Mr Impossible (22 page)

She’d reached
the door of her cabin. As her fingers closed over the door handle, he
laid his palm against the door and rested his weight on it. The
passage was narrow, and this was the end of it. His big frame, inches
away from her, blocked any return to the front of the boat. His big
hand held the door shut. He not only took up most of the space but
most of the air, it seemed. She found it difficult to breathe, near
impossible to think.

“
You had your
turn to talk about Coptic,” he said. “Now it’s my
turn. I want to talk about… Harnesses.”

She knew he hadn’t
followed her to discuss the pharaoh’s cartouches. “That
is quite unnecessary,” she said. “You already
apologized.”

The passage’s
gloom veiled his expression, but she heard his smile when he said,
“Did I? That’s unusual. What on earth for, I wonder?”

“
I know it is
the merest trifle to you.” She lowered her voice to an
undertone while hoping that Leena, inside the cabin, did not have her
ear pressed to the door. “However, many people believe it is
highly improper to kiss a member of the opposite sex who is not a
close relative.”

“
Oh, that
kiss wasn’t a trifle,” he said. “I’ve had
trifling ones, believe me, and that was another category altogether.
That kiss was—”

“
I think we
had better pretend it never happened,” she broke in
desperately.

“
That would
be dishonest,” he said.

The space was
small, and growing smaller and warmer by the second. She was
desperately aware of the large hand on the door. She remembered how
easily he’d captured her, how gently yet firmly he’d
grasped her head and held her while he claimed her mouth and made it
his. She remembered his powerful hand on her backside, pressing her
so close, and the pressure of his arousal against her belly. She was
awash now in the mingled scents of Male: boot polish and shaving
soap, pomade and, most intoxicating of all, the combination that was
so absolutely and devastatingly
him
.

“
It was an
aberration, a momentary madness,” she said.

“
It was madly
exciting,” he said, his voice so low that she felt rather than
heard it, on her neck, behind her ear, and deep, deep within, where
the devil lurked and made her ache for wild and wicked things.

She said, her voice
taut and a little too high, “But above all, it was
wrong
, Mr. Carsington.”

She didn’t
see him move, but it felt as though he stood nearer, too near.

“
Really,”
he said. “What was wrong with it? Which part? Should I have
done this?” He laid the palm of his other hand upon the door,
boxing her in. “And this?” He lowered his head and
lightly kissed her forehead.

It was the gentlest
of touches. The world slowed, and awareness narrowed to the light
touch of his lips upon her skin. It was butterflies. Rose petals. The
glisten of morning dew. The first note of birdsong. She had no words
in any language for the sweetness she felt.

“
And this?”
He kissed her nose.

She was afraid to
move, afraid the sweet feeling was a dream. If she moved, if she
breathed, it would vanish, as so many dreams had done.

“
And this?”
His lips brushed her cheek.

“
Oh,”
she said. “Oh, this is… Oh, I don’t think…”

“
Don’t
think.” His lips touched hers, and then she was melting,
everything within her dissolving into liquid.

She leant back
against the door, her hands flat against it at her sides, keeping
herself still, or trying to. Her knees weren’t there anymore.
She was dying of pleasure. It was wicked, but so sweet. The sweetness
held her, made her give back in kind, and the pleasure deepened and
darkened into longing.

She knew better
than to long for any man, especially this kind. She knew the
sweetness was seduction, not affec-tion. This was not the youthful
innocence it felt like. She knew this, in some safe, sober corner of
her drunken mind.

Knowing all this,
she should have turned away or pushed him away. She couldn’t,
wouldn’t.

She had to have the
feel of his mouth hard against hers. She needed the taste of him
again as much as the
hashisheen
needed their drag. She could
not get enough of the slow, wicked game he played with his tongue,
and the tiny heat shivers he triggered in the back of her neck and in
her belly. In some part of her clouded mind she knew she’d
suffer for it, but that was far away, and he was near, and the scent
and taste of him blocked out everything else. He took her into the
darkness, and that, it seemed, was where she was meant to be.

RUPERT KEPT HIS
hands on the door. He’d meant to hold back, to wait. He’d
had enough torture this day, and pursuing her, touching her, was
begging for more. Still, for the moment, torture was delicious.

It was only a kiss.
Merely the longest kiss in the world, a thousand kisses blossoming
from one. His mouth played upon hers, and hers upon his, and in no
time at all she’d set the moons and planets and stars whirling.

He kept his hands
on the door. For balance. For strength. And to stop it from ending.
He mustn’t move his hands, mustn’t let them touch her, or
she’d shy away.

He could drink her
in, though. He could inhale the scent of her, a hint of incense
carried on the desert wind. And he could savor the taste of her, a
strange champagne, light and fresh even while it made fire trails in
the veins.

He could let his
mouth tease hers, playing over the hint of a pout. He could brush his
face against hers, skin to skin, hers like silken velvet, a softness
that stabbed him someplace within, and left him weak-kneed and
half-laughing inside at how easily a woman could bring a great lummox
to his knees.

He feathered kisses
over her creamy, heart-shaped countenance and traced her beautiful
cheekbones with his lips. He found the sensitive place behind her
ear, and the pulse point in her throat. He felt its quickened beat
under his mouth, and heard his heart hammer an eager answer.

