Must Have Been The Moonlight (17 page)

“Donally doesn’t report to me.”

Michael sensed Veresy’s pause.

“But Pritchards did,” Veresy added tiredly. “As a matter of professional courtesy. All information was given in the strictest of confidentiality.”

“As was my imminent recall back to England?” Michael felt a harsh recklessness crawl up his neck. “Something that I’ve yet to be told?”

“That was unfortunate.” Lord Veresy sat back in the chair. “But neither was the information classified.”

A silence fell over the room. In vain, Michael only now comprehended that he had lost the support of Veresy. He
knew what that meant to his job, to his reputation, and to his honor—lacking as it was, he valued the principles of the oath he’d sworn to uphold.

“Your recall from this post was my recommendation,” Veresy finally said. “I’ve already been in contact with the Foreign Affairs office in London. When the khedive returns from Paris, I’ll brief him on the matter.” Veresy’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I hold no patience for those who court a personal vendetta over national interests, no matter the moral ground that you stand. We have to find a way to work with Sheikh Omar. Because of his holdings in the south, appeasing the man works in British interests, especially when the French have such a stronghold here. I know how you feel. You must also know I’m as reduced to bloody impotence by politics as you are.”

Michael turned to the tall window that looked out over the narrow patch of lawn. “How long do I have left at my post?”

“The
Northern Star
leaves out of Alexandria in ten days. I already put in for your transfer, even before I received a visit from Lord Chamberlain this afternoon. I understand that you would have been leaving us soon. My condolences on the death of your brother.”

Laughter sounded from the thinning crowd outside. For a moment the noise didn’t penetrate; he heard only the rush of blood in his veins.

Then he caught sight of Brianna as she ran up the steps from the garden, her dress belling out around her, and the whole world receded. Something primitive grabbed at his insides as he lifted his gaze to ascertain the reason for her hurried pace. But he saw nothing. Brianna wore white, trimmed with the slimmest of lace, her hair smoothly netted at her nape. The moonlight wrapped her in light and shadow.

Maybe his discharge from his post didn’t matter anymore. Life always had an ironic way of turning vinegar into wine when least expected. As Donally had once told him, at least he was leaving here alive, even if he didn’t want to return to England at all.

As he watched Brianna, two young men in uniform stopped her at the top of the stairs. “What is the occasion for celebration tonight?” he asked, his gaze following Brianna until she disappeared inside.

“It’s Wednesday.” Veresy opened the door with grave courtesy. “Go join the crush, Major. You’re entitled.”

Michael descended the stairs to the crimson carpeted landing that overlooked the ballroom. Conscious that he was not in full dress, he knew that he was out of place among the glittering sect and ornamented uniforms of his brethren. He stood perhaps ten seconds before shouldering through the press of onlookers to where a young captain was escorting Brianna out for the first waltz. One look at Michael’s countenance was sufficient to inform even the meanest of intelligence that Brianna was his intended target.

“Sir—”

“This dance is already taken, Captain.” Michael stepped between the stunned man and Brianna, and pulled her out onto the floor, his method of securing this dance as unorthodox as his intent was selfish.

“Are you insane, Major?” Brianna lowered her voice.

Michael whirled her in a graceful arc around the edge of the ballroom. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said with combative eyes, the tenor of his mood pulled by something he could not explain. “Maybe I’m just bloody annoyed at watching every other man look at you.” Leaning close, he spoke in a low seductive voice. “Have I told you how beautiful you look?”

Blue eyes lifted to touch his, and he wondered if she’d been crying. “I’d heard that you were with Lord Veresy,” she said quietly. “Are you going to face a court-martial?”

“There will be no court-martial.”

“I would stand as a witness to your character if it ever came to that,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Goodness, how unsophisticated do I sound?”

But her arms tightened around him, and Michael experienced that same curious feeling of protectiveness he’d felt upstairs. “Do me a favor, Miss Donally.” He pressed his mouth to the soft scented fragrance of her hair. “I want only one thing tonight. And she’s currently ensconced in my arms.”

“Surely a man who sweeps me off my feet in front of the whole European community can grace me with a more provocative endearment, less common than Miss Donally.”

Their gazes met. Michael took a turn with her out the glass doors onto the terrace, and together they slowed to a breathless stop. He didn’t understand the strange undercurrent beneath his mood or the tension that gripped him. “I believe that there’s nothing the least common about you,” he replied in a soft tone.

“Only compared to social rank perhaps.” She took his much larger hand and turned it over in hers. “I prefer to think of myself as bold.”

Michael pulled her fingers to his lips. “Bold enough to sneak out of a bedroom window to visit your true love?” He peered over her hand into her eyes. “The man who spoiled you for life with just one kiss?”

She frowned and snatched her hand away. “I see Christopher has subjected you to the usual brother-to-other-man chat.”

“I fear that is the case,” he said, quietly amused.

“Did he also tell you that I’ve spent time in a gaol?”

Taking her hand again, Michael walked with Brianna past a pair of colonnades away from the illumination of the ballroom. “I believe he mentioned that fact as well.”

The blue flash in her eyes told him that she was not pleased with her brother. “Then while we’re on the topic of my indiscretion, you may as well know the other sordid details of my past.”

Gravel crunched beneath his boots. A couple strolling past them in the gardens nodded their heads. “That’s not necessary, Brianna.”

“Truly, I think it is,” she said. “Did he tell you that I shared my captivity in a cell full of bawds?

“Bawds?” He hadn’t heard that term in ages.

“Prostitutes,” she succinctly clarified.

“Hell, Brianna. I know what a bawd is.”

“I won’t go into the mundane details of why I was arrested with them in the first place.” Her voice remained confrontational. “I went on to document their lives in an attempt to bring awareness to their plight and the plight of others on the street.”

