We didn’t try the river trick again. Since it had not worked twice in a row now, it was clear that the Brazilians, imperialists and rebels both, had excellent trackers among them. Instead, we marched as hard and as fast as we could, and hoped that Mr Ambrose’s threats were enough to deter them. They certainly would have been if I’d been the one following.

Still…I did wonder why Mr Ambrose hadn’t employed a simpler method of preventing trouble. A method that, usually, he didn’t seem averse to using.

‘Why didn’t you do it?’ I demanded, once we were well out of hearing range of our enemies.

‘Do what, Mr Linton?’

‘Kill them, of course! You could have, after all, easily. They were bound and at your mercy, which we both know is not very considerable. So why did you spare them? You didn’t have any qualms about disposing of the pirates.’

‘I have business interests in Brazil. I didn’t think the Brazilian government would look kindly on my shooting one of its officers, even if that officer is a worthless, greedy worm.’

‘And the rebels? You could have shot the rebels.’

‘I could have.’ He gave me a look. The kind of look that Julius Caesar probably gave his slow-witted little centurions before he explained why he wanted to invade Gaul. ‘But if I leave them both alive, maybe we’ll be lucky and they’ll kill each other.’

I remembered the gleaming blade Mr Ambrose had left behind at our former campsite, and the greedy gazes of the tied-up soldiers. If they did indeed kill each other, it would have little or nothing to do with luck.

We continued through the jungle, keeping up not quite as gruelling a pace as before, but still, it was pure torture for my poor legs. For hours upon hours filled with ceaseless marching, I craved nothing so much as a soft bed to lie on, and three pounds of solid chocolate to forget my aches - at least at first. After a few days, very slowly, a change set in. My legs ached less and less. My behind, which had felt like the dead weight of a mammoth dragging behind me, somehow got…lighter. My steps grew steadier. Only my craving for solid chocolate stayed. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as another craving.

‘Come here!’

‘You are my subordinate, Mr Linton! You cannot give orders to- mmmmph!’

‘In case you hadn’t noticed before,’ I whispered against his smooth lips, ‘I like breaking rules.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘Oh yes, indeed, Sir! Now shut up and kiss me!’

We were camping next to a big tree that bore some kind of big, reddish fruit. It smelled invitingly tasty, but Karim had strongly advised against trying it. That wouldn’t have stopped me - I wasn’t big on following men’s advice - but I had my very own forbidden fruit lying right here on the ground beside me, and it was a lot tastier.

‘Mr Ambrose, Sir?’ Running my nose along the line of his jaw, I breathed in his scent of man, money and power, and felt his hard body quiver beneath me.

‘Yes, Mr Linton?’

‘Why don’t you relax a bit? It’s hot here in the jungle. Why don’t you take off a few of those stuffy clothes?’

He met my gaze with a cool one of his own. ‘Because I’m English.’

‘I’m English, too,’ I pointed out.

Slowly and lingeringly, Mr Ambrose let his gaze rake over me, from my messy hair down over my torn, threadbare chemise and bare legs to my feet, encased in massive boots. ‘Yes, and I’m sure that Nelson and Wellington are turning over in their graves at the fact.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

Grabbing my face with masterful hands, Mr Ambrose pulled me towards him and claimed my mouth with his.

‘Try to guess, you wicked little wench!’

I captured his lower lip between my teeth and bit, gently. ‘So, I’m your wicked little wench now?’

‘You are my little Ifrit!’

Warmth flooded my chest, stoking a fire in my heart. Blimey! This seemed to happen more and more often lately. How was it possible that no matter how coldly that man stared at me, it made me heat up inside like a bloody furnace? And every time he used that word, that damn word starting with ‘I’ that should have been an insult, I felt as if I could fly on fiery wings!

‘So?’ I whispered, teasing the corner of his mouth with little kisses. ‘Are you going to take off that tailcoat, or will I have to burn through it with my fire?’

He groaned beneath me. ‘Damn you! A part of me actually believes you could!’

‘Out of that tailcoat, Mr Ambrose, Sir! Now!’

‘No.’

