CHAPTER NINETEEN

“Open up, Magi!” Desdemona called.

“Aha! It is time you are home!” Desdemona heard Magi’s voice at the same time the inside bolt slid back. “You are most late. An English gentleman should know better than—”

The front door swung open. Light spilled out of the front door illuminating Blake at the bottom of the stairs, Harry slung over his broad shoulders.

“Allah have mercy.” Magi gasped as Desdemona pushed past her.

“Bring him in,” she said to Blake.

Blake shifted Harry’s weight and struggled up the stairs. With each step, Harry’s head bobbed. He was unconscious again, as he’d been most of the way here.

“To one of the bedrooms?” Magi asked.

“No,” Desdemona said, “at least not tonight. I need light. We’ll use Grandfather’s library. Follow me,” she ordered Blake. She strode down the narrow, cluttered hallway and flung open the door at the far end. “Duraid,” she said, spying the boy peeking around the corner, “bring fresh linen, iodine, soap, and hot water.”

Blake, burdened with Harry’s long, limp form, lurched up the last few steps into the hallway.

“Sometime before Harry succumbs, Duraid,” Desdemona suggested grimly, and the round-eyed boy fled toward the kitchen.

“But where can we put him?” Magi asked.

Desdemona quickly surveyed the room. The “library” was no more than an anteroom separating the main body of the small house from the little walled courtyard behind. It was already packed to overflowing with relics in various stages of readiness for shipping to London. Books, treatises, papers, and files littered every available surface. Crates, some empty, some packed, stood stacked along the walls. The desk and drafting table were lined with cartons and vessels and pottery.

She considered the floor and discarded the notion. Aside from being dusty and cold, it would be impossible to drape with the netting essential in keeping night-flying insects from feasting on Harry’s open wounds. She bit her lip, searching for someplace to set Harry. Blake, hunched panting in the doorway, grunted.

“In there,” she finally said, pointing. “It’s high enough so I can see what I’m doing and narrow enough to keep him from rolling over.”

“But surely, Miss Desdemona—” Blake protested.

“Just until we can scare up a cot.”

Looking doubtful, Blake eased Harry onto the blankets Magi quickly laid beneath him. Desdemona raised the gas jets on the wall as high as they would go and turned. Her breath caught in her throat.

The hissing light exposed Harry’s torn and battered form with awful clarity, revealing injuries far uglier than any she’d imagined.

So much damage. So much blood. Such filth—

“Miss Desdemona!” Blake caught her about the waist. He urged her toward the desk’s chair but she shifted out of his embrace, impatient with her uncharacteristic squeamishness.

“I’m fine,” she said firmly, bending over Harry and examining his face. “I am.” His swollen left eye was discolored, a deep gash crossed the high angle of his right cheek, and a jagged tear scored his lower lip. Poor beautiful lip. She drew a shaking breath.

“I have the things, Sitt,” Duraid said from beside her.

Without looking up, she accepted the small, steaming saucer of water and thick wad of square linen bandages that Duraid handed her. “Magi,” she said, probing the torn edges of the cut on his cheek, “pour some iodine over this gash while I swab it clean. Allah only knows what is encrusted in there.”

“Yes,” Magi murmured. She dribbled liquid into the deep laceration and Harry jerked. His eyes flew open and he stared at her, his expression wild and fierce and intent.

“It’s all right, Harry. I’m—”

“Magi!” The word burst from his lips.

“Magi’s here, too.” Did he think she wouldn’t care for him, as well, as determinedly as Magi? Did he think she felt so little for him? “I promise I’ll do—”

“Where’s Magi?” he demanded hoarsely.

“I am here, Harry.” Magi put her hand on his brow. He grabbed her wrist. “You have … you … have … to—” He ground his teeth against whatever pain he felt and squeezed his eyes shut. Slowly the white-knuckled grip with which he held Magi’s wrist eased. He’d fallen unconscious again.

“For God’s sake,” Blake burst out.

“It’s better this way,” Desdemona assured Blake. “Better that he’s unconscious. I must work fast.”

She eased the edges of the cut apart and swabbed little flecks of grit from the gash. Then she flooded the area with clean water and looked up. Her next request had already been anticipated. Magi placed the threaded needle in her trembling fingers.

“Hold his head, Duraid.”

The boy slunk forward and bracketed Harry’s pale face between his young hands. Clamping her lips together, Desdemona pinched the ragged edges together and forced the needle through the resilient flesh. Harry flinched and moaned.

“I said hold him still!” She blinked rapidly, her eyes watering with concentration.

“I think I’m going to be sick, Sitt.”

She didn’t have time for such delicacy.

“Maybe I can help, Miss Desdemona,” Blake said quietly.

