Mr Impossible (13 page)

Her beastly,
unwomanly temper. Five years of Virgil’s gentle reproofs had
not helped subdue it. On the contrary, the reproofs only made her
angrier.

Mr. Carsington did
not mind her temper at all.
Exciting
, he called it—though she might have got them both killed.

She looked up at
him as he wrestled with her hair and the turban.

He was… very
much alive.

She was acutely
aware of the rise and fall of his chest, of his breath on her face,
and of his dark gaze focused on her head. And of his hands, those
capable hands… so reassuring during the long, dark journey
through the pyramid. And so dangerous, making her want more, making
her impatient… to be touched.

Her heart began to
race.

She swatted his
hands away. “Never mind,” she said. “I’ll
wear a shawl.”

She hurried out of
the room and walked straight into Leena. Daphne glared at her and
continued on. When they were out of earshot she said, “Have you
been eavesdropping—listening at the door?”

“
Yes,”
Leena said, not in the least abashed. “But his voice is so low,
all I hear is a growl. Is he making love to you?”

Daphne hurried on.
“Certainly not.”

Leena followed.
“But your hair is down.”

“
I had a
temper fit and threw off my turban,” Daphne said. “I need
to change. I’m going to the
suq
.”

“
Now?”
Leena said, baffled.

They entered
Daphne’s bedroom. She pulled a pair of women’s Turkish
trousers out of the cupboard and found a shirt. She tore off the
clothes she’d been wearing since yesterday and threw them on
the floor. “Burn them,” she told the maid.

“
I do not
understand you,” Leena said. “Why do you not send me to
shop while you stay and let him take off your clothes? What is the
good of being a great lady if you do the work of servants and take no
pleasure?”

Daphne went to the
washbasin. While hastily washing, she reminded Leena that this was no
time for pleasure. Not to mention that she was the daughter of an
English clergyman! And the widow of another!

“
Yes, but
they are dead, and you are alive,” Leena said. She gave her
mistress a towel. “And this man—
y’Allahl
You
saw how he lifted big Wadid straight off the floor.” She
pressed her plump hands to her plumper bosom. “So strong. So
handsome. I saw how you looked at him. You—”

“
My brother
is
missing
,” Daphne cut in tightly. “People have
been
murdered
.”

“
Yes, but you
have not.” Leena helped her into the loose shirt. “I
would like to be in a dark place with such a man. I would not hurry
out.”

Leena’s moral
principles left a great deal to be desired. But she was intelligent,
multilingual, and highly efficient. While she lectured her mistress
about missed opportunities—and life’s brevity and
unpredictability— the maid’s hands worked as busily as
her tongue.

In a very short
time, Daphne returned to the
qa’a
,Cairo’s answer
to an English drawing room or salon.

Mr. Carsington
studied her for a good while, his dark gaze traveling slowly from the
head veil Leena had pinned onto a cloth cap, down over the cloak that
covered the thin shirt and most of the trousers.

His hands might as
well have made the journey.

She could imagine
the touch, practically feel it. Her skin came alive, and she could
scarcely stand still.

He tipped his head
one way, then the other. Then, “I give up,” he said. “Who
are you this time?”

A mad, bad, wild
girl.

No, a woman who
knew how to subdue her worst impulses.

“
It doesn’t
matter,” she said. “Everyone will stare at you. I’ll
simply blend into the background.”

“
I think
not,” he said.

She looked down at
herself, at the body she’d never understood and had been taught
not to trust. “I was trying not to look foreign.”

“
It’s
more useful to look fetching,” he said. ‘To dazzle Anaz
into revealing all his secrets.“

“
It doesn’t
matter how useful it would be,” she said. “I can’t
do it.”

“
Can you
not?”

“
No,”
she said firmly. “I am not that sort of—that—”
He regarded her steadily, his dark eyes unreadable. Her heart pumped
overfast. Her fogged mind thickened. “I’m not like the
women you’ve met in Society… and the other places,”
she said. “I’m bookish.”

“
Readingimproves
the mind,” he said, and there was no mockery in his eyes.

“
But not the
personality,” she said. “I’m not fascinating. I’m
tactless and cross and stubborn.” And worse. What she must
admit embarrassed her. The battle within, which she could never speak
of aloud, shamed her more. She was beastly hot in consequence, and
her face, she knew, was scarlet.

But Daphne was
nothing if not persevering. “It isn’t at all the sort of
thing men like,” she said. “We must find another way of
wringing Mr. Anaz’s secrets from him.”

“
Certainly,”
he said. “I’ll wring him if you wish.” The oddly
penetrating expression vanished as though it had never been, and he
was once more the cheerful blockhead she’d first supposed him
to be.

Her tension eased a
very little bit.

She had grown so
used to being ignored or, when she wasn’t ignored, earning some
man’s disapproval or disappointment. She’d learnt how to
steel herself against these reactions. They didn’t hurt her
anymore.

With him she was
all at sea, and at the mercy of the storm within.

She drew the veil
over her face. “We’d better go,” she said. She
turned to Leena, who stood in the doorway looking both disapproving
and disappointed. “If anyone asks,” Daphne told her,
“we’ve gone to buy a rug.”

