Mr Impossible (9 page)

“
Someone
thinks so,” Lord Noxley said.

“
It must be
the French,” Ghazi said. “They grow desperate.”

This was because
Lord Noxley’s agents were steadily driving the French away from
the richest sites. He wasn’t sure desperation explained it
completely, though. Had he erred regarding Archdale, mistaking
secrecy for modesty?

“
The question
is, who possesses the means and is ruthless enough to undertake such
villainies?” he said.

Apart from Lord
Noxley himself, only one man met the requirements.

“
Duval,
then,” said Ghazi.

“
I rather
think so.”

“
I will talk
to his people.”

The word
talk
, both men knew, was a euphemism for a very broad range of
activities.

But Lord Noxley
knew Ghazi didn’t require specifics. His lordship only added,
“And that idiot Carsington.” He briefly described Lord
Hargate’s fourth son. “He’ll be inGizatomorrow. I
want him out of the way.”

Wednesday 4 April

RUPERT ARRIVED AT
the widow’s domicile at daybreak as ordered.

He found they would
travel with a retinue. All of her cowardly servants but Akmed, it
turned out, had skulked back to the house by the time she returned
the previous evening. She’d decided they must come along
toGizatoday.

It took Rupert a
while to take this in because he was still trying to digest her
appearance.

She’d
abandoned the black silk for a costume: a gold-trimmed maroon jacket
over full Turkish trousers of a bright blue. And a turban. They would
pretend she was a man, his Maltese translator, she said.

She did not in any
way resemble a man, Maltese or oth-erwise. She made Rupert think of
harems and concubines and dancing girls. In those thoughts clothing
of any kind was not a prominent feature.

He remembered how
surprised he was when he lifted her off the donkey: she was smaller
than he’d guessed, though quite as generously curved. He could
almost feel it still: the inward turn of her waist… the flare
of her hips where the edge of his hand had rested. A familiar heat,
having nothing to do with the morning’s temperature, settled
into his nether regions. As a consequence, a long moment passed while
he tried to get his mind on business.

The ludicrous
turban didn’t help matters. It begged him to unwind it by
spinning her round and round like a top until she was giddy and
giggling… then pick her up…

But he couldn’t.
Not yet. If he moved too quickly and put his mouth or hands where she
thought they didn’t belong, she’d send him back to Salt.
Rupert would end up toiling in the desert, supervising natives
shifting sand and rocks. Lord Noxious would have the fun of a search
with her and fights with unsavory, very likely French, persons, while
Rupert died of boredom.

Picturing Noxious
with his hands on her waist promptly squelched Rupert’s
lascivious urges.

He turned a
skeptical eye upon the cringing servants. He made his expression
stern, and adopting the same disdainful tones his father used on such
occasions, said, “I should like to know, madam, what good you
expect this lot to do, except give you a prime view of their backs
the instant trouble threatens.”

“
We cannot
travel unaccompanied,” she said. “Not only is it not
respectable, it is not at all safe. And we haven’t time to
apply to the local sheik for replacements.”

If they had to
apply to a sheik for servants, it would take forever. While Rupert
understood almost nothing of Arabic, he knew that phrases such as
“make haste” or “we must not lose a minute”
or “I mean
now ”
were not in the local lexicon.

In short, he must
make do with the material at hand.

“
Leena,”
he said, “please be so good as to tell these fellows that there
will be no running away today. Tell them that no matter what terrible
thing threatens, it will not be half so terrible as what I will do to
them if they desert their mistress.” He provided a brief, vivid
description of what he would do to them, emphasizing with gestures.

Leena rapidly
translated.

“
For all the
good it will do,” Rupert said, half to himself. “I should
have to catch them first, shouldn’t I?”

“
They won’t
run away,” Mrs. Pembroke said.

He turned back to
her, and his stern demeanor crumbled before the turban and the
strange, heart-shaped face that didn’t belong under it.

“
Won’t
they?” he said, smiling helplessly.

“
Rumors have
spread that you are a genie,” she said. “Wadid by now has
told them what you did to him yesterday, and the feat has been
exaggerated beyond all recognition.”

“
Good,”
Rupert said. “That saves me deciding which of them to use for
the demonstration.”

A WHILE LATER,
fists on his hips, the long, muscled legs straddling a gap between
masses of broken stone blocks, the man who’d brought Daphne to
Giza without a murmur of objection stood looking up at Chephren’s
pyramid.

By swift degrees,
Mr. Carsington had discarded his gloves, hat, neckcloth, and coat.
Now barely dressed and glowing in the sun’s glare, he seemed a
bronze colossus.

Daphne was only
dimly aware of the pyramid, one of the world’s wonders. All she
could see was the man, and far too much of him: the shirt taut across
the broad shoulders, the thin fabric almost transparent in the harsh
light, revealing the contours of muscular arms and back.

It was some comfort
to know she wasn’t the only one whose gaze he drew. Her
servants cast him frequent, wary glances. The men who loitered about
the pyramids to help visitors ascend to the top or penetrate its
interior also watched him from a respectful distance.

And she might as
well have been his shadow. The guides hardly noticed her or seemed to
care who or what she was.

They all felt it:
the magnetism of that tall figure, the danger crackling in the air
about him. All understood that an unpredictable, uncontrollable force
had come among them.

