To Catch a Bride (6 page)

“I will go now to the Englishman’s house and wait until darkness falls. Don’t worry, Laila, Ali and I will be home after dawn.”

From a hook in the courtyard wall she took a coiled length of rope and wrapped it around her waist.

She always carried a knife hidden under her top. Now she tied a thong around her calf and slipped another weapon, a thin dagger, between it and her skin. She hoped it wouldn’t come to knives.

Laila hugged her. “Allah keep you safe.”

Ayisha nodded. She’d never killed before, but she would kill the Englishman before she’d let him take her.

 

 

 

 

T
he trap was set. The boy was asleep. Rafe rose from the chair beside the bed and walked quietly out, closing the door behind him.

He stood at the open French doors, looking out into the velvet night, breathing deeply. A crescent moon gleamed through a gauzy waft of cloud, turning the river below to a ripple of silk. The night air was cool and moist. A faint breeze stirred the leaves of the big old sycamore by the wall, and he fancied he could smell the faint, spicy scent of the desert. Out here, the crowded, dirty, dusty town seemed a world away instead of half a mile.

By daylight Sir Henry Cleeve’s former home had a forlorn, shabby elegance: at night it became a place of beauty and enchantment. Cicadas shrilled outside in the lotus trees and the scent of Damascus roses wafted up from the courtyard below.

Almost a pity to have turned it into a trap. Almost. But someone had been following him all day, he could sense it, feel it in the rising hairs on the back of his neck.

And someone had sent that boy to steal the picture.

Interest had been stirred up by the picture and the gold, just as Baxter had said. And interest was a hopeful sign.

Rafe had secured the Cleeve house for just three weeks. He’d got it by a stroke of luck. On his first day in Cairo, he’d made a visit to Johnny Baxter, the cousin of a friend of his.

“Johnny is the man you need in Cairo,” his friend Bertie had told him. “Knows everything and everyone.”

Johnny Baxter, Bertie told Rafe, had been badly wounded in the Battle of the Nile and had elected to remain in Egypt, to die in sunshine instead of in the stink of a ship’s hold.

Not only had Baxter lived, he’d thrived. He survived Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt and had managed to keep his head low throughout the turmoil that followed. He loved Egypt and intended to live out his life there.

“Good thing, too,” Bertie told Rafe. “Went completely native. Married the woman who first took him in, wounded. She died last year, but it made no difference to Johnny. Still dresses like an Arab, jabbers away in the native lingo, made his fortune there, but no plans to come home. Never know to look at him he was an Englishman, let alone an Eton man—family have disowned him, of course. Embarrasin’, havin a chap go native.

“But Johnny’s a good egg, all the same. Thick as thieves with all the locals—from street beggars to the sultan or whatever y’call the top native fellow. If anyone can get you on the inside track, Johnny can.”

But when Rafe called on Baxter, he discovered something Bertie hadn’t mentioned: Baxter habitually shunned the society of Europeans.

He’d refused to see Rafe at first. He didn’t receive visitors from England, had left the world of polite morning calls behind him, his servant said.

But Rafe was not fobbed off so easily. His experience in the army had taught him that good local knowledge would save a lot of time and errors.

Rafe sent in his card for the second time, this time with a terse, handwritten message.

Baxter had greeted him in full Arab robes, gave a silent bow, and called in Arabic for coffee to be served. He waited in silence, cross-legged on a low divan, observing Rafe with a shrewd eye. He was about forty, his face weather-beaten and slightly scarred. Powder burns and shrapnel, Rafe decided.

Recognizing the tactics, Rafe made no attempt to fill the silence but sat back, relaxed, and waited. When the coffee arrived, a bitter brew of grainy mud that he frankly thought disgusting, he drank it down without a word.

The silence stretched.

Eventually Rafe yawned and said, “We used to play a game like this when I was at school, only then it was the first one to blink who lost. I usually won. I’m quite competitive, you see.”

“And yet you spoke first,” Baxter said softly.

Rafe shrugged. “I bore more easily these days. Besides, I’m tired of childish games.” He met Baxter’s gaze steadily.

