the ship. Gert and George summoned the farm manager, a Nguni tribesman named Jama whose grandfather, Inkunzi, had come with the Courtneys when they first settled at Fort Auspice. Inkunzi had been the chief herdsman for a mighty queen whom the Courtneys had defeated in battle. As the queen’s wealth was in cattle, and as the Nguni loved their cattle as tenderly as their own children, it had been a position of great honour and power. His family had been managing the Courtney family lands ever since.

  ‘Lock the gates tonight,’ said Gert, ‘and summon our workers to the fort.’

  Jama frowned. ‘Do you expect trouble?’

  ‘Isala ’kutshelwa sabona ngomopo,’ said George, using Jama’s own language. A man who does not listen for danger will find out his mistake when the blood flows. ‘Those men who came for dinner were our guests, but I do not trust them.’

  Jama nodded. The Courtneys had not survived so long at Nativity Bay without a healthy dose of caution. He sent runners to fetch the strongest of their workers from their kraals and unlocked the armoury to break out the stands of muskets that the Courtneys kept ready.

  ‘We will keep watch all the night,’ Jama promised. ‘If even an ant stirs, we will see it coming.’

  From the bedroom window, Paul watched the men take up their positions on the walls of the fort. Again, his mind went back to Gondar, to Yostos’s warriors seizing the gatehouse as soon as the king was dead.

  Did I bring this here? It was a paradise before I came. Now there are guns, and war is on men’s lips.

  He went to bed, but could not sleep. Knowing this was his last night at Fort Auspice drove him to despair. When he thought of how Mary had flirted with Hugo at dinner, he beat the pillow with rage. But the thought of being parted from her was even worse.

  Sana couldn’t sleep either. She rolled out of her bed and climbed into Paul’s, as she had done so many times. When she was smaller, she could almost curl into the curve of his back. Now she had grown so much she stretched the full length of him, cupping herself into the undulations of his body.

  She had been given an old nightdress of Mary’s, but she wasn’t wearing it that night. Paul could feel her naked skin warm against his own. Her breasts pressed against his back, while her pubic hair grazed against his buttocks. She threw her arm over him, so that her hand rested on his stomach.

  He felt himself begin to harden. It horrified him: in their years together he had come to think of Sana like a daughter. He tried to concentrate on other things, to control himself, but the more he tried, the more he could feel himself swelling up. He told himself she was a child; she did not know what she was doing.

  But it was not a child’s body pressing against him any more.

  ‘Are you sad?’ she whispered.

  He nodded.

  She kissed him on the nape of his neck.

  ‘It will be good to be gone from this place. We will be alone together again.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  The hand on his belly moved slightly lower. She kissed him again, this time on his shoulder blade. Paul knew she was only trying to comfort him. She could not realise the effect she was having.

  Sana tugged on his shoulder, rolling Paul towards her. In the narrow bed, her face was inches from his. The moonlight shone on her dark skin, on her bright eyes and her glistening lips. There was an expression on her face, fierce and vulnerable, that was entirely new to Paul.

  She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.

  Paul responded automatically. His body convulsed; his mouth opened. Sana took it as encouragement. She pressed herself against him, writhing like an eel. She was awkward and inexperienced, but fired with determination. Her teeth knocked his as she forced her tongue between his lips; their noses jostled clumsily.

  The soft skin of her breasts rubbed against his chest. Her hand reached down and took his penis, pushing it against her pubis.

  Paul pulled back. Sana clung on tighter. Her mouth was so tightly locked on his, her teeth caught his lip and made it bleed when he finally got free. He stared at her, both of them wild-eyed and panting hard.

  What are you doing?

  ‘I wanted to make you feel better.’

  She reached for his cock again, teasing it up. He snatched her hand away, shaking his head. Sana’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘I thought you loved me.’

  I do love you. But . . . He made the gesture he had made once before to Ilya – two fingers rubbing together side by side. You are my friend.

  Tears glistened in her eyes. He had never seen her cry before.

  ‘I saved your life.’

  The confusion on his face spoke more clearly than any words.

  What does that have to do with it?

  ‘I love you.’

  Then, horrified by what she had said, she sprang off him and ran out of the door.