Daphne had felt it
even before she could see him, when he’d been only a shadowy
figure in the dungeon’s gloom.

“
It’s
big,” he said at last.

“
Yes, it is,”
she said. “I suppose you want to climb it.” Men could not
resist.

“
Not at the
moment,” he said. “If I climb to the top, it’ll
only be a prodigious long stairway. No, for the present I like it as
it is, immense and impressive.” He turned to her. “Unless
you think we might find a clue at the top?”

She shook her head.
“Miles said he wanted to study the interior. He seemed to think
it held clues that would help us find other tombs.”

The guides hadn’t
any useful information about Miles. Yes, they remembered the
Englishman with the “white” hair. He had come a few days
ago. No one recalled anything unusual about the visit.

Mr. Carsington
climbed down from the stones and joined her. He’d unfastened
the button at the neck of his shirt, which allowed the garment to
hang open in a large V. She directed her gaze away from the expanse
of bronzed chest and toward the pyramid.

“
Why did Lord
Noxious find your brother’s reason for coming here so odd?”

“
Lord what?”

“
You heard
me,” he said. “I wondered how that insufferable bore
could be your brother’s—or anyone’s—boon
companion. But English-speaking fellows are thin on the ground, I
notice. Noxious must have won the position by default.”

“
You didn’t
like him,” she said. Which was about as astute an observation
as Mr. Carsington’s remarking that the pyramid was big.

There was too much
male in view—too much insufficiently clothed male. It was
shocking, really. Small wonder she couldn’t think. She ought to
tell him to put his clothes back on.

“
It wasn’t
my
liking he was after,” he said.

Her gaze shot back
to him. The black eves glinted.

“
How
concerned he was for you,” he said. “So understanding of
your predicament. He didn’t assume your brother was lolling
about in a whorehouse, visiting theGardenofAllahby means of a hashish
pipe. No, indeed. His lordship was properly sympathetic and
desperately eager to do your bidding.”

“
I should
like to know how this makes him noxious,” she said.

“
He was so
quick to imagine the worst,” Mr. Carsington said. “Most
men would say, ‘There, there now, I’m sure it’s
nothing to fret about. There’ll be a simple explanation—a
message gone astray or some such.’ Instead, he made a great
to-do about it, shoveling on veiled and unveiled suggestions to make
you more anxious, rather than less.”

“
I detest
‘there, there now,’” she said. “It is
patronizing. And I vastly dislike being made to feel like a child who
is imagining things. That is how Mr. Salt behaved toward me. It is
exceedingly provoking.”

“
Maybe the
consul general likes the way your eyes flash when you’re
provoked,” said Mr. Carsington. “And the way the pink
comes into your cheek, right here.” With his forefinger, he
drew a line along his cheekbone.

He stood well away
from her, yet she felt the touch, as though his long finger grazed
her skin instead of his.

She felt the heat
climb there, and knew the pink he described must be deepening. She
ought to blush—with shame for being so susceptible. “You
have a knack for straying from the subject,” she said. “You
asked what was odd about my brother’s reasons for coming here.”

“
Yes. Why
shouldn’t your brother find clues here? Why couldn’t the
mystery tomb
be
here, in fact? They’ve still another
pyramid to penetrate.” He nodded toward the third, unopened
pyramid of Mycerinus. “And haven’t they uncovered a great
lot of mummies somewhere hereabouts?”

Her gaze went to
the third pyramid, then shot back to meet his, as innocent as a
little boy’s. She was not a little girl and was not taken in.
“You know all about this place,” she said. “You
were playing with us, asking those absurd questions about where and
whatGizawas.”

He only smiled and
looked away from her toward the group of guides. “I don’t
feel like a long climb in the blazing sun today,” he said. “But
I’m perishing to have a look inside. I should like to see for
myself what’s so odd about the idea.”

“
Mr.
Carsington,” she said. She wanted an explanation.

But he’d
already caught the eye of a guide, to whom he signaled. The man
quickly joined them. Mr. Carsington pointed to the entrance Belzoni
had discovered three years earlier, now a black rectangle on the
north face of the pyramid.

The guide summoned
another, and the two men led them up through the clearing in the
rubble that had for so many centuries concealed the entrance.

Daphne knew it was
wiser to save her energies for the ordeal ahead. She reminded herself
that she was doing it for Miles’s sake, that she loved him
dearly and would do whatever she needed to bring him back safe. She
told herself that what she felt in the small passageways was
irrational, mere emotion. She was a rational being. All she had to do
was concentrate on
facts.

THE ENTRY PASSAGE
was four feet high, about three and a half feet wide, a hundred and
four feet five inches long, and descended at an angle of twenty-six
degrees, Mrs. Pembroke informed Rupert.

Rupert had no
trouble estimating the height and width. He’d done that
automatically as he entered, and was estimating the angle of descent
even while he watched the uneven sway of her handsome backside as she
preceded him.

Watching her
derriere was no small feat, considering he walked folded almost in
half on an uneven surface and had his hands on the walls to maintain
his balance and keep track of the passages’ features.

In any event, he
hadn’t as clear a rear view of the lady as he could wish. The
guides’ torches were fighting a losing battle against the
darkness.

They’d gone
about fifty feet when Mrs. Pembroke enlightened him about the
dimensions.