Playing with Fire (29 page)

He gazed at her in the candlelight. “I want what is mine, Tansy, but I don’t want it without you.”

She turned. “Whatever you decide, I will be at your side,” she promised.

His eyes cleared, and he went to her, crushing her into his arms and kissing her passionately on the lips. Then he met her eyes again. “My darling Church Mouse, you shall have everything my title can provide, but most of all, you’ll have a lord who worships the very ground upon which you tread,” he whispered.

Their lips met again, but this time with a tenderness that spread warmly through their veins like the magic of the bronze cat. There was magic all around them, a tingling in the air that seemed to bring brief images of all the things that had brought them together. Tel el-Osorkon and the Nile, Tusun, the wall painting, the escape on the
canja,
the
Lucina,
Chelworth itself…. But above all, the cats. Ozzy and Cleo rubbed around their legs, and the wonderful sound of purring seemed to throb through the entire house.

It was a sound that made Tansy draw from the kiss to smile down at the two animals. “Martin, I can’t help thinking about the story of King Osorkon.”

“I have thought of it as well.”

“What happened here today is exactly the same, except that it took place in modern England. You are Osorkon, and Cleo is the retriever cat who saved you from your evil brother.”

“It seems so farfetched, and yet who can doubt that strange things have occurred since we met?”

“Will they continue to occur, I wonder?”

“Only time will tell.”

* * * *

It was breakfast at 16B Grosvenor Square, and the May sunshine was pouring in through the east-facing window. A bowl of lilacs stood in the hearth of the elegant pink marble fireplace, on the mantel of which was carved the Fenworth motto,
Noli tangere ignem, Do not stir up fire.
It was advice to which it was far too late for either Amanda or Randal to pay wise heed.

Amanda was sorting through the latest invitations that had been delivered to Lord Sanderby and his new bride. She was wearing a sapphire blue morning wrap that frothed with lace and ribbons, and her lovely golden hair was pinned up in the intricate style that her new Parisian maid managed so effortlessly. Everything about her was exquisitely beautiful and fashionable, but the fixed expression in her cornflower eyes was anything but beautiful as she paused to gaze coldly at Randal across the breakfast table.
“What
did you just say?” she demanded icily.

Randal’s face had lost all color, and the letter he was reading fell from his fingers. “The game’s up, Amanda.”

“Up?” As yet she knew nothing about the moves in progress to strip Randal of his title in favor of Martin. Randal had been very careful indeed to keep her in the dark about such a discomforting development, not because he feared to lose her and therefore her fortune. That was all fully signed and sealed now, with entries in place where they should be, and a license so well absorbed into the records that no one on earth could have disproved it. No, Randal’s reason for saying nothing to Amanda was simply that he was terrified of her temper. Liza Lawrence might have been the one with red hair, but it was Amanda who had the vile temper.

Randal’s eyes slid to the motto on the mantel. They had both played with fire and were about to be burned. The moment had arrived to make a clean breast of things. He dreaded her reaction, but he couldn’t put off the evil moment any longer. Their world was about to fall about their scheming ears, and she had to be told. He cleared his throat. “Well, I’m afraid it’s like this, Amanda. Thanks to that damned old fool Richardson, Martin Ballard has come forward to claim his rights, and according to my lawyers, his case is bound to be proved.” There, it was done at last.

Amanda became so still she seemed to have ceased to breathe. But then she spoke in a soft and trembling voice that gave due warning of the fury that had begun to rise within her. “Proved?” she breathed. “But how can it be
proved?”

“It seems, among other things, that the papers I burned at Chelworth were not the vital letter.” Randal got up and went to the sideboard to pour himself a large glass of brandy, which he drank in a single gulp. He felt a strange tickle start in his nose and looked around swiftly. A cat? Where?

Amanda rose, trembling, to her feet. “How can this be? You swore to me that—!”

“I know what I swore.”

“You just said among other things? Among what other things? There is more?”

“Yes, I rather fear there is. They have found the clergyman who originally barried by father to Barguerite Kenny!” Randal’s eyes watered profusely, and he searched desperately in his dressing gown pocket for a handkerchief. Goddamn it all, there wasn’t even a cat in the house! So how…?

“For heaven’s sake, Randal! Get on with telling me what’s happened!” cried Amanda.

