Mr. Impossible by Loretta Chase (18)

Chapter 18

RUPERT SAW HIS FIRST CROCODILES ABOVE Girga, half a dozen of them basking on a sandbank.

The river had grown shallow, and sandbanks formed a maze of obstructions through which the Isis must pass. Previously he’d gazed at flocks of pelicans and wild ducks gathered upon them. That was to say, his eyes had been turned in that direction. His mind had been elsewhere.

On her.

On getting off the boat and finding someplace private. They were drawing closer to Thebes by the hour. Time was running out. Once they found her brother, nothing could be as it was.

Rupert told himself he ought to be planning how to get her brother out of the villains’ clutches. He ought to be planning how to protect the women and children.

Instead, his mind was busily devising and discarding schemes for slaking his lust on Daphne Pembroke’s magnificent body.

Even now, gazing at the crocodiles, he was wondering how they might help him get her naked.

All his brain produced was an excuse to see her. He left the deck and went inside, where she’d lately been spending the hottest part of the day. He found her not in the front cabin but in her own. The door stood open for ventilation.

Spread out upon the divan was a familiar document bearing three kinds of writing. It was a copy of the Rosetta Stone. Her lap held a notebook.

He tapped on the open door. She looked up. A flush overspread her creamy countenance.

He wanted to kiss all that rosy skin. And all the paler parts. Then work his way down.

“Crocodiles,” he said.

“Really?” She set the notebook aside. “Where?”

He found an umbrella and led her out to the deck. He held it over her while she gazed raptly at the strange creatures. It was a long time before she spoke.

He didn’t need to say anything. It was enough to be near her, to watch her surprise and pleasure transform everything he looked upon. The crocodiles somehow became more exotic and miraculous. With her, one always felt as though one gazed upon marvels.

“I can scarcely believe they’re real,” she said at last. “Look, one slithers into the water. It is like a dream.”

Rupert became aware of two boyish voices nearby, quarreling, by the sounds of it. He sent a quelling look in their direction.

Tom hurried to him. “Please, sir, I must speak to you.”

But he could not speak in front of the lady, the boy said. This was talk for men. With a shrug and a smile, Daphne went back inside, out of the baking sun.

“This had better be important,” Rupert told the boy.

“Oh, yes, sir. Yusef is very sick.”

Rupert studied the other lad, who hung back, looking abashed. His turban was all askew and his clothes hung crooked.

“Illness is the lady’s department,” Rupert said. “I’m not the doctor here.”

“He is sick with love, sir,” Tom said. “This is why he has no care for his clothes.”

“Love?”

“Yes, sir. For Nafisah. His suffering is very great. I told him that you are our father now, and you will arrange for his happiness, but he does not believe me.”

Rupert looked again at Yusef, whose expression had become pathetically hopeful.

Rupert reverted to Tom. “Since when am I your father?”

Tom explained. The plague had taken most of his family. His uncle Akmed had disappeared. Yusef had no family, either. Muhammad Ali’s soldiers had burnt his village to the ground two years ago and killed everybody.

“Now we belong to you,” the boy concluded. “You are our master and our father.”

At that moment, the baby began to cry.

Rupert looked about him. A baby. Women. A pair of adolescent boys.

He was the father.

DAPHNE STARED DOGGEDLY at the cartouches, but it was no use. She couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t remember what she’d been thinking before she heard the tap and saw Mr. Carsington in the doorway.

She remembered the way he’d trapped her against that door on the evening after their visit to Memphis.

The kiss, the magical kiss. The tenderness and playfulness of it and the strange discovery it was, as though no one had ever kissed before in all the world.

Then all the memories she’d tried to shut away came flooding back and left her sick with longing.

She could have borne the ache more easily if he’d been the lout he’d pretended to be. But no lout could have restored her confidence as he had done, and made her feel fully normal—even likable—for the first time since her girlhood. A lout would not stand beside her holding an umbrella to shield her from the sun. A lout would not play with the baby, or sit up late at night telling the boys stories, or let a mongoose use him for a playground. A lout would not be able to make everyone about him love him.

