The room lay silent about them, as though enfolded in their content. Only their hard breath remained.
"I never knew lovemaking could be so intense." He startled himself by his own admission.
"Because I loved you with more than just with my body." She smiled at him carefully and reached out to touch the marks on his chest. "But that was merely the first stage of kama. Are you ready now for the second?"
[ ]
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nadir Sharif studied the pigeon as it glided onto the red sandstone ledge and rustled its feathers in exhausted satisfaction. It cocked its white-spotted head for a moment as it examined the prime minister, then waddled contentedly toward the water cup waiting just inside the carved stone pigeon house.
He immediately recognized it as one of the birds he kept stationed in Gwalior, his last pigeon stage en route to Agra from the south. The cylinder bound to its leg, however, was not one of his own. Imprinted on its silver cap was the seal of the new Portuguese Viceroy of Goa, Miguel Vaijantes.
Nadir Sharif waited patiently for the pigeon to drink. He knew well the rewards of patience. He had waited patiently, studying the feringhi, for a full week. And he had learned almost all he needed to know.
The Englishman had been invited to durbar every day since his arrival. Arangbar was diverted by his stories and bemused by his rustic gifts. (The only gift that had not entertained Arangbar was the book of maps he had wheedled out of the Englishman, which upon inspection showed India as something far less than the greatest continent on the globe. But Arangbar found the map's rendering of India's coastline to be sufficiently naive to cast the accuracy of the entire book into question.) This was the first feringhi Arangbar had ever met who could speak Turkish and understand his native Turki, and the Moghul rejoiced in being able to snub the Jesuits and dispense with their services as translators.