“I…I believed the buffoon was long dead, but it seebs he is now a herbit on an island off the coast of Scotland.” Randal sneezed violently. “Barguerite Kenny once bentioned his nabe to her dear son, who had the presence of bind to suddenly rebebber it. Richardson’s creatures went to the island and obtained a witnessed statebent that by father did indeed barry Barguerite Kenny! Due to this and the evidence of the letter, the courts are also prepared to take into account a dabbed note I’d forgotten. The scoundrel I ebployed to investigate it all has agreed to give evidence against be.” He wiped his streaming eyes and tried to resist the second sneeze that was tickling his nose.

“What forgotten note? What ‘fellow’ you employed?” Amanda breathed ominously.

He poured and drank another glass of brandy, then faced her. He explained about the agent he’d sent here, there, and everywhere, searching for Marguerite Kenny, and then finished with, “I ab afraid I was a little rebiss and forgot the fellow’s note. It was in by pocket, and Liza—” He broke off abruptly, for now was definitely
not
the time to acquaint Amanda with Liza’s existence as well.

But Amanda had already pounced upon the name. “Liza? Who is Liza?”

“Oh, nobody. A baid at Bothenbury.”

“Don’t lie to me! You had a whore there, didn’t you! You were whispering in my ear, seducing me with your kisses, and all the time you had a trollop warming your bed!” Amanda screamed, and hurled her plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausages at him.

He ducked, and the scrambled egg spattered his family motto instead. “Abanda, dearest, I—!”

“So after all our plotting, I’m not Countess of Sanderby after all?” Amanda’s cup of coffee followed the plate. Again she missed her target, but found another instead. Not the mantel this time, but the cook’s fat tortoiseshell cat, Tiddles, the existence of which had not been guessed by the master and mistress of the house. The unfortunate feline had a minute or so earlier slunk in to sun herself on the sill behind the gold-fringed green velvet curtains. It was the first time she had managed to get into the main part of the house, and she was thoroughly enjoying the east-facing window. Now, however, being suddenly drenched in hot coffee and pelted with porcelain, she erupted from her cozy place with a yowl like something from hell itself, and fled from the room.

Hardly able to credit that one of his greatest aversions had managed to get in the room, Randal recoiled as she passed.

Amanda screamed again at her husband. “Well?
Is
that what you’re telling me?”

“Abanda, dearest—!”

“OH, STOP SPEAKING LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF BEDLAM!” she shrieked, so livid and beside herself that every word was uttered at the top of her lungs. If anyone looked and sounded like a denizen of Bedlam, it was she.

“I CAN’T HELP IT!” Randal bawled back. “Look, Abanda, I didn’t bean things to get to this pitch! I truly, honestly—”

“Truly? Honestly? You don’t know the meaning of the words!” she cried.

“But, dearest, we aren’t exactly destitute. I bay no longer have a title, but we have your fortune….”

Amanda froze. A nerve fluttered at her temple, and her fingers closed over the corner of the tablecloth.

Randal backed away nervously. “There’s bore I have to tell you….”

“More?” she repeated softly.

“Tansy and my half-brother are to be barried next bonth at St. George’s, Hanover Square. Virtually the whole of society is to be there, even the Prince of Wales.”

With a strangulated banshee wail that was heard the length and breadth of the gracious Mayfair square, Amanda seized the tablecloth and wrenched it ferociously from the table. Everything crashed to the floor, and Randal made a very hasty exit, only to fall over the hapless Tiddles in the hall. He went sprawling, and the cat shot up a curtain to the pelmet, from where it looked balefully down at him, just as certain other furry faces had once looked over a garden wall in Dorset.

* * * *

The sea had never been more blue as Tansy and Martin rode along the hilltop behind Chelworth. He wore a pine green riding coat and white corduroy breeches, and she was in a gold velvet riding habit that became her dark coloring very well indeed. There was gold on her finger too, the wedding ring that Martin had placed there at the lavish Mayfair ceremony attended by the grandest society in the land.

Ozzy and Cleo bounded ahead of the horses. At least, Ozzy bounded, for Cleo was obliged to be a little more sedate due to being in what the genteel termed
an interesting condition.
No one doubted that the kittens would be a mixture of ginger and tabby.

