He surged forward. Pinning me to the wall like butterfly, he claimed my lips for one single, hard, ferocious kiss - and then pulled back.
‘Loving enough for you?’ he growled.
‘It’s a start.’ My voice sounded strange in my own ears - full of a thousand emotions I couldn’t comprehend, let alone name. Neither could he, to judge by the look in his eyes. For a moment, he just gazed at me, the silence between us stretching. Then, finally, he spoke.
‘We are going into very dangerous territory tonight. If anyone there finds out who I really am, it is doubtful we will come out alive. You will need to play your role to perfection. If you can’t,’ he told me, his voice sinking to a low and dangerous tone, ‘I will be forced to teach you a lesson. Do you understand?’
My heart jumped. A lesson?
No! I bloody well did not understand! What did he mean?
But, looking into his dark eyes, I was too afraid to ask. Slowly, I nodded my head.
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I mean yes, Di- Rick.’
He held my gaze for a few moments more - then nodded and let go. In a daze, I followed him outside to where the same coach in which we had travelled before was waiting for us. He held the door open for me.
‘Come on, darling,’ he hollered in a cheerful tone I would never have believed him capable of, for all the world to hear - and especially for any curious ears in the vicinity. ‘It will be fun. We haven’t seen anything of Alexandria yet except the hotel. And you wanted to go sightseeing, didn’t you?’
I looked around. Several members of the hotel staff stood around, watching. So I smiled at him, and shrugged. ‘I’d love to go! But I’m a bit tired. Don’t you think we had better wait until morning?’
‘No, darling, not at all.’ He met my eyes. ‘The city has a special atmosphere at night. We will enjoy ourselves immensely, trust me. There will be things to see we could never see in daylight, and maybe even more interesting things to hear.’
*~*~**~*~*
‘Well, I agree with you so far,’ I told Mr Ambrose, watching a half-naked woman contort her body into agonizing shapes. ‘I’m seeing things I’ve never seen in daylight. Only I’m not too sure whether I actually ever wanted to see something like that.’
‘Immaterial,’ Mr Ambrose told me, pulling me past the contortionist to the entrance of a house in front of which another woman with even less clothes on her body was performing a dance that let everything about her jiggle. ‘We are here for work, not for pleasure.’
My eyes swept over the parts of the woman that jiggled the most. The eyes of all the men in the vicinity seemed to see nothing else. Only Mr Ambrose’s eyes were fully focused on the street beyond.
‘Err… work, not pleasure? Are you sure we’re in the right part of the city for that, my dear?’
‘In this case, yes. Our work involves buying information. And in this part of the city you can buy anything.’
We passed another house from which hoots, whistles, and ecstatic moans were issuing in a cacophony.
I nodded, feeling a bit queasy. ‘Yes, I can see what you mean, dear. I really must congratulate you. You pick the most fantastic places for sightseeing.’
Not deigning to respond to this, Mr Ambrose tightened his hold on my arm and pulled me farther on. We had been walking for some time now, having been forced to leave the carriage behind over an hour ago, when the streets had gotten too narrow for it to pass. At first I had objected.
‘Won’t we be conspicuous?’ I had protested. ‘This isn’t the best part of town, to put it mildly. Wouldn’t a gentleman and a lady in a fine dress stick out like peacocks in a henhouse?’
In answer, Mr Ambrose had simply pointed out of the carriage window. Following his pointed finger, I saw a man in what looked suspiciously like a French admiral’s uniform staggering along the street, each arm thrown around the neck of a very pretty and very scantily dressed girl. Not far behind him came a party of three gentlemen and one lady, obviously all tight as owls.[17]
‘Rich people come here to waste their money,’ he told me, his tone indicating what he thought of people like that. ‘There are places like this in any big city in the world. We won’t even be noticed.’
And we were not. Apart from the fact that every five minutes somebody tried to sell us something, we were pretty much ignored. And when Mr Ambrose pulled me off the main street into a dark alley, even the hawkers disappeared. It became ever quieter the farther we ventured into the darkness. The figures that passed us now weren’t wearing admirals’ uniforms. Most of them kept their faces hidden.
Suddenly, I heard a noise behind us and swivelled my head around - nothing. The alley was just as dark as before. Shrugging, I let Mr Ambrose lead me further.
Tap… tap…
There it was again! Footsteps this time, definitely! Twisting out of Mr Ambrose’s grip, I whirled around just in time to see a dark shadow press itself against the wall, melting into the gloom.