Must Have Been The Moonlight (38 page)

The steward hastily prepared the pillows on the chair. The old man was of Arab descent. Ware made no secret of the fact that Brianna was missing, and as the former diplomat spoke with quick, authoritative tones, Michael remained silent.

Charles Cross had changed in the month since Michael had seen him in London. His white stock, loose and unkempt at his neck, accentuated the weather-burnt pallor beneath the pale skin. Black lashes shadowed his strange gold eyes, attentive behind his spectacles. But no formality of posture could hide the gravity of his appearance. One look at the man’s pallid complexion dispelled any doubt that Cross was seriously ill.

“We’ve come to inquire about a certain amulet that was given over into your possession some time ago,” Michael heard Ware say. “Lord Ravenspur spoke to you about the matter when he was here in London last.”

“I have seen that the amulet was returned to the museum in Cairo. Your daughter is aware of this.”

“Have you received anything else…that you would term illegal?”

Michael had put too much hope in the expectation that Cross would be his man. Brianna wasn’t here.

No longer able to contain his restless energy, he stood as Ware spoke inanely. Rich hangings, silken carpets, and exquisite lamps lined the walls and floors. The salon was a throwback to history, an antiquated museum of eastern artifacts and furnishings, from the ivory-inlaid tables to bamboo and Chinese ebony chairs. Photographs shared the walls with a tiger’s head and fanged beasts. He stopped in front of a photograph, the kind usually taken at fairs. Two boys sat on each side of a pretty woman, embraced by a palm frond sitting in a vase at her back. She wore a simple dress that was in fashion ten years ago. One boy looked about fifteen, the other ten. Both were leaning into the woman, their hands in their laps. The boy on the left was clearly Charles Cross.

“You have a brother?” Michael asked. Realizing that he had interrupted, he turned. “My apologies, your lordship,” he said to Ware.

“He attends Oxford,” Cross said behind his handkerchief.

“This is your house?” Michael asked, letting his gaze go around the room. Indeed, for a man of humble beginnings, he had come far.

“This house belonged to my mother. She passed away shortly after that photograph was taken.”

Lord Ware stood. “We apologize for disturbing you, Mr. Cross.”

“Please convey my apology to Lady Alexandra,” Cross said at the door. “As you now understand, I felt it best to stay away from her.”

The house was still. Michael glimpsed the unmarked layers of dust and shrouded furniture in the rooms on either side of the entryway. Yet, some subtle atmosphere in the air bothered him. Something more than the hint of disinfectant that surrounded Cross, and the realization that he’d smelled
that same scent in the passageway of the steamer the night someone had jammed the door.

“You like fresh flowers?” Michael casually asked. “Not many florists sell roses this time of year.”

“Mine does.”

This time when the handkerchief came away from Cross’s mouth, Michael saw the blood. Slowly, he lifted his gaze. Their eyes met.

Michael knew! Goddamn, he knew!

Cross’s expression no longer benign, he dabbed the corner of his mouth. “Do you think it incongruous that I would wish to fill this place with something patently innocent? Look around you, Fallon, and tell me that even a single rose would not add life to this sordid existence?”

Ware’s fingers wrapped around Michael’s forearm. “We have kept you too long, Mr. Cross,” Ware said.

“You should have let me kill him, brother.” The words were spoken from the shadows behind Charles Cross.

Charles stood at the long window overlooking the yard. “What have you done with her?” He’d spoken in Arabic without realizing. He despised the crude language and didn’t like that he’d slipped. The opium made him careless.

“She did not get out of the room,” Selim said.

Charles finally smelled the roses. The scent was coming from Selim. There was still the shattered residue of attar of roses on his clothes. The house probably reeked of the scent. Damn Selim for his stupidity!

Charles dropped the edge of the curtain. He held his arms to his side and let his faithful steward remove his jacket to check the bandage beneath. “You are bleeding. You must return to bed,” the older man said. They’d served many years together. “You will die, effendi….”

