As You Desire (22 page)

“But I don’t know any real Egyp—”

“Whatever you can offer will be appreciated,” Marta said sternly, casting a speaking glance at Simon who’d nearly finished gulping clown his fig.

“Oh!” Whatever her blind spot concerning Harry, Desdemona was no fool. She would oblige if she thought she could help her host out of an uncomfortable situation. “Of course. Let’s see.” She
paused, obviously casting about for something suitably entertaining. “Ah, yes. I recently read this charming love poem. New Kingdom”—she grinned mischievously—“I think.” She cleared her throat and began:

“Did you say
Aton?”
breathed Simon.

Georges froze, his fork half raised to his mouth. “Where did you read this extraordinary missive?” he whispered.

“A papyrus. It purports to be scribed at the behest of Nefertiti herself.” Desdemona vested the word “purports” with added emphasis.

“Nefertiti?” Cal said.

“Where the devil”—Simon caught Jabbar’s hand as it swooped in carrying another fig—“stop it, Jabbar—where the devil did you get hold of it, Miss Desdemona?”

“I acquired a scroll when I was, er, visiting a trader’s encampment last week.”

“What encampment?” Simon leaned across the table, resting heavily on his meaty forearms, the end of his beard dangling in the water bowl.

Marta’s interest quickened. Could the girl actually have stumbled onto something important? Idly she swatted Cal’s hand from her knee, attentively watching Simon and Georges’s reaction.

“Oh, Colonel Chesterton!” Desdemona chuckled. “I’m sorry I’ve teased you. I can assure you the papyrus is forged.”

“Oh, oh, yes, of course.” Simon and Georges slumped back down in their respective chairs, their disappointment nearly palpable. “Ridiculous to think that it could be otherwise,” Simon said. “Why would traders allow a young gir—” He broke off, his face suffusing with bright red color. “If they were real, your grandfather would be strutting about the table crowing, not poking about in El Minya.”

“This Nefertiti is that Akhenaton fellow’s wife, right?” Cal asked, stretching his long legs beneath the table where they rubbed intimately against Marta’s. He grinned lazily.

Georges continued a melancholy study of his empty plate. “Yes. The great queen-wife of the heretic.”

Simon nodded. “If someone did find something—” He glanced at Desdemona and grimaced. “You shouldn’t give an old man heart palpitations like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Desdemona said contritely. “They are rather good fakes. The author has a definite feeling for New Kingdom verse: word usage, cadence, imagery. But the subject matter is too earthy to have been written by the consort of a pharaoh. Indeed, in some cases it is openly lascivious.”

“Really?” Georges asked interestedly. In fact, Marta noted, all the men from Jabbar to Cal looked interested. Men hadn’t changed in four or five millennia.

“Yes.”

“You know, I still wouldn’t mind taking a look-see at them,” Simon offered. “Purely from an academic standpoint.”

“Me, too,” Georges said.

“Not necessary, sirs,” Desdemona said. “I’ve offered them to a New York publisher. You give me hope that they may provoke some interest—purely academic, of course.” She grinned.

The blasted girl didn’t see the disapproving frost in Ravenscroft’s eye, Marta thought. The chit had spent too many years with too many conversations open to her, privy to too much knowledge and too many … “experiences.”

“Drat!” Cal said.

“Unfortunate,” Simon murmured.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want to waste your time on them,” she teased further.

“Of course they wouldn’t,” Blake said suddenly. “Who could have foreseen that salacious scribbling would be of any interest to such … 
learned
men?”

The learned men sank back in their chairs, looking properly chastised if not particularly convinced.

“How chivalrous you are to champion Miss Carlisle, Lord Ravenscroft,” Marta murmured. Even though the girl looked perplexingly unimpressed with Ravenscroft’s gallant intercession, what romantically inclined girl could resist such chivalry? Marta smiled.

None.

Desdemona thanked her host and followed Cal Schmidt and Marta out of the palace and down the wide stone steps leading to the front gardens. Behind, Georges bolted out the door, Simon hot on his trail. She stopped, awaiting Blake, and looked around in pleasure.

Above, a milky moon disappeared beneath indigo-colored clouds. The scent of night-blooming flowers flavored the cool air. An occasional black-winged kite screeched during its phantom flight overhead.

Cal paused at the bottom of the steps, twirling his watch fob. Red light flashed from its many inlaid jewels. Marta, too, had noticed the sparkling bauble. She was smiling in a distinctly predatory manner.

“You had those two going in there, Miss Carlisle,” Cal said in impressed tones. “Little bit of a thing like you.” He shook his head and chuckled. “Who’d a thought there was an imp under those gold locks?”

Desdemona laughed. She couldn’t help herself, the American’s easygoing humor was contagious.
Marta didn’t seem to see the humor. She looked relaxed but aloof, her smile uninterested.

“Listen, Miss Carlisle, the more I think about that Apis bull, the more I want one. You say you were at a trader’s camp the other day. Did you see one?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Schmidt. I wish I had.” He’d never know how much.

“Oh, that’s okay. I know Mr. Paget is trying his best and Mr. Braxton. I ’spect between the two of those fine gentlemen I’ll get what I want.” He turned his attention to Blake. “Say, Lord Ravenscroft, maybe we should pool our resources and share a carriage.”

“Oh, Mr. Schmidt,” Marta said, leaning limpetlike against his arm. “I was rather hoping to walk. It is such a lovely evening and you’re such a big, strong man. I feel quite safe in your care.”

“But your house is a good two miles away, ma’am,” the American said.

“Is it? Perhaps. But then, if I recall correctly, your hotel is not.”