After a moment, Baxter inclined his head in acknowledgment, and the atmosphere eased. He ordered more coffee.

Rafe held up his hand. “Not for me, I thank you.”

Baxter stiffened. “You don’t like my coffee?”

“No, it’s appalling,” Rafe said calmly.

There was a pause, then Baxter chuckled. “Few men would have dared tell me that, but you’re quite right. My cook and his family left unexpectedly yesterday to return to their village—a death in the family—and I’ve not yet replaced them. Would you believe it? Not one person in my employ can make decent coffee.”

He sat back and said in a much friendlier tone, “Now, tell me how you met Cousin Bertie—the only member of my family who speaks to me. You were both in the war, I gather.”

They spoke of the war, and Rafe gave him news of his cousin. Then the politenesses over, Rafe explained the errand he was on. “I was advised to seek assistance from the members of the English community here.”

“And yet you ignored that advice?”

Rafe shrugged. “It seems to me that if the English community knew anything about the girl, word would have filtered back long ago.”

Baxter snorted. “Absolutely right. Most of them here are ignorant snobs. Know nothing about the local people but find them wanting, all the same. I have as little to do with them as possible.”

Rafe nodded. “Bertie said you’d be the best man to advise me on the local situation.”

Baxter found the whole story of Sir Henry Cleeve’s missing daughter fascinating. He agreed with Rafe that since no news of the girl had come from the foreign community, he was better off setting the locals to find her. “Flash that picture around, spend a bit of gold—that’ll soon flush any information out.”

He told Rafe about the vacant Cleeve house and who to see to rent it. He advised Rafe to get the search over with as quickly as possible. “For plague can become a problem in the hotter months.”

“I will,” Rafe assured him. “I intend to be back in England well before then.”

“Good. I also recommend you visit Zamil, the slave trader. For if the girl is alive and nothing’s been heard of her for six years, chances are she’s in a harem somewhere. Unspeakable, I know, and better to tell the old lady she’s dead, but a young white virgin would fetch a high price, and Zamil deals with only quality goods. Tell him Baxter sent you.”

And so he’d gone to Zamil’s.

Quality goods. Rafe’s jaw clenched. He hoped to God the little girl in the picture had not ended up in a place like that.

And all for nothing; Zamil had proved unhelpful.

Rafe sipped his brandy and waited, the tranquility of the night all the more perfect for the knowledge it would not last.

Showing the picture around and flashing gold had indeed stirred up some interest. Someone was sniffing around, and there had to be a reason for that.

It was extraordinary, that moment of awareness there in the marketplace. The knowledge, the feeling that someone was watching, watching
him
. With intense particularity.

The watcher had stood in the shadows of that narrow alley, and the instant Rafe was distracted, he’d moved. But the prickle between Rafe’s shoulder blades continued, throughout the day. He was being followed.

After the market, there was that street urchin who’d come racing around the house, seen him, turned, and bolted like a rabbit—a dead giveaway. He thought he’d spotted the same youth at Zamil’s but he couldn’t be sure. And then there was the boy, Ali, who’d tried to steal the picture.

The prickle between Rafe’s shoulder blades intensified. Someone was out there in the dark right now, watching.

A thief? An assassin? The person who’d sent a boy to do a man’s job? His pulse thrummed with anticipation.

He glanced at Ali sleeping, bound and gagged on the bed in the next room.

The imprisonment of small children—pickpocket or no—didn’t sit well with Rafe, particularly such a game little lad.

But the boy was the key to whoever had been following him all day, the first sign that Rafe hadn’t come all this way on what he’d been sure was a wild-goose chase. Until now.

A dead giveaway to go for the picture instead of his purse.

Young Ali might be an incompetent pickpocket, but he would have made a fine soldier. He’d admitted nothing except his name, even though Rafe, through an interpreter, had grilled him rather hard. In a shaking voice he’d claimed to have no family, no home, and no master. And he’d insisted—repeatedly—that nobody had asked him to steal the folder with the drawings. Insisted rather too much, Rafe thought. Brave little beggar.

