CHAPTER NINE

The mantel clock struck six A.M. as Desdemona looked up from the account book. In order to balance the household finances, the numbers in the right column of the ledger needed to outweigh the figures in the left. It was a close contest, but this month the income column lost. How was she ever to find enough money to repay her grandfather’s outstanding debts in London when she couldn’t even come up with the fourteen pounds necessary to make this month’s ends meet?

Something would have to be done. But then, there was always something that could be done. And she was the one who invariably did it. She bent over a sheet of paper and began writing.

Not half bad. Now it only remained to add a loving closing, and Lieutenant Huffy could come fetch this latest letter to his jealous wife in England. Desdemona added another five shillings to the income side of the ledger and then steeled herself in preparation for writing the next missive.

She took a deep breath and marched over to the bookshelves lined with leather-clad volume after leather-clad volume of scholarly treatises and tomes, histories and scientific data compiled in English, French, Arabic, and Latin.

She stood on tiptoe and toppled Pliny on his side, reaching behind it and groping around until her hand closed on a small paperbound book. Quickly she withdrew it, glancing down at the title to make sure she’d gotten the right book. My Sins Be Scarlet was by far and away the most lurid of the books sent to her monthly by the New York-based publishing company.

Certainly—she checked the imprint on the face page—Hamm and Ham would not be shy about publishing some Egyptian love poems, even if they were modern Egyptian or more likely some modern European. She noted the address of the publisher and carefully stowed the book back in her hidden cache of romantic novels.

She returned to the desk and spent the next ten minutes penning a polite and professional query to Mr. Hamm. Then she sat back and rang for someone to come and take the letter. While she waited, the thought occurred to her that the publisher might like to see a sample of the poems. She reached down beneath her grandfather’s desk and slipped her hand behind the drawer. A small, dropped shelf was tucked alongside the sliding mechanism. Carefully she withdrew the brown paper-wrapped parcel containing “Nefertiti’s” poetry.

She unrolled the scroll and started reading:

“Sitt requires?” Desdemona dropped the scroll and snapped upright, cheeks burning. Magi had entered the library. Quickly Desdemona retrieved the scroll and rolled it back up.

“What did you say, Magi?”

“You rang the bell a few minutes ago. May I so humbly inquire what it is the Sitt requires?” the housekeeper asked in an ultra-soft voice, her almond-shaped eyes lowered deferentially.

Desdemona grimaced. Magi was still mad at her for being kidnapped. Well, that had been four days ago, it hadn’t been her fault, and it was high time Magi got over it.

“Yes. Sitt requires this letter to be brought down to the docks and mailed to New York forthwith.” With any luck, Mr. Hamm would have the letter by early next week. And then there was the possibility—remote but real—that the Albanian dealer, Joseph Hassam, might know where she could get her hands on an Apis bull. She picked up the note she’d written him earlier. “And if you would take this to Mr. Hassam’s establishment.”

“Of course, Sitt.” Magi bowed and clapped her hands. Immediately the houseboy, Duraid, appeared. His ungainly young form reminded Desdemona of yet another potential problem.

“Duraid, did you notice a young man, a few years older than yourself, hanging around outside?”

“Yes, Sitt. Tuarek. Dirty people,” the boy answered promptly, and with a certain relish. “Do you want I should have the scum arrested?”

“No, Duraid.”

“I could have a few of my friends beat him—”

“No, Duraid.” Desdemona sighed. Duraid was a horrible snob. How they’d managed to raise such an elitist in their midst was beyond her. Still, something would have to be done about Rabi. He couldn’t, as Harry had suggested, have a crush on her. On the other hand, if he thought to kidnap her and sell her again, he had another think coming.

Magi delivered a few curt Arabic words to Duraid and the boy took the letter and sped off, leaving the housekeeper standing in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her waist, eyes to the floor. “Your bidding is done.”

“Good,” Desdemona said.

“Whatever Sitt desires, she must have. I live to serve. She is wisdom, I am but a poor stupid old woman who subsists on her benevolence.”

