As You Desire (34 page)

Yes
. She could have felt it necessary to see him. Blake. “Send someone to the hotel with inquiries.”

“I do not know what the note said.” Tears shimmered in Duraid’s eyes. “I cannot read.”

“Can’t one bloody person around here read?”
Harry thundered, his fist crashing down on the desktop.

“You do not help by terrorizing the boy,” Magi chided.

Curse it, Harry thought, she was right. “I’m sorry, Duraid. Tell me again what happened.”

“Early this morning I find a note under the door at the back of the house. It bears the
Sitt’s
name. I can read that much.” A hint of reproachfulness. “I am taking it to her when I hear my friend calling for me from the street. I go to meet him and he tells me that the turkey farm’s landlord wants more money. Today. I am very worried for my friends at the farm. I go to find
Sitt. Sitt
will help.”

“Go on.”

“She is in her room. I do not think she feels well. She is very white and here”—he gestured toward his eyes—“it looks as if she is hurting.”

“Duraid, just tell us what happened, boy,” Magi said.

“I hand her the note and tell her about the turkey farm. She gives me money to take to the landlord. I do as she says. I come back and she is gone.” He lifted his hands, palm up. “I swear, Harry, I would tell you if I knew where.”

“I know.” He willed himself to be calm. She’d only been gone a few hours. She was, as Duraid had said, hurt and unhappy. As far as being in danger … Maurice was safely in jail and Dizzy knew this city better than any Englishwoman ought to.

The servant Magi had sent to the Shepheard’s slipped into the sitting room and whispered in
Magi’s ear. The housekeeper’s face grew tense with concentration.

“What is it?”

Magi dismissed the servant before addressing him. “The clerk at the front lobby said that Lord Ravenscroft secured a guide and horses for an overnight excursion.”

“Well, if Blake has gone touring he won’t be of much help finding Dizzy,” Harry said. Another avenue closed.

“Lord Ravenscroft asked for two horses. He was, the clerk said, with an Englishwoman.”

He froze. “Who?”

“He did not hear her name.”

He heard the pained assumption in Magi’s voice. She needn’t have worried. Whoever had been with Blake, it had not been Dizzy. Dizzy might feel she needed to tell Blake that she could no longer encourage his attentions, but nothing more. Four hours ago, Harry thought, Dizzy said she loved me. She would never betray her heart.

“I can’t stay here waiting for her to return,” he said. “I’m going to the turkey farm. If she comes back while I’m away, keep her here until I return.”

“What if she doesn’t want to see you?” Magi asked.

“We don’t always get what we want,” he answered grimly.

Desdemona rested her forehead on her knees, hugging her arms about her legs and shivering. The single high window let in the last of the fading sunlight.
Soon it would be night. She had nothing to protect herself from its frigid embrace except her shawl.

Earlier, the Arab woman had approached her cell with a stack of blankets. Maurice had cuffed her across the face, sending her and the blankets sprawling in the sand. No one else had comte near. No one had brought food; no one had brought water. She ran her dry tongue over her cracked lips, tasting the powdery dust covering them.

Keys rattled in the lock and Desdemona bolted to her feet, pressing herself tightly against the far wall. The door swung open and Maurice centered. Wordlessly he threw a goatskin at her. She caught it and raised the flask to her lips, gulping down the tepid, alkaline water. Her parched throat sated, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Let me go,” she rasped.

“Do not worry. I do not intend you shall stay here long. Just until Braxton arrives.”

“What do you want with Harry?” She’d already asked him the question a dozen times. He’d yet to answer.

“You are a nag, Miss Carlisle.” He had no accent, though his voice held a faint cadence. “Has anyone ever told you this?” he asked. “I hate nagging women. There are places in the world where a woman pays for wagging her tongue by losing it. Not a bad idea.”

She lifted her chin, gratified her lips were so stiff they could not tremble. “What do you want with Harry?”

He grunted appreciably.

“Well?”

“I want Harry to die.”

