CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Harry paced restlessly around the cluttered library until he caught sight of the packet of papers Blake had left with him. He picked up the thin packet and unfolded them. Letters spilled in unrecognizable patterns across the sheet, meaningless and provocative. He tossed them back down.

It had been nearly two days since he’d offered to sign those damned mortgage papers in return for Blake’s vacating Egypt. Two days since he’d offered Darkmoor Manor in exchange for Dizzy.

Since then Blake had avoided him. Blake hadn’t, however, avoided Dizzy. He spent more time here than at his blasted hotel. She allowed it. She was “at home” whenever he called.

For the hundredth time, Harry cursed himself for acting so rashly. All he’d needed to do was sign the bloody papers and within a few days Blake would have been hightailing it back to Jolly Old, making lists of repairs to the family manse. Now bloody Blake would stay until bloody doomsday proving how noble and sincere his aristocratic sentiments were.

Bully for bloody Blake.

Harry rammed his shoulder against the frame of the door leading out into the small walled garden behind the house. His lip curled at the blameless poppies nodding in the early-spring sunlight outside.

If Dizzy found out he’d tried to blackmail Blake into leaving Cairo, she’d have his head. But when Blake had presented him with a chance to be rid of him, he’d fallen on it. He should have: realized how Blake would react to extortion. Blake’s righteous outrage should have been pitifully easy to anticipate. The man was a walking cliché.

Luckily, Blake’s intrepid discretion was just as easily assumed. He wouldn’t tell Dizzy about Harry’s attempted coercion. His gentleman’s code would never allow it. Not that Harry gave a damn. He simply wanted Blake gone.

Leaving Dizzy to him.

His beloved.

Even now, he could hear the murmur of Dizzy’s and Blake’s voices from the sitting room. Though he strained his ears, all he could discern of their conversation was the tone: intimate and maddening.

He raked his hair back from his temples and returned to the library and the book he’d been perusing. Carefully he paged through the dog-eared book, treating it as if it were fragile vellum instead of the cheap foolscap novels of this type were generally printed on. He’d spent the morning skimming the illustrations of this and the other books he’d found tucked along the uppermost ledge of the bookcase.

They had striking similarities. They all featured an insipid-looking, open-mouthed girl and a rock-jawed man with a constipated expression. On the last page of each book was an inevitable picture of the pair, their arms entwined as they strolled toward some moss-mantled manor on a distant hill.

Harry closed the book.

Darkmoor was no pink-and-pastel fairy castle, but it was a manor.

And he could have had it; Darkmoor and, by transference, respect—or at least the qualified approval that came with the ownership of such ghastly rubble piles. He could return to England and, with his financial acumen, make the right investments, cannily parlay his money into wealth. He could force society to acknowledge his success if not his worthiness.

He would never make a name for himself as an Egyptologist. He would never find success in the fascinating field he’d devoted the last decade to studying. But he could have a measure of respect, and that was what he’d always wanted. Or imagined he’d wanted.

Because he’d heard Blake’s disclosure and felt not one whit of triumph, of hope, of eagerness. Because it meant nothing, nothing at all, except that he would have been able to offer Dizzy at least part of the fairy tale.

Would have been.

Unfortunately, owning Darkmoor would not stop the sidelong pitying glances of some damned curate’s wife, the condolences whispered to Dizzy behind his back, the assessing gleam in too-interested masculine eyes as they softly queried, “Why would a woman like that marry the likes of him?”

Abruptly Harry reached up and shoved the book back in its place.

“Harry?” Duraid’s voice interrupted his black musings.

“Come in.”

Duraid entered, spotted the serving platter heaped with half-attended food, and grimaced. “Magi will be upset with you for not eating,” Duraid warned as he began stacking plates.

Harry forestalled him. “Has Lord Ravenscroft left yet?”

“I will look.” Duraid abandoned the luncheon dishes and went out into the hall.

Harry had to find some way to remain in the Carlisle house until he was certain Maurice was no longer a threat. Unfortunately, his bruises were fading. While he could count on Dizzy’s soft heart allowing him to stay, once Sir Robert returned he had little doubt he’d be expelled like yesterday’s bathwater.

“He is going.” Duraid closed the door behind him, immediately rousing Harry’s suspicions. Obviously Duraid had been told to close the door. By whom? Dizzy? And why?

“Open that blasted door, Duraid,” Harry snapped, and then, meeting the startled reproach in the boy’s eye, “We need some air movement in here.”

“They are in the hall,” Duraid whispered.

“So what?”

“They were in the hall when I came to collect the lunch things fifteen minutes ago. Whenever he leaves, it takes a long time. Even though they spend all that time talking, they must say nothing because whenever he leaves he still stands, talking.” Duraid’s caramel-colored eyes widened with mystification.

“What do they talk about?” Any feelings of sheepishness he might feel at pumping the boy for information vanished with Duraid’s answer.

“England.”

“Damn it!”

The boy shrugged, looking doubtful. “Sitt desires.”

Abruptly the irritation that had held Harry’s desolation at bay drained away. Dizzy desires.

