The Companion (4 page)

“I should think they are very busy just now, preparing to cast off or some such,” Beth said soothingly. “I’m sure they will take notice of us soon, because our trunks are in the way.”

Indeed, Lady Metherton had been so kind, the last several weeks had been all but unbearable to Beth. She took Beth entirely under her expensively dressed maternal wing and tut-tutted about the kind of father who would bring a gently bred girl into the wilds of North Africa. Even Tripoli, a thriving metropolis, was hardly civilized enough for a refined British woman, let alone the desert, with all that nasty sand and sun. No wonder Beth’s manners were less than refined. Why (Beth could hear her cultured voice, particularly well modulated as a lady’s should be), Beth could not help her brown complexion, and no doubt traipsing
about on those dirty camels had stunted her growth. A sigh. It could not be helped, and England was the only remedy for her condition.

Beth was fairly sure that England would not be the remedy or that it would, at the very least, be a very nasty draught if Lady Metherton’s reaction to her was any indication of the reception she would receive in the drawing rooms of London.

“Well, well, ladies,” a bluff voice echoed behind them. Beth and Mrs. Pargutter turned to see a large man with a rolling gait dressed in a dark blue coat of superfine with huge metallic buttons across his chest in civilian imitation of a naval officer. “Welcome to the
Beltrane
, the finest merchant ship in the Med and your home for a few weeks if the breeze blows well. I’m Captain Tindly.” He bowed.

“Captain,” Beth said, extending her hand. “I am Miss Rochewell, and may I present Mrs. Pargutter and her companion Miss Fellows?” Beth naturally took the lead, though Mrs. Pargutter was nominally her protector.

“Your servant, madam,” the Captain said in a voice born to bellow orders at sea. “We cast off at sunset.” He called to the nearest seamen, “Mr. Severn, Mr. Cobb, see these trunks to the forward cabins. Shake a leg, there.” He turned to bawl orders about fo’c’sles and hammocks and grates, then surveyed the shore and muttered, “Damn all passengers. Where is he?”

A man scurried into the rigging and scrambled up it rather like a rat. Beth was used to such behavior, but Mrs. Pargutter gave out a little shriek and grasped Beth’s arm. “Did you see that, my dear? Why, he looked hardly human!”

“Be easy, ma’am.” Beth patted her hand. “Surely you saw sailors on your voyage out.”

“Never like that!” she cried. “Positively bestial! Besides, I spent the whole voyage in my cabin, for I have never been a good traveler, and the sea quite oversets me.”

Beth sighed. The trip stretched dismally ahead of her, though what she had expected from Mrs. Pargutter under the best of circumstances she could not say. Beth was suddenly
very glad that Jenny would have the tending of what she suspected would be a determined invalid. The seamen hefted their trunks. “Perhaps you would like to go to your cabin?”

“Yes, yes. I am in need of a little restorative. I have a supply of laudanum.” Mrs. Pargutter bustled after the seamen, Jenny Fellows in her wake. Beth did not follow.

“Blast! I swear I’ll leave him,” the Captain said behind her. “I’ll not miss the tide.”

A ship some way down the quay drifted away from its moorings, one sail flapping down and then another. A breath of offshore breeze kissed the neighbor’s canvas. “Captain, if I stand against the wall of the quarterdeck, will I be out of your way? I’d like to see us sail.”

“By the door there.” The Captain smiled, pleased that she bothered to be out of the way.

“Ahoy the passenger’s boat!” a sailor yelled.

Out of the growing gloom a boat thumped against the side. A large form swung a leg up over the rail and stepped on board.

“About time, Rufford!” the Captain called. “We was about to leave you.”

The easy grace of the figure spoke of power. Even from here, with little more than a silhouette to guide her, Beth could sense it emanating from him. He had a pair of shoulders on him, a thick, blunt form with powerful thighs. And he was tall—a big man altogether. As he approached the Captain and bowed briefly, Beth saw his face. In some ways it was also blunt: unruly brows, a nose straight but slightly prominent, likewise chin, strong and cleft. She could not tell the color of his eyes, only that their expression was intense. It was his mouth that startled—full lips, so sensuous they did not seem to fit so masculine a figure. His hair was light brown and thick, long, pulled back into a queue old-fashioned even when Beth had last been in England.

