EPILOGUE

Lord Blake Ravenscroft hobbled down the promenade deck of the Thomas Cooke’s newest luxury excursion steamer. He found an unoccupied deck chair and lowered himself into it, staring broodingly out over the Egyptian landscape. He motioned for an attendant to bring him a scotch and water. The week-old wound to his leg throbbed and the blasted splint was a nuisance.

Only a few hours had passed since the wedding. He’d come directly from the church without bothering to change clothes. Though there had been no reason whatsoever to prolong his stay, he was pricked by the notion that he’d run away.

The bride had been lovely, Blake conceded, even though her gown had been an odd conglomeration of Eastern and English elements. The veil she’d worn had been some sheer piece of Oriental nonsense. Above the low décolletage she’d worn had been a collar, or a pectoral as Marta Douglass had informed him in awed tones, fashioned in the form of what looked, for God’s sake, to be a jeweled vulture. The effect was disturbing.

But then, the bride was disturbing. Lovely and heart-stoppingly desirable, but decidedly disturbing. Bizarre, one might say. As was this entire Egypt, belonging as it did to no one though so many countries claimed it.

Blake’s gaze slipped wearily over the Nile’s tea-colored waters. In the far distance he could see the desert’s shoulders, muscular and dun-colored, hunched above the river plains.

No one would ever own that.

Perhaps ultimately Egypt belonged to the desert. Who could tell? He only knew this country held nothing for him, no appeal, no charm, no romance. It would always be the battleground upon which he’d been forced to confront his own nature. He’d done so bravely, facing the truth about himself like a gentleman. Why did he feel as if somehow this godforsaken land had revealed some unworthiness in his nature that honor did not address?

No, Egypt wasn’t for him. Just as Desdemona had not been for him. Both had proven to be enigmas he did not want to understand.

Well, he thought, accepting the iced glass of scotch the silent waiter offered him, at least he’d come away from this cursed place with some compensation. He slipped a hand into his inner jacket pocket, reassuring himself that the thick packet of American bills was still folded there. Ten thousand dollars for one bona fide Apis bull. The money would be enough to get him reinstated as his grandfather’s heir. The old man was nothing if not practical.

Yes, Harry had Dizzy but he’d have Darkmoor Manor.

Blake’s smile faltered as he stared into his glass. The damnable thing was that he suspected Harry had gotten the better deal.

Abdul watched his youngest son pack the cooking equipment. For the next six months Rabi would be doing woman’s work, and he would be doing it uncomplainingly. It was Rabi’s punishment.

Abdul shook his head. Not only had his youngest apparently lost his mind and kidnapped Harry’s woman but then, as if to compound his crime, Rabi had given the woman the scroll!

Well, thought Abdul, pointing at a pan that had escaped Rabi’s eye, by the end of his penance the boy would have a keener appreciation of his family’s duty. A duty untold generations old. Though to be fair, Abdul thought, pointing impatiently at some bedding Rabi had yet to pack, it had not been completely the boy’s fault.

Abdul should never have removed the scroll from the tomb. Occasionally, throughout the years and decades, it had been necessary, in order to ensure his family’s well-being, to sell off some small bit from the enormous trove. Always they were small things, indistinguishable as coming from any specific cache. It was only after he’d translated a bit of the scroll that he’d realized it would lead a canny scholar immediately to its source. They were, after all, poems the beautiful queen had written her husband, Akhenaton.

And now Harry, one of the few men Abdul knew would be able to identify the papyrus for what it was, was in possession of a scrap of it.

Abdul had broached the subject of the papyrus on the journey back to Cairo as Harry cradled the Sitt tenderly in his arms and she had drifted in and out of slumber. The Tuareks had helped him find his woman, Abdul had explained, now Harry must return the piece of papyrus.

For a long minute their gazes had met and held. Abdul knew, perhaps more than any other man, what such a discovery could mean to Harry. Harry would obtain much honor among the scholarly community. He would finally achieve the recognition his inability to read had hitherto excluded him from. Abdul had held his breath. Though Harry was an honorable man, and he owed the Hassams much, even Abdul could not tell how he would answer.

Finally Harry’s gaze had broken from Abdul’s and he had looked down at the woman nestled close to his heart. Pure contentment spread over his features.

“I have in my possession only one piece of paper. It is”—he’d lifted his eyes to Abdul and passion and sincerity shined in their pale depths—“a private missive. To me it is priceless. I will never part with it, let it be seen by another, or sell it. To you or anyone else.”

That had been an end to it. Harry never lied.

Abdul sighed and picked up the bedroll at his feet. He threw it at his frightened-looking offspring before relenting and giving the boy a small smile. To give him his due, Rabi had found the woman and the scroll before any serious damage had been done.