There had to be some way to make her see how much she meant to him. Some manner in which to combat the hypnotic lure of England and lantern-jawed aristocrats and fairy-tale castles …

“Duraid, I want you to go to my house and get something for me.” Motioning him near, Harry gave the boy instructions. He’d finished when Magi entered. Duraid passed her on his way out.

“It’s finished,” she said without preamble.

“When?”

“Early today the shabtis was secreted in this Maurice’s house. When he sees Maurice return, the man who did this will inform the Turkish authorities. Maurice will be arrested at once. With such unassailable evidence of his theft, thefts from Sir Robert’s home itself, he will not be released for a very long time.”

“Good.” Harry nodded.

“This is a dangerous game you play, Harry.”

“The alternative is untenable. I won’t wait for Maurice to decide he’ll strike at me through Dizzy. Someday he would.” He heard Dizzy laugh, a rich sound of enjoyment. His lips answered with a smile even as his heart contracted painfully.

“You are a fool,” Magi said quietly.

“Seems to be the popular consensus.”

“I mean it, Harry Braxton. I never thought to say the like to you, who has always seemed a resourceful and level-headed young man, but I must. You are a fool.”

“Third time’s the charm.”

“Fool.”

“You know there’s a popular myth in England concerning modest, silent Eastern women—”

“This is not the time for your glibness. Do you want Desdemona to marry Lord Ravenscroft?”

“No.” The word rang out, harsh and clear, an answer from his heart, his very soul. “She won’t marry Blake.”

“She will,” Magi stated grimly, “because he has no fear. Unlike you.”

“I’m not afraid of—”

“—anything but that Desdemona will pity you, not love you.”

He looked away, unable to form a reply. Magi touched his arm, compelling him to meet her serious gaze.

“For years I have watched you mask your desire. She is drawn to you and you know this and you want this and you will not allow yourself to have it. You will not let her fall in love with you without telling her the truth about yourself, yet you cannot let her go.” Magi’s voice dropped.

“So you keep her like this, month after month, year after year … making her love you, making her distrust you … each day falling more in love with her yourself. Telling her to go away while you make her stay. Afraid of what she will do, what she will say, when she discovers the real Harry Braxton. Not a silly child’s hero, not this Prince of Jackals she likes to call you, but simply a man who cannot read.”

He heard his own heart’s beat, smelled the ancient dust of the surrounding artifacts, the must of antique leather, the perfume of decay. “How did you know?” he asked without surprise.

“All of Cairo knows, Harry,” Magi said softly.

He nodded. What did it matter? Cairo knew his secret and he’d still achieved success, wealth, some respect. He’d achieved everything … except Dizzy’s heart.

Magi opened her palms in exasperation, seeking an explanation. “I do not understand. Why don’t you tell her?”

“She wants to leave,” he said simply. “Every day she plots and plans and strategizes how she will leave Egypt. Why tell her what I am? What purpose would it serve other than provoke her pity?”

Magi shook her head. “She should stay here.”

Should she? Harry rubbed his hand across his eyes. He didn’t know how to untangle his desire for her to stay from his desire for her happiness. He didn’t even know where to begin.

“She deserves more than a crumbling Mameluke palace with a chorus of starving dogs singing her to sleep each night. She wants England.”

“England. Bah!” Magi said. “She has made herself homesick for a fantasy, because no one has offered her reality. I remember when Desdemona came to us. Though grieving for her parents, in this new country her dreams were fresh and sweet and newly possible. She even found a hero …who laughed at her.”

“If he hadn’t laughed, he’d have sobbed with wanting her.” He did not flinch from the condemnation in Magi’s eyes. In this, at least, he was certain. “She was too innocent. Too young;. And he … was too afraid.”

“Ah, yes. Fear again. Is it any wonder that Desdemona is enraptured of the dauntless, suffering viscount? Even his pain recommends him to her. How better to engage Desdemona’s soft heart than to need her? You, Harry, have never needed anyone. Or anything.”

God, what lies he’d enacted.

“Tomorrow is her birth date,” Magi continued. “Lord Ravenscroft will give her pretty things, useless things, things for her enjoyment. He is unique among her acquaintance. Here, at last, is a man who does not care that she can read a dozen languages, decipher hieroglyphics, balance a ledger.” Her finger flew out, pointing at him in a scornful gesture. “He doesn’t care what she does. He does not want the scholar, he wants the pretty, adoring young girl used to making do with little. The perfect wife for an impoverished viscount. He wants—”

“I want her.” Harry broke in tersely. “Never doubt it.”

“Then tell her. Tell her the truth.”

Magi didn’t know what she was asking. He wasn’t the boy who’d damped untold pages with his tears of frustration, or the young man who’d arrived in Egypt certain his life would always be dictated by his inability to make sense of written words. He didn’t want to remember those incarnations. He wanted them dead.

“You call her a romantic and sneer at her fantasies but you only offer her more of the same.” Magi’s finger jabbed the air, punctuating each sentence. “You withhold and reveal as you see fit. It is not fair. It is cowardly. Anything less than the truth is just more make-believe. Desdemona needs a lover who is not a chimera, no matter whose creation, yours or her own.”