The Devil She Knows (9 page)

“Why me?”

“You're American, not British. Touchy as the Sultan is, he won't be looking for trouble from an upstart colonial.”

She blinked. “What do you mean by that?”

“Two years ago, the Sultan barred the Dardanelles to our Navy. It's the only reason we didn't have a full-out war with Russia—Baltic, Crimea, Afghanistan, Pacific, everywhere—at a time when India itself was at stake.”

“The Penjdeh Crisis.”

“Finally your tiny brain starts working.” The little boys ran off after their nanny. St. Arles sighed and turned his attention completely to her, his brief ascent into humanity completely vanished.

“The Sultan is a bloody-fingered autocrat who looks for plots everywhere. A trunk this large in a diplomat's luggage, especially British, would be watched constantly. That's why you're taking it in.”

“Never.”

“You'll do as I say or every one of your so-called friends will be dismissed without a reference.”

They'd be destroyed. They'd never be able to find another job, at least not a decent one.

“You wouldn't dare,” she countered. “Your wife would be left to fend for herself, with no one to cook or clean for her.”

“Only until I could replace them. It would be worth it, if it meant the traitors were gone.”

Traitors?

“Most of them have served generations of your family,” she countered, striving for logic.

“They should have testified against you when I told them to.”

“They'd have lied.”

“What of it? I wouldn't have needed to pay that greedy actor, plus witnesses at the coaching hotel to do so. Every other man can rely on his staff at all times; why couldn't I?”

Because you're a brute and I tried to protect them.

“Now it's time for them to be of some use.”

As bait?

“The trunk can't be worth enough for that kind of blackmail.” She flogged her brain for a way out of this impasse, as if she were riding through an endless thicket of cactus with no water in sight.

Think, Portia, think. You must have learned something from Gareth.

Perhaps if she sent word to her solicitor in London, he could do something in time. But she'd wager her best pearl necklace St. Arles was having her every move watched, including every cable she sent.

“The Turks will think it's jollier than old Humpty Dumpty.” He snickered. “Don't try to open it; you won't have the key, of course.”

“You need an American woman,” she said slowly. Was this clue a glimpse into an oasis or a mirage? “Is this for yourself or the Crown?”

He stilled, like an angry rattler ready to strike.

“A matter of state?”

His hand shot out for her throat. She automatically jerked away, trained by far too much practice, and Sir Graham growled.

St. Arles dropped his hand an inch short of her jugular. He glared at her, the promise of gory death lurking behind his slitted eyes.

Old terror tried to climb back into her veins but she shook it off. She was not his puppet any longer, required to spout the prattle he fed her whenever she walked among other diplomats' wives.

“Good God, St. Arles, what are you planning to do? Buy conspirators for some harebrained scheme?”

“It's none of your affair. Simply do as you're told and there'll be no trouble from me for your friends.”

What was in that trunk to evoke such a sharp reaction?

“Why me? Surely you could have found somebody else, perhaps paid a man to take it there.” If she understood better, surely she could convince him to change his mind. He usually did, given enough money.

He laughed harshly, the noise as jarring as a crow's cry heralding death among these scented gardens.

“Not at all, my beloved former wife. You see, this is how you will work off your debt to me.”

“I don't owe you a penny, St. Arles. You know perfectly well my dowry wiped out your father and brother's gambling debts on our wedding day. After that, you spent the spare change on cleaning up your home.”

“A million pounds.”

Even her heart stopped beating at the far too familiar sum.

“Yes, I thought you might recognize the amount. Or should I call it
five million dollars
? You owe me that much for rushing our divorce through.”

“I owe you nothing!” Portia violently swept petals off a planter's rim.

“Remember the trust from your mother that you inherited on your twenty-fifth birthday? Townsend should have told me about it.”

“What of it? Mother inherited it from her mother and it would pass only to her daughters. Father had nothing to do with it, so of course he didn't think of it.” Her heart was beating like one of those erratic drums in a bazaar.

Stay calm, Portia. Gareth always remained poised during battle. Oh, dear Lord, if only he could walk by right now…

“If you'd contested the divorce, if it had taken the usual amount of time, we would have been married on the day you came into it—and all of that wealth would be mine. I would have the gold and Amabel's fertility a few days later, rather than your useless barrenness.”