Including me, she thought. Including stupid me.

“Daphne.”

She looked up, expecting to see nothing, because she was only wishing, and the deep voice she heard came from her imagination.

But no, he stood in the doorway again, head tipped to one side, because the space was a few inches too short for him. The north wind had made a tangle of his thick, dark hair. His eyes glinted with humor. She remembered how he’d whistled in the darkness of the dungeon, laughing at danger, as though it had been made purposely to amuse him.

Now she saw that he’d been driving away her own darkness, day by day. And day by day, she’d changed. Because of him, she’d become more than she’d been—or perhaps more truly herself. Because of him, she’d learnt to like and trust herself again. Because of him, desire had become a pleasure, not a shame.

I love you, she thought.

He gazed at her for a long moment. Then his mouth curved lazily upward. “Ah,” he said. “That’s better.”

“What’s better?”

He came inside the cabin. He closed the door.

“You know,” he said.

“You should not close the door,” she said, while her heart thrummed, wicked thing, in anticipation.

“You look at me in that t’ala heneh way,” he said.

“I do not,” she lied. The need beat in her heart and hummed in her veins: T’ala heneh. Come here.

“Then why do I forget why I came?” he said. He sank onto the divan beside her. “It was vastly important. But the expression on your face made me forget everything.” He took up the notebook that had slid from her hand when she saw him. “Perhaps it will come to me by and by. What occupies you today? Or should I say whom? For here is a pair of those pesky cartouches.”

“Not a pair,” she said tautly. The space was too small. They were too isolated. Outside the crew launched into a love song. “They come from separate places.”

As she and he did, she reminded herself. Separate worlds. She needed to stay in hers, to keep her distance. She knew this.

Yet she drew closer and pointed at the page while she spoke, though it was unnecessary. He could see well enough. The matter wasn’t complicated. “The one on top is Ptolemy’s, from the Rosetta Stone. The one below is Cleopatra’s, from Mr. Bankes’s obelisk.” She was too close. His scent was in her nostrils and seeping into her brain and making a haze there.

His gaze lifted from the notebook to her face. She should look away, focus her mind, or else he’d read in her countenance what she wanted, every reckless thought, every mad feeling. She couldn’t look away. She wanted to trace the angle of his jaw with her fingertips. She wanted to lay her cheek against his.

“You’ve written letters over the signs,” he said.

“Guessing games,” she said. “Count the letters. Compare the letters. To keep my mind occupied.”

“Is it working?” he said.

Think of Miles, she told herself. Think of all he’s done for you. Will you make him pay for your weakness and folly? Say, “Yes, it’s working.”

“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”

“Nothing works for me,” he said. “It was stupid to come in here and close the door. Everything in here is yours. The goddess scent of incense. The scent of your skin. The smell of books and parchment and ink.” He stroked his hand over the few inches of divan between them. “This is where you sleep. I sleep all the world away. That’s how it feels. I miss you.”

She came up onto her knees and laid her fingers over his lips. She mustn’t let him say another sweet word. She would start believing things that couldn’t be true. Then, afterward, it would hurt even more. Men would say anything, do anything. Even Virgil had changed his tune with her when he felt amorous.

Outside, the sailors sang of love. One voice rose above the others in a wail of longing.

He brought his hand up and stroked down over the fingers covering his lips, down over the back of her hand. He clasped her wrist. She let her hand slide down and curl into his. Their fingers twined. He brought their joined hands to his chest and pressed them over his heart.

“Miss you,” he said. It was the barest murmur, scarcely a sound.

She missed him, too, missed the freedom they’d had in their tomb in Asyut: to touch, to kiss, to give and take pleasure, to hold each other. To be whatever it was they were when they were in each other’s arms.

She bent toward him and touched her lips to his. He answered with a gentleness that made her ache. She slid her hand from his clasp so that she could hold him with both hands, cupping his beautiful face and looking into those eyes, those dark, laughing eyes.

Even now the wicked spirit lurked there, a glint of mischief in the darkness of heat and desire. It made her smile, and she brought her smile to his mouth and gave it to him. “Miss you,” she whispered. “So much.”