She looked around in surprise. For a minute, she’d forgotten he was there. “Can you hold him still?”

“Yes.” Blake’s face was as white as his shirt, his expression concerned, but there was unmistakable determination, almost anger, burning in his eyes. Duraid backed off and Blake took the boy’s place.

True to his word, though Harry’s body jerked, his head did not move in Blake’s hands until Desdemona had pulled the last thread taut and clipped the end. She straightened, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.

“What else can I do?” Blake asked.

Else? Dear God, Blake was right. They’d only just begun, and it had already seemed they’d been working for eternity. Harry lay there seemingly lifeless; even his unconscious flinches had stopped. So still. So quiet. Once again, her vision swam.

“Ah.” She cleared her voice to keep it from quavering. “There’s some brandy in the bottom of that cabinet over there. If Harry wakes up too soon, he’ll need it.”

By the time Blake returned with the brandy, she’d finished cleaning Harry’s face. She took the bottle and glass and set them aside. Harry wasn’t going to wake up.

“Lord Ravenscroft, would you lift Harry? We can start getting his shirt off.”

“Shirt? Start?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“You aren’t suggesting that you’ll be tending Harry’s other bodily wounds yourself?”

“Yes,” she said. “Why?”

“Miss Desdemona,” Blake answered stiffly, “you are a young Englishwoman of genteel lineage. Young women of your type do not tend half-naked males. They do not see half-naked males.”

She blinked in total incomprehension. She saw naked men all the time. Well, mostly naked. She needed only to walk through the suq, or visit a dig site, or stroll down the riverside to see them working, bathing, or playing. Young, middle age, old. Men. Naked. Mostly.

“Harry’s shirt stays on until we can find a physician to care for him.”

She relaxed in comprehension. Blake assumed a physician would be caring for Harry. Of course he would. He would not have any other experiences to guide him. She felt a touch of sympathy for him. Everything here must seem so foreign to him, so uncivilized.

“How best can I send for a medical chap?” Blake asked.

Magi caught her eye. A wealth of contempt was revealed in that one short glance. “We care for our own, Lord Ravenscroft,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t mean one of your native chaps. I mean an English physician.”

“There are none,” Desdemona said.

“I don’t believe it,” Blake said. “Cook’s steamers must have some quack attending the aches and pains of his clientele.”

They didn’t have time for this. “It would take all night to make the trip to the dock, find the fellow-assuming he exists—and convince him to return here,” Desdemona said. “In Cairo, a night of untreated, open wounds can be fatal, Lord Ravenscroft.”

“I see.” He did not like the situation. It offended him on every level.

Her sympathy toward him faltered. “Magi, will you help me?” she asked.

Blake forestalled Magi by stepping behind Harry’s head. “It seems I have no choice but to do as you bid or look the churl.”

Desdemona gave him a dazzling smile. Thank God, he was not so hidebound by convention as to risk Harry’s life to preserve his English sense of modesty. Of course he wasn’t!

“But,” he said sternly, “not his pants.”

She barely heard him, her attention having been caught by Harry’s sudden, involuntary grimace. She’d never seen him like this.

Vulnerable.

To her, Harry epitomized the stamina, endurance, sheer tenacity of a desert scavenger. Oh, yes, he was a bit ragged around the edges, battered, but never fatally so. He was a survivor. But now Harry’s tanned flesh glistened with sweat, his breath staggered in his chest, and the pulse fluttering at the base of his throat looked too mortal for the likes of a Jackal Prince.

“Please hurry,” she said softly.

Blake lifted Harry and she peeled his shirt off, exposing his dirty, blood-smeared torso. Wringing cloth after cloth in the bowl of warm water Duraid raced to keep filled, she carefully sloughed the grime from his chest and arms. When she was done, she placed a hand at the small of her back, arching into the cramping muscles.

“Are you all right, Desdemona?” Magi asked.

“Yes. Just tired. I think he’ll be fine.” It was true; so far she’d found nothing wrong with Harry that time and some nice strong horse liniment wouldn’t heal.

There was a nasty bruise over his ribs and a half-dozen angry red welts across his shoulders. He had raw abrasions encircling both wrists, as if he’d been tied, and some scrapes low on his stomach, as if he’d been dragged over rough ground. But her fingers could find no broken bones and—

She lowered her head and laid her ear on his chest. She held her breath, listening before closing her eyes in relief. His lungs sounded clear of fluid, his heartbeat was regular. Gently, thankfully, she fanned her fingertips over his heart’s steady drumbeat. She’d found the only areas where disease might find a home. At least on his upper body.

She rose to find Blake watching her with a guarded expression. She had to get him out of there. He’d never understand, or condone, or possibly even allow her to examine a man’s nether regions.

