CHAPTER TEN

“Any chance of some coffee appearing?” Harry asked. Magi murmured assurances that coffee, dark and sweet, would be immediately forthcoming and hurried off to see that it was so. As soon as she left, Harry turned to Desdemona. “Where is it, Diz?” he asked.

“It?”

“Rabi came to see me last night. He insists that you took something important from the camp. He says now you will not see him and give it back.”

“Took?” Desdemona exclaimed indignantly. “He gave it to me.”

“He says that this … thing”—he raised his brows invitingly. She ignored him—“is of a personal and highly sentimental nature.”

“Ha!”

Harry grinned. “That’s what Rabi says.”

“So that’s why he’s hanging around. Well, you can tell Rabi that I consider this … thing compensation for being kidnapped, and that hell, or whatever its Islamic equivalent is, will freeze over before he’ll see it again.”

The boy had probably pilfered the papyrus from his disreputable sire’s personal library of erotica, Desdemona thought. She banished her urge to return them. Sometimes the best lessons were those hard-learned.

Harry held out his hands in capitulation. “Hey, don’t kill the messenger. I told Rabi I’d try.” He crossed to the window, looked out, and made a slicing sign across his throat.

The morning light, still translucent and fragile, bathed Harry’s features in gold, ennobling his aggressive-size nose and curling lovingly around his lips. The first clear rays of sun glanced off his irises, making them seem to gleam from within like colored votive glass.

Desdemona wondered if he knew the effect and had positioned himself accordingly. But, as much as she’d like to think otherwise, she doubted it. Vanity—at least regarding his appearance—had never been one of Harry’s flaws. Not that he didn’t have plenty of others to compensate.

He turned back and approached the desk. “Rabi wants that thing very badly. What is it?”

When she didn’t reply, he leaned over the desk, bracing his arms on either end. “I can wait here as long as it takes for you to answer,” he said. “What did Rabi give you?”

If Harry knew about her possession of blatantly erotic poetry, he’d never let her forget it. She blushed profusely at the thought of his endless teasing. “A scarab.”

Harry captured her chin and lifted her face to his, studying her for a long moment, a tenderness in his expression that matched his gentle touch.

“You’re lying … to me,” he said, softly quizzical, almost aggrieved sounding. His hands, like the rest of him, were an odd combination of elegance and toil. Though his nails were clean and trim, his fingertips were callused and the backs of his hands were covered by telltale glyphs: white scars from toiling through tomb rubble; an overlarge knuckle on the finger he’d broken during an excavation; a pair of white dots, reminders of a cobra’s unhappy waking.

“Dizzy, look at me,” he coaxed.

How could she help herself, regardless of how stupid or useless? She shook her head. Magi had awakened old thoughts, old mistakes. They were better left sleeping. Better yet, dead.

“What?” she asked. “You wouldn’t want to know all my secrets, would you, Harry? I’d lose my feminine mystique.”

“Never.”

“And are you willing to tell all yours in trade?”

“Would you really want to know them?” he finally asked, the seriousness of his tone catching her by surprise.

She sensed a slight withdrawal on his part, but discounted it, being too aware of the copper shards in his pale eyes, the laugh lines radiating from their corners, the thin red line beneath—

She frowned. “You’ve hurt yourself.”

Without thinking, she touched the freshly shaved skin on his throat where a narrow gash angled across the vulnerable-looking flesh. He was warm. His skin was fine-grained and smooth. He swallowed. His pupils had dilated, his lips opened.

She dropped her hand. He dropped his.

“It’s nothing. A razor cut.”

“It could become infected. I’d better have Magi bring—”

“Don’t.” He straightened. “I have to leave in a few days, and I want you to be careful.”

“You’re off after the Apis bull? You’ve found one to sell to Mr. Schmidt?” she asked, her hopes toppling. If Harry already had arranged to procure a bull, how could she, with her few contacts in Cairo, hope to compete?

“I’m off,” he said shortly, “and while I doubt Rabi would do anything stupid, he’s a young male and ‘stupid’ is rather synonymous with that breed. If you won’t return his … gift … at least promise me you won’t go adventuring.”

“Of course not,” she said with a twinge of guilt. How she was planning to spend the afternoon wasn’t adventurous, it was simply business.

“Regardless of what you might think, I’d … nothing must happen to you. You are … You are too …” He trailed off.

She could hear him breathing. The room had grown preternaturally quiet. The fragrance of night-blooming jasmine drenched the air, and the faraway cry of a hound throbbed through the still morning.

She stood up, disoriented. Had their friendship shifted into something else, become something …

No. She dipped her head, closing her eyes tightly. It was all in her imagination. She had thought this once before and she’d been abysmally wrong. She arranged a smile and looked up. He was standing motionless, a frown scoring his brow with a deep line.

“Well, if you’re planning to kick about the desert with your Egyptian cronies, you certainly aren’t dressed the part,” she said.

He glanced down at his white linen suit and back at her, puzzled. “Oh. Yes. I’ll wear appropriate garments.”

“I suggest that Desert Prince ensemble. Classic. Very impressive. Most chic.”

“Whatever are you talking about, Dizzy?” he asked, clearly bewildered.

How could she answer? She didn’t know herself. All she knew was that the room seemed too small, that she could smell the sharp, antiseptic tang of his soap mingled with the cool, dry scent of book leather, still feel the exact degree of warmth her fingertip had stolen from his throat, the pressure of his thumb tipping her chin.

“I’m talking about your trip,” she said. “What else?”

His frown deepened. “I wish I could take you with me.”

“Oh, really?” she asked lightly. “You’ll be needing some verification on some translations?”

“No. I don’t like you being left alone.”