“No. You can’t.” She shook her head in vehement denial.

“Oh, yes.” His smooth, ageless face nodded in mock agreeableness. “I do.”

“Why?”

“Because he is my … 
nemesis
?” His eyes, black and shiny as a beetle’s carapace, rolled thoughtfully toward the ceiling. “Yes. Nemesis. Even though it seems a romantic word and I am by no one’s definition a romantic. I am a businessman. I perform services for profit. Everything I have done is for the sake of business. Does that seem unreasonable to you?” He looked as if he were sincerely interested in her opinion.

“No,” she said.

“No,” he echoed encouragingly. “I have never made the mistake of allowing personal feelings to interfere with business. Yet many times Harry has seen fit to thwart my endeavors.”

“I’m sure …” She fumbled around for something to say. “I’m sure it is just business for him, too.”

“Oh, no,” Maurice said. “No. He enjoyed cheating me, discrediting me … reviling me. Did you know that at one time I was the leading procurer of antiquities in Egypt? At one time Braxton and I were partners.”

“Impossible.”

“Yes!” A flash of ire. “I knew where to go, because
I was the Cairo Museum’s chief foreman, overseeing dozens of archeological digs. You cannot imagine the treasures I once had access to.” His gaze grew clouded, his attention turned inward.

Holding her breath, Desdemona moved along the wall.

“Harry reaped the rewards of
my
expertise,
my
entrée into the dig sites. But then he interfered.” An expression of aggrieved bafflement crossed Maurice’s unlined face. “Do you know why Harry Braxton did this?”

She halted, pinned in her progress by his sudden attention, yet he did not seem to notice she’d moved. “Did he get too avaricious? Surely you can understand how he may have been tempted—”

“No,” he cut in. “Greed I could understand, forgive. Greed is a part of business.”

“Business.”

He pounded one clenched fist into his open palm and she started. “Business reasons might make it necessary to interfere with a man’s livelihood, a man’s career. But it wasn’t business! He interfered because of the brats.”

She was nearly to the corner of the room now. Her foot bumped against something and she glanced down at the cylinder she’d put the papyrus in. She looked up and found Maurice studying her. “Brats?”

“Yes, brats,” he said slowly. “The peasant children who worked the digs. One of them died, a mewling brat died, and Braxton organizes a mutiny!”

“Mutiny? I thought he beat you up.” She froze when she saw the effect of her words. Madness chased beneath Maurice’s smooth face, like worms flooded from their hiding spot during a deluge.

“You’re right,” he said, openly struggling to control himself. “He beat me. And
then
there was the mutiny. It was the end of my being a foreman. A man who cannot instill fear in these peasants cannot supply the necessary manpower to the dig sites.”

He took a deep, calming breath. “Still, I did not hold a grudge. That would be … unprofessional. There were other careers available,” he went on, “other lucrative business opportunities around, ones where I did not need to cross Braxton’s path.”

“That was good of you.” She was a few feet from the open doorway.

“Oh, do not fool yourself.” His amused snarl made clear her attempt to placate him had failed. “That doesn’t mean I forgave Braxton for introducing sentiment into simple business practices.”

A child died and this man called it a simple business practice. He
was
mad.

“Being an astute businessman, I determined to be prepared should Harry and I have another encounter,” he said. “I asked around. I ferreted out his secrets. His weaknesses. I found none. Then”—his gaze flowed over her like fly studded honey, sweet and repulsive—“a stroke of providence, or luck, or whatever you’d call it, occurred. I was hired to fulfill my own desires. Business served pleasure. I was paid—and handsomely—to beat the hell out of
Braxton. And he told me of his Achilles’ heel himself.
You.”

She bit the inside of her cheek, refusing to give him the pleasure of her pain.

“Oh, not in so many words,” he said. “But his face, his eyes when I spoke your name, when I suggested you were important.” He laughed and Desdemona’s stomach clenched. “He fought like a chained dog when I taunted him with your name. I have never seen the like. Even beaten, he still sought to free himself to protect you.”