Selim stepped forward into the light, his youthful countenance no longer recognizable behind the bruises and swelling on his face. “Why do you bother with the girl after
what she has done to you? Her presence condemns us all. He will tear down this house looking for her.”

Charles lifted his gaze to the ceiling. The hunger he had lived with since she’d left Cairo returned to gnaw at his gut with burning force. Brianna had not understood his devotion to her. She had no idea how he’d protected her. How he still protected her. Selim had wanted to kill her, but then, Selim had always hungered for blood, more so since the girl had blackened his face.

He moved slowly into the entryway, every step agony. He’d recognized the glacial look in Fallon’s eyes, and knew that only Brianna’s presence had kept them all alive tonight. But maybe it didn’t matter anymore. Already his plans had changed.

He gripped the balustrade as he eased up the stairs. The staircase window was high and latticed with stained glass. A chandelier filled the space above the entryway, and as he raised his gaze, he couldn’t remember ever having seen the crystalline fixture alive with lights.

“Light them,” he told his steward, who had remained behind in the shadows. “Light everything.”

“I’m a liability,” Ware rasped over his breath. “You should leave me and go for help.”

“Stay in the shadows.” Without taking his eyes off the gate, Michael had worked the revolver from his waistband. “I should have killed the son of a bitch….” His long coat brushed his calves as he walked with Ware. The driveway was matted with weeds. Moonlight spattered across the ground like broken eggshells.

“It looks like someone beat you to it,” Ware asked. “He’s coughing up blood. Gunshot?”

“Which explains why he’s still in London. He has no intention of leaving that house alive.”

“If his mother has been dead for ten years, it’s obvious what Cross has been sending back to England. He couldn’t have been working alone.”

But Michael was no longer listening as he attempted to remove himself as a walking bull’s-eye. He could feel the pulse and danger of the night swirling around him. His hands and stomach were cold with fear and rage. But as suddenly as his fury and panic had come upon him, it ebbed into something deadly. This wasn’t a walk that he preferred to take, but there was too much at stake. If he broke off now, Ware would be left unprotected. Nor could he charge into the house, any more than he could have dragged Cross outside if he ever wanted to see Brianna alive.

“When we get to the carriage, I want you to find the constable.”

Ware slowed. “You’re going back alone?”

“He won’t be alone.” Donally spoke as Michael passed through the gate. “She’s my sister, Fallon.” Dressed in clothes that blended with the night, the black stubble on his face, the former Public Works minister for the khedive was leaning against the stone wall. The streetlight picked out his blue eyes as he shifted them to Ware. “You’ve surprised me by breaking the law so blatantly, my lord.”

“Don’t tell me you came alone?” the man’s father-in law scoffed.

Wind breathed across the street and stirred the gnarled tree branches above them. “I’m not as foolish as some.”

Michael’s gaze lifted. Surrounded by leafy branches, Finley crouched on the weathered stone wall above the street. He smiled like a wolf. “My men are already on the grounds, your fancy lordship.”

Tucking his gun away, Michael cocked a brow at Donally, hastily removing his coat. “How is it that you two know one another?”

“We grew up together.” Donally lifted himself onto an overhanging branch.

A moment later Michael settled beside him in the tree. He was glad for Donally’s friends. Water dropped from the leaves onto his hands. “Your Grace.” Finley held out a knife, hilt first. “You’ll be needin’ this.”

“Keep it. I have my own. And don’t anyone touch Cross. He’s mine.”

His focus clear, his footing sure, Michael lowered himself off the ledge and into the night. Then he was sprinting full-out through the trees. Nothing else mattered but finding his wife. And if Cross didn’t die first of his wounds, Michael would kill him.

Brianna sat on the edge of the bed. The turnkey had returned. She tried to talk to the dullard who’d refused her food and water. So weak, she’d tried desperately to distract him to get to the window.