She should move away, but it was too late. She’d breathed the scent of his skin, and got the taste of him on her lips, and felt the warmth and strength of his hands. She pressed her mouth to his once more, and all the longing she’d tried to stifle spilled from her in the kiss she ought to have held back. Her hands slid to his shoulders, and she clung when she knew she ought to let go. Later it would only be harder.

But later was so far away. Now all her world was him, and the long, tender kiss that turned fierce in a moment. His arm went round her waist, and he pulled her against his hard torso. She shifted into his lap, and pulled up her skirts, and wrapped her legs around his hips. She was shameless. With him she could be. She could do as she pleased. No rules. Only to please and be pleased. She caught at his shirt, tugged it up, and broke the kiss only long enough to pull the garment over his head. She dragged her hands over his shoulders, his back, his chest. He was as smooth and hard as marble but warm and vibrantly alive. She’d never known anyone so fully alive as he.

Outside the men sang:

He caught the back of her head and pushed his long fingers into her hair. He held her away and looked at her. No words. Only the heat in his eyes and the glint of wickedness and the hint of a smile. Then his hands slid downward, and he undid the bodice fastenings, watching her face all the while. She remembered the first time he’d tried to undress her, against the door.

What are you doing? she’d said, like an idiot.

Taking off your clothes, he’d answered, clearly amazed at the stupidity of the question.

Now she laughed silently, recalling. He grinned, and she knew he remembered, too.

The bodice fell away, and his hands were upon her skin, and her brain slowed and thickened.

She pressed her fist to her mouth to keep from making any sound. She had craved his touch, his strong, clever hands tracing the curves of her breasts, her waist and belly and hips. She hadn’t understood how desperate it was, the ache, until now, when it swept over her like a sandstorm, blotting out everything but the piercing need for him.

He pushed her skirts up further and loosened the waist of his full trousers. She trembled when the garments slid away, leaving them skin to skin. She wrapped her arms about his shoulders and pressed her mouth against his neck to keep from crying out when his hands moved up her thighs. She drank in his scent, hot and male and his alone. At the first intimate touch she screamed silently. If she could have done, she’d have cried out her pleasure, her torment, and impossible, contradictory demands. More. No. Stop. Don’t stop. There. No, there. Oh, don’t. Oh, yes, please.

Laughter bubbled inside her along with a sorrow all but unbearable.

Madness.

Wonderful madness.

Her teeth dug into his shoulder, her nails into his back while his wonderful, dangerous hands found every pleasure point, and streams of sensation, violently sweet and hot, coursed through her.

The sailors’ drum was a distant echo, their aching song a counterpoint to the ache within. She longed for him. To be his. To be together. To be one.

She slid her hand down over his belly, and took his rod in her hand to guide it into her. He made a choked sound and pushed her hand away. He shifted her on his lap, and before she could tell him she couldn’t wait any longer, he thrust into her. His mouth covered hers before she could cry out. Yes, oh, yes. Like this. At last.

Outside, the sailors sang:

Outside was the wail of the pipes and the beat of the earthen drum.

Inside was an all-consuming need to be joined, completely and forever.

She took him deep inside her, wrapped herself about him, her hands moving over him, to have as much of him as she could, though it could never be enough.

She rocked with him, silently, to the music and beat only they two heard. Feelings swelled, dark and ungovernable, and she let them take her. With him, she would go anywhere. With him she feared nothing. With him she was finally, truly alive.

She held onto him as she’d done during the sandstorm. She let the pleasure rage around her and inside her and between them until it shattered them both. It brought release, and a quiet like peace.

“WHAT ARE THEY singing?” Rupert said later, when he could breathe again, think again. They’d sunk down against the cushions and lay there for a long time without moving. He held her still, close to him, and she held him.

He ought to help her get her clothes back on. Not a great deal to do. Put her bodice back together. Straighten her skirts. Nothing else. No corset. No petticoats. No drawers. He grinned.

“Love songs,” she said. “What’s so amusing?”