London was still abuzz with the Sanderby scandal. Amanda had left Randal, and the last anyone heard she was on her way to join her father in Australia. No one knew what had become of Randal, for he had been much pressed by duns as soon as word got out that he was no longer Earl of Sanderby. He had disappeared one night, and rumor was that he too had left the country. Canada had been mentioned; indeed, there was a whisper, a very sly one indeed, that he had somehow taken passage on no less a vessel than the
Lucina,
posing as a keeper of the regimental goat. But it was just a whisper.

* * * *

The pyramid soared against the sky, and Tansy and Martin reined in beside the entrance. The cats lay on the grass, Cleo quite thankfully, for she found so much exercise quite a trial. Not that anything would have persuaded her to stay behind in the house when there was an outing to be had. “It will look very regal here indeed when Uncle Julian’s new sphinxes are built,” Tansy said, gazing at the pyramid.

Martin nodded. “An unforgettable landmark,” he said, shading his eyes to look out to sea, where a frigate very like the
Lucina
was beating eastward for Portsmouth.

“Do you miss the navy?” Tansy asked anxiously.

He shook his head. “Not enough to rejoin, if that is your fear. Besides, I have estates to run now, and retainers for whom I am responsible. I can’t do that if I’m sailing around the Mediterranean.”

“When are we leaving for Sanderby Park?” Sanderby Park was in Westmorland, and it seemed very far away.

“Next week. It is all arranged.” He reached across to put his hand on hers. “If you do not like it there, we will not live there.”

She summoned a smile. “I’m sure I will be happy wherever we are.”

“I adore you, Lady Sanderby.”

“And I adore you, my lord.”

Martin glanced down the hillside toward the house.

“I wonder if Sir Julian and his new fiancée have progressed in their battle with the hieroglyphs?”

“I do hope so, for they have both become quite unbearable about it.”

Sir Julian and Hermione, who were to celebrate nuptials of their own in the fall, spent every possible hour studying the inscriptions on the slab of black basalt, and when they were not poring over that, they were absorbed by the mysteriously joined papyrus instead. They talked of little else, and if the conversation at dinner shifted at all, it was merely to other aspects of Ancient Egypt. There was no doubt indeed that they would regard it as a calamity of the highest order if someone else solved the mystery first.

Tansy smiled again. “Shall we try to prevent them mentioning Egypt at dinner tonight? Just to be a little wicked? I love to see them squirm because there is only the one thing on their minds and they haven’t the time or patience to discuss anything else.”

“You are a minx, Lady Sanderby.”

“True.”

They were about to ride on home when a metallic sound made them both look down the steps to the entrance to the pyramid. Ozzy and Cleo got up swiftly and uttered little mews. Their ears were pricked, and their bodies quivered with interest.

“What was that?” Martin asked.

“I don’t know. It sounded like….” Tansy shook her head. “It can’t be, because I know I left it on the mantel in our room.”

“The figurine?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Tansy, since when has where it was left had any bearing on things? I think we should investigate.”

He dismounted, and then reached up to help Tansy down as well. Hand in hand they went down the steps, preceded by Ozzy and Cleo, who were impatient for them to open the door, but it opened anyway, as if someone inside were about to welcome them all.

Tansy’s steps faltered a little nervously. “Martin…?”

“Come on, I have a feeling that everything is all right,” he said, and led her into the room where she had been held prisoner a few months earlier.

The bright May sunlight flooded in from behind them and fell directly on the wall opposite. Once again there was a painting there, but not of King Osorkon and his cat. Instead they found themselves looking at Tel el-Osorkon as it had once been, with the statue of Bastet crowning the hill.

Tansy’s fingers curled tightly in Martin’s, and she knew she was holding her breath but couldn’t help herself. Something rolled across the floor. It was the bronze cat, and it came to rest between Ozzy and Cleo, who were crouching in front of the painting, their bellies to the floor, their heads lowered.

“What’s going to happen?” Tansy whispered, shrinking closer to Martin, who pulled her to him.

“I don’t know,” he replied; then they both took involuntary steps backward as the painted statue of Bastet came to life. The goddess stepped down from her throne, and from the wall itself, an elegant, graceful, cat-headed woman in the robes of Ancient Egypt, with kittens playing about her feet. She bent to take the figurine from the floor, then turned to place it at the very spot where Amanda had first trodden on it. Then she looked down at Cleo and beckoned. Cleo’s ears pressed lower, and she didn’t move. She was the picture of wretchedness.