Growling with frustration, I reared up above him. ‘What the hell is the matter? Why won’t you…’

My voice trailed off. It wasn’t very easy to see anything in the deep shadows of the trees, and it was a task for a clairvoyant with a bloody great telescope to find any expression on the face of Mr Rikkard Ambrose at the best of times, but…

I narrowed my eyes as I knelt there, staring down at him. Then, slowly, very slowly, a smile spread across my face.

‘Do you want to know what I think?’

‘No. Definitely not.’

‘Well, I’m going to tell you anyway.’ My smile widened. ‘I think you’re shy.’

The look he sent back up at me could have introduced a new ice age.

‘Shy?’

The word was a whisper as sweet as snake’s venom.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ I hurriedly assured him, patting his cheek. ‘I think it’s very sweet, in a way. I mean, you told me I am your first. But I guess I didn’t realize what that meant before. It mustn’t be easy for a young, innocent virgin like yourself to trust yourself so completely to someone else for the first time, to put aside all the secret fears about your inadequacies that you’ve harboured for years and to-’

I didn’t get any further than that because I was tossed through the air, rolled around like a rollicking roulade and suddenly found myself pressed against the forest floor with one hundred and seventy pounds of man-muscle pressing into me.

‘Shy?’ an arctic voice hissed at my ear. ‘How shy is this?’

His hands found their way into my chemise.

‘I…oh…I…’

‘Tell me,’ he rasped, his hands playing me like a fiery instrument, ‘what inadequacies of mine were you speaking of exactly?’

‘Um…well…I…’

I was sure there were at least three dozen, but right now I couldn’t seem to remember. The fireworks going off in my head were too distracting.

‘Am I too rich for you? Too powerful? Too strong?’

‘N-no…I…’

Underneath the chemise, his fingers found their way to my back, stroking down my spine from the top to the literal bottom. I almost bit my tongue off trying not to moan.

‘Am I too beautiful? Too hard? Too perfect?’

With all my might, I tried to gather my scattered wits.

‘You’re a ch-chauvi…’ I muttered, ‘chauvinist…’

He just laughed a deep, masculine arrogant laugh that only made me crave him more. Damn him!

‘True,’ his lips whispered against my skin. ‘I do believe that men are stronger than women.’ In a lightning-fast move, his hands shot out, capturing my arms at either side of me by the wrists. In just an instant he had them pinned to the ground so I was spread out underneath him, helpless and trembling with need. ‘Can you honestly disagree?’

Oh yes, I could! Of course I could! And I would, as soon as I could remember the appropriate arguments and convince my tongue to speak. At the moment, the stubborn thing seemed to be interested in doing one thing, and one thing only.

*~*~**~*~*

It took me till next morning to remember my feminist principles. But when I saw Mr Ambrose checking and cleaning his gun, a familiar spark of rebellion lit up inside me.

‘Why don’t I have one of those?’ I demanded.

He looked up, his hands freezing.

‘Because you are a girl, Mr Linton,’ he said and continued with his inspection.

‘You know, for saying a sentence like that you should really have your head examined!’

‘Indeed?’

‘Oh yes, indeed! And not just because you used the words “girl” and “mister” to refer to the same person. We are only three out here in the jungle, and the rebels and imperials might very well still be on our trail! Don’t you think it might be better if we had three people with guns instead of just two?’

This time he didn’t even bother to look up. ‘No. Not if the third doesn’t know how to shoot.’

‘Then teach me how to shoot!’

The sentence hung in the air, heavy with promise.

Teach me how to shoot.

Guns equalled power. A man’s power. Men could carry guns with them wherever they pleased, could demand satisfaction from anybody and shoot them down in a duel. A lady would fall into disgrace if she even so much as held a pistol. Images I had often dreamt of, but never really dared hope for, suddenly flared in front of my inner eye: me, riding on horseback in a hunting party, a rifle slung across my shoulder. Me, standing across from a man who had dared to threaten my family, raising my pistol. Me, in glorious triumph, standing over-

‘No.’

That one word cruelly shattered my nicely bloody dreams. I glared at the stone statue still checking his gun with precision.

‘Why not?’ I demanded - although I knew the answer before the question was out of my mouth.

‘Because you are a girl.’