“You,” he said. “You weren’t wearing any underthings. I collect you were expecting me.”

“I haven’t worn underthings in days,” she said. “It’s too hot. We need to get dressed. It’s getting late. We’ll be stopping soon for the night.”

“Love songs,” he said. Then he remembered. The reason he’d come. The excuse. “Yusef is sick with love for Nafisah.”

“That would explain the choice of song,” she said. “All the burning vitals and misery and ‘alas’ this and that.” She started to untangle herself from him.

He drew her back.

“We need to be sensible,” she said. “I need to be sensible.”

“Another moment,” he said.

“Mr. Carsington.”

“Rupert,” he said.

“I need to keep a distance,” she said.

“It’s a bit late for that,” he said.

“I know it is hypocritical,” she said, “but I must try to maintain an appearance of decorum. For Miles’s sake.”

He kissed her forehead. “If he finds out, will he have my liver on a spit? Will he insist upon pistols at twenty paces?”

She pulled away and sat up. “Good grief! A duel? Over me? If he even contemplated anything so deranged—But no, he would not be so idiotish.” She wrestled her bodice back into position, and turned her back to him. “Do me up, please,” she said. “I can hardly call for Leena.”

Reluctantly Rupert sat up. Reluctantly, he fastened the garment.

“Have you spoken to Nafisah?” she said.

“Can we talk about Nafisah later?” he said. “We’re not done talking about us.”

She turned back to him. “Please don’t,” she said. “We can’t continue this. I don’t regret what I’ve done. But the rest of the world will never understand, and the rest of the world is what Miles must contend with. I cannot embarrass him. I could not live with myself if I did. You can have no idea what he’s done for me. Without him, I should have gone mad.”

“He’s taken care of you,” Rupert said.

“Far beyond what most brothers would do for their sisters.”

“Then I shouldn’t wish to injure him for the world,” Rupert said. He pulled on his shirt. He wished wisdom were a garment, that he might put it on so easily. He’d been so happy for a time. Now he was unhappy and growing unhappier by the minute. He had to leave. He would have to sleep alone this night.

He was not a monster. He did have self-control. He didn’t wish to disgrace her. He didn’t wish to shame the brother she loved, the brother who’d protected her from who knew what.

It shouldn’t be so hard to leave. It shouldn’t be so hard to tell himself they’d find her brother in the next few days. They’d rescue him or die trying. And if they died, it would be over. And if they succeeded, it would all be over between Daphne Pembroke and Rupert Carsington.

He’d never expected matters to end any differently, and he’d never had any trouble with endings.

He’d had other women.

When it was time to go, he went.

Whether it was his decision or—on the very rare occasion—hers, he said good-bye graciously and kindly. With gratitude, perhaps. Never with regret.

He told himself this day had brought more than he’d dared hope for. He’d come to the cabin on family business.

He’d come on behalf of the lovesick boy who’d looked at him with that pathetically hopeful expression.

“I’d better settle the matter I came to settle,” Rupert said. “Otherwise it will be obvious to everyone what we were doing here with the door closed.”

“Yusef wishes to marry Nafisah, it appears,” she said, rising up on her knees and twitching her skirts back into place.

“Yes, but he’s very young. Fourteen, I think.”

“Most Egyptian boys his age have a wife,” she said. “I believe his countrymen employ the principle that it’s better to marry than to burn. Fathers usually provide wives for their sons by puberty.”

Rupert frowned. He’d never thought of marriage in that way. Well, he didn’t need to, did he? The English didn’t keep their women hidden behind veils or shut up in harems.

“It’s easy enough to do, if she’s agreeable,” Daphne said. “A maiden’s marriage is as elaborate an affair as the family can afford. For widows and divorced women, the business is much simpler. I made some notes on the subject. I intend to write a paper on several aspects of modern Egyptian culture.”

She pushed the cushion they’d lain upon back against the cabin wall. She crawled over the divan and rummaged in a small chest in a corner of the cabin. While she searched, he gazed at her handsomely rounded backside. He suppressed a sigh.

