CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Thoughtfully, Desdemona made her way toward the sitting room. She’d always assumed Harry had been the Golden Boy, favored and cosseted by adoring parents and sisters. Certainly his self-confidence supported such an estimation.

But he could not have won such poise from the unhappy childhood Blake described, in a schoolroom where he’d apparently been singled out by his peers to be tyrannized. Why would they do that? Harry could charm vultures into fasting should he set his mind to it. It made no sense.

And Harry had wanted to be an academician? Again, she’d always assumed that Harry had always achieved exactly what he had wanted to achieve, that there was no brass ring beyond his reach.

Her brows knotted. Harry was an expert. He could date an artifact after a casual perusal, find the single genuine shard in a mountain of rubble, descry an eloquent history from a broken vase. Yet he’d been expelled from Oxford, fled England and his dreams. Even though he’d declared he’d done so for money, she didn’t believe him. There was more here. There was frustration, aspirations, abandoned dreams … failure.

A fallible Harry seemed all too human. It would be hard to believe his devil-may-care, bon vivant attitude could be mere window-dressing masking … sensitivity? She smiled at her own folly. She was romanticizing Harry again. If he had been beaten up by the other lads at Eton, it had very probably been a well-deserved thrashing. Still, her own companionless childhood probably prevented her from ever really understanding him. Or anyone else.

She lifted her chin in a consciously defiant gesture. She refused to believe that. There was something else going on.

“—from the turkey farm.”

Desdemona blinked. Duraid stood beside her, waving a scrap of paper under her nose, his face troubled. “What did you say, Duraid?”

“At the farm last night, a pack of dogs got into the pens. A quarter of the turkeys are dead and a full half have run off.”

The thought of turkeys leaving scarab-studded offerings throughout the streets of Cairo brought an unwilling smile to her lips.

“My friend there says already many of the boys have gone back to the streets, certain that the factory is closed for good.”

“Rubbish.” A seed of anxiety flavored her tone.

“Matin says it will cost fifty pounds to replace the turkeys and make repairs.”

“I don’t have fifty pounds, Duraid.” She didn’t have ten pounds.

“Yes, Sitt.” Duraid nodded, but his eyes pleaded with her for reassurance. “Sitt will think of something though, will she not?”

Always Sitt would think of something, come up with something, find something. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, struggling with this newest financial disaster. Those children needed the turkey farm.

“Won’t Sitt think of something?” he prodded. Duraid had once begged in Cairo’s streets. Several of his friends from those days depended on the scarab factory for their livelihoods.

She dropped her hand. “Of course I’ll think of something.” Somehow she invested confidence in her voice. “Soon. Now go to the kitchen and have Magi make some tea for Mr. Paget.” She opened the door and entered the sitting room.

Georges scurried to his feet, abandoning the thrice covered settee he’d been perched on. “Ah, Miss Desdemona! I hear you have a houseguest.”

“Yes. Harry met with some difficulty the other night and is recuperating here.”

The little Frenchman shook his head. “Difficulty, you say. Ah, Harry. He is incorrigible. Nothing too bad, I trust?”

“He’ll recover.” She motioned for him to retake his seat and took the one opposite him. “Duraid said you were here on a matter of business?”

“Yes. Last night you said you had acquired a papyrus.”

“Papyrus? Oh, you mean the poetry. But, Monsieur Paget, I also told you it was a forgery. Nothing the Cairo Museum would bother with,” she protested.

“I am not speaking of the museum, Miss Desdemona.” His tone was playful.

“Oh?”

“Sometimes, outside of my duties to the museum, I have been known to engage in a bit of independent commerce. I can find a buyer for such works.”

Though she had known this for years, Georges had never openly admitted his unofficial business practices before.

“I will take the fake papyrus off your hands for a nice profit to yourself. To a collector”—he lifted one slim brow—”it may prove valuable. May I see it?”