‘And you are a stubborn, chauvinistic son of a bachelor!’

‘Thank you for the compliment, Mr Linton.’

He snapped the gun shut with a sharp click and put it away.

‘Come on!’ I pleaded, knowing that I sounded like I was whining, and not caring. ‘It’s not as if we’re hard pressed for ammunition, is it? We took the Brazilians’ weapons, packhorses and bullets. We could shoot down every monkey in this jungle and still have enough bullets left to stage a coup in Rio de Janeiro!’

‘Which we are not going to do, Mr Linton.’

Placing one hand over my heart, I raised the other in the air. ‘If you teach me to shoot, I swear I will abandon all revolutionary ambitions. I’ll also promise to never use my newly acquired skills to try and shoot you.’

He cocked his head, giving me a long, long look. ‘The fact that you would have to promise that does not exactly raise my confidence in you, Mr Linton.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘No. It’s a no.’

‘But-’

He raised a warning finger, cutting me off in mid-protest. ‘No argument, Mr Linton!’

And I didn’t argue.

Instead, I practised patience until we camped that night and the sun had set, snuck up to the packhorses and pinched a gun. It was a bloody big thing, and heavy. It didn’t have that nice revolving cylinder with the seven bullets that was the prime feature of Mr Ambrose’s guns. But it was a gun. I took it off into the jungle until I found a nasty-looking yellow-orange plant that seemed shootworthy and took aim.

Now…breathe deeply. Raise your arm and keep it steady. You’ve seen men do this, right? So it can’t be that difficult.

My eyes zeroed in over the barrel on a poisonous-looking bloom. Holding my breath, I took aim, crooked my finger around the trigger and…

Click.

Hey…Wait just a moment! Click? That wasn’t right! It was supposed to go kaboom!

I shook the gun. Maybe it was a bit stubborn? Well, there was nothing for it but trying again.

Click. Click. Cli-

‘I took out the bullets, Mr Linton.’

The voice from behind me came so suddenly, I whirled around instinctively, raised the gun, and-

Click!

‘And well I did,’ Mr Ambrose said with dangerous calm, ‘or my head would be a collection of bloody splatters on the tree behind me right now.’

‘Oh. Um…oops. Sorry about that.’ My ears started to burn. But then his first words registered. ‘Wait a minute - you did what?’

‘I took the bullets out of all the guns we acquired. Or, to be more precise, I had Karim do it. I knew that sooner or later you would try to sneak off to blow up some innocent tree. I know you.’

‘If you know me,’ I said sweetly, stepping towards him, clutching the gun like a cudgel, ‘do you know what I would like to do to you right now?’

‘If I would hazard a guess, I would say it involves inappropriate violence.’

‘Violence? Oh yes, it does! But inappropriate? I beg to differ!’

My fist lunged forward, still clutching the gun. Before it even got near that too-damn-perfect face of his and had a chance of leaving a nice scar, his hand shot up and closed around my wrist. I might as well have been clapped in irons.

‘Why do you insist on this?’ His voice was fierce, his eyes glinting in the dark. ‘Don’t you think I’ll keep you safe?’

‘That’s not the point!’ I growled, punching his chest with my free hand. It was like punching a rock. He didn’t even flinch. ‘I have to be able to defend myself!’

‘Why?’

‘Why? What sort of question is that?’

‘The kind I would appreciate an answer to.’

‘Because…because I want to be independent! I have to be able to stand on my own two feet!’

‘And what,’ he growled, leaning down towards me, his hard chest pressing deliciously into me, ‘if I don’t want you to stand on your feet?’ His foot shot forward, and in one swift move he had tugged my legs out from under me. I fell back with a yelp and landed in his arms. They held me. Hard. Hot. Close. ‘What if I want you like this?’

‘Too bad! Then you’re out of luck, Sir!’

‘Really?’ He lowered his face until I could feel his breath on my face, caressing my skin. And my heart, the traitorous bloody organ, nearly jumped out of my chest with joy at the proximity! ‘I’m feeling lucky tonight.’

And his lips came crashing down on mine.

I didn’t think about guns again that night - but there definitely were a lot of explosions going off, trust me.