“You're…” She wet her lips at the deadly poison in his eyes.

“Angry? Logical? Exactly so, my dear,” he sneered. “Don't think to tell anyone, even your precious companions here in Cairo. You're holding a Crown secret once again, as you've already surmised. Whitehall deals very harshly with loose lips and the ears they pour foolishness into.”

If she was sixteen again and this was only a prank, Gareth would appear to tell her how to deliver the ugly chest to the Sultan. Instead, he'd walked out and she had to outmaneuver her poisonous rattler of an ex-husband by herself.

She had to agree. It was the only way to play for time.

“Very well.”

Blast the man, he'd undoubtedly have her watched every second from now on. But maybe a carefully phrased cable to Uncle William and Aunt Viola would make it through.

And surely the Constantinople police would not be as ridiculously fearful as St. Arles implied. It was far more likely her fiendish ex-husband simply wanted to make her miserable yet again.

Saladin's Citadel, Cairo, two days later

T
he wind pummeled Gareth the instant he stepped outside the ancient stone fortress. Saladin, the mighty leader who'd thrown back Richard the Lionheart's armies from Jerusalem's walls, had first fortified this steep hill. Mamelukes, that legendary warrior caste, had fiercely defended this castle for centuries until the last ones sallied forth from this gate to meet their doom less than seventy years ago. Their corpses paved the road to the future, while their tortured prisoners' skeletons no doubt cheered their ambushers.

Sand hung in the sky like a deadly disease, filthy brown and eager to send the unwary to a graveyard. The Nile's blue ribbon was only a vague smear on the western horizon past the tattered tenements. Green growing things were a vague memory, their scent trapped on the wind's fringe to be pounded against the southern desert.

Gareth flung his burnous around his head and shoulders to protect himself from the worst of the upcoming storm, grateful he'd chosen to wear native dress, including the full, heavy cloak.

He could have worn European attire but that would have cost him infinitely more baksheesh, the golden grease which kept Egyptian commerce moving in more or less efficient channels. The Suez Canal was a far faster route to Europe from Asia but Egypt held the perfume industry's heart and soul, with its vast profits for tiny, fragile parcels. The art was paying the minimum in bribery, while still staying alive.

He smiled faintly, remembering all the dead assassins who'd tested themselves against his blade before his business costs had become measured only in coins. Oddly, the natives seemed to award him greater respect after he learned the local language.

Gareth shifted his shoulders, settled Portia's knife's neck sheath more comfortably into place, and headed for his hotel. A hot bath, a good drink, and at least one willing woman couldn't arrive too soon.

Ranks of alabaster columns faded behind him, hidden by their guardian stone bulwarks. Two great minarets lanced the dirty air, while the mosque's great golden dome impassively observed both the songbirds fleeing for safety and the scarlet-coated British sentries. Last night, its halls and the entire city had rung with
Lailat al Mi'raj
, the Festival of the Night Journey when Muslims remembered patience, perseverance, and prayer.

A few tourists fluttered like ragged pieces of paper inside their open carriages. He ignored them, memories of his hotel chef's chicken rasping his throat more powerfully than the sand.

“Mr. Lowell!” A man shouted at him from the British Army barracks.

His ears pricked at the aristocratic drawl but he didn't break stride. The hot bath was far more important than answering a stranger's call, especially since Donovan & Sons now had other agents in this country.

The British consul general and his staff—everyone who meant anything in actually operating Egypt's government—had their offices in Cairo's Citadel. The British army was headquartered here, including the large force charged with retaking Khartoum and retrieving the wildly popular General Gordon's body. That very upper-crust bloke could have mistaken him for anybody.

“Gareth Lowell!” A woman's voice this time.

Gareth slowed, his feet dragging to a stop. An American female, here in Egypt, who knew him?

“Mr. Lowell, I'm Cynthia Oates, Portia's best friend.” A small blond whirlwind hurled herself at him and grabbed his shoulders.

“Yes, I remember hearing of you.” Vaguely, from scrapes she and Portia got into years ago at boarding school.

“This is my husband, Graham.”

“Sir.” Gareth exchanged a bare nod with the other.

What was going on? The fellow wasn't offended by his wife hanging onto a stranger in a public street, even though her attitude was that of an anxious sister.