VANNI ANAZ WAS a
former mercenary of unknown origins—Armenian, Albanian, Syrian,
Greek, no one could say for sure. But everyone knew he’d
settled long ago inEgypt, where he conducted a profitable trade in
rugs, drags, and antiquities. His shop, Daphne told Mr. Carsington on
the way, was more like those ofEuropethan the typical
cupboard-sized
dukkan
of the main shopping quarters. The typical shop, seven feet high at
most and three or four feet wide, could hold no more than three
customers at a time. They would sit and smoke and bargain half the
day over a length of cloth or a copper pot. The shop floors stood two
or three feet above street level, making them even with the stone
bench built against the front for the inconvenience of passersby
trying to squeeze throughCairo’s narrow streets. These stone or
brick obstructions were called
mastabas
, Daphne explained, and it was upon them that business was
transacted.

Anaz’s shop
was more like a private house. One went inside to view the rugs, and
negotiated with the merchant while seated upon the divan.

Not on view when
they entered was Mr. Anaz’s collection of articles from tombs
he and his agents had plundered.

“
He is
regarded as a reputable merchant,” Daphne whispered to Mr.
Carsington while they waited for the rug dealer to appear. “But
the word
reputable
is more elastic inEgyptthan inEngland. I think it most disreputable
to make up stories about hieroglyphic guides to a pharaoh’s
treasure.”

“
You said the
papyrus contained royal symbols,” Mr. Carsington said. “A
pharaoh is at least mentioned, I take it?”

She nodded. “A
king’s name is enclosed in an oval called a cartouche. Miles’s
papyrus had two. The simpler contained a circle, a scarab beetle,
three short vertical lines, and a shallow bowl or basket.”

She frowned at the
paneled door to the back rooms. “Is the man
never
coming? Dishonest persons might make off with half the shop while he
dallies.”

“
Maybe he has
a woman back there,” Mr. Carsington said.

Daphne looked up at
him. “Do you never think of anything else?”

“
I try to put
myself in the other fellow’s shoes,” he said. “I
ask myself what I’d be doing. Or what I’d most
like
to be doing.”

He looked down
straight and deep into her eyes, and down thatmidnightgaze took her,
into deep waters. She couldn’t catch her breath or find her
balance. Her mind went dark and her hand came up and she almost,
almost caught hold of him.

A noise from the
back of the shop broke the spell.

He looked away
toward the sound. She did, too, sick with dismay. Lack of sleep was
the trouble, she tried to tell herself. Fatigue sapped the will and
the mental faculties. But a small, vicious, inner voice mocked
her:
Sleep won’t cure what’s wrong with you
.

“
Mr. Anaz,”
Mr. Carsington called out.

He did not shout,
but his deep voice seemed to expand and intensify. Such a voice,
Daphne thought, might have easily commanded armies or instantly
silenced the drunken masses gathered inRome’s Coliseum. It
called her to the present and brought her sharply alert.

It did not bring
the shopkeeper running, however.

Mr. Carsington’s
expression hardened. He moved to the inner door and pushed it open.

“
Confound
it,” he said, and added with a warning gesture to Daphne,
“don’t move.”

She ignored the
warning and hurried to the door. He put up his arm, but she pushed it
away and looked at what he tried to hide.

Vanni Anaz lay on
the floor, staring wide-eyed up at them. A red line snaked across his
throat, and a pool of blood spread under his head.

RUPERT DID NOT wait
to find out whether she’d faint or not but drew his knife and
moved swiftly across the room. He’d seen a door curtain flutter
as he entered. The killer couldn’t have gone far.

Rupert couldn’t
hear the lurker, but he sensed his presence, an awareness that grew
stronger as he reached the curtained doorway. He pushed the curtain
to one side— and promptly retreated.

A large stone
figure crashed to the floor, exactly where he would have been had his
instincts failed him.

He heard Mrs.
Pembroke shout, “Don’t!” as he leapt through the
doorway and onto the retreating figure. His target went down, but
twisted free, and started up onto his feet. He kicked Rupert, who
grabbed his foot. His opponent tried to shake him off. With a hard
yank, Rupert unbalanced him. The man tried rolling away, kicking and
thrashing. Rupert slowed him with an elbow to the head, and soon had
him pinned down, a knee pressing on the small of his back.

“
Look out!”
Mrs. Pembroke cried.

Rupert ducked, and
the missile caught him near the temple. He saw stars. He saw, too,
the other villain bearing down on him, knife upraised. Rupert flung
himself at him.

They went down,
grappling with each other while falling pottery crashed about them.

Another figure
appeared from nowhere, and another voice called out in Arabic. While
Rupert knocked away one assailant, he saw out of the corner of his
eye Mrs. Pembroke pluck something from the floor and leap into the
fray.

He couldn’t
tell what it was, hadn’t time. But he heard a yelp, and one of
the attackers stumbled away, turbanless, clutching his head. Holding
a large object aloft, she went after him, and the fellow ran. Then
something struck the back of Rupert’s head. The world went
black with flashing lights. The ground opened up under his feet, and
down he went.

The lights went
out.

THE LIGHT CAME back
slowly. Rupert smelled frankincense and ambergris and something else
his brain called
she
. A feminine-scented softness pillowed his head. A pulse beat later
he realized it was a woman’s bosom. The pleasant stroking
against his cheek was a soft, smooth, lady’s hand.
Hers
. The exotic fragrance was hers, too. Incense. Goddess scent.