As You Desire (32 page)

“In England, I’m just a man who can’t read. I couldn’t go back there to be the subject of pity. Or scorn. I
couldn’t.”
He could not keep the bitterness out of his voice.

He looked up to find her trembling, her expression chaotic with confusion, remorse, and resignation.

“Couldn’t,” she said. “But now you can.”

He nodded, drew a deep breath. “Yes. I can. If you want. If you desire. I love you.”

She shook her head then, a tense, negative motion. Tears spilled over her eyelids and rained down her cheeks. He started forward once again and once again she stopped him, pushing him away.

“Don’t you see, Harry?”

“See what?” His voice contained a full measure of the fear and frustration coursing through him.

Truth. Well, there it was, bald and naked. He’d told her and now he saw that he’d been right for all those years when he’d withheld the truth from her. He’d related his defectiveness and he was going to lose her because of it.

“Blake arrives and it is all too clear that some long-standing rivalry exists between you.”

“Blake?” His voice mirrored his shock. What had Blake to do with this?

“You bear him a grudge and he bears one for you.” She lifted the papers and dangled them from her fingertips as if they were unclean. The damn papers Blake had brought. “You’re inheriting Darkmoor Manor. You’ve somehow taken his birthright from him. That’s why you can go back to England now. You’ve won the grand prize, Harry.”

“Prize?” He should have burned the damn papers. “For God’s sake, Dizzy, I couldn’t care less about Darkmoor Manor.”

She swallowed. “I know. That’s what frightens me. You don’t care about it but you’re inheriting it anyway. What does that say about me? About … us?” Her voice broke.

Stunned and furious, he stared at her.

Her gaze fell to the ground, masking her dark, liquid eyes. “It seems you’ve won me, too.”

“I don’t know what to say to convince you you’re wrong,” he said, the anger washed away in sudden comprehension, greater fear. “This wasn’t a contest. You weren’t the brass ring.”

The words rang false. Last night, in his own thoughts, he’d called her a prize and he had been frantic to win her when he thought she was becoming enamored of Blake. But not for the reasons she thought. He’d stake his life on it. He’d already staked his heart.

“I’ve always loved you, Harry.” She still stared at her feet, cold and pale beneath the pooling sheet she’d gathered around her. “No matter what you
did, or what I thought you did. No matter what you can or cannot do. Scoundrel or not, I’ve always loved you.”

“Dizzy—” He lifted his hand imploringly, helplessly.

“I simply love you too much. I could not bear to watch your interest in me fade at the same rate as Blake’s passage home.”

“Jesus.” He shook his head and slumped down against the edge of the desk. His legs had gone numb, his heart, his thoughts were beggared of the ability to act. His hand fell between his knees and hung there limply as his world pitched into an endless black orbit. “I can’t … how could you believe … that of me?”

“I don’t think it purposeful, Harry,” she answered faintly. “I don’t know what to think. There’s so much about you I never knew … don’t know. So many secrets. So much you never told me. You’re a stranger to me, Harry. But I do know you wouldn’t intentionally hurt me.”

“Well,” he said bitterly, “thank you for that kindness.” God. She thought he’d been scoring off Blake without even being aware of his own motives. “Jesus, Dizzy.” He lifted his head, every ounce of his being concentrated in his bleak, blasted gaze. “I love you.”

She drew a shuddering breath. “If I stay here long enough with you, I’ll believe you only because I want to.” Her voice was faint.

“Believe it!”

“I can’t just take the easy course, Harry. It might not be as easy later on. It won’t be fair. To me or you.” She looked down at the papers in her hand and dropped them as if they burned. “I’m not plunder in this war you have against Blake or England or anyone else.”

He clenched his fists, his mind racing, groping, fumbling to think of something, anything, to persuade her, to shatter her awful certainty. The thought of a future without her sent his thoughts, spinning muddled and frantic, despair robbing him of reason.

