Her eyes, he noticed, were serious and level, sage green in colour, but shot with speckles of tawny gold.
Jake's match burned his fingers and he swore. She turned to him and he stood up quickly.
"I didn't expect a woman."
"You don't like women?" Her voice was pitched low and had a husky tone that raised goose bumps on Jake's forearms.
"Some of my favourite people are women." He saw that she was tall, reaching almost to his shoulder, and that her body had a poised athletic carriage. She held her head at a haughty angle which emphasized the strong independent line of mouth and jaw.
"In fact, I can't think of anyone I like more." And she smiled for the first time. It had surprising warmth, and Jake saw that her front teeth were slightly uneven one pushed out of line with the other. He stared at it fascinated for a moment, then he looked up into the appraising green eyes.
"Do you drive a car?" he asked seriously, and her smile turned to surprised laughter.
"I do." said Vicky, laughing. "I also ride a horse and a bicycle, I can ski, pilot an aeroplane, play snooker and bridge, sing, dance and play the piano."
"That will do," Jake laughed with her. "That will do just fine." Vicky turned back to the Prince. "What is all this about, Lij Mikhael?" she asked. "Just what do these two gentlemen have to do with our plans?" The towering purple hull of the Dunnottar Castle swung slowly across the back-drop of palm trees and the high sun-gilded ranges of cumulus cloud, as she pulled her anchors and came around for the harbour entrance.
At the rail of the upper deck, the tall figure of the Prince was flanked by the white-robed figures of his staff, and as the ship increased speed and kicked up a white sparkling bow wave, he lifted an arm in a gesture of farewell.
Swiftly, the shape of the liner dwindled away into the limitless eastern ocean as she made her offing before turning northwards once more.
The four figures on the wharf lingered after it had disappeared, staring out at the horizon whose long sweep was uninterrupted except by the tiny white triangular sails of the fishing fleet coming in off the banks.
Jake spoke first. "We'll have to find digs for Miss Camberwell. And at the thought, both he and Gareth made a grab for her single battered portmanteau and the typewriter in its leather case.
"Spin you for it," suggested Gareth, and an East African shilling appeared in his hand.
"Tails,"decided Jake.
"Rough luck, old son," Gareth commiserated, and returned the coin to his pocket. "I'll take care of Miss Camberwell-" he went on, " then I'll start looking for a ship to take us up coast. In the meantime, I suggest you have another look at those cars." As he spoke, he hailed a ricksha from the row which waited at the head of the wharf.
"Remember, Jake, it was one thing driving them down to the harbour but an altogether different matter driving them through two hundred miles of desert. You'd best make sure we don't have to walk home, he advised, and handed Vicky Camberwell into the ricksha. "Driver, advance!" he called, and with a cheery wave they jogged away up town.
"It looks as though we are on our own, sir," said Gregorius, and Jake grunted, still staring after the departing ricksha. "I think I should also find accommodation," and Jake roused himself.
"Come along, lad. You can doss down in my tent for the few days before we leave." And then he grinned. "I hope you won't be offended if I wish it was Miss Camberwell rather than you, Greg." The boy laughed delightedly. "I understand your feelings but perhaps she snores, sir."
"No girl who looks like that could possibly snore," Jake told him. "And another thing don't call me "sir", it makes me nervous. My name's Jake." He picked up one of Greg's bags. "We'll walk," he said. "I have a horrible hollow feeling that it's going to be a long weary wait until next the eagle screams." They set off along the dusty unpaved verge of the road.
"You said you own a Morgan? "Jake asked.
"That's right, Jake." you know what makes it move?"
"The internal combustion engine."
"Oh brother," applauded Jake. "That is a flying start. You have just been appointed second engineer get your sleeves rolled up." Gareth Swales had a theory about seduction which in twenty years he had never had reason to revise. ladies liked the company of aristocrats, they were all of them basically snobs and a coat of arms usually made the coldest of them swoon. No sooner had they settled into the padded seats of the ricksha, than he turned upon Vicky Camberwell the full dazzling beam of his wit and charm.
No one who had built up an international reputation in the hard field of journalism by the age of twenty-nine could be expected to lack perception, or be naive in the wicked ways of the world. Vicky Camberwell had made a preliminary judgement of Gareth within minutes of meeting him.
She had known others with the same urbane good looks and meticulous grooming, the light bantering tone and the steely glint in the eye.
Rogue, she had decided and every second in his company confirmed the initial judgement but damned good-looking rogue, and very funny rogue with the exaggerated accent and turn of speech which she had recognized immediately as a huge put-on. She listened with amusement as he set out to impress with his lineage.
"As the colonel used to say we always referred to my old man as the colonel." Gareth's father had indeed died a colonel, but not in an illustrious regiment, as the rank suggested. He had worked his way up from the lowly rank of constable in the Indian police.
"Of course, the family estates were from my mother's side-" His mother. had been the only daughter of an unsuccessful baker, and the family estate had comprised the mortgaged premises in Swansea.
"The colonel was always a bit of a rogue, and moved with a wild crowd, you know. Fast ladies and slow horses. The estates went to the block, I'm afraid." Victims themselves of the grinding injustices of the British class system, mother and father had devoted themselves to lifting their only son beyond that invisible barrier that divides the middle from the upper classes.
"Of course, I was at Eton and he was mostly on foreign service.
Wish I'd got to know the old devil better. He must have been a wonderful character-" Entrance to the school had been assisted by the Commissioner of Police, himself an old Etonian. The mother's small inheritance and the greater part of the father's salary went into the costly business of turning the son into a gentleman.
"Killed in a duel, would you believe it. Pistols at dawn.
He was a romantic, too much fire in his veins." When the cholera took the mother, the father's salary was insufficient to meet the bills that a young man casually ran up when he mixed sociably with the sons of dukes. In India, bribery was a convention, a way of living but the colonel was found out. It was indeed pistols at dawn. The colonel rode out into the dark Indian forest with his Webley service pistol, and his bay mare trotted back to the stables an hour later with an empty saddle and the reins trailing.
"Had to leave Eton, naturally." Under considerable duress.
It was coincidence that Gareth's friendship with the house master's daughter took place at the same time as the colonel's last ride, but at least it allowed Gareth to leave in a blaze of glory, as Lij Mikhael remarked, rather than as a nobody whose fees had not been met.
He went out into the world with the speech, the manners and the tastes of a gentleman but without the means to support them.
"Luckily they were having this war at the time " and even a regiment like the Duke's were not enquiring too deeply into the private means of their new officers. Eton was sufficient recommendation, and, with the help of the German machine guns, promotion was swift.