CHAPTER THREE

Desdemona flipped over in her bed. The words kept her from sleep, teasing a deep warmth from her body. All evening she’d pored over the papyrus. Not an authentic papyrus, of course. Akhenaton and Nefertiti’s tombs had never been found.

She could have offered the scroll’s creator a few pointers on counterfeiting age on papyrus, she thought. This was too clean, the vegetable dye too fresh looking, the whole too well preserved. The author’s imaginative abilities, on the other hand, were another matter altogether.

Not only were the verses erotic, sensual, and graphic, but they touched the heart as well as aroused the, er, spirit.

At ten o’clock Desdemona had been interested, by midnight she was riveted, and by one A.M. she’d developed such heart palpitations only a brisk sponge bath in cold water had relieved her. She’d been lying in bed for the last hour, unable to get the verses out of her mind. They were nothing like the romantic books she kept hidden in her grandfather’s library and far more graphic than anything her own imagination had thus far come up with.

When she’d been twelve, she and her parents had stayed with a professor of antiquity in Hamburg. He had a daughter Desdemona’s age, Maria. In her, Desdemona had found her first real girlfriend. Each day the two girls would excuse themselves to go study. In reality, they would lie on Maria’s great featherbed, staring out the window and trading daydreams. They made up stories that had nothing to do with philosophies or academics or politics, but instead recounted deeds noble and worthy by men, honest and brave, who loved their beautiful ladies far better than they loved wealth or fame or power.

It was a harmless pleasure she nurtured during the seemingly endless rounds of symposiums and conferences her parents—and she—attended. She would take the dry, sterile little episodes of her life and build elaborate, wonderful stories around them.

As she grew older she kept up the practice, secure in the knowledge that being a romantic did not mean being a fool. What harm did it do to weave a little magic around mundane events? She knew the hero of her imagination didn’t exist. But if a few flowery words could help assuage the nameless longings …

She moved restlessly beneath the sheets. Romantic she might be, fanciful she was not. Longings, indeed. If she kept up this nonsense, she’d convince herself Harry was simply misunderstood rather than a self-confessed, unrepentant, charming rogue. She forced her thoughts back to the matter of the papyrus.

This wasn’t the sort of things one picked up on the sidewalk outside Shepheard’s Hotel. This was geared to a highly specific type of collector. A male collector.

Men, Desdemona had learned, were fascinating, often self-delusional creatures. The same man who would not consider looking at, let alone owning, such steamy salaciousness when printed between the covers of a modern book jacket would pay ten times over for that same verse when written by an ancient hand on a decaying piece of pounded vegetable pulp. And that man would not thank anyone to point out that new ink on old weeds does not an antiquity make.

A buyer was out there. She only needed to find him. Discreetly. She couldn’t very well stand about on the street corners hawking Egyptian pornographic verse. Such activity was bound to ruin one’s chances in society. Or, at least, the society she’d join once they returned to London.

The thought brought a frisson of discontent that she quelled. Hopelessly longing after something one could never have was pointless. Having learned the benefits of ruthless practicality, she’d long since decided that if her future lay in England, then England she would love.

She couldn’t stay in Egypt without her grandfather, and her grandfather wanted—and deserved—to return to London. He was nearly sixty. He ought to have the opportunity to enjoy some well-deserved acclaim.

She sighed and rolled her cheek into a pillow clad in Egyptian cotton so finely woven that it felt like brushed satin. She’d miss Egyptian cotton.

She felt Harry’s mouth, a thing fashioned for ecstasy and sin, roam with wicked delicacy along her throat, trace the wing bone jut of her clavicle, and follow the incipient swell of her breast to the very …

Desdemona woke in slow, delicious increments as a light, warming breeze soughed over her through the netting that surrounded her bed in the Egyptian style. Wonderful sensation, though a curious one since she distinctly recalled Magi closing the shutters last night. A slight noise, exactly like the cushioned fall of a foot, caught her attention. Without turning her head, she opened her eyes.

Through the gauzy tenting she saw a man moving about with economical—and devious—grace. Harry Braxton was expertly and stealthily rifling through her drawers.

There would, Desdemona thought, have been a time when Harry would have found something in her drawers. Not now. Five years had taught her everything she needed to know about Harry, and no amount of fermented goat’s milk could erase that cautionary knowledge.

Her very first lesson had been never, ever, leave anything of value in an easily accessible location. Like a drawer. Well, she amended as he scowled and straightened, his hands on his hips as he looked around her room in exasperation, maybe not the first lesson. The first lesson had been that looks were deceiving.