Business was business and she needed money. Though she’d hoped to sell the papyrus to a nice, distant New York publisher, if Georges Paget offered her enough money, it was his. She started to nod before remembering that it was in the library. Harry was in the library. She wasn’t going to reveal her secret hiding hole to his all-too-interested gaze. Georges would have to wait.

“I’m afraid that at the moment that’s not possible,” she said. “Perhaps tomorrow? Or the next day?”

“Oh.” His disappointment was nearly comic. His bland face collapsed into slack, aggrieved lines.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Paget,” she said.

“So am I,” Georges said unhappily, as Duraid arrived with the tea service. “So am I.”

“How did they catch up with you?” Blake asked, watching Harry struggle out of that … that coffin … and limp across the room.

Harry stopped beside Sir Robert’s desk and began poking the various objects littering its top.

“Catch up with me?” Harry murmured in a distracted voice, tying the sheet around his waist and wincing as he did so. Apparently he found whatever he sought on the cluttered desk. His hand closed about a small figurine. “Duraid!” he shouted.

“Tell me how the men who were chasing you caught up with you,” Blake demanded. “You were always so bloody fast. How did they catch you?”

Harry spared him an annoyed glance. “Really, Blake, how would I know? They caught me. I wasn’t clocking them.” He used the tone an adult would when dealing with a tiresome child. Blake’s resentment swelled.

How dare Harry treat him so condescendingly? How dare Harry play the hero, forcing him to play the craven? “You didn’t run!”

Harry held up the statuette, scrutinizing it closely, ignoring him completely.

“Damn you. I said you didn’t run!”

Startled by Blake’s shout, Harry looked up. His gaze sharpened on him for a second before returning to the figure. “No,” he murmured. “There was no place to run. The other corridor ended in a blind alley.”

“You knew that when you sent me up that corridor, didn’t you?”

“Yes. If you’ll excuse me?” Painfully he made his way across the room, favoring his bruised side. At the door he poked his head into the hallway. “Magi!”

“I won’t be beholden to you,” Blake said. “You may think you’ve proven something by forcing me to desert you, after you knew … after I told you how wretched I’d felt about abandoning you back at Eton …” He stopped, seeking control before going on. “You haven’t proven a thing, to me or to Desdemona. It was a pitiful act that in no way proves you’re a better man than I.”

“Magi!” Harry’s voice reverberated once more down the cramped passage before he turned his head. His expression was flat with dislike. Blake returned it, easily surpassing his cousin’s animosity.

“I don’t have time to address whatever grievance you’re nursing against me, Blake,” Harry said. “And frankly, even if I did have the time, I don’t have the inclination. I just don’t give a damn.”

Blake could hear the truth of Harry’s words in the tiredness with which Harry regarded him. It infuriated Blake. Harry held hostage his very birthright, had cost him the woman he loved. Harry threatened everything Blake valued. He was a defective, utterly inadequate, a victim who improbably wore the mien of the victor.

Rage and frustration clouded Blake’s thoughts, roiled darkly in his heart, and he fought the urge to lash out. His lack of self-control, these base impulses were intolerable.

Blake was the scion of the family. He had a heritage to uphold. A standard to maintain. By God, he would do what was right. He was a gentleman.

It was all that was left to him.

“Harry?” The housekeeper appeared in the doorway. “You called for me?”

Without wasting another glance at Blake, Harry stepped into the hall with the housekeeper. Blake stayed where he was, refusing to leave until he’d done what he’d come to Cairo to do. He would tell Harry about the new will. It was what honor demanded.

He waited and watched Harry bend over the slight, dark woman. He heard the gibbering lilt of Harry’s Arabic words and the monosyllabic replies of the Egyptian. Harry placed the figure in her hand, closing her fingers around it and gesturing. Nodding gravely, she turned and disappeared down the hallway.

Harry reentered the room and, finding Blake still there, sighed heavily. “Blake, go away.”

“I came to Cairo to see you, Harry.”