“What kept you, man?” the Captain challenged, puffed up with his inconvenience.

“I stayed to dine.” The passenger’s voice was a grim rumble
in that massive chest. “It will make a more comfortable voyage for everyone.”

A trunk swung up over the side and thunked on the deck. The Captain harrumphed and began shouting orders to cast off. The passenger, Mr. Rufford he was called, went below with his trunks. As he passed, Beth saw that his eyes were blue. But that was not the startling thing about them. The pain they held was terrible to behold. His gaze raked her, but she was fairly certain he didn’t truly see her. What man registered a girl as unattractive as she was?

Lines were cast off. Sailors’ calls and responses echoed over the deck. The ship rocked slowly away from its moorings. Several sails flapped into place. They were away into the harbor, threading their way between moored behemoths Beth guessed were ships of the line—Royal Navy. Yes—there were the gun ports. She counted. A seventy-four. The mouth of the harbor opened before her. She turned. The lights of Tripoli blinked in the growing blackness, receding.

This was the last of Africa, the last of freedom, the dying dream that had been her father’s and, therefore, hers. Strange that people should think her life had been uncertain here. It was far more certain in its principles, its qualities, than any she was like to find in England.

The wind whipped at her hair and took its wisps. The lights of Tripoli faded as the merchantman drifted into the current. She had never felt so alone. She grabbed for the rail to make her way back to the cabin.

The other passenger, Mr. Rufford, leaned against the rail, looking out to sea. She could not mistake his brawny form. Strands of hair escaped the small ribbon at his neck, whipping backward in the wind. He was directly in her way. She dared not start across the open deck. The sea had grown a little rough and the ship’s roll was more pronounced. She squared her shoulders. Avoiding him was impossible, since they were to spend weeks as two of four passengers on a cargo ship. She decided to acknowledge him. A civil nod would be enough.

He rolled quite easily with the ship. His coat was dark blue like the indigo of sky behind him and the dark sea ruffled with white. As she drew near, she saw something gleam around his wrists. How odd! Were they bracelets? No. Scars. His wrists were scarred. She felt like an intruder, as though she were spying. Quite close now, she prepared to dash for the rope hold on the quarterdeck wall.

He looked up at her. At first he didn’t seem to see her. His thoughts clearly dwelt on something unpleasant. The combination and the intensity of emotions roiling in those eyes were something she had never seen in a man’s countenance: revulsion, longing, perhaps even fear. But he didn’t look a coward. No, there was something of resolution about him. This was confirmed when he registered her presence and the eyes went flat, bottling up those emotions in a most determined way. He stood upright, pulling his cuffs down selfconsciously, and nodded to her. They might have been in Lady Metherton’s drawing room except for the roll of the deck and the wind whipping at their hair.

“Ian Rufford,” he almost growled. “Your servant, madam.” He actually turned away, not even waiting for her reciprocal introduction.

She should simply race across to the stairs below. It would be most improper to stay and speak to any man without an introduction other than his own. She might have been in Africa and the Levant for these ten years, but even she knew that. Still, she did not like being snubbed.

Beth grabbed the rail to steady herself. “Elizabeth Rochewell.”

He turned back, surprised at her boldness. His eyes raked her as though he knew something about her she might not want anyone to know. She was acutely conscious of her short stature. Could he see her brown complexion in this light? Probably not. He could see her black pelisse and her kid half boots, fashionable, if moderate in style. She was glad Lady Metherton had talked her into buying them as part of her mourning clothes, even if this man was not the kind to care for fashion.

“What brings someone like you to Tripoli, Miss Rochewell?” His voice was indifferent.

“Someone like me,” she mused as she turned out to the sea, determined not to let her anger show. He didn’t think much of women or at least women who looked like her. “Someone like me was on an archaeological expedition with my father in the desert.”

Behind them, a man’s voice called out, “Luff up handsomely, there!” A sail flapped.

“Treasure hunting, like Lord Elgin?”

She didn’t look at him. She didn’t trust her eyes not to betray her outrage. “Searching for knowledge, Mr. Rufford, about who we are, and where our kind has been.”