  Paul did not try to follow her. He lay on his bed, dazed. For so long, he had seen Sana as she had been that day he rescued her from the necropolis: a scrawny child in need of protection. Without him noticing, she had grown into a young woman, full of a young woman’s needs and desires.

  His body seethed with frustration, which only deepened his guilt. What sort of a man was he, to respond to her that way? His mind rebelled. But at the same time, he could not forget the tears in her eyes. He had done that to her, and he hated himself for it.

  He was still lying there, knotted in misery and self-loathing, when a soft knock came at the door. He made no sound; he was not sure he could face Sana again yet.

  The door edged open, admitting a crack of lamplight.

  ‘Are you asleep?’

  It was Mary. Paul pulled the sheet over himself just as her head peered around the door.

  ‘I came to say goodbye.’

  He beckoned her in. She closed the door and set her lamp down on the dresser, filling the room with a warm glow that dispelled the steely moonlight. She sat on the bed beside him, her legs tucked up under her nightdress.

  ‘Where is Sana?’ she asked, noting the empty second bed.

  Paul pointed out of the window.

  ‘You look sad,’ she said. ‘Is it because you are going away?’

  Paul gazed at her, helpless. All his anger from dinner was forgotten now she was here. There was so much he wanted to tell her: how beautiful she looked; how much he would miss her. But language was a wall between them that neither could cross.

  The frustration showed on his face as anger. Mary drew away.

  ‘Perhaps I should not have come. I only wanted to say goodbye.’

  No.

  It emerged as a strangled grunt from his throat. Gesturing to her to wait, he wrapped the sheet around his waist and went to the bureau. He took up the sketchbook and pencil he had borrowed from her.

  She understood what he wanted. She settled back on the bed and held herself still. The lamplight softened the lines of her body and surrounded her with a radiant nimbus. Paul felt the same trance-like magic creeping over him that he had felt in the temple in Egypt. An invisible tendril seemed to stretch from his eye to the tip of the pencil, bypassing all thought and will. He forgot where he was, who he was – even that he was there. All that existed was Mary, taking shape in curves and shades on the paper.

  There was no clock in the room, so he didn’t know how long it took. At last he finished, trembling with the effort. He put her name and the date on the back.

  ‘Let me see,’ said Mary, holding out her hand.

  Shyly, he gave her the paper.

  ‘You have made me beautiful,’ she gasped. The delight on her face transcended words and sang in his heart. ‘Is that how you see me?’

  She looked up from the picture and her gaze met his. In that moment, the walls that had stood between them seemed to dissolve. Her face shone gold in the lamplight, open and willing. Her eyes said everything that needed to be said.

  Paul leaned in and kissed her. Tenderly, softly, full on the lips. She moved towards him, putting her arms around his shoulders and drawing him close.

  They parted for a moment to draw breath. Mary tugged the sheet away, exposing the full length of Paul’s body. She gazed at him wide-eyed, as if she had been admitted to a secret. She traced her fingers down his chest, over his hips and along the shaft of his erection.

  ‘You are beautiful,’ she told him. ‘Beautiful.’

  It was one of the few English words he knew, and he thrilled to the sound of it. In all his life, no one had ever said that before. Silently, he mouthed it back to her. He unlaced the bodice of her nightdress and tugged it off her shoulders, revealing her full breasts. He ran his hands over them, squeezing and cupping them in a way that made her groan with desire.

  She wriggled out of the nightdress and stretched out on the bed. They came together again, more urgently this time. Instinct took over. Sana’s attentions had primed Paul’s body; Mary was almost as eager as he was. She pulled him on top of her. For a moment they fumbled awkwardly as her unpractised hands tried to guide him to the right place.

  She cried out when he entered her. He paused, but at once she grabbed him and drew him in deeper, biting her lip against the pain. He felt her body resisting him, but she would not let him stop. Gradually, she opened to him. They relaxed into a rhythm, slow and tentative at first, but then faster, rising like a wave climbing to a peak. The rhythm rose. The wave climbed to unfathomable heights, curling over but still carried on by the irresistible force of its own power. At last it broke. Paul flooded into her, again and again and again. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her to him. Their bodies shuddered in unison, glistening with sweat, as the pleasure washed through them.