“Really?” Harry said incuriously. “That’s not the reason my mother gave out.”

“And what was that?”

“She says you’re recovering from a broken heart.” Everything in Harry’s manner betrayed how unlikely he found this explanation. Damn him.

“A broken engagement.”

“Oh?”

Harry’s careless tone infuriated Blake, shredding his determination to act as a gentleman, dimming his nobler resolutions. “Do you know why Lenore DuChamp dissolved our engagement?” He spoke quickly, violently, shocking himself.

“Do I want to know?” Harry mused, still unconcerned.

“Because of you, cousin.”

Harry laughed and Blake’s hand jerked shut into a clenched fist.

“Oh, come, Blake,” Harry said with sharp amusement, “I’ve been blamed for a good many things, and in most cases I’m willing to plead guilty, but I’ve never even met Miss DuChamp.”

“You didn’t have to. She’d only needed to hear about you, your defect, to call off our engagement.”

And now, finally, Blake had the savage satisfaction of seeing Harry’s brown skin turn a sickly cast, his eyelids flicker shut as if he’d been struck.

“That’s correct, Harry.” Blake stretched his lips, trying to smile. “I told her about you myself. It was the only decent thing to do. She decamped after the courtesy of a final interview. She expressly told me that she could not face the possibility of bringing an abnormal child into the world. And what with your inadequacy, our bloodline was suspect, to say the least.”

“Jesus.”

As soon as he’d said the words, Blake experienced their loss. He’d kept the reason for Lenore’s departure strictly to himself. He hadn’t even told his grandfather, even when the old man had answered the news of her desertion by disinheriting him.

Harry absorbed the information as if he’d been struck. Even as he watched, Blake witnessed Harry master the pain, somehow become ennobled by it. Blake, for all his months of secret suffering, had not become nobler. He’d become bitter. And he knew it.

Once more he found himself wanting in comparison to Harry. Fury lashed his self-contempt into a white-hot resolve.

No more. Not again. Not ever again would he be found wanting in comparison to his imbecile cousin. He leaned a white-knuckled fist on the desk separating them, forced words through stiff lips. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t be a fool. Of course it matters.”

“No. Not anymore.”

“Does Miss DuChamp realize that we might not even share the same grandfather—”

“No! Besides, a better chatelaine than Lenore exists.” He hadn’t meant to say that, but once spoken, he was glad. His elation outpaced his self-disgust. It wasn’t as if the words weren’t true. He just hadn’t realized before how well suited Desdemona was for the role of his viscountess. He hadn’t said the words out of spite. He hadn’t!

Harry looked as if he’d sustained a heart blow. He swayed ever so slightly … so gratifyingly. “No.”

“Don’t ever presume again,” Blake spat out. “My future and that of any woman I contemplate forming a union with are no concern of yours. None. Don’t dare to presume, don’t dare!”

“You’ll destroy her!” Harry’s words tumbled out, low and throbbing with intensity. “She’s artless and honest and decent. You’ll never forgive her for being better than you are, Blake, for having nobility you can only approximate, and you’ll chip away at her until you’ve destroyed her, until she’s—”

“Shut up!” Blake squeezed his eyes shut.

He would not listen to Harry discuss Desdemona. The thought of their intimacy made his head swim with dark and violent impulses. He hated how casually she touched him, how he followed her with his gaze … “Shut up!” he shouted again to still the flow of images. “You’ve everything! Everything.”

“Everything,” Harry echoed hollowly.

“Everything! You’ve been named Grandfather’s sole heir.” Blake squared his shoulders and opened his eyes to find Harry regarding him in flat disbelief.

“It was because of Lenore,” he went on, determined to finish this, to prove himself. “Grandfather doted on her and after she left, he was furious with me. He punished me by naming you his heir, knowing how I loved Darkmoor Manor, knowing how much it meant to me and how little it meant to you.”