“And you thought you would find that in the barren deserts of North Africa. . . .”

He made it sound childish. “The desert holds many secrets. Look at the lost city of Petra—it gives us two thousand years of history and more.”

“Petra, what is that?” She had piqued his curiosity.

“You don’t get about much, Mr. Rufford, if you haven’t heard of Petra. Discovered seven years ago in Palestine—a treasure trove of knowledge. A paper was read just last year at Somerset House before the Royal Society.”

“Yes. Well. I have been otherwise engaged for the last two years. No time for announcements of obscure archaeological discoveries.”

She shot a stealthy glance at him, remembering the scars. He was leaning out over the rail again, watching the ships of the convoy, now closing in around them. Had he been in prison? Why? His aura of danger took on a more palpable form. She let her words race on. “It was not obscure. It was a very important discovery.”

He looked her over once again. Those full lips curled in a tiny smile that might have been a sneer. “So now all the bored aristocrats are wandering about the desert looking for meaning to their lives, even women. Did
you
discover anything important?”

She repressed a gasp. His rudeness deserved that she just
walk away, or rather lurch away toward the quarterdeck ropes. But she could not resist a setdown of a more telling nature. “I discovered that all the guesses about the age of the Sphinx in Egypt were only that—learned guesses, but very wrong.” She paused. “You
have
heard of the Sphinx, have you not?”

He did not answer her sally. But he examined her once again. “Wrong.” He let his disbelief hang in the air, just short of derision.

Beth turned to him, leaning against the rail for balance. “Yes. Wrong. I became interested in the patterns of erosion, Mr. Rufford, when I was looking into the geological phenomena around Petra and how those ravines came to be there waiting for a city to be carved out of them. I thought one might use erosion to date things. And I did, in a way.”

“What way?” He was reserving judgment now.

“Erosion comes in several varieties: the kind made by wind and the kind made by dripping water, for instance, and they leave very different patterns on the objects they erode. Everyone thought the Sphinx was three or four thousand years old, eroded by the desert winds.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“It was eroded by water, Mr. Rufford. The pattern is quite clear.”

“Water, in the middle of the desert?” He thought briefly. “And we would not be talking floods, as of the Nile. You mean it
rained
on the Sphinx? Impossible.”

Beth smiled slowly. He had caught the thing at once. He was brighter than most men, at any rate. “Ah, you are thinking of Egypt as we know it now. But think in terms of geological time, Mr. Rufford. The earth changes; mountains come and go; seas rise and fall. Once, the desert must have been wet. A
very
long time ago. It rained on the Sphinx for many centuries.”

“How long ago?” He cocked his head.

“Ten thousand years, at least. I don’t think the head is even original. You must have noted how small it is, and much better preserved than the lower parts. It was re-carved.”

His brow wrinkled. “Ten thousand. But then who could have . . . ?” He trailed off.

“Could have made it?” Beth finished his question. “Ah, the mysteries of the Dark Continent, Mr. Rufford. It contains more than you and I have ever contemplated in our world.”

His head sagged between his shoulders almost imperceptibly. “You are right about that.” She had hurt him. She did not know how. He squared his shoulders. That was the courage again. “I should like to meet your father. He sounds an interesting sort.”

Beth swallowed. Her loss washed over her so suddenly it must have been lying in wait. Rufford should have guessed from her mourning clothes that his remark was tactless. After she could breathe, she said, “Too late for that, sir. He is dead a month and more.”

There was an awkward silence. “I’m sorry.” The low rumble sounded sincere. What an odd creature he was, sneering and sincere in turns.

“So am I.” She had said too much, flaunting knowledge like a bluestocking, determined to impress, and so taken unawares by lurking grief. “And what of you? Why are you in Tripoli?”

He hesitated. It was not such a hard question, unless of course he was a prison escapee. “I was staying at the British delegation at El Golea.”

He said it as though that explained why he was in the middle of the Sahara and so far from England. “My father and I were organizing an expedition in Bi’er Tegheri to look for Petra’s sister city, Kivala, sleeping somewhere under the sands of the desert.”

He looked up sharply at her. “Did you find it?” Fear, even horror, flashed in his eyes.

“No. My father died before we could fairly start.”