Rage, cold and implacable, obliterated her fear. This man had beaten Harry, brutalized him. And someone had paid him to do it. “Who paid you?”

“The Austrian,” Maurice answered with a shrug. “It seems your Harry is not a very popular fellow.”

She would have Gunter Konrad’s head on a platter when she got out of—Her momentary fury died with the resurgence of her fear as she remembered her plight.

“But if you already got to beat Harry up, can’t you call it a draw?” she asked in a rush. “I mean, he beats you up, you beat him. It all seems pretty well evened up to me.”

Ugliness flickered over Maurice’s smooth features again, like the churning of silt beneath the Nile’s thick, smooth water.

“Doesn’t it?” he asked. “But it
didn’t
end there. Braxton saw to that. He set me up. He framed me!” His voice rose in fury. “He stole a funerary piece from your grandfather’s own collection and planted in my home! And then he sent the Turk military pigs
to have me arrested, thrown into prison. Do you know—” He moved close to her, angling to her side, leaving the doorway unguarded. His breath, fetid and hot, fanned her face. “Can you possibly conceive of what an Arab prison is like?”

She shook her head, mesmerized by the virulence in Maurice’s unblinking eyes.

“Braxton and I aren’t just enemies. Harry Braxton is my nemesis. He seeks my destruction. It is only reasonable that I strive to achieve his first. And I will,” he said, “because I have something Braxton won’t be able to resist coming for: you.”

She leapt for the open doorway.

He was way ahead of her. He caught her hair, savagely jerking her back and spinning her around. His backhanded blow caught her across the mouth, slicing her lip open against her teeth. She gasped, dropping to her knees with the force of his blow.

“Any more questions … 
Honored Sitt?”

H
arry any stared in the mirror, barely recognizing the image it gave back. He looked awful. Dark bruises encircled his eyes. His skin looked thin and cleaved too tightly to the underlying bone.

Dizzy hadn’t come home.

“Someone has to have seen her.” How many times had he said this, aloud and to himself?

“I have men scouring the area and I’ve sent word to Sir Robert in Luxor. Undoubtedly she has gone to join him there,” Simon Chesterton said. He pulled the unlit cheroot he’d been gnawing on out of his mouth and rolled the soggy ends between his thumb and forefinger. He looked older, too, his ruddy face lined like thousand-years-old crumpled papyrus. Even his beard appeared thinner.

“Without clothes, money, or telling Magi?” Harry asked.

“We’ll find her.” Simon’s words did not reassure him.

Harry had sent for the colonel late last evening, after everything he’d done, every avenue he’d searched had proved fruitless.

“Coffee?”

“Thank you, Magi,” Simon said, allowing his untouched cup to be emptied and refilled with steaming liquid.

“The boy from the turkey farm,” Harry asked again. “You’re sure he hasn’t seen any Englishwoman? Any at all?”

“No.”

“What about a light-skinned native woman? Sometimes Dizzy dresses in—”

Simon shook his head gravely.

Nothing had been found. Not a single clue to where she’d been taken … and taken she’d undoubtedly been.

A young woman alone. Taken from the streets
. Harry pushed his fingers hard against his temples and breathed deeply through his nostrils, seeking calm. Little more than a week ago when Rabi had snatched Dizzy from the
suq
, he’d spent a similar night, demon-haunted and terrified. He’d hunted then as frantically as he had last night, roaming the bazaars and footpaths and streets until dawn and word from Abdul had finally come.

This might be the same thing. Initially alarming but ultimately benign. It had to be.

He swept his hand over his eyes, vaguely aware his fingers grew damp on their passage.

*  *  *

“Marta, what’s wrong, dear?” Cal asked. He waved the hovering waiter away and planted his forearms on either side of his plate. “I was delighted when your note arrived suggesting we breakfast on Shepheard’s terrace together, but now I’m thinking that this isn’t a purely social visit, is it?”