She took out a notebook like the one in which she’d drawn the cartouches. She flipped through the pages. “Here it is. Quite simple. The woman says to the man, ‘I give myself up to thee.’ This is usually done before witnesses, but they are not necessary. The dowry is a fraction of that for a virgin. Naturally, I should provide a generous dowry, so that is not an issue.” She looked up from the notebook. “It only remains for the girl to agree.”

“That’s all?” he said. “ ‘I give myself up to thee’? No banns? No license? No parson?”

“We might give them a fête,” Daphne said. “It’s a good excuse for a celebration.”

He rose. “Yes, well, I’d better find out what Nafisah thinks of the prospective bridegroom, then.”

“Send her to me,” Daphne said.

“No, no, I’ll use Tom as interpreter,” he said. “They want me to do it. I’m the father.”

“The father?”

He gave a distracted nod and went out.

HE RETURNED FIVE minutes later.

Daphne had not had time to put her feelings in order. She’d barely had time to wash herself. She hastily dabbed her face with the towel so that he wouldn’t know the wet was from tears.

Making love with him again had only made everything worse. She knew it had to be the last time, but she wasn’t done with him. She wasn’t ready for it to be over.

She was acting like a romantic, emotional schoolgirl. It was as though the ten years since her first blind infatuation had never happened.

But it had, and she needed to remember what had happened, every miserable detail, all the consequences of trusting feelings.

Thus she counseled herself, but when he was near, it was very difficult to be logical and sensible.

He stood in the doorway, his head tipped to one side.

“We could marry,” he said.

She took the towel away from her face and clutched it to her stomach. She said nothing. She couldn’t have heard aright.

“We could marry,” he said. “The way you said. You’re a widow.”

Her heart was a great pickaxe inside her chest: one heavy blow after another. Something would break, something vital.

“Marry?” she said. “Did you hit your head on the way out?”

He smiled. “You see? That’s one of the things I like about you. Your sense of humor.”

“I have no sense of humor,” she said.

“Maybe you don’t notice because your mind is so taken up with scholarly matters,” he said.

“No, the trouble is, you don’t know the real Daphne,” she said. “You think I’m dashing and interesting, but I’m not. Circumstances have forced me to behave differently. But as soon as everything returns to normal, I shall revert to the unamusing and unamiable person I really am.”

“You believed you were unwomanly, recollect,” he said. “You can’t judge yourself by a fussy old man’s standards.”

“You don’t understand!” she cried. “I have no hobbies. I have no other interests. I eat, drink, and breathe lost languages. My idea of a grand time is counting the number of hieroglyphic signs on the Rosetta Stone. One thousand four hundred nineteen. The corresponding Greek text has four hundred eighty-six words. Would you like to hear the conclusion I draw from these figures?”

“Of course,” he said. “I love to listen to you talk.”

“Even when you don’t understand it.”

“Is it necessary?” he said. “Do you understand cricket? The finer points of boxing?”

“Of course not,” she said.

“My mother has said that it’s often better for a husband and wife not to understand each other too well,” he said. “A little mystery keeps a marriage more interesting, she says.”

“With you and me it is more than a little mystery,” Daphne said. “We have nothing in common.”

His dark eyebrows went up.

“Lust doesn’t count,” she said. “It is no basis for a union that must last a lifetime. We are not Egyptians. We cannot divorce with a handful of words, and without disgrace. I can’t, at any rate.”

He appeared to think this over. Then, “You’re telling me the answer is no, in other words,” he said.

“It’s for the best,” she said. She tried desperately to remember what one ought to say in such circumstances. She must have read about it somewhere. “I fear we should not suit…over the long term. But thank you for making the offer. It was…kind.”

“Kind,” he repeated. He gave a short laugh and left.

BY NIGHTFALL, DAPHNE had herself in hand. It was not as though she had any choice. The wedding business quickly occupied everybody.

Not long after Mr. Carsington left, Leena and Nafisah hurried in with the happy news. Nafisah had agreed to have Yusef. She was very pleased. She wished to have more babies. Yusef was young and strong and would give her many children. He was handsome, too, and kind. She kissed Daphne’s hand repeatedly, thanking her.

