Mr Impossible (48 page)

“
I cannot
believe you so addlepated as to imagine Nox-ley would fight fair,”
Daphne said, when Rupert waxed indignant on this point, calling it
“deuced unsporting.”

“
But it
isn’t
done
,” Rupert said. “Ask your brother. Ask anybody. I did not
draw my pistol. I did not draw my knife. I had never killed anybody,
and I did hope it would not be necessary.”

He was a great deal
more upset than he let on. He hadn’t meant to throw Noxley out
the window. At least Rupert hoped he hadn’t. At such times,
though, a man was not truly capable of thinking. It was all instinct.
Noxley had stabbed him. Rupert had yanked out the blade and thrown it
aside—and the next thing he knew, Noxley was sailing out of the
window.

Having got the
wound as clean as she could, Daphne quickly and neatly stitched it up
and bandaged it.

“
Tray do not
distress yourself about Noxley,” she said, quite as though
she’d spent the last few minutes reading his mind. “He
would have killed you without a second thought, certainly with no
qualms. He had no conscience whatsoever. A moral vacuum. He must have
what he wanted. Anyone who stood in the way must be annihilated.”

She turned away to
the medicine case that stood on the floor nearby. Rupert couldn’t
see what she was doing. After a moment, she turned back, a small
glass in hand.

“
I had not
realized he wanted me until his men dropped a hint,” she said.

“
I told you
he wanted you,” he said. “It was obvious in the way he
looked at you. He might have been mad for power and fame, but he
wasn’t blind.”

“
Power and
fame can be costly,” she said. “He was not in lust with
my person alone. He doted equally upon my fortune.”

It took a moment
for Rupert to fully grasp what she was saying, and these mental
exertions must have shown in his face because she said, frowning,
“You did know Virgil left me heaps and heaps of money, did you
not? All the world knew, I thought.”

“
Heaps and
heaps?” he said. “Well, it was the least he could do, the
lying swine. Not that I imagined you were a pauper, when you saw
nothing out of the way in your brother’s spending thousands for
one of those brown, rolled-up thingums.”

“
Papyri
,”
she said crisply, almost as she’d done that first day, in the
dungeon. But he heard the note of amusement.

“
I know,”
he said. “I knew. I was only trying to provoke you that day. I
knew you had a temper. I could
feel
it, when you were twenty
feet away. It was like standing on the edge of a storm. Very…
stimulating.”

“
You’ve
had sufficient stimulation for the present,” she said. She came
close then, raised Rupert’s head, pressed it to her delicious
bosom, and held the glass to his lips. “Here, drink this.”

He’d had an
unpleasant feeling the glass was for him, but the conversation had
diverted his attention. The warm femininity he rested upon was an
even greater distraction. “What is it?”

“
A little
laudanum mixed with wine.”

He carefully turned
his head away from the glass without endangering his agreeable
position on her soft endowments. “I don’t want any.”

“
You will
drink it,” she said, “or I shall summon Akmed and tell
him to gather the largest men aboard. They will hold you down while I
pour it down your throat. Will you submit gracefully, or would you
rather be embarrassed in front of the boys?”

“
I don’t
need any laudanum,” he muttered, but he turned back and drank.

When he was done,
she set down the glass and gently but firmly transferred his head
from her bosom to the pillow. “The wound is sure to become a
great deal more painful as the shock wears off,” she said.
“This way, you will get some rest.”

“
I wish you
might rest with me,” he said, letting his hand slide to her
thigh. She was dressed like an Arab man, but no man with working
eyesight would ever mistake her for a member of his sex.

“
That would
not be restful,” she said. “And kindly remember that my
brother is now aboard.”

Rupert sighed. The
brother. Yes, of course. But the brother was not Akmed, with whom
she’d threatened Rupert a moment ago. Who was Akmed?

Oh, yes, the fellow
who spoke up, just as matters had promised to grow very interesting,
indeed.

What had he said?
He’d spoken in English first, then reverted to Arabic.

“
What did he
say?” Rupert said. “The Akmed fellow? He called you
‘mistress.’”

“
That was
Akmed,” she said, unenlighteningly.

“
That’s
what I said,” he said patiently. Really, there were times when
he wondered whether that immense brain of hers contained an empty
chamber or two. “He said something, just before I… um…
dozed a bit.”

“
You
fainted,” she said. “Several times.”

“
I was a
little sleepy,” he said. “I hadn’t slept since they
took you. I was… tired. I did not faint.”

Her delicate snort
sufficiently expressed her views on the subject.

“
I wish you
wouldn’t keep turning the subject,” he said. “Who
is Akmed and what was he saying?”

“
He said you
saved his life.”

Rupert thought
about this. “He must have confused me with someone else,”
he said.

“
On the
bridge outside Cairo,” she said. “He’d been badly
beaten. A Turkish soldier tried to finish the job. But you stepped in
the way.”

After a period of
cogitation, which went even more slowly than usual, Rupert realized
who she was talking about: the dirty cripple on the bridge. “Oh,
that
fellow.”

“
That was why
you ended up in the dungeon,” she said accusingly. “You
risked your life on behalf of a miserable native you didn’t
know from Adam.”

“
It wasn’t
a fair fight,” Rupert said.