Magi, ten years her senior and gorgeous, was trying to provoke an argument. Well, two could play at this game. “Allah will be pleased with your humility,” Desdemona said.

“Allah?” Magi speared her with a dark look Bull’s eye.

“Yes, apparently you have finally learned to control your restless woman’s tongue and achieved a proper humility in your dotage.”

Magi’s nostrils widened. “Yes. Mayhaps my transformation is an example for every headstrong, sharp-tongued woman.”

Point for Magi.

“Now,” Magi said, “does Revered Sitt require anything else? Would Revered Sitt like to borrow my yashmak … again?”

“That’s terribly thoughtful of you, Magi. Actually, your veil may come in useful when I—”

“No!” The obsequious manner fell away, as did the soft, broken accent. It was replaced by a perfectly crisp English one. “How many times must I warn you, Desdemona, it is not proper for a lady of your standing to dress up and go into the bazaar? It is only a wonder you have not been kidnapped before. Praise be Master Harry was available to save you.”

Desdemona shoved the scroll back under the desk, irked by Magi’s relentless and completely unwarranted hero worship of Harry. In all other things, Magi was so discerning. Where Harry was concerned, she was blind. “Humph. Harry was nothing more than a courier for his thieving pals.”

Magi swept across the floor on bare; feet, her early years as a pasha’s concubine evident in her graceful movements. “Master Harry was most distraught. He will always come for you,” she said.

“Yes, I expect he shall,” Desdemona said, “as long as there’s something in it for him.” She picked up the silver letter opener and began slitting open the correspondence stacked on the corner of the desk.

“Harry will come for you at whatever risk to himself. Whatever cost. Why are you so unkind to him?”

“I’m not. You romanticize him.” She inserted the tip of the blade into the end and sliced it open with more enthusiasm than she’d intended.

“I do not.”

“You do.”

“I do not.” The older woman’s face softened. “Oh, Desdemona. In so many ways you are such an astute woman. But in the matters of the heart you are so … monumentally stupid! It is you who are the romantic.”

“There is nothing wrong with being a romantic,” Desdemona said. “But thank you for making me reconsider my words. Your insistence on vesting Harry with heroic qualities isn’t romantic, it’s self-delusional. Harry Braxton is the least romantic man I know.”

“That is not what the other ladies in Cairo think,” Magi said slyly. Desdemona snatched another envelope from the stack and ripped the end off the damned thing.

“There is a huge difference between romance and … appetite,” she said tightly.

“Desdemona”—Magi cocked her head in sudden inspiration—“is it perhaps that you do not feel yourself woman enough to satisfy a man of Harry’s experience?”

“No.”

“Because, if it is, I can teach you some means of securing and keeping a man’s interest,” she offered.

“No.” Desdemona blushed, which was ridiculous. Long ago, she’d asked and received from Magi certain explicit information regarding the nature of physical relationships between men and women. She’d received that detailed information unblinkingly. Why that knowledge when spoken in conjunction with Harry should now make her blush was a mystery.

“Just as well.” Magi shrugged. “I do not think Harry requires experience of you.”

“I don’t give a damn what Harry requires!”

“Language!” Magi scolded. She folded her hands at her waist. “Why cannot you see? What happened that you have built this wall between Harry and yourself?”

“Wall?” Desdemona said. “There’s no wall between Harry and me. We understand each other perfectly. We’re friends. Kind of.”

“Friends.” Magi said the word as if it were sour. “Bah. This is a nothing word. You use it to protect yourself.”

“From what?” Desdemona asked, honestly startled.

“This is what I would like to know. I have never pursued the subject, certain that in your own time you would come to see that which is clear. But next week you will be twenty-one years and I have seen a troop of young officers parade through here without ever touching your heart. What do you protect yourself from, Desdemona?” Magi’s voice was soft with concern. “Why do you insist on playing the part of this sleeping person from one of your English fairy tales? Why do you not try to attract Harry?”

“No challenge.” Desdemona took a deep breath, striving for a light tone. “The entire female population of Cairo has already accomplished it.”