“What happened?” He’d stopped beneath a tree near the pagoda.

“My work was considered pornographic and banned in England.”

“Did you really publish a book?”

“I did.” She raised her chin.

Their gazes held; then she looked at his gloved hand entwined with hers. “Stephan and I were together for four years,” she said after a moment. “The man I snuck out the window to see. I thought the sun rose and fell with his smile. I was seventeen when I fell in love with him.” She leaned against the tree. “One doesn’t just fall in and out of love overnight, if you can understand? And it’s never taken lightly with me.”

He’d entwined his gaze with their fingers but now looked into her face. “Maybe I understand more than I should, Brianna.”

“What I haven’t told my family, or anyone else for that matter, is that he walked away for someone else. A simple, sweet English girl more fitting of his station. It was a matter of pride that my family not know.” She paused as if to consider her next words.

“Not that my family doesn’t have good reason for their doubts about me,” she said. “I blamed Stephan for being a stupid dolt, yet, I have the unfortunate ability to understand his reasons for what he did. Now, I’m in Egypt…and once again it seems that I find myself drawn to the forbidden.”

“In that we are both the same,
amîri
.”

Michael was not prepared for her effect on him. He was unused to dealing with the fallible human side of his being. He’d been too long in the desert. Too long a soldier who wasn’t allowed to have feelings or to show emotion. His existence hadn’t lent itself to doubt or dishonor in the day-to-day ritual of survival. He’d served his queen with dubious distinction, but he’d served with honor. Now, as England emerged on the horizon like a vast green morass of uncertainty, for the first time in his life he found the road ahead fogged with no clear path.

“I think the forbidden excites us.” She traced a finger along the epaulette edging his shoulder. “Would you like to know my theory why?”

He leaned his palm against the tree at her back, took in her scent and the heat of her body, which imprinted itself on the length of his. “I’ve never known you to be tongue-tied, so I expect you’ll tell me.”

“We are both the youngest in a family of tyrants, subjected to all manner of oppression. And oppression breeds rebellion against authority. Of course, I feel sorrier for your circumstance. I can understand why you became a soldier and ran away.”

More than anything else, she had the power to make him laugh, and he did so now.

“Was it any harder then than it is now?” she asked.

“Is
what
harder?” He pulled back to look down into her face.

“You said once that you served with Gordon in China. How did you survive the change?”

“One doesn’t survive China in a state of distraction. Especially someone who didn’t own a single blister on his hands when he left.”

Turning his hand over in hers, she raised it to her cheek, and he was lost to her tenderness. “Did you find out anything about my Dickens book?” she asked after a moment.

“It didn’t make the rounds of any shops. Whoever delivered it to the mission did so through one of the children
there. The book was sentimental to you. Maybe someone wanted you to have it back. Do you have any more admirers that I should know about?”

“Do tell, Major.” Her rebuke was weighted with gentleness. Then she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on the solid muscle of his shoulder. “I’ve missed you, too.”

He slid his hand beneath her hair. “Have you?”

They were in public, and the trees made a poor shield. A reckless more dangerous part of him knew the sordid ugliness that came with gossip, and how quickly a way of life could end. He didn’t want Brianna to suffer that castigation.

Holding her face between his palms, he pulled away and looked into her eyes. Bloody hell, he thought, if he wasn’t about to do something honorable. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck—and Michael knew a moment when he was lost. Maybe it was some forgotten memory of cool sunny days and blue skies, he decided, that had stamped his psyche forever. No matter its origin, he couldn’t stop himself from covering her mouth with his.

He’d meant only to taste her, but as soon as his mouth touched hers, his arms tightened and he pulled her closer.

“Leave with me,” he said against her hair, her mouth, as he kissed her again. “I’ll have you back at your house before this soiree ends.”

Her hand came up between them. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I came here with my family. I’m sure Christopher has already gotten word of my unorthodox departure from the ballroom.”

“Dammit, Brianna.” With a thick sound of frustration, the fury that had been seething just below the surface made itself heard in a quiet oath as he set her away. “Our time together seems to be at cross purposes.”

“Truly you can be unreasonable about the oddest things.”

The absurdity of his irritation caught at him. But Brianna didn’t know him as well as she thought, and
unreasonable
didn’t nearly touch the raw edge of his emotions.

“Go,” he said quietly, paying no heed to her wounded look. “If you stay here, you’re going to find yourself flat on your back.”

A frown bracketed the corners of her mouth, but she did as he told her. Michael walked up the steps of the pagoda. Leaning in the archway, he watched the sway of her skirts, and knew a hunger deep in his loins. She hadn’t walked far when she turned.

“Will you consider lunch on Friday?” She stood on the flagstone path between the shrubberies. “Alex hasn’t seen you since we’ve been back. Two o’clock,” she coaxed him, not waiting for him to answer. “Plus or minus an hour depending on her ladyship’s appetite.”

Michael watched her go. Somewhere beyond the high walls of the consulate, a mandolin played. He rolled a cigarette and looked out across the lake as he struck a match, then laid the flame to its tip. He turned and peered through the smoke as Brianna disappeared inside the ballroom. He couldn’t do the family proviso with her. He didn’t know how, and it was too late to begin.

Hell, he hadn’t even told her he was leaving Cairo.

He’d told her nothing at all.

Then he looked past the blue smoke and saw Omar on the drive. His hand, holding the cigarette, froze in midair. A bevy of dainty women in their tulle veils and ample dresses of saffron silk surrounded him. He watched as they boarded their European carriage in seclusion. Omar mounted a horse and, followed by his dark guardians on horseback, thundered away from the consulate with all the fanfare of a mighty ruler. In disgust, Michael ground out his cigarette.