When she’d arrived in Egypt five years ago, she had promptly fallen madly, passionately, desperately in love with Harry. She’d just come to live in a strange land with a grandfather she’d never met. She’d been as credulous as only academic parents could make an only child. In short, staggeringly credulous. Harry Braxton, young, charming, and athletic, had seemed like the quintessential storybook hero.

Now, with five years of hindsight to guide her, she realized that anyone—indeed, any thing, including a crocodile lurking in the Nile—was better suited to the role of romantic hero than Harry. He wasn’t even that good-looking, she thought, watching him through half-closed eyes.

Once she’d likened him to a Greek or Roman god. She nearly snorted. About the only thing epic on Harry’s countenance was his nose; a nice, bold specimen. The rest of his face was pure north European, not Mediterranean. He had high, broad cheekbones; a clean, canted jaw line that clipped out in a ninety-degree angle from his throat; thick, nut-brown hair; and pale blue eyes banked by dense bronze lashes. A god would have had soulful obsidian orbs. There were times when Desdemona doubted Harry even had a soul.

Nope, she thought with satisfaction as Harry disappeared into her closet and returned a few moments later, she was over her childish infatuation. She could not help it if her dreams occasionally forgot the lessons daily life had taught her. It had to be enough that during her waking hours she was wise enough to know the difference between fiction and reality.

Indeed, she congratulated herself, she was so well over it that she could even admit the points of Harry’s physical appearance that did not suffer in comparison to a Greek god’s.

Like his mouth. Harry had a nice mouth. No, honesty compelled her to admit, Harry had a beautiful mouth. It was wide and mobile with firm lips, the upper bowing into a sensually pronounced philtrum above the full, sculpted band of the lower. Harry’s lips looked sensitive. Harry’s lips, thought Desdemona, looked like they could read Braille.

His smile was disarming, too. Seductive. Why, last night—while granted she’d not been herself—hadn’t even the most casual of his smiles seduced her, appealed to her, made her read into it a warmth that simply didn’t exist? Too bad he not only knew this but used it to shameless advantage. If she had a pound for every woman who’d fallen victim to Harry’s grin, she’d be living on custard and foie gras instead of hiring out her services as a translator, correspondent, and whatever else she could to augment the household’s overextended funds.

And finally, she had to admit Harry had a nice form—if one were partial to a rather attenuated version of the classic physique. Which, drat it all, she was. He was lithe and supple and strong. Rather like a feral cat, she thought as he suddenly dipped and felt along the bottom of her desk.

She allowed herself a small, victorious smile. Nothing there, Harry, old chap.

He stood up, looking annoyed, and after pulling a chair noiselessly over to the wall, leapt lightly atop it. He peered into the wall sconce.

“How stupid do you think I am?” Desdemona asked curiously. “Anything hidden there would be set on fire the minute the jets were raised.”

Harry whirled. The chair started tipping over. An ordinary man would have tumbled and fallen flat on his face. But then, an ordinary man hadn’t spent so much of his life sneaking about. Harry simply jumped out of the range of the toppling chair like a house cat avoiding the crash of the furniture it upturned. And just as nonchalantly as that cat, he gazed at her.

“Dizzy, m’dear, you’re awake,” he said with unfeigned pleasure.

“What are you doing here, Harry?”

“I’ve come to see how you are?” The assurance came out as a question. “I stopped by this morning and Magi said you were still snoring away. Next time you visit a trading camp, avoid the fermented goat’s milk. That stuff will lay a strong man out for a week.”

Uncomfortable, she looked away. At least being tipsy accounted for all that nonsense she’d been thinking about “desert princes and harems” before she had realized just which prince had come for her.

The Prince of Jackals.

Mythic creature formed of wind and darkness, indeed. Tipsy? She’d been drunk. The thought was comforting.

“Well, as you can see I’m fine. Now would you care to explain why you are looting through my things?”

“Looting? What a vulgar choice of words,” Harry said. “I was merely waiting for you to wake up and looking about for something to do.”

“Theft is an interesting pastime.”

“You used to be such a sweet creature. So trusting.” He tched gently. “Whatever happened to you?”

“You.”

“Dizzy, you wound me. You really do. Actually,” he hurried on, doubtless reading her willingness to do battle in her eyes, “I have come about that papyrus you promised to translate.”

“I only promised that when I thought you had risked life and limb to save me from the clutches of heinous villains, not simply answered a call from your reprobate pals to come and take me off their hands—for a hefty fee, I might add,” she finished darkly.

