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the final, brutal fact that he had desperately refused to accept. Even in the privacy of his own mind, it was almost impossible to say the words to himself, but finally he did.
    He was impotent.
    As Ian's nails dug crescent-shaped grooves in his palms, he rolled the syllables around in his mind. Impotent. A eunuch. Half a man. Never again would he know the basic human satisfactions of passion and physical closeness, never would he have a wife or child.
    The knowledge seared like white-hot iron. There might be men of naturally monkish disposition who would scarcely notice the loss of their sexuality, but he was not one of them.
    Looking back, he knew exactly when the damage had been done; during the worst of the beatings administered by the prison guards, he had been kicked savagely, and repeatedly, in the genitals. After that day he had never felt desire again.
    At the time he had barely noticed, for hunger and despair had already extinguished passion. The question of whether he had been rendered a eunuch seemed academic, for women were no more than a distant memory and he had expected to die in Bokhara.
    But he had survived, and the question of his virility became relevant again. When freedom and decent food didn't restore him, he had refused to believe that he might have suffered permanent damage. Instead, he convinced himself that being reunited with his fiancee would make him whole. Georgina would arouse him, for her ripe curves had enticed him from the first time they met.
    When she had accepted his proposal, he had been impatient to teach her the pleasures of the flesh, for during their stolen moments of privacy she had proved to be an apt pupil. But because she was only nineteen, her parents had insisted on a long engagement. That was one reason he had been willing to go to Bokhara, for he had found it difficult to wait.
    Throughout the years in Central Asia, his fiancee had occupied his thoughts, even after desire was no more than a memory. She became a symbol of everything he had loved and lost.
    After his rescue, he had made his way back to Georgina in search of healing. Yet when he saw her, he felt not a single flicker of desire, even before he had discovered that she was married. Though she was as attractive as ever, sexually he might as well have been dead.
    For a desperate moment he considered visiting the beautiful Indian girl who had been his mistress until he had fallen in love with Georgina. Leela was no inhibited English maid but a skilled courtesan, and their relationship had been passionate and mutually satisfying. Yet when he thought of her now, his body did not respond in the slightest. Not a twitch, not a tremor, even when he recalled precisely what they had done together.
    He had a brief, horrifying vision of visiting Leela and failing utterly to perform. She was kind and would not laugh at what he had become; instead, she would pity him, which would be far worse.
    Nor would he deceive himself with the hope that he was suffering from a temporary condition that would eventually heal, for he had had enough of self-delusion. It had been over three months since his escape from prison. But though his overall physical condition was much better, there had been no change in his sexual nature, not the slightest hint of improvement. The time had come to accept that the worst had happened, and that a vital part of his life was gone forever.
    After working his way through to the final bleak conclusion, Ian released his breath in a ragged sigh. He had had quite enough merciless honesty for one night; what he craved now was cowardly surcease. He rolled to his feet, lifted the lamp, and returned to the darkened drawing room, where he found the brandy decanter in a cabinet. Recklessly he filled a glass almost to the brim and dropped into the nearest wicker armchair.
    He was taking a deep swallow when the door to David's bedroom opened and his brother wandered in, half-dressed and blinking sleepily. In the last three