“What have I to do with it?” Daphne said. “It was you who stole his heart.”

“If you had left me in my village,” the girl said, “my Sabah would be dead, and I would be the fourth wife of an ill-tempered man.”

Like Virgil, Daphne thought. He’d looked so saintly and serene, but it was a mask, and it had fooled her. She’d thought she was at fault and hadn’t realized she was at the mercy of a moody, discontented man.

But she’d been so young then, older than Nafisah in years, but much younger in experience. She’d no experience of the outside world. Girls, even very clever girls, didn’t go to public school. They didn’t go to university. She’d studied at home, with her father. She’d lived a quiet, cloistered existence.

Were her feelings never to be trusted simply because they’d fooled her all that long time ago?

Was her judgment about men fatally flawed, or had she simply made a youthful error?

She was not sure, and she hadn’t time this day to work out the riddle. Though the wedding was a simple affair, it ought to be a festive occasion. She busied herself with arranging it. By the time the boat moored for the night, the meal was in preparation and the bride dressed in a set of Daphne’s Arab garments.

The bride-to-be was applying kohl to the baby’s eyes when the mongoose raced into the room, chittering excitedly.

“What on earth is the matter with…” Daphne trailed off as she became aware of unfamiliar voices outside.

Leena peered through the shutters. “Officials, from the town,” she grumbled. “They will steal all our food, and call it a boat tax.”

Marigold dashed out again. Daphne nudged Leena away from the shuttered window. The mongoose ran out onto the deck and instantly went up on her hind legs, fur bristling as though she’d spotted a cobra.

Daphne went to the chest where she kept the pistols, took them out, and loaded them, her hands shaking.

The voices outside sounded calm, but she didn’t trust the calm. If she’d had fur, it would have bristled, too. She didn’t know what was wrong, only that she was absolutely certain something was.

“Find knives, whatever weapons you can,” she whispered to the women. “If anyone tries to get in here, attack first, ask questions after.”

For once, Leena did not launch into a prophecy of calamities to come. She only nodded.

Daphne quickly wrapped a shawl about her waist and tucked one pistol into it. The other she carried in her hand. She went out into the passage. At the door that opened onto the deck, she paused and listened.

The matter was quite simple, one of the strangers was saying. The Englishman was invited to accompany them to the house of the local sheik.

Rupert answered that he was honored by the invitation, but he had made other plans for the evening.

The man said he feared that the sheik would be deeply offended. In this case, every member of the crew must be bastinadoed, to soothe the sheik’s wounded feelings.

“I must invite you to leave,” Rupert said. “We’re having a wedding, you see. We’ve just cleaned the boat, and you don’t want to be spilling a lot of blood on it, do you?”

The man muttered something to somebody nearby. The second man grabbed the nearest sailor and started beating him with a stick.

Then several things happened very quickly.

The mongoose leapt at the leader and sank her sharp teeth into his leg. He shrieked. A rifle went off. Rupert had an oar in his hands and was swinging it at the two men rushing at him. A man fell overboard. A lantern fell onto the deck. Daphne cocked the pistol, opened the door a little wider, aimed, and fired at one of Rupert’s attackers. The villain screamed and went down, clutching his leg.

After that it was hard to sort anything out. The crew had picked up oars and tools and cookware and were using them to fight. She was pulling out the second pistol and cocking it when a hand closed round her wrist like a vise, forcing her to drop the weapon. Her assailant dragged her away from the door. She kicked it closed behind her, then kicked out at him. Her boot connected with a limb. He swore but didn’t let go. He was dragging her to the back of the boat, away from the fray at the front. She swung the first pistol at his head. He knocked it away, grabbed both her hands, and pinned them behind her.

“Rupert!” she cried. “Tom! Yusef! Somebody!”

She thought she heard Rupert shout back. She looked toward the sound of his voice. There was a flash that lit his face in the instant before he clutched his chest and stumbled backward…and over the side.

“Rupert!” she screamed.

“You come, your people live,” said the man who held her. “You fight, they die. All.”

She went.