She was suddenly angry; at her racing pulse, the phantom of her infatuation, his paternal concern. “I won’t be. I have Grandfather and I’ll be spending quite a bit of time with your cousin.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. We’re lunching together today and we’ll be going to Giza later. So you see, I’ll be well looked after. Not that I think it necessary, but should any need arise, Lord Ravenscroft looks to be more than a formidable protector.”

“Yes,” Harry muttered. “I’m sure he is everything a hulking young aristocrat should be.”

“He’s not hulking! He’s very—” She was saved from getting into an argument by Magi’s arrival. The housekeeper slipped into the room, her face wreathed in benevolent smiles, and set the silver coffee service down. She fussed a moment with the toast rack and the jam pot, sent Desdemona a stern look of encouragement, and glided out.

Harry seated himself and poured out two cups of coffee. He settled back, raised his cup to his lips, and took a sip. “Quite taken with His Lordship, are you?” he asked in a bored fashion.

“Taken?”

“Smitten. Besotted.”

“I’m sure I haven’t any idea what you mean. I don’t know Lord Ravenscroft. Please refrain from ascribing your own base nature to me. Just because you are incapable of being in the same room with an attractive woman without falling all over her does not mean I share the same proclivity.”

Harry burst out laughing. “Falling all over?”

“Yes!”

“Oh, Dizzy. Someday I’ll have to properly demonstrate ‘falling all over.’ ”

“Don’t bother.”

“Although old Blake and you were doing a passable job of it last night.”

“Lord Ravenscroft was a complete gentleman and I, I hope, deported myself as a lady.”

“There was more fluttering going on at that table than from the handkerchiefs on the deck of one of Mr. Cook’s steam liners.”

“I wasn’t fluttering.”

“And Blake.” Harry shook his head in disgust. “Such affectations.”

“You are calling someone affected?” she asked, raising her brows. “You, who employ two secretaries, one for your Arab dealings and one for your English? You, who are too high and mighty to write your own correspondence?”

Harry grinned. “That’s different. At least I don’t commit the sin of triteness. Calling you a ‘rose.’ An ‘English rose’ at that. You must forgive him the hackneyed compliment. Old Blake’s not much for originality, I’m afraid.”

“I thought him charming.”

Harry made an unconvinced sound.

“I did. I suppose you could do better?”

“Well, were I to make the effort to extol a woman’s beauty, I could certainly do better than to drag out some tired old cliché about a rose.”

“You are the most monumentally egocentric man I know,” Desdemona said, trying to keep the trace of admiration out of her voice.

“You are unconvinced?” Harry asked, taking a sip of coffee and crossing his legs. “Allow me to demonstrate … and please bear in mind that I improvise.”

He spread jam over a piece of toast, studying her quizzically as he did so. She felt like a specimen, standing there under his scrutiny. She took the chair next to his and started buttering her own toast with supreme indifference. She was not a specimen.

“Let me see. Nothing floral. In fact, I think we’ll dispense with the vegetative allusions altogether. Animal?” he asked rhetorically. “Perhaps a gazelle? No,” he dismissed the idea, chomping into his toast. “Too meek. Too inconsequential. This is difficult, Diz. To blandish a woman about her physical appearance is so limiting.”

“Yes,” she said dryly, burying a pinprick of hurt. He couldn’t think of anything to compliment her on.

“All right, then,” he finally said. “I’d begin with the way you stand.”

“Stand?” He’d caught her off guard. She blinked.

“Slender. Upright. Face lifted for the sun god’s caress,” he murmured slowly, musingly, as if to himself. He cocked his head, his eyes traveling lingeringly over her body, and she recognized the potent attraction other women must feel when Harry looked at them this way. As if she were the central point upon which all of his world turned. As if he lo—

“Why, look,” he asked in a hushed voice, something surprised and painful and pleased in his tone, “even Ra himself cannot resist you. Only see how he lathes your cheeks and brow with his heated tongue”—he reached out, brushing his fingers over her tanned cheek—“marking you with his golden kiss?”

His words were too graphic, too carnal, and she was too aware of his fingers skating along her cheekbone and over her jaw line. He’d never spoken to her this way before. Her heartbeat quickened, thrumming in her throat and in her wrists. She shivered. He smiled. His hand retreated.

“How can a mere mortal man stand a chance if even the gods are so enamored?” he whispered. “And how can one single image describe you? You are a country, a country of unexplored sensation and whim, veiled in dawn, shining, shedding light. See how the long fluid line of your throat flows to your breasts?” If he heard the intake of her breath, he ignored it. “Or how their blue-shadowed curves ripen above the smooth plain of your belly?”

She should stop him, he went too far, but his voice mesmerized her, like sweet, honeyed wine, warm and languorous.

“Your mouth.” He paused, and her lips felt suddenly sensitized, tingling as his gaze fixed on them. “Your mouth is a sweet well sealed against me, keeping me thirsting for the clarity of your kiss. Your flesh is like the desert sand, warmth and shifting strength beneath its golden color. Your palms open, fingers flexed, are minarets, delicate and elegant. And your body … it is the Nile itself—the camber of your back slipping so easily by the narrows of your waist and jettied hips to the lush delta below.”

He stopped. She heard the intake of his breath. “You are my country, Desdemona.” Yearning, harsh and poignant, and she felt herself swaying toward him. “My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining.”

She gasped.

His gaze fell, shielded by his lashes. An odd, half-mocking smile played about his lips. “You’ll never hear old Blake say something like that.”

She swallowed, unable to speak, her senses abraded by his stimulating words, her pulse hammering in … anticipation? Trepidation?

“Remember my words next time he calls you a bloody English rose.”