The American broke into warm laughter, and blood raced up into Desdemona’s cheeks. The woman was shameless. How could Harry ever have—

“Let’s go, Miss Carlisle,” Blake clipped out, taking her elbow and guiding her onto the footpath intersecting the gardens. At the gate leading to the street Blake stopped and looked around for a carriage, once more, as he had all evening, acting on her behalf. He’d championed and protected her
womanly sensibilities. All the things a hero did. He was becoming enamored of her.

It was wonderful.

Wasn’t it?

“We may have to wait awhile, Desdemona.” He was standing very near. She could smell the bay rum he used, see the shadowy cast of his incipient beard. He stepped closer, taking her hand and pressing it.

“We could walk, too,” she suggested.

“Yes.” His voice was low. His dark head bent nearer. Her breath caught in—anticipation that felt like anxiety.

A sudden low sound drew her attention. With a curious sense of relief, she backed away from Blake and peered around, looking for its source.

“Damn it,” Blake said.

A figure detached itself from the night, and for a second the masculine form was silhouetted against the street torches before it staggered toward them.

Although darkness masked his features, Desdemona could see that the man’s shirt hung open and torn from his lean torso. The ragged
khafiya
draped his throat like a charmer’s snake. With each step, his gait grew more unsure. He called out in a hoarse, thick voice, but his words were so slurred and painful she could not tell what he said. She started forward but Blake caught her upper arm, stopping her.

“For Chrissakes,” Blake bit out, “you’d think Jabbar would have the beggars kept off the palace grounds!”

The moon suddenly escaped the embrace of scuttling
clouds, revealing the man’s features, swollen and battered and somehow—

“Oh, my God!” she breathed. “Harry!”

He stumbled to a halt before her and sank to his knees in the dirt. “Diz,” he muttered thickly, “you’re not hurt.”

“Dear God, Harry! What’s happened to you?”

He grinned crookedly. The moonlight caught the dark gleam of blood on his lip. “Well, Diz …” He gasped. “You always said … you’d see me … on my knees.” He pitched forward.

She caught him before he hit the ground.

“O
pen up, Magi!” Desdemona called.

“Aha! It is time you are home!” Desdemona heard Magi’s voice at the same time the inside bolt slid back. “You are most late. An English gentleman should know better than—”

The front door swung open. Light spilled out of the front door illuminating Blake at the bottom of the stairs, Harry slung over his broad shoulders.

“Allah have mercy.” Magi gasped as Desdemona pushed past her.

“Bring him in,” she said to Blake.

Blake shifted Harry’s weight and struggled up the stairs. With each step, Harry’s head bobbed. He was unconscious again, as he’d been most of the way here.

“To one of the bedrooms?” Magi asked.

“No,” Desdemona said, “at least not tonight. I need light. We’ll use Grandfather’s library. Follow me,” she ordered Blake. She strode down the narrow,
cluttered hallway and flung open the door at the far end. “Duraid,” she said, spying the boy peeking around the corner, “bring fresh linen, iodine, soap, and hot water.”

Blake, burdened with Harry’s long, limp form, lurched up the last few steps into the hallway.

“Sometime before Harry succumbs, Duraid,” Desdemona suggested grimly, and the round-eyed boy fled toward the kitchen.

“But where can we put him?” Magi asked.

Desdemona quickly surveyed the room. The “library” was no more than an anteroom separating the main body of the small house from the little walled courtyard behind. It was already packed to overflowing with relics in various stages of readiness for shipping to London. Books, treatises, papers, and files littered every available surface. Crates, some empty, some packed, stood stacked along the walls. The desk and drafting table were lined with cartons and vessels and pottery.

She considered the floor and discarded the notion. Aside from being dusty and cold, it would be impossible to drape with the netting essential in keeping night-flying insects from feasting on Harry’s open wounds. She bit her lip, searching for someplace to set Harry. Blake, hunched panting in the doorway, grunted.

“In there,” she finally said, pointing. “It’s high enough so I can see what I’m doing and narrow enough to keep him from rolling over.”

“But surely, Miss Desdemona—” Blake protested.

“Just until we can scare up a cot.”

Looking doubtful, Blake eased Harry onto the blankets Magi quickly laid beneath him. Desdemona raised the gas jets on the wall as high as they would go and turned. Her breath caught in her throat.

The hissing light exposed Harry’s torn and battered form with awful clarity, revealing injuries far uglier than any she’d imagined.

So much damage. So much blood. Such filth—

“Miss Desdemona!” Blake caught her about the waist. He urged her toward the desk’s chair but she shifted out of his embrace, impatient with her uncharacteristic squeamishness.

“I’m fine,” she said firmly, bending over Harry and examining his face. “I am.” His swollen left eye was discolored, a deep gash crossed the high angle of his right cheek, and a jagged tear scored his lower lip. Poor beautiful lip. She drew a shaking breath.

“I have the things,
Sitt,”
Duraid said from beside her.

Without looking up, she accepted the small, steaming saucer of water and thick wad of square linen bandages that Duraid handed her. “Magi,” she said, probing the torn edges of the cut on his cheek, “pour some iodine over this gash while I swab it clean. Allah only knows what is encrusted in there.”

“Yes,” Magi murmured. She dribbled liquid into the deep laceration and Harry jerked. His eyes flew open and he stared at her, his expression wild and fierce and intent.

“It’s all right, Harry. I’m—”

“Magi!” The word burst from his lips.

“Magi’s here, too.” Did he think she wouldn’t
care for him, as well, as determinedly as Magi? Did he think she felt so little for him? “I promise I’ll do—”

“Where’s Magi?” he demanded hoarsely.

“I am here, Harry.” Magi put her hand on his brow. He grabbed her wrist. “You have … you … have … to—” He ground his teeth against whatever pain he felt and squeezed his eyes shut. Slowly the white-knuckled grip with which he held Magi’s wrist eased. He’d fallen unconscious again.