Perhaps Rabi would soon be ready for the real family business: guarding Nefertiti’s tomb until such a day as Egypt belonged to Egyptians.

Harry withdrew the vial suspended from a gold chain around his neck. It was warm from resting near his heart. Tightly rolled within the delicate yet strong crystal carrier was a piece of papyrus and on that scrap was a set of simple hieroglyphics.

“You are my own, my always love.”

Even now, the simple message had the power to make his hand shake. He looked up, eagerly awaiting his wife. He could hear her moving about in the adjoining room. He could damn near feel her presence.

His wife.

Five days ago they’d struggled out of the desert under Abdul’s escort. Harry had returned her to her frantic grandfather vowing—or, as Sir Robert later claimed, threatening—he’d be back to marry her.

He’d spent the next few days preparing for their wedding. First Harry had confounded Sir Robert’s gruff reservations by offering the old man the first pick of whatever treasures Harry came into possession of—at in-law rates, of course. It had been painful to watch Sir Robert’s paternal impulses war with his archeological ones. Dizzy, Magi later told him, had tipped the balance by declaring in irrefutable terms that she did not want to go to England, had never wanted to go to England, and that she’d only said she had so that Sir Robert would feel free to return to London and achieve the recognition he deserved.

Apparently Sir Robert’s face had grown comical with extravagant relief. He’d actually teared up; the only words he’d been able to push past the constriction in his throat were, “I hate tweeds.”

That obstacle overcome, Harry had next bribed the necessary Egyptian and English officials—with Simon Chesterton’s blessing—into hastening the licensing procedure. All the while he’d rehearsed ways to convince Dizzy of the sincerity of his love.

If she wanted to live in England, in England they’d live. He’d live anywhere on the bloody planet as long as she was with him.

She hadn’t wanted England; she’d wanted him. When he’d appeared in her bedroom the night before last and told her he loved her and she’d be a damn fool not to realize it and just let them live happily ever after, in whatever the hell country she desired, she’d told him she’d found what she most desired—or rather whom.

The memory of her words pierced him with happiness, and he looked around impatiently. He heard her a few seconds before she came into the room, a vision of silken skin and silken gown, gold and tawny and altogether lovely. She stopped before the open window, shoving the shutters apart so that midafternoon sun flooded the room. The sudden light glowed on her skin, turned her hair into a shimmering veil that spilled over her shoulders and down her back.

“You’d think at the rates they charge Shepheard’s would endeavor to keep their rooms aired,” she grumbled.

He laughed. “I love you, Desdemona. Lord knows, I love you.”

She turned, a smile lighting her face.

He couldn’t seem to say the words often enough, at first because it had been the simple truth that had gone for so long unvoiced but then because of the wondrous change each repetition wrought in her. From wonder to contentment to self-confidence, she flourished.

Just a few days ago, she would have blushed, her gaze would have dropped shyly from meeting his. Now her whole face lit with pleasure.

“You just love me because I can read and in marrying me you think you’ve gotten a free scribe for life.”

His breath caught in his throat. A further illumination. All of his life his inability to read had been something to hide, a source of pain. But she … she teased him about it, gently, tenderly, casually. The effect of her teasing was astonishing. He’d never felt so empowered. So capable of doing anything. He might well author that treatise Sir Robert had for years been badgering him to do. Perhaps the method he’d used to learn hieroglyphics could be used to learn English. Anything was possible now.

Dizzy loved him.

“Don’t try to deny it,” she said, one brow lifted.

“How did you know?” he asked gruffly.

“You’re a terrible opportunist, Harry Braxton. Everyone knows it. Just because I lo—” She paused, eyeing him wickedly. “Suffice to say, I mustn’t allow my personal aberration to cloud my judgment.”

“You said ‘I lo—’ You ‘lo—’ what?” If he adored telling her he loved her, his passion for hearing it from her was nearly as great. He moved closer. She laughed. Beautiful, wide curving lips.

“I love … your mouth.”

He captured her, hauling her into his arms, spinning her around, the feel of her pressed to him heady, pulsing, delicious. The memory of their lovemaking returned with urgent clarity.

“Dear Allah, I am so damn glad you like my mouth.” He could barely hear himself. His words came out in a hoarse whisper. He was too intent on the feel of her intimately rubbing against him. The warm satiny skin was his to touch, to stroke and caress and nibble and … He swallowed. Hard.

At this rate the honeymoon was going to be over before it began.

Her lips touched the base of his throat and roamed in shiver-inducing increments up his throat to the angle of his jaw and over his chin. Her arms crept around his neck and she suddenly swayed into him. She was, he realized, pushing him toward the bed.