  ‘I have never done that before,’ Mary whispered in his ear. They lay tangled together on the damp sheets. ‘And now that I have, I never want to stop.’

  Paul stroked her hair. For maybe the first time in his life, he was perfectly happy.

  ‘Let us run away together,’ she said. ‘Somewhere my papa cannot disapprove or send you away. Somewhere we can be free, like my great-grandfather Jim did when he came here with Louisa.’

  Paul wished he understood what she was saying. He could see it was important – something she wanted him to know, rather than simply endearments. He smiled, shaking his head slightly to show incomprehension.

  Mary put her hand on his chest. She made a walking motion with her fingers, across his skin and then into the air, extending her arm towards the window until it was pointing at the night sky sparkling with stars.

  ‘Together,’ she said.

  Paul understood. He kissed her. He closed his eyes, savouring the sweetness of her lips, the brush of her tongue inside his mouth.

  But already his mind was starting to turn with practical details. They would need food, supplies, a gun for hunting and ammunition. Then there was the question of how they could get out of the fort, with Gert’s men standing guard on the walls. They could not have chosen a worse night.

  And at the back of his mind, always, the fear that he had misunderstood Mary; or that she would think better of running away from her family; or that some other stroke of fate would intervene to stop him.

  He opened his eyes.

  He had not heard the door, but now it stood ajar. Sana stood in the gap, almost invisible against the dark corridor behind. How long had she been there? What had she witnessed?

  Even if she had just arrived, she had seen enough: Paul and Mary, naked, locked in an embrace and smeared with each other’s fluids. Paul met her gaze, and what he saw would stay with him forever. Her face had twisted in a terrifying snarl, worse even than the hyenas in Gondar. Eyes flared, teeth bared, every muscle quivering with hatred. A guttural growl trembled in the back of her throat, sharpening to a hiss as it escaped her lips. She spat at him. Then she turned and fled.

  ‘What will she do?’ Mary cried. Her golden skin had gone grey with shock. She snatched up her nightdress and pulled it on. ‘Will she tell Papa?’

  Paul was already halfway into his trousers and shirt. Gert was a strict father, and George even more uncompromising. If they knew what Paul had done with Mary, they would thrash the hide off his back – or worse. Then there was Sana. She had had the look of a wild animal; there was no telling what she might do.

  Later, Paul might feel guilty that he had forgotten about her in his plan to run away with Mary. For now, all that mattered was speed and escape. He went with Mary quietly down the corridor to the pantry. They filled two sacks with provisions – flour, rice, salt beef and other food that would keep – and grabbed a jug of Gert’s cider. Every second was urgent, but when Mary caught his eye they started giggling like children. They both knew this was madness. What if they were discovered? If they were not discovered, how could they ever survive the African wilderness? But it was a wonderful kind of madness that they refused to let go. If they stopped to think, they would not dare to do it.

  For all his fears, Paul’s heart was filled with joy. Everything he had suffered in his life was worth it if it had led to this moment. At last he was in command of his own destiny, with this beautiful woman who – miraculously, inexplicably – loved him.

  ‘It would be better to take horses,’ Mary mused. ‘But I do not know how we can get them out of the gate with all Papa’s men guarding it.’

  Paul shrugged, not understanding. He was more concerned with finding a weapon. They would need it for hunting, and for defending themselves if necessary. Euphoria had not made him completely insensible. In the back of his mind, he knew Gert would not let his daughter run off unstopped. He would come after them to get her back.

  He mimed a shooting motion. Mary nodded.

  ‘All the muskets have been distributed to the men. It will have to be Papa’s hunting rifle.’

  The rifle was kept in a rack in the dining room. Paul and Mary went there quickly. The room was dark, and Mary had not brought the lamp. Paul felt around on the wall for the gun. His hands ran over the brackets that should have held it, but they were empty.

  ‘It is gone,’ said Mary.

  Only one man was allowed to carry that rifle. Gert guarded it jealously; Paul had seen Marcus get a clip around the ear even for touching it. But Gert was supposed to be in bed.