He tried to peel her hands off but her fingers only tightened.

“Where have you been? We've been looking for you, since we left her at the dock in Alexandria.”

“Portia? I was on the other side of the Red Sea, at the Arabian Sea.”
Buying and selling pearls, but not glimpsing any truly priceless ones like Portia.

Oates' eyes widened. He reassessed Gareth's clothing with a fierce stare, betraying how much he knew of men who could live among the natives, including Arabia's brutal Empty Quarter.

“St. Arles will hurt her, I know.” Mrs. Oates' fingernails sank into Gareth through the rough linen, sharper than his conscience all these long years.

A mighty shock punched into his gut, grabbed his breath and darkened his world. He shook his head and fought for enlightenment.

The muezzin sounded the first call to afternoon prayer from high atop the mosque's minaret, the ancient city's tallest point. Other criers answered, their voices echoing across the stones and into the desert.

“Portia?” Gareth wheezed. “She's divorced from the bastard.” He was too surprised to apologize for his language.

“He's sent her on an errand to Constantinople for him,” Oates said quietly, his voice the clipped tones of an officer keeping to the facts because any emotion meant loss of control. His lady rejoined his side but watched Gareth constantly, like a falcon hovering over its prey.

“What kind of errand?” Gareth demanded.
Good God, may it be something simple like taking a message to one of that son of a bitch's mistresses.

The husband and wife locked eyes with each other in one of those long moments of communication only deep love can bring. Then the man's face twisted, as if he'd accepted a necessity too bitter to be spoken of.

“She never mentioned it,” Mrs. Oates said slowly. She glanced around for observers and found none. Even their carriage was parked in a half-ruined building's lee a few feet away. “But she took an extra trunk with her. A big, heavy one at that.”

Gareth pounded his fists together, since St. Arles was nowhere close at hand. Smuggling anything into Constantinople could cost lives. How much did it matter to that brute? How far had he gone to force her into his game?

“Did St. Arles force her to do it? Was he pleased she agreed?”

“Very much so,” the little lady sighed, a sound redolent with remembered horror.

What was that verse from the Koran his traveling companion on the journey across Arabia had quoted?
Be sure we shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods, lives, and the fruits of your toil.

Gareth shot a glance at Oates.

“If I wasn't a serving officer and he a diplomat, I'd have killed him myself for how he treated her.” Rage ran through the very proper English tones like the finest steel carving a carcass. “Even so, I had a damned hard time containing myself when I found out afterward.”

“Can you stop Portia before she's arrested?” the little blonde asked, every tiny inch blazing with outrage.

“It's too late.” Gareth shook his head. “If she's been on a steamer for two days, the next customs official she sees will quickly report to the Sultan's secret police.”

“There's no such thing as secret police!” objected Mrs. Graham Oates. “God won't let her be harmed.”

But there was and their foulness wouldn't respect foreign ladies. Gareth shuddered, his appetite gone faster than the daylight.

He had to help her. His friend's voice came back.
Oh you who believe! Persevere in patience and constancy. Vie in such perseverance, strengthen each other, and be pious, that you may prosper.

“I'll go to Constantinople. If she chose a steamer based on comfort…”

Gareth raised a desperate eyebrow and Oates nodded quickly. “Her courier chose such a boat. She hired a gentleman from a well-known Turkish family to escort her. He's a scholar who wanted to visit relatives in Constantinople.”

“Plus, a good paying job would give him a better reason for the paperwork to enter Constantinople,” Gareth said cynically, his brain flashing through the shippers he knew. How could he sail north across the Mediterranean first?

“Better than having family there?” Oates' wife stared at them both, her eyes darkening at the mercenary atmosphere her friend would be entering.

“In that case, I should be able to charter a faster one.” His mouth twitched briefly at how much of a true smuggler's craft she'd be. He'd leave a message at the American consulate for any Donovan & Sons employees who might look for him.

“I promise you I won't let her be caught by the secret police.” He could do that much at least. Then he'd take her home to San Francisco, where she could finally settle down with a good man.

Somebody totally unlike himself.

“Thank you.” Cynthia Oates leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “I knew you'd look after her.”

Gareth's smile was as crooked as his past.