“I do not know.” Magi cocked her head, frowning as she studied Desdemona. “I do not think this is simply jealousy. You are not by nature a covetous woman, Desdemona. Is it something else. Perhaps … did Harry at one time become too ardent? Too demonstrative?”

Desdemona cut off the sob—whether of laughter or pain she would never have been able to say.

But Magi was quick to read her and stared in astonished dismay. “Oh, my dear. If when he was younger, bolder, more unruly, he overwhelmed you with his—”

“Good God, no!” She cut Magi off in a voice low with embarrassment and hurt. “Quite the opposite.”

“Desdemona?”

“Harry doesn’t want me, Magi.”

“Impossible.”

“Oh, quite possible. In truth, a fact.” She laughed, a splintered sound. “I am loath to admit it, even to you dear friend, but he was offered me on a silver platter! I, you see, did the offering.”

“Oh, my.”

“Yes. So now you understand, there’s no need to—”

“There is every need. You must have misunderstood. I see how he looks at you. I see how he cares for you.”

“Magi, there is no possible way I can have misunderstood. I went to his house, dressed in”—her face burned with fire—“in a most provocative manner. I … I kissed him. He told me to go home.”

She told Magi the story then: how she sneaked into his home and found him in his library. He had jerked away from her kiss and scooped her up against his chest. His arms had been wrapped so tightly, so fiercely about her, she had thought he was taking her to his room. But he hadn’t, and she knew now that the tightness of his clasp had been from panic. He’d practically run to the door of his house and set her down on the front steps. He hadn’t even called a carriage for her. He’d told her to go back to England to find her Galahad and slammed the door shut.

He’d avoided her for a week, then two. And after she’d cried all her tears and forfeited all her illusions regarding Harry and love and happily-ever-afters, then, anxious and uncomfortable, then he’d arrived. It had been the one and only time she’d ever seen imperturbable, affable Harry truly nonplussed, when he’d gravely suggested they discuss what had occurred.

She’d stopped him cold. She simply could not have borne his pity or compassion or weak, watered affection. She’d fixed him with a bright smile—a brilliant smile—and told him not to be so damned full of himself. She’d said she didn’t want to discuss the matter. Ever. It had been a stupid little fancy she’d taken into her head. It wouldn’t be repeated. She was quite over it.

And she was. Dammit, she was.

“So you see, I tried,” she finished, somehow finding a light tone.

Magi was frowning. “When did this happen? You sneaked out of this house dressed like a bin-tilkha’ta?” she asked, using the Arab word for prostitute. “I did not see you. How did you accomplish this?”

Desdemona shook her head. Leave it to Magi to focus on that aspect of the mortifying debacle. Magi prided herself on knowing every single movement of those under her care.

“It was three years ago. A lifetime.”

“Aha,” Magi returned, mollified. Her eyes grew large. “Then perhaps Harry has changed—”

“No.” Desdemona shook her head. “Harry has not changed. Leave it alone, Magi. We’re comfortable as we are. Harry teases me about my one-time infatuation and that’s fine. I … I would never admit this to anyone, especially not him, but I value his friendship, Magi. It is important.”

“Still, something does not fit. And now there is this man, this cousin of Harry’s.”

“Lord Ravenscroft.”

“I do not like how you say his name. You sound like an awe-filled child whispering the name of a favored bedtime story.”

Desdemona scowled. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Magi. First you pester me about Harry, now you don’t like his cousin. You haven’t even met Lord Ravenscroft. He’s a fine man. A handsome man. A viscount.”

“I do not need to meet him,” Magi said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He will be a wide man with too much hair and a cross expression on his face.”

“Cross?”

“Unhappy, crabby. You will say he broods,” Magi said.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” Desdemona sniffed.

“Yes, you do. Now Harry … he is—”

“Stop it, Magi.”

“I will not. You must—”

A light rap on the door interrupted Magi. A young Arab house girl poked her head in. “Master Harry is here,” she said, grinning broadly.

“Show him in,” Magi said before Desdemona could say a word. With a triumphant smile, she glided to the door.