“What does the bitch want now?” Selim strolled into the room.

He’d spoken to her guard in Arabic, but Brianna recognized the tone well enough to know what he’d said. His venomous gaze went over her before he backhanded the hapless guard. “
Abît
. Idiot. What is she doing untied?”

Realizing he intended to strike her as well, Brianna leaped off the bed, too frightened to breathe. Dizziness swarmed over her senses. She didn’t know where she was. But a gust of wind sent branches scraping the roof above her head and mingled with the creaks and groans of distressed joints. She suspected that she’d been put in the upper reaches of a house. The ceiling sloped to within three feet of the floor.

“All I want is something to eat and drink. Is that so much?” Her voice was hoarse, her throat dry from screaming so long in the gag.

“Do you think you’ll live long enough to die of starvation?”

Selim lifted her and tossed her on the bed so hard, she heard the frame snap. Fighting to regain control of her panic, she struck out at him and screamed, only to hear her high-pitched rasp. Her legs entangled in her skirts. He tied her ankles. “We weren’t supposed to be here but for you.”

“Enough!”

Through a waterfall of her hair, Brianna saw Charles Cross leaning against the door frame, a wine flask held
loosely in his hand as if he were drunk. Her friend. Her ally in Cairo. For a moment he struggled to stand, and Brianna, disbelieving, noted his pallid features, the way his hand trembled against the door frame. Until now she hadn’t known for sure that he’d been the one she’d shot. Someone had hit her and knocked her unconscious. But now she knew.

“How could you?” She tried to scream at him but couldn’t as Selim turned her over on her stomach and bound her hands tightly behind her.

How could he be associated with a murderer like Selim?

“Leave us,” Charles said to the younger man. “Now!” he said again, when it looked as if Selim would argue. “You are free to go.”

“You still have time, my brother,” Selim pleaded. “We have avenged our mother. We have won. You don’t need to stay. Come with me.”

“Go, Selim. Before it is too late for you.”

“I cannot!”

“Go. And lock the door.”

Glaring at Brianna through tears, the younger man whirled away and stalked from the room.
Mother?
They shared the same mother?

His face hidden in the shadow, Charles seemed to be staring at her. She heard the click of the door, and struggled to sit against the cast-iron headboard. Selim was Omar’s youngest son. Brianna remembered what Omar had once said about having an English mistress while he’d attended Oxford. Brianna’s gaze rose to Cross’s. No sound escaped her.

“With my hair and coloring, my illustrious father thought I could be of more use to him if no one knew the truth, that I could even care the slightest for him after he made a whore of my mother.” Charles moved into the dull sphere of light cast by the single candle on the nightstand. She could see the bloodstain spreading outward in a circle on his shirt. “Do you know what he used to do to the young servants in this room? Sometimes he would even bring my mother and me up here to watch.”

“You are the one who killed him.” She’d exhausted herself in her struggles. “He was never part of those caravan raids.”

“Had I been able to convince Fallon that Omar was the one behind the attacks, I could have trusted him just to deal with the bastard. That gold shipment raid had been our last. I’d accomplished what I’d gone to Egypt to do. Ruin Omar. I’d wanted him to know that his bastard sons were better than he was. I could go anywhere in the world and live like royalty with what I took off that caravan.”

“I live like royalty. There’s better ways to ruin your life.”

He chuckled, such a normal sound that they could have been sitting down over tea. Pain creased his features. “You shot me, Brianna.”

“I didn’t know it was you. How could I?”

The bed dipped as he sat beside her. He smelled of disinfectant and sweat. Brianna turned her face away as he held the flask to her mouth. “You have to drink now, Miss Donally.”

“Please…don’t.”

“You are thirsty. And this will help.”

She tried to fight. The wine dribbled over her lips and down her chin. Then he shoved a fist into her hair and pulled her head back. “I have no need of poisons, Miss Donally. This will not hurt you.”