“Abdul went through a lot of trouble to see you were safely—and discreetly—returned.”

“Abdul is a smelly desert rat and runs with the same.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How did you get involved, Harry?”

“Don’t look at me like that. I did not arrange to have you kidnapped.”

“Oh?” she said. “You were pretty quick with a suggestion of how I could repay your heroism.”

“You should be relieved I don’t demand the obvious and customarily accepted mode in which a damsel repays her debt to the man who has saved her life.” He moved around to the side of her bed and placed one palm flat beside her hip, drawing the sheet tight over her lower body, leaning over her. His face was suddenly lost in shadows, his expression inscrutable. For a long moment he studied her.

“Little temple cat,” he finally murmured. His voice filtered like smoke through her thoughts: dangerous, warm, obscuring smoke. “I said you belong to me.” He leaned closer. She could hear the slow intake of his breath.

Confusion raced with arousal along her nerves. Last night she’d thought he’d seemed different and now, today, again, their familiar relationship was off balance, skewed. “Or do I belong to you?” he mused in that hypnotic whisper, longing and irony intertwined in his gaze. Longing.

She closed her eyes. Her skin shivered with electric awareness, her blood saturating the nerves with restless stimulation. She forced her breathing to a regular pace. Her reactions were simply the last vestiges of fatigue and inebriation.

She counted to ten. Her muscles tightened involuntarily with the notion that all she had to do was move forward a few inches to feel the lips that had tormented her in her dream touch her in reality.

But this wasn’t a dream and she had none of the excuses for her unruly thoughts that she’d had last night. She may not yet be in control of her body’s reaction to Harry, but she could certainly control her thoughts.

“Would I take the reward, were it offered?” A layer of desperation lay beneath his casual tone. Nonsense. She forced herself to smile and opened her eyes. He was toying with her.

“You know there is absolutely no chance of collecting that reward.”

“Do I?” he mused. A shadow of … self-mockery? No. More probably fatigue crossed his face. He straightened abruptly, his face carefully blank. “Well, I didn’t have you snatched. Do you think I’d resort to such measure just so you would translate some scribblings?”

“Yes.”

“I wouldn’t. I didn’t. You’re not the only translator in Cairo. The place is rank with translators.”

“But I am the best.”

“Such self-conceit.” He shook his head sadly. “It isn’t at all desirable in such a pretty, delicate, and fragile-looking young woman.”

Hearing the twist he gave words that she’d applied to herself only a day ago, Desdemona’s face grew hot. He grinned. Evil, mind-reading wretch.

She stabbed him with what she hoped was a superior glare. “I am the best and you know it. The wunderkind of Egyptology. Why, my father had me—”

“—‘translating glyphs when I was six years old,’ ” Harry finished in a bored voice. “Yes, yes. I’ve heard it all before. I hate to think what your life would have been had your parents finished what they started.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” She rose up on her arms and her light blanket slipped to her lap. Harry’s light eyes skittered over her, jerking away.

“For God’s sake, Dizzy, have you no modesty?” He lifted the ragged lace strap from her shoulder. His fingers shivered as they brushed her shoulder. Or was that her own response? Her belly muscles tightened. “More important,” he said tersely, “have you no decent bedclothes?”

He was not so unsusceptible as he would like to be, she thought triumphantly. Drat him anyway, teasing responses from her body and then chastising her for her immodesty! Well, she wasn’t the only one prey to human failings, susceptible to certain unaccountable but undeniable attractions. And if rumor was to be believed, Harry was more “susceptible” than most.

“May I remind you that you are in my bedchamber uninvited? If my lack of modesty or my choice of nightrails offends you so much, go.” She sat up straighter, aware of the swing of her unbound breasts beneath the thin, worn cotton nightrail, the flush blooming across her chest and flowing up her throat at her unaccustomed boldness.

“If you’d stay decently wrapped under your blankets instead of traipsing about in that flimsy—” He broke off. His eyes fixed somewhere over her left shoulder. “May I remind you that I am not your ancient eunuch, your cursed brother, or your feeble uncle? I’m a man, Dizzy,” he said, his breathing rapid and angry. “Just a man. But sometimes that’s enough.”

Her pulse quickened in response to his low, urgent tone. All of Cairo viewed this man as someone to be reckoned with, and all of Cairo’s women saw him as desirable. Including, damnation take it, herself.

But the ability to awake a man’s baser interests wasn’t the same as awakening his heart, Magi had adjured her on many occasions. And that is what she wanted, a man who loved as well as desired her. That man wasn’t Harry. He’d made that clear long ago. Regardless of how he teased her.