She gazed at him
for a good long while. Then she stroked his cheek briefly. “No,
it wasn’t,” she murmured. “But only you would
care.” More distinctly she added, “Akmed is the servant
who went with Miles to Giza. What you saw was the results of the
beating the so-called police gave him—the ones who kidnapped
Miles. Akmed is the servant who ran away when the men came to my
house and stole the papyrus.”

“
He’s
the servant who didn’t come back,” Rupert said. “Tom’s
uncle. The fellow on the bridge. One and the same. And he turned up
here? Extraordinary.”

“
Not really,”
she said. “Akmed knew he wasn’t safe in Cairo and being
there might endanger his family as well as me. So he went to Bulaq,
to get work on a boat. There he heard Lord Noxley was going to look
for Miles. Akmed had no trouble getting hired. He speaks English and
a little French, and he is intelligent and hardworking. He thought
Noxley was a fine man. Akmed had no doubts about this until the fine
man fed a few followers to the crocodiles— very possibly the
same ones you and I saw above Girga.”

“
But Akmed
didn’t run away then?” The lantern light was growing
fuzzy—or was that Rupert’s brain? He seemed to be
drifting… on a river… no, a cloud.

“
He stayed on
because he was determined to find Miles,” she said. “Then,
when Noxley’s men found my brother, Akmed stayed to look after
him and protect him as best he could while avoiding discovery. He’d
grown out his beard, and Miles didn’t recognize him. Akmed
decided not to enlighten him until he could arrange for an escape for
both of them. Then I turned up and complicated matters.”

She went on, but
Rupert lost track of what she was saying. Her voice became a distant
music, sweet and familiar. And then by degrees the sound, too,
drifted away, and he slept.

Saturday 5 May

CARSINGTON DID NOT
wake until midafternoon. Sun streamed through the cabin window, and
Miles, sitting upon the far end of the divan, had been trying to
while away the time reading a book.

He gave up the
effort when Carsington pushed up to a sitting position.

“
I’m
not sure you’re allowed to sit up,” Miles said.

Under lifted
eyebrows, the coal-black eyes regarded him steadily.

Miles remembered
that the patient was not to be agitated, either. “On the other
hand,” he added, “I’m not sure who could stop you.
Daphne, maybe, but I finally persuaded her to get some sleep. She sat
up all night with you. Worried about a fever, she said.”

“
Not very
likely,” Carsington said. “How should I look them in the
face, I ask you, was I to get infected and feverish and such—over
a bit of a cut? They’d laugh themselves sick, the lot of them.”

“
The lot of
whom?” Miles said.

“
Family,”
Carsington said. “My brothers. Alistair was at Waterloo, you
know.”

“
I know.”

All the world knew.
Alistair Carsington was a famous Wa-terloo hero. Why couldn’t
he
be the Carsington in Egypt? Or any other one of them? Why did it have
to be this one?

“
They shot
three horses out from under him, sliced him up with sabers, and stuck
him with lances,” Carsington said. “Some cavalry rode
over him and a couple of soldiers died on him. Did
he
get infected and feverish?”

“
Did he not?”
Miles said.

“
Well, not
very much,” Carsington said. “He lived, didn’t he?
If he could live through that, I can jolly well live through a nick
in the belly.”

“
I hope so,”
Miles said. “I think Daphne would take it very ill, were you to
require planting.”

He couldn’t
imagine what she’d endured when she believed Carsington dead.
He felt like a fool for not realizing she’d become attached.
But she had concealed it so well.

Besides, Daphne
never noticed men—or if she did, it was to regard them with
mistrust. Why should Miles think Carsington’s case any
different? Why should he, of all men, turn out to be the one she’d
risk her life for? Miles could scarcely believe his bookish sister
had risked her life on his own account, and he was her
brother
.

Belatedly he
recollected the instructions and explanations she’d given
before departing the cabin. “I’m to offer you a glass of
water,” he said. “Daphne said she’d given you some
laudanum, and you might wake up feeling dry.”

“
I feel as
though someone moved the Arabian Desert into my mouth while I was
sleeping,” Carsington said. “Along with the camels. Am I
allowed to have a wash and a shave and clean my teeth at least? But
never mind what she allows. She’s asleep. What she doesn’t
know won’t hurt her.”

“
Yes, but you
really must move as little as possible,” Miles said. “To
avoid putting pressure on the wound. You will not want all her work
to go for naught?”

Carsington
instantly stilled. “No, of course not. She was picking out bits
of cloth—the merest threads—for hours, it seemed. What a
beast I should be, to undo all her efforts.”

Miles blinked,
once, twice. He was not sure what he’d expected. He knew
Carsington was unmanageable. Everyone in the world knew it. Even his
formidable father appeared to have given up the case as hopeless.

Miles did not
wonder at his lordship’s sending his fourth son to Egypt. He
only wondered at the earl’s not sending the son to China, or
Tierra del Fuego, or the Antipodes.

“
I’ll
valet you,” Miles offered. He collected the bowl, ewer, and
towel. He found Carsington’s toothbrush and shaving kit, and
placed all within easy reach.

While he was
playing manservant, the mongoose ran into the room. She rose up on
her hind legs and watched the proceedings.

When Miles had
settled back into his place, she crawled into his lap and watched
from there. “I heard her name is Marigold,” Miles said.

“
She’s
in love with your shirt,” Carsington said.

Miles had already
heard the story, and put two and two together. While Carsington set
about his toilette, Miles told of his adventures in Minya and the
limping mongoose he’d fed.