Louisa was not sure what had awakened her. She lay looking at the ceiling in the darkness, feeling her heart thumping against her ribs. She held her breath. There was someone in her cabin. She could sense them standing near her.

      ‘Who’s there?’ Her voice was barely more than a whisper but it seemed to echo round the boat. ‘Who is it?’ Sitting up she reached with a shaking hand for her matches and lit her candle. The cabin was empty. Staring into the flickering shadows she held her breath again, listening. Her cabin door was shut. There was no sound from the sleeping boat. They had moored as night fell, against a shallow flight of marble steps, where palms and eucalyptus trees grew down to the edge of the river. Water lapped against the steps and in the distance, against the fading twilight she had seen the outline of a minaret.

      A sharp crack followed by a rattling sound made her catch her breath. The noise had come from the table in front of the window. It sounded as though something had fallen to the floor. She stared at the spot, straining her eyes in the candlelight then, knowing she would not rest until she had looked more closely, she reluctantly climbed out of bed. She stood for a moment in her long white nightgown, the candle in her hand, staring at the floor. One of her tubes of paint had fallen from the table. She picked it up and stared at it. The slight movement of the boat as it lay against its mooring must have dislodged it and allowed it to roll from the table. Her eyes strayed to Hassan’s scent bottle. She hadn’t seen him to speak to since he had given it to her that afternoon. While she dined with the Forresters he had been sitting on the foredeck with the reis, smoking a companionable hooker, both men deep in conversation.

      She had tucked the piece of paper with its Arabic warning into an envelope and slipped the envelope into the back of her diary. Joke or not, the message made her feel uncomfortable.

      The little bottle was standing on the table with her painting things. She frowned. She had surely tucked it into her dressing case? She remembered distinctly doing so before dinner. Perhaps Jane Treece had moved it when she tidied away Louisa’s muslin gown and, not recognising it, had assumed it was part of her painting equipment. She reached out to pick it up and at the last moment hesitated, almost afraid to touch it. What if it were true? Supposing it was three or four thousand years old? Supposing it had been the property of a temple priest in the days of one of the ancient pharaohs?

      Drawing in a quick deep breath she picked it up and taking it back to her bed she sat down. Leaning back against her pillows, the little bottle cradled between her palms, she lapsed into deep thought, her imagination taking her from the high priest who followed the scent bottle, to Hassan. Why should he have given her a present at all? She pictured his face, the strong bones, the large brown eyes, the evenly spaced white teeth and suddenly she found herself remembering the warm dry touch of his hand against hers as he passed her the flaring torch in the tomb in the valley. In spite of herself she shivered. What she had felt at that moment was something she had never thought to feel again, the intense pleasure she used to feel at the touch of her beloved George’s hand when he glanced at her and they exchanged secret smiles in unacknowledged recognition that later, when the children were asleep, they would keep an assignation in his room or hers. But to feel that with a comparative stranger, a man who was of a different race and one who was in her employ? She could feel herself blushing in the light of the candle. It was something too shocking, almost, to confide even to her diary.