Must Have Been The Moonlight (4 page)

Brianna covered him with the blanket. Then, turning, she started to extinguish the lamp beside the cot, and felt his fingers wrap around her wrist.

With a start, her gaze slammed directly into his.

His eyes, half lidded and astonishingly silver in the light, eased over her. He was still asleep, settled in the shadows of some dream.

Brianna held her hand still and returned his look, but for all of her talk about equality for women, and her emboldened demeanor, she still possessed more Victorian mores than she cared to admit. Michael Fallon made her nervous. And she was never nervous around men.

For the most part, members of the opposite gender annoyed her with their condescending nature and patronizing platitudes, and she’d never had a problem dismissing them. Except for Stephan. Her once betrothed.

There had been security in the predictability that she’d found with Stephan. Security that she’d never appreciated, and on more than one occasion taken for granted. At twenty-five, he was three years older than she, and studying to become a barrister, a crown jewel in England’s justice system. She’d never loved anyone but him. They might have been married upon his graduation, except for one fatal flaw in her plans.

Stephan had wanted children and a wife who would make him a home in his perfectly respectable, sedate life. Yet, for all her dreams of being in love, not once had she looked upon Stephan Williams with anything more than a girlish adoration—which faded immeasurably compared to the curious intensity she felt when she looked upon Major Fallon.

A dangerous thrill ran through her.

Dangerous because she’d had her hands on him before and ached to do so again.

He pushed up on one elbow and looked around the tent. “What are you doing here?” His voice was raspy, awake now.

She raised a brow fractionally and her gaze dropped to the band of steel still holding her wrist. “Are you going to kiss me, Major? Or let me go?”

She’d seen the look in his eyes when he first touched her, and wondered now, as he awakened fully, who he’d been thinking about.

Their eyes held for a fraction longer before he looked around again as if to reaffirm his surroundings. “I’ve been asleep.”

He released her. “For the whole day, it would seem, sir.”

Her hair had come undone, and she tucked a wisp behind her ear. She’d given up trying to comb it out and had tied the mass off her face with a leather thong. “Where do you have to go, Major?” she asked readily. “Why don’t you remove your boots and sleep?”

The tent flap opened and Christopher’s servant entered. He stopped when he saw her standing beside the cot, and a smile lit his bearded countenance. “Sitt Donally, I am so glad that you are well. I did not get to see you when you arrived.”

“Abdul.” She took the wizened hands clasped in front of him. “It’s good to see you as well.”

He wore his white turban and a belted long-sleeve tunic that reached his knees. “If only your brother had waited another day before he left. You would not have known him, Sitt.”

His voice was quiet, and afraid that Alex might be awake, Brianna turned to Fallon, who’d not moved from his position on the edge of the cot. “Abdul, please bring in his gear. He’ll be sleeping here.”

“But he asked that I not do so.”

“Do it, Abdul,” Fallon said tiredly, one eye squinted up at her. “And a bowl of water if you will. I need to wash.”

“And to shave as well, Major.” Brianna smiled after Abdul
scurried out. “Pity the poor woman you’d kiss tonight, otherwise.”

A slow grin curved the edges of his mouth, a flash of white in the shadows of his face. “Are you always so bold with men, Miss Donally?”

“Only with those who have already seen me undressed. We’ve rather bypassed polite formalities, have we not, Major Fallon?”

She could tell by the wary look that came into his eyes that she wasn’t at all what he’d expected. That was just fine with her. There was nothing worse than being predictable. Putting space between them, Brianna escaped the tent when Abdul entered with a tray of food.

Christopher’s tent had been erected near a large pool of water. An enormous star hung low on the horizon. It was ironic that such stark beauty gave life to a barren plateau of sand. Some distance away, a boy herded bleating goats. Behind Brianna, the tent flap opened. Major Fallon’s robed figure filled the opening. His gaze found her standing near the fire. Then she watched him take in the surrounding area.

He didn’t like their neighbors; she could see that in the narrow look that came into his eyes. Turning her head, she tried to see what he saw. Did he think they were still being followed?

Abdul squeezed through the opening. “I have dinner prepared, Sitt. Shall I have food brought to her ladyship?”

“Only if she’s awake. Where has the baggage that was brought in on my camel been stowed? I haven’t found my camera.”

“Come with me, Sitt.”

Without a backward glance at Major Fallon, Brianna followed Abdul. She glimpsed a woman leaving the pond. “Why aren’t some women veiled?” she asked as he led her around the larger tent to one in back.

“It is not uncommon among nomadic women to go unveiled.” Abdul held back the flap and Brianna’s heart leapt.

She’d found her camera.

Nothing seemed broken in the trunk holding the photo chemicals, black cloth, and plates