When he looked up, she was gone.

Desdemona sat on the edge of her bed, staring out the window at the cool, winter sunlight. Her hands shook violently and she twisted the fingers until she felt some pain. Felt something, anything other than this overwhelming confusion and despair.

She’d hurt Harry when she’d only hoped to save them both from deeper pain. How could any pain be deeper than this?

Had she been right? Did the fact that he’d kept secrets from her, kept part of himself from her mean that he couldn’t love her honestly, wholly? Honesty and Harry seemed such incompatible words. She closed her eyes. It didn’t matter. She wanted to believe him. She’d never desired anything more. Maybe if she went back and he explained about Darkmoor …

“Sitt?”
Duraid’s voice called from beyond her bedroom door.

“Yes, Duraid?”

He slipped inside the door. “I know it is very early,
Sitt
. But this was waiting beneath the door when I came down this morning.” He offered her a folded sheet of paper.

She accepted it, slowly focusing on Duraid’s bleak expression. “Is something wrong, Duraid?”

The boy nodded miserably. “It is the turkey farm,
Sitt
. The owner of the property is demanding higher rent.”

“Why wasn’t I told of this?”

“Matin did not wish to worry you,
Sitt
. He knows you are trying to find the money to replace the turkeys. He was hoping to change the landlord’s mind. But”—he lifted his shoulders and spread his palms wide—“the landlord will not wait.”

Guilt added its piquant flavor to her misery. She’d completely forgotten about the turkeys. She’d failed the children. She got up and went to the sideboard and opened the empty silverware drawer. She withdrew the five-pound note she kept there for emergencies and pressed it into Duraid’s palm. “Take this. Ask the landlord to wait. One week. Tell him I will pay interest on what is owed.”

“Yes,
Sitt
. Thank you,
Sitt
. I will go right now. Immediately! Allah shines his face upon you,
Sitt.”
The boy backed out of the room, dipping and bowing.

She dashed a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand and realized she still held the folded paper Duraid had given her. Incuriously, she opened it. It was written in a coarse hand in Arabic.

The bull she sought … an Apis bull?

She sighed at her foolishness. Rabi had probably manufactured some shabby facsimile. Still, however remote the chances were that he actually had an Apis bull in his possession, she needed to look into it. The letter offered her a chance to do something, for the turkey farm, for Matin, for her grandfather. She couldn’t ignore her responsibilities.

She glanced at the gilt clock on her desk. It was already eight-fifteen. She pocketed the note and went to the armoire where she’d hidden the papyrus she’d taken from the library. From inside, she withdrew it and the small hard-sided cylinder her grandfather used to transport papyrus.

Quickly she draped a dark shawl over her head and slipped into the hall, looking for any sign of Magi. Magi would never allow her to go to the bazaar without a male escort, and with Duraid gone, there was only one male available. With one last despairing glance at the door to the library, she stole down the quiet hallway and out the front door.

Outside, the residential area was quiet. Only a closed carriage stood at the corner of the street, the horses sleeping in their traces. She’d nearly made the corner when she heard the click of European heels behind her. She looked around.

Marta Douglass, her thin elegant face set in determined lines, hastened toward her house.

“Mrs. Douglass?” she called, puzzled by Marta’s appearance so early in the day. She started back toward the house.

Suddenly a thick arm looped around her, hauling her off her feet. She twisted frantically against her unseen assailant, opening her mouth to scream only to have a rag thrust into it. Her frantic gaze locked with Marta’s shocked one. And then she was being dragged into the waiting carriage.

Marta wheeled around, looking somewhere, anywhere for help. There was no one around but a ragged-looking Arab boy who slunk quickly into the shadows when he realized he’d been spied.

From inside the carriage that man, Maurice, barked an order.

“El Aguza?” The driver called down the name of a district south of the city.

“La!”
Maurice yelled the Arab word for ‘no.’ “El Bawki. Y
alla!”

