For a moment it was impossible to think. She could only feel the inexpressible rapture that had swept through her body when he held her captive.

She could not translate its meaning even to herself. She only knew that there was a throbbing within her breasts, her lips hurt from the violence with which he had kissed her, while at the same time they trembled with the wonder of it.

She turned to the porthole and laid her cheek against the coolness of the glass looking out onto the enchanted silver beauty of Monte Santo.

There was a sense of calm serenity in the landscape, but it did nothing to calm the tumult within Yamina.

Lord Castleford had awakened a rapture within her and now her body burned with a strange fire.

It was a fire that was part of the moonlight because it was the intensification of all beauty and yet it was far more vulnerable and infinitely more human.

Because she felt he might return and would be angry to see that she had not obeyed him, she pulled the curtain over the porthole and shut out the blinding beauty of the moon.

Then, moving across the cabin, she crept beneath the mosquito netting.

She slipped off the embroidered caftan, covered herself with the sheet and closed her eyes.

She knew it was impossible to sleep. She could feel herself thrilling from the top of her head to the soles of her feet with the fire that Lord Castleford had awakened in her.

She could not think of him coherently. He was no longer the man she had talked to at dinner or the man who had raged at her for involving him in her escape.

He was a God-like figure who had stepped into her life and made her a part of him.

This was what she had dreamt of, what she had longed for without realising it, what she had known was waiting somewhere for her in the world if only she could find it.

It was what she had never understood but which was written now in words of fire on her heart.

It was love!

*

It was dawn when Lord Castleford finally returned to the cabin.

He moved very softly and Yamina knew that he thought she would be asleep.

He threw himself down just as he was on his cushioned couch and after a long while she thought he slept, but she was not sure.

Thinking of him, still overwhelmed with the new emotions he had evoked, she fell asleep and when she awoke it was to hear him in the bathroom.

He was taking a bath and she realised that it was early in the morning and the ship was moving again.

He dressed himself without the help of his valet and a little while later came from the bathroom moving softly across the still darkened cabin to leave through the outer door.

Once again Yamina was alone.