His hands slid down
the door, and they were not quite steady, either. He brought them to
her shoulders, because he had to stop. Enough was enough. He was no
saint. He could barely resist temptation at all, and he’d
already tested his limits and beyond.

And then somehow
his fingers were sliding up the smooth column of her neck and pushing
into her silken hair. Then he needed more of her mouth and the
strange champagne and her tongue playing a wicked game, enslaving
his.

Then it was all too
easy to forget what he’d meant to do. She was warm and soft and
so passionate and for the moment completely his. Every perfect,
curving inch of her was close at last, and she fit exactly as she
should in his arms.

He brought his
hands down over her straight back to her waist. She felt so right
under his hands, and the Tightness swept him along. He forgot about
slow sieges and getting round obstacles and winning her by slow
degrees. He forgot that it was too soon and he mustn’t rush his
fences or she’d be on her guard next time. It was too much to
remember. He was drunk on her scent.

He was only
distantly aware of the gasp that faded into a sigh as his questing
hand moved over her breast. It was warm and soft and fit his hand as
though made precisely for the purpose, bespoke for him from the
beginning. And so it was the most natural thing in the world to need
to touch skin and to reach for the bodice fastenings—

“
Good grief!”
She pushed him away, so hard that he stumbled backward. “What
are you doing?”

“
Taking off
your clothes,” he said.

“
No,”
she said. “No, no, no.” She yanked the door open,
staggered inside, and slammed it behind her.

Breathing raggedly,
he regarded the closed door with narrowed eyes.

“
You knew
this would happen,” he told himself in an undertone, “and
you did it anyway.”

But she had said it
was wrong, and she’d done it anyway, too.

And so he left the
passage and went out onto the open deck, softly whistling all the
while.

Zawyet el Amwat,
opposite Minya

MILES HAD PLANNED
to row to the nearer and more thinly populated eastern shore, rid
himself of the shackles, find a hiding place where he could sleep for
a few hours and gather his strength, then set out at first fight. The
dinghy held the tools and weapons he’d taken as well as a
basket of Egyptian bread. This, along with lentils, had made up the
crew’s diet. It ought to hold him for a week, by the end of
which—in a small boat, traveling by day, with the current
carrying him—he should be back in Cairo.

All he needed—apart
from getting rid of the curst shackles—was a disguise. It would
be best not to attract anyone’s attention. He couldn’t
play a ghost in the daytime, and he couldn’t travel under cover
of darkness and risk colliding with another boat or a sandbank. Even
experienced Nile navigators had accidents, sometimes in broad day.
The sand-laden desert winds constantly reshaped the riverbed, and
navigation was most difficult at this time of year, when the Nile was
reaching its lowest point.

He wished he’d
thought of stealing clothes before he fled the sinking boat, but he
would deal with that later.

It turned out to be
later than he expected.

It took him all
night to rid himself of the shackles. By then his head and hands were
throbbing. A wave of nausea and dizziness drove him to his knees. He
vomited, but die nausea only worsened. His head was on fire.

The sun was coming
up, the fierce Egyptian sun, compared to which the English sun was a
lantern in the fog.

He couldn’t
travel, sick with plague or whatever it was, under the baking sun. He
could only conceal the boat as best he could, pack as much as he
could carry, and drag his shaking, burning body across the narrow
stretch of fertile and to the cliffs looming behind it.

Many hours later,
when he woke up inside a tomb, he ouldn’t remember how he got
there. He wondered if any-one had seen him. He thought of Daphne, and
hoped he’d live to see her again. Those were his last coherent
thoughts. By nightfall he was delirious.

Wednesday 11 April

WHEN LORD
NOXLEY’S
dahabeeyah
the
Memnon
arrived at Minya, Ghazi was at the landing place, waiting for him,
along with two men.

Neither of the two
men was Miles Archdale, a circumstance which caused a small frown to
mar his lordship’s angelic countenance. While the expression
seemed mild enough, those who knew him easily discerned the black
thundercloud forming above his head.

Ghazi discerned it.
He had, in fact, expected it, which was why he’d hurried to
Minya as soon as he heard of the debacle with the kidnappers. He let
the two men tell the master their story. It was short enough.

They were all that
remained of the group Ghazi had sent to recover the Englishman, the
friend of the master, they said. Everyone else was dead, including
all of the kidnappers.

Had these two men
been a trifle more intelligent, they would have pretended to be dead,
too. Most certainly they would not have lingered in Minya, waiting to
give their master bad news. But like many of those Lord Noxley
employed, they had not been hired for their intellectual skills. Like
most of the others as well, they’d dealt with his lieutenants,
never with the Golden Devil directly.

“
The
kidnappers killed the Englishman?” said his lordship. “How
odd. Why should they kill a valuable captive?”

The men were unable
to explain this.

“
I trust you
recovered my friend’s body, at least,” his lordship said.

They looked at each
other. Then they told him about the ghost who’d come after them
when they were tying then-small boat to the larger one.

Lord Noxley said
little during the ghost story, merely nodding with what they took to
be sympathy and under-standing while the thundercloud they couldn’t
see grew blacker and thicker. He dismissed them, telling them to make
themselves useful aboard the
Memnon
.