12Mistral put her hands to her eyes. For a moment she thought she might faint, but with a sense of desperation she knew that, if she did, she would be lost forever. ‘Ten minutes,’ the Rajah had said, and already a minute of it must have gone.
She felt panic rising within her again. She wanted to scream, to beat with her fists on the door, yet common sense told her that it would do no good. She was conscious of a strange thudding sound and realised that it was her own heart beating as if it would burst from the fragile confines of her body.
She must do something and quickly. She thought of the windows and ran to the one nearest to her, pulling aside the heavily embroidered curtains. She opened the window and looked out and knew immediately why the Rajah had not feared she might escape tha