“Then don’t come in here unless you’re invited,” she snapped angrily, abandoning her plan to punish Harry with longings similar to those she felt. What purpose could it possibly serve? “And stop mocking me about my former … delusions. Someday, Harry Braxton, the tables will be turned. Someday you’ll be the one humiliated by an ill-conceived and absolutely unwarranted fascination.”

“So you promise … repeatedly.”

She wriggled down against the pillows, tucking the blanket up under her chin. “Someday you’ll be on your knees—yes, on your knees—because of some woman, Harry—”

“Sounds painful.”

“—and when you are, I’ll be there to see it.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he said, suddenly serious. And then he grinned, switching from grave-eyed male to reckless, charming rogue and in the process confusing her. “You’re a fascinating woman, Diz.”

She snorted.

“I mean it. Just look at you,” Harry said with something that might, if one were of a fanciful disposition, have been approval. “Self-confident, competent, vivacious. Egypt has made a woman of you. Why ever would you want to go back to that mold manufacturing plant called England? Egypt reeks of romance and a good half of Her Majesty’s officers are madly in love with you—”

“For heaven’s sake, Harry, do you honestly believe that this palaver will twine me about your little finger?” she asked. “You just want me to stay here because I’m the cheapest of the translators you hire.”

“I want you to stay.” His gaze locked with hers. For a second, shadows moved in his bright eyes. “At any rate, Dizzy, my dear, until you’ve done my translations.” He chucked her lightly under her chin, but one finger lingered to touch her cheek. “Now, now. Don’t look like that. You have only yourself to blame. If you didn’t insist on indulging your thespian impulses by dressing up and lurking about the bazaars looking like some poor fool’s angel or a houri—” He rose and thrust his hands deep in his pockets, sauntering away from the bed.

“I wasn’t lurking. I was attempting to blend in.”

“Exactly,” he muttered in a distracted tone. “You know you are much safer dressed as an English citizen than an Arab woman. You have no idea how poor Abdul was sweating when he discovered who, or rather what, his youngest son had brought home from market.” He stopped near her battered desk and hitched his hip up against it.

“Why didn’t you come get me straight off?”

“I didn’t know where you were. I just about went mad—” For an instant his expression tightened into something resembling pain. No. Frustration. Harry would have hated being thwarted.

“Abdul was so distraught by the situation he neglected to impart that rather pertinent bit of information in his note.” Incredibly, his gaze fell away from hers, as if he were uncomfortable. “So I scouted around until I found you.”

“It took you long enough.”

“I started north of the city. He went south. Poor Abdul.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Harry. They’re slavers.”

“Abdul is not a slaver,” Harry said. “It’s enterprising young Rabi who wishes to expand the family business into a new, lucrative sideline.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t thought of it.”

“Oh,” he said, “I’ve thought of it.”

Desdemona’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Have you no decency?”

“Certainly,” Harry said. “I just choose to ignore it. As you did when you took advantage of poor Rabi and accepted …?” He trailed off invitingly.

“Aha!” Desdemona crowed. “Now we get down to it. That’s the real reason you’ve sneaked in here.”

“Why is Braxton here?” her grandfather asked from the doorway.

It said much about her grandfather’s confidence in her that he did nothing more than raise his eyebrow at Harry’s appearance in her bedchamber. And, too, Harry insisted on acting under the completely unfounded assumption that he was somehow looked upon as a member of the family.

“Why are you here, Braxton?” her grandfather repeated.

“I came to see how Dizzy was and to ask you both to dinner at Shepheard’s this Friday evening.”

“Why?” Sir Robert asked suspiciously.

“My cousin is here, healing from a broken heart. Or so my mother writes. I promised her I’d introduce him to the assorted Inglizi littering the place.”

“Cousin?” Desdemona asked.

“Lord Blake Ravenscroft.”

Desdemona’s interest awoke. She knew Harry had a family in England. An extensive, loving one. After each Christmas he sported new shirts for weeks on end. She hadn’t realized there was a lord among them.

“Really?” she asked.

Harry gave her a sardonic smile. “Oh, you’ll love him, Desdemona. He’s so damn English I expect he carries a piece of Buckingham Palace around as a talisman. And romantic! Broad, dark … bulky. I assume he spends a good deal of time pouting—though you’ll doubtless call it ‘brooding.’ At least he did as a child. The most boring, humorless companion I’ve ever been forced to spend a summer with. I can’t think that a dozen years will have changed him much.”

Harry didn’t like his cousin; she was half in love already.