“No,” she reproved him in a throaty whisper, drawing her head back and causing him to groan in frustration, “I don’t like your mouth. I love your mouth. I love the look of it.” She swept her fingertip back and forth along his lower lip, her dark eyes nearly black with sexual intent. “I love the shape of it.” She stood on tiptoe, her tongue following the path her finger had just forsaken, nearly bringing him to his knees with longing. “And the taste of it.”

He lifted her into his arms, backing up until he felt the bed bang into the backs of his thighs.

“But most of all I love the feel of your mouth,” she said, and opened her own mouth over his, kissing him deeply, passionately, succulently.

He toppled backward, dragging her down on top of him. They landed with a soft whoosh and sank deep into the down mattress, a tangle of arms and limbs, her hair spilling over his chest.

He closed his eyes, nuzzling his cheek against the cool, silky texture of it. She sprawled over him, all soft womanly skin against his heated male flesh. Abruptly he rolled to the side, carrying her with him, pinning her beneath him. His gaze riveted on hers, stealing her breath with the open hunger of his expression.

Color mounted her throat and cheeks and his lids slipped low as he watched. He opened his mouth and bent near, scenting her fragrance, her taste, the moist salty aura that shimmered a fraction of a degree above her flesh. Her breathing grew rapid beneath his lazy perusal, excited, nervous. She could not stand the strain of his silent intensity.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice pitched a full octave above her normal one. “You shouldn’t look at me like that. It makes me—”

Her voice gave out abruptly.

He met her eye and smiled with roguish laziness. He knew full well what she was about. Slowly, one by one, he began unbuttoning the tiny seed pearls that marched primly up her bodice.

Her pulse raced madly as she vacillated, alternately shy and bold, light-headed with the longing his undressing her engendered.

“Lovely.” He peeled back the first few inches of her bodice and brushed his fingertip over the exposed curve of her breast. She trembled. “Have I ever told you how I learned to read hieroglyphics?”

“How?”

“With my fingertips,” he said softly. “Like this.” He ran his hand beneath the lacy chemise, slipping beneath her breasts, stroking their roundness. “I can read your body just as easily.”

He found her nipples and positioned the hard nubbins in the center of his palms and kneaded her breasts lightly. “I can read the arousal you’re feeling. Not yet desire, but more than simple longing.”

Without warning he left off his attentions to her breasts and swept her skirts above her slender thighs, finding the lacy garters that secured her silk stockings. With infinite delicacy and agonizing slowness, he rolled first one sheer stocking from her leg and then the other. His pale gaze never left her face.

“I can feel your thighs relax,” he whispered. “They’re still closed, furled. They need encouragement to ease open, like a hyacinth blossom.” His hand brushed lightly on the most sensitive skin of her inner thighs. “Open for me, Dizzy.”

She shivered. His touch was both familiar and foreign. Before when they’d made love, it had been a tidal wave of instinct and long-suppressed emotion. This was an inexorable step, the crescendo of an ever-building dance of which he was the maestro. She was being pulled along, uncontrollably and without volition, and he … He seemed so in control, so familiar with passion’s heated music.

It disturbed her that he had mastery over this thing between them where she had none. She did not know what they were sharing and what she was simply receiving. She only knew she had no choice but to ride the rising tide of stimulation and desire that he so effortlessly awoke in her body and heart. She wanted so much to be a part of this, to give as well as take from him. To have it be unique and extraordinary and … and wondrous.

He seemed to understand her agitation, the inexpressible misgivings, for suddenly his hand moved away from that place between her legs. He captured her face between his palms.

“It has never been like this for me, Dizzy. Never. I only dreamed that making love could be this … important,” he said in a hushed, reverent voice. “Diz, I have waited for you for all my life.”

“Me?” She could not hide the tincture of disbelief in her tone.

“Always.” He stared into her eyes. “Do you remember the mirror, Diz?”

She nodded.

“I’d waited years to give that to you, though the sentiment was true from the first time we kissed. And one I carried with me for three years.” His voice was low and hypnotic and flowed over her like ambergris and honeyed wine.

A tear slipped from the corner of her eye. He caught it.

“Am I much alone, Dizzy?” he asked softly. For just an instant the old self-doubts, echoes of the past, clouded his brilliant gaze. She did not ever want to see their like again.

She shook her head roughly, her eyes liquid with reflected pain. “No. Nor am I.”

He touched his lips to hers. He did not want tears from her, not now, not when his blood sang with desire and his heart beat a staccato of such exultation he felt he could not contain it. Now was for surging, joyous passion.

“And”—he took a deep breath and suddenly smiled, the old Harry and the new fully merged, whole and complete—“was that romantic enough for you?”

She did not hesitate a second before answering him, they were that alike, that closely allied in soul as well as heart. Because she discerned his intent and realized it was her own.

Joy.

“It’s a beginning,” she answered archly.

And, indeed, it was.