Then, unexpectedly, Leon became aware of a subtle perfume on the warm, tropical air. It was light and fragrant, the same enchanted scent that had captivated him once before as he held in his hand the silken garment from the ruptured cabin trunk. Then he saw Graf Otto’s eyes flick to look over his shoulder. Leon turned his head to follow his gaze.
She was there. Ever since he had read Kermit’s letter he had anticipated this meeting, but was still unprepared for the moment. He felt a flutter in his chest, like the wings of a trapped bird trying to escape from the cage of his ribs. His breath came short.
Her loveliness surpassed Kermit’s meagre description a hundredfold. Kermit had been correct in one detail only: her eyes. They were an intense blue, a shade darker than violet and softer than dove grey, slanting up at the outer corners. They were wide-spaced and fringed with long, dense lashes that meshed when she closed them. Her forehead was broad and deep, and the line of her jaw finely sculpted. Her lips were full and parted slightly when she smiled to reveal a glint of small, very white teeth. Her hair was a lustrous sable. She wore it scraped back from her face but, beneath the brim of the fashionable little hat cocked at a jaunty angle over one eye, soft tendrils had escaped the retaining pins and curled out over her little pink ears. She was tall, almost reaching Leon’s shoulder, but her waist was tiny.
The puffed sleeves of her piped velvet jacket left her arms bare from the elbows. They were shapely and lightly muscled, the limbs of an equestrienne. Her hands were elegantly formed, her fingers long and tapered, the nails pearly; the hands of an artist. From under her long, full skirts peeped the pointed toes of a pair of snakeskin riding boots. He imagined that the feet within the expensive leather must be as shapely as the hands.
‘Eva, may I present to you Herr Courtney? He is the hunter who is to take care of us during our little African adventure. Herr Courtney, may I present Fräulein von Wellberg,’ Otto said.
‘Enchanted, Fräulein,’ Leon responded. She smiled and proffered her right hand, palm down. When he took it he found it was warm and firm. He bowed and lifted it until her fingers were an inch from his lips, then released it and stepped back a pace. She held his eyes for only a moment longer. Looking into their depths he saw that her regard was enigmatic and layered with innuendo. He had the sensation of gazing into a pool whose secret depths could never be fully fathomed.
When she turned away to speak to Graf Otto, he felt a pang of some emotion totally alien to any he had ever experienced before. It was a strange mixture of elation and regret, of attainment and numbing bereavement. In a blink of time it seemed he had discovered something of infinite value that, in almost the same instant, had been snatched away. When Graf Otto placed one large freckled hand on Eva’s tiny waist and drew her closer to him, and she smiled up into his face, Leon hated him with a bitter relish that tasted like burned gunpowder in the back of his throat.
The transfer ashore was soon accomplished, for Graf Otto and his lovely consort had little luggage with them, fewer than a dozen large cabin trunks with some containers of Graf Otto’s rifles, shotguns and ammunition. Everything else had been sent out in the first shipment aboard the SS
Then he turned to Leon. ‘You may introduce your assistants,’ he said, and Leon called Hennie and Max forward. Graf Otto treated them in the same easy, condescending manner, and Leon watched them fall almost immediately under his spell. He had a way with men, but Leon knew that if anyone ever crossed or disappointed him he would turn on them vindictively and mercilessly
‘