Would the master come for the boy? The coward, sending a child to risk his hand for the sake of a worthless drawing.

Though clearly it wasn’t worthless to someone.

Rafe was very glad he’d come to Egypt. He felt more alive than he had in ages. And all day the sun had beat down on him, soaking into his bones. He couldn’t get enough of it. He’d felt so cold for so long . . .

He settled down to wait. Such a long time since he’d been on watch . . .

 

 

 

 

T
he moon was riding low in the western sky. Rafe drifted in a blue reverie, contemplating with grim outrage the future his older brother had mapped out for him. Driven by his obsession to ensure the succession of the Earls of Axebridge . . .

The scrape of something against the bricks outside brought Rafe to full alertness.

He moved silently into position by the window. The room was open to the night, the carved wooden shutters fastened back. He stood in the shadows and waited.

A shadow slid noiselessly over the balcony. Small and slight. Another boy, dammit. Older than the first one, a youth rather than a boy, but still, not a man. Not the master who Rafe was coming to despise.

Rafe had left a lamp burning low in Ali’s room. The boy’s shape in the bed was visible through a door deliberately left ajar. Like a wraith the intruder stepped through the open window and glided across the floor toward the boy.

Rafe caught a glint of light on steel. A knife! An assassin? He leapt forward and chopped at the hand holding the knife. A soft exclamation and the knife clattered across the floor. The boy whirled and kicked—straight for Rafe’s balls.

Rafe dodged and a hard foot collided only with his upper thigh. It would have crippled him had it connected with its target. The lad had a kick like a mule!

The boy lashed out with a fist and at the same time kicked again for the same target. Rafe might not care about the succession, but he did care about his balls. Rafe, swearing, kicked the lad’s feet out from under him and knocked him to the floor.

The boy spotted the knife and made a grab for it. Rafe kicked it under the sofa. He turned and saw the boy making for the window. He dived, knocking him to the floor, landing on top of him.

The boy was still for a moment. Rafe could hear him fighting hoarsely for breath. He’d knocked the wind out of him. Good. He flipped the boy over, but even though he was still gasping like a landed fish, the youth fought back, punching and kicking, and all the time writhing like a damned eel, trying to get a foot free to go for Rafe’s family jewels once and for all.

He was small—half starved no doubt—and though he fought like a little demon, his strength was pitiful by comparison with Rafe’s. Enough to be a damned nuisance, all the same, Rafe thought, dodging another punch, trying to grab the flailing fists to subdue the boy. He needed to question him, but first he had to tame him.

“I won’t hurt you if you surrender,” he said in English, then realizing it, repeated it in French.

The boy bared his teeth in what Rafe thought could be a smile. He relaxed slightly and the boy lunged.

“Ow!” The little bugger had
bitten
him. Enough was enough. A quick scientific punch to the boy’s jaw knocked him cold. His head fell back and he didn’t move.

Rafe grimaced. He must have hit harder than he intended. He’d meant to subdue the little devil, not knock him out.

He sat back on his haunches, kneeling astride the youth’s supine body and regarded his young assailant. In the soft light from the other room all he could see was an urchin face smeared with dirt. He looked about fifteen, thin and as raggedly dressed as Ali. His turban had come off in the struggle and his hair was very short, chopped jaggedly in a cut that Rafe decided the boy had done without benefit of mirror or scissors. It wasn’t unattractive, he decided. Might even take off—the Urchin Cut. He favored the Windswept, himself.

The youth’s features, under all that dirt, were quite delicate . . .

Good God. If he didn’t know better . . .

He thought of the lad’s lack of muscle. The way he’d succumbed to the merest tap on the jaw.

He stared at the youth’s chest. Flat as a pancake.

He shifted his position back, till he was sitting on the lad’s legs. He peered at the place where the legs joined the torso. The pants were very baggy, but . . .

There was only one way to tell. He brushed down over the base of his prisoner’s stomach and between his legs . . . Nothing. Or rather not nothing, but nothing that would have been there if his youth had been a boy.

He was a girl. And, he thought, staring at the girl’s features in the dim light, not just any girl.