Hurry
. Marta’s Arabic was rudimentary, but she knew enough to understand that the man had ordered the driver to an ancient desert road. She hastened up the steps of the Carlisle house. Harry would know what to do. He’d save—

She stopped, her hand raised to knock, her heart racing in her throat. Fear warred with self-interest. If Harry saved Desdemona, the girl was bound to finally realize his feelings for her. And Harry would never look at Marta again.

Last night … Last night had been wonderful. Cal and she—But there wasn’t going to be any “Cal and she.” She clenched her teeth in anger at her stupidity. She wasn’t going to trade one alien culture for another, Egypt for Texas, even if Cal was to ask. Which he hadn’t. She wasn’t going to risk it all, ever again. She wouldn’t fall in love with him. She couldn’t. She wanted Harry.

But Harry was smitten with Desdemona and Desdemona was infatuated with the British viscount, the arrogant and powerful Lord Ravenscroft. Marta’s hand dropped and she looked down the street. Dust still billowed from where the carriage turned the corner.

A thought, born of panic, formed bright and tempting. Let Lord Ravenscroft play knight-errant to Desdemona’s damsel in distress.

She spun around. With a speed no one had ever witnessed in her before, she ran down the street.

Behind her, Rabi Hakim emerged from the shadows and trotted off in the opposite direction.

“I
want all my trunks shipped back before week’s end.”

Marta heard Gunter Konrad’s thick accent as she finished penning a note to Lord Ravenscroft at Shepheard’s lobby desk. The huge Austrian strode by her, four bellhops trailing in his wake like pilot fish after a behemoth. He stopped and pointed at a huge pile of luggage at the foot of the staircase.

Apparently Gunter was leaving Cairo, Marta thought. Very odd as the archeological season was barely under way.

She handed a bellhop her note and instructions and then settled back in the chair, catching Gunter’s eye as she did so. He blushed and fidgeted like a naughty little boy who’d been caught leaving the cookie jar with its lid askew.

“Mr. Konrad,” she hailed him, glad for the distraction. Every minute Desdemona was held by Maurice she might be subjected to—no, she
wouldn’t consider that. Desdemona was an English citizen. Maurice wouldn’t dare harm her. “I say, Mr. Konrad!”

At the sound of her voice, he heaved a sigh and pivoted with military precision. “Madame?”

“You’re leaving us so soon?” she asked mildly. “You did not receive a concession?”

“Yes, I got a concession. Of course I got a concession. I am Gunter Konrad.”

“I see. No trouble in your family, I hope?” She was being shockingly forward but she really didn’t care. If only Ravenscroft would appear—

“No trouble.”

“Then …?” She let the phrase dangle invitingly.

His florid face grew even brighter. “You are most inquisitive, Mrs. Douglass. But for your own safety, I tell you this. There is a man in Cairo who hires his services out in any number of capacities. I employed him to do some work for me. He … he went above and beyond the intent of my directions.”

“Yes?” Marta prompted, perplexed.

“He is become a nuisance and, more important, I am not at all sure he isn’t dangerous. He comes to me, big Gunter Konrad, and he threatens me, telling me I owe him more money for this thing he has done. He is obviously not right”—Gunter rapped his forehead with his knuckles—“up here. I decide it is better to leave Cairo this season.”

“I see.”

Apparently he did not appreciate her tone. “Certainly I could hurt this little man. But that would
make unpleasantness with the authorities. I am not sure if he holds citizenship here and I, Gunter, do not want trouble. It is best I leave. For this little man’s sake.”

“Of course.”

He slammed his fist into his palm. “A rabid dog does not care what the size is of the man he bites, Mrs. Douglass.”

“No,” die said. “I don’t suppose it does.”

His lips compressed and he spun about, barking commands at the attendants hovering over his mountain of trunks. As she watched, Lord Ravenscroft made his way around the luggage, nodding perfunctorily at Gunter.