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"Yes, I understand." She motioned for him to take the chair beside her. "I want to be gone, too," she said. She gave him a quick, soft kiss on the lips.

"Ah, do that again," he said. "That comforts me mightily!"

She kissed him twice, slipping her warm fingers around the back of his neck.

"We won't be in Cairo more than a few days, I promise."

"A few days! Can we not take a motor car and see these things, or better yet, simply take the train to the coast and be done with it!"

She looked down. She sighed. "Ramses," she said. "You have to forgive me. But Alex, he wants badly to see the opera in Cairo. And so does Elliott. I more or less promised we would...."

He groaned.

"And you see, I want to tell them farewell there. That I'm not going home to England. And ... well, I need the time." She studied his face. "Please?"

"Of course," he said. "This opera. This is a new thing? Something I should see, perhaps."

"Yes!" she said. "Well, it's an Egyptian story. But it was written by an Italian fifty years ago and especially for the British Opera House in Cairo. I think you'll like it."

"Many instruments."

"Yes." She laughed. "And many voices!"

"All right. I give in." He bent forward, kissing her cheek, and then her throat. "And then you are mine, my beauty--mine alone?"

"Yes, on my soul," she whispered.

That night when he declined to go ashore at Luxor again, the Earl asked him if his trip to Egypt had been a success, if he had found what he wanted.

"I think I did," he said, scarcely looking up from his book of maps and countries. "I think I found the future."

HIS HAD been a Mameluke house, a little palace of sorts, and Henry liked it well enough though he wasn't entirely sure what a Mameluke was except they had once been rulers of Egypt.

Well, they could have it, as far as he was concerned. But for the moment he was enjoying himself and had been for days, and in this little house crammed with Eastern exotica and big comfortable old pieces of Victorian furniture, he had just about everything he wanted.

Malenka kept him fed on delicious spiced dishes that for some reason he craved when he was sick from drink, and which enticed him even when he was very drunk and all other food tasted like gruel to him.

And she kept him in booze, taking his winnings into British Cairo and coming back with his favourite gin, Scotch, and brandy.

And his winnings had been good for a straight ten days, as he kept the card game going from noon until late into the evening. So easy to bluff these Americans who thought all British were sissies. The Frenchman he had to watch; that son of a bitch was mean. But he didn't cheat. And he paid his debts in full, though where such a disreputable man got the money Henry couldn't imagine.

At night, he and Malenka made love in the big Victorian bed, which she loved; she thought that was very high class, that bed, with its mahogany headboard and yards of mosquito netting. So let her have her little dreams. For the moment, he loved her. He didn't care if he never laid eyes on Daisy Banker again. In fact, he had more or less made up his mind that he wasn't going back to England.

As soon as Julie and her escorts arrived, he was heading on to America. It had even occurred to him that his father might go for that idea, might settle an income on him with the understanding that he stay over there, in New York, or even in California.

San Francisco, now that was a city that had an allure for him. They'd almost completely rebuilt it since the earthquake. And he had a feeling he might do well out there, away from all that he had come to loathe in England. If he could take Malenka with him, that wouldn't be half-bad either. And out there in California, who would give a damn that her skin was darker than his?

Her skin. He loved Malenka's skin. Smoky, hot Malenka. A few times he'd ventured out of this cluttered little house and gone to see her dance at the European club. He liked it. Who knows? Maybe she might be a celebrity in California, with him managing her, of course. That might bring in a little money, and what woman wouldn't want to leave this filthy hellhole of a city for America? She was already learning English from the gramophone, playing records she had bought in the British sector on her own.

It made him laugh to hear her repeating the inane phrases: "May I offer you some sugar? May I offer you some cream?" She spoke well enough as it was. And she was clever about money, that was obvious. Or she wouldn't have managed to keep this house, after her half-breed brother left it to her.

Trouble was his father had to be handled carefully. That was why he hadn't left Cairo already. Because his father had to believe he was still with Julie, and looking after her, and all that utter rot. He'd cabled his father for more money days ago, with some silly message that Julie was quite all right. But surely he did not have to follow her back to London. That was preposterous. He had to work something out.

Of course there was no rush to leave here, really. The game was going splendidly for the eleventh day.

And it had been some time since he'd set foot out of doors, except of course to take his breakfast in the courtyard. He liked the courtyard. He liked the world being completely shut out. He liked the little pond, and the tile, and even that screeching parrot of Malenka's, that African grey--the ugliest bird he'd ever seen--wasn't entirely uninteresting.

The whole place had a lush, overblown quality that appealed to him. Late at night he'd wake up dying of thirst, find his bottle and sit in the front room, amid all the tapestried pillows, listening to the gramophone play the records of Aida. He'd blur his eyes and all the colours around him would run together.