Harry frowned, skeptical and unconvinced. “And you came to Cairo? Why? To tell me in person, about my … fortune?”

“You bastard.”

“I’m disappointed,” Harry said, his flip tone at odds with his tense posture. “You’ve always been careful to make sure your epithets are accurate. Idiot, fool, moron. If nothing else, you know I’m legitimate.”

“Don’t you understand? You will own Darkmoor Manor!”

“I understand perfectly,” Harry said, his bright eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “I’ve been named heir to Grandfather’s estate in retaliation for your losing an approved fiancée. Miss DuChamp must have been a buxom girl. Grandfather was always partial to buxom women. No, I understand that part. What I haven’t figured out is why you’ve come all this way to tell me.

“If I were you,” Harry continued, “I’d be out scouring the English countryside for a suitably well-endowed replacement so I could wiggle into the old man’s good graces before he died.”

Jesus. Blake had never considered the possibility that Grandfather could die while he was gone—He looked up. Harry smiled knowingly.

“Damn you.”

“You’re being redundant.”

“I will do everything in my power to regain what is rightfully mine,” Blake said. “But my first responsibility is to Darkmoor, to seeing that it is properly cared for in the interim. That’s why I’m here.”

“Yes?” Sharper interest now.

“It’s falling apart. If something is not done soon, the foundations will give way and the house will slide into the sea.” He watched intently, trying to gauge Harry’s reaction. “I need money to make the necessary repairs. Lots of money.”

“You want me to give you—”

“No,” Blake clipped out, insulted. “No. I asked the bank for a loan but they won’t give me one. They will only lend that sort of money to someone with the collateral to back it—in other words, to Darkmoor’s heir. You. That is why I’ve come here. I want you to sign the bank papers.” He reached inside his coat and withdrew a thin packet: the bank’s loan papers and a copy of the will naming Harry Darkmoor’s heir.

Harry took the proffered papers, his smile ripe with grim humor. “You want me to sign papers that will make me responsible for repaying a loan that will be used to restore my inheritance after which you will then do your damnedest to do me out of that same inheritance?”

Blake nodded.

“It would seem I come by my brass honestly. Perhaps we’re related after all.” Harry tossed the papers onto the desk.

“If I had any other recourse, I would have taken it. Time is precious. I need the money now.”

“How do I know these are what you say? I’m sure you remember I can’t read. You might be asking me to sign a confession to some heinous crime you’ve committed back in England. You’re not the Ripper, are you, Blake?”

Blake glared at him. “I give you my word as a gentleman they are what I say. If you have any doubts, hire someone to read them for you. I’m sure you must employ someone’s services in that area fairly frequently.”

“True, and of course, I shall do just that. But even if these are what you say, I don’t see how this would be a practical business move on my part, Blake. I mean, I take all the risks, incur all the debt, and you get all the fun of turning my supposed grandsire against me. A rather despicable role and one I humbly suggest I’m far better suited for.”

Blake stiffened. “I will, of course, accept full responsibility for repaying the loan.”

“Of course.” Harry held all the cards and he knew it.

“Darkmoor means nothing to you.”

“That’s true. But I’m a businessman, Blake. You don’t need to read to be a businessman. You only need to understand the simple concept of profit and loss. And I’m asking myself, what profit I?”

“What do you want?”

“Leave Cairo,” Harry answered harshly.

“You bastard!”

Harry did not smile this time, but met and held Blake’s furious gaze with one of his own, his eyes flat and hard and brilliant. “That’s what I want.”

“I can’t believe you entertain notions about Desdemona Carlisle. You can’t honestly want to force that lovely girl to live here, like some Arab tramp, with you for the rest of her life? She’s extraordinary, gifted. You must have some natural affection for her. Want what is best for her.”

“That’s what I want,” Harry repeated, breathing hard. “I’ll sign the papers when you board the boat.”

Blake snatched his hat up from the table. “I won’t be blackmailed.”