“There,” she said, picking up a towel and wiping her hands dry. “I think he’ll do.”

“You are heroic, Miss Desdemona,” Blake said. He cocked his head. “A regular Florence Nightingale. I wish Harry were more deserving of such endeavors.”

“Sir?” Magi said.

“Obviously his nefarious activities have led him to such a pass. When one plays with fire …”

“Mr. Harry has played with fire many times,” Magi avowed loyally. “He has never before been burned.” And then, catching Desdemona’s caustic expression, she amended. “Well, not so badly burned as this. Once or twice swollen knuckles. The odd cut. Oh, on occasion a black eye. A few stitches taken for vanity’s sake. But nothing more.”

“There doesn’t have to be more!” Desdemona threw the towel on the floor, suddenly angry.

Blake was right. Whatever Harry had gotten himself into was undoubtedly a product of his own manufacture. Whatever it was he’d gone looking for, it wasn’t worth the price of his blood!

She’d thought Harry had more wilt than to imperil his life for profit. And imperil his life he had. Well, he wasn’t going to die before giving her the opportunity to voice her views on such monumental stupidity. And in order to make absolutely certain he didn’t die, she needed to get his pants off.

“Harry is a most circumsp—”

Desdemona cut off Magi’s diatribe. “My. I suddenly feel light-headed.” She fixed Magi with a stare.

Magi’s eyes widened slightly and Desdemona knew her unspoken message had been understood.

“You do look most tired, Miss Desdemona.” Magi caught her hand and patted it consolingly. “Allah keep your revered self from succumbing to ill health as a result of your saintly ministrations.”

She was going to have to teach Magi not to mix her religious allusions.

“An angel, you most certainly are, but an angel in human form. You must care for the fragile vessel that shelters your sublime spirit.”

“I am rather … fatigued,” Desdemona allowed faintly, brushing her hand across her eyes.

“Oh, course you are, m’dear.” Blake wrested her hand from Magi’s and took over patting it. “May I suggest you get some much-needed rest?”

“I believe I’ll take your advice, Lord Ravenscroft.” She pulled her hand free and dragged her feet toward the library door. She paused at the portal. Blake wasn’t following her. “Lord Ravenscroft …?”

“Don’t worry.” He removed a carton from a chair. “I’ll stay with Harry.”

“No!” Magi chimed. “Really, Lord Ravenscroft, I am surprised you would suggest such a thing. Miss Desdemona is a maiden woman, little more than a girl, and her grandfather is not here.”

“Don’t worry,” Blake said sardonically, “I promise I have no ulterior motives in mind and I will, of course, be the soul of discretion.”

“I am sure you would, sir,” Desdemona said. “But I would not like”—she scrambled around for something she wouldn’t like—“I would not like us found in an untenable situation because of your determination to stay with your cousin.”

“Really?” Blake gestured toward Harry. “And what about him?”

“Oh, Harry. No one will think anything of that. They all know Harry. And me. Besides, he can’t … do anything.”

Now she did blush. Blast.

“I will make sure all is proper,” Magi said. “I will set Duraid to sleep before Miss Desdemona’s door.”

“What?” Duraid croaked. “I don’t want to sleep on the floor. I never slept on the floor before when Harry—” Duraid’s protest cut off abruptly. Magi glowered at him. “I-I will, Sitt,” he stammered. “Of course, Sitt. Like always, Sitt.”

“It is for the best, Lord Ravenscroft. Really,” Desdemona said.

With a touch of petulance, Blake capitulated. “I suppose you’re right. We must be mindful of appearances. But if you should need me for any reason, send the lad.”

“Oh, Í will,” Desdemona promised, escorting him to the front door and waiting while he descended the stairs. “Thank you.” She heard a muffled groan from deep inside the house, a sound of pain. Infection could set in in a matter of hours, and God alone knew how long Harry had been staggering through the streets of Cairo while she’d been eating curry and dates.

“I am yours to command,” Blake said solemnly, leaning against the rail at the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t have time for declarations … as much as she would liked to have heard them.

“That’s very nice.”

“I mean it.”

“And I appreciate it.” Another groan, louder this time.

“I want you to know—”

“I do. Good night, Blake.” Before he could respond, she backed into the house, closed the door firmly behind her, and hurried back to the library. “I heard him.”

“He is fine, just waking up a bit,” Magi declared. “But we’d best hurry and get these pants off of him before we have another male’s delicate sensibilities to contend with.”

Without further prompting, Desdemona bent over and began unbuckling Harry’s belt.

“You look most disgruntled,” Magi said.

“All this trouble just to get a man’s pants off,” Desdemona muttered, tugging the belt free of its loops.

“It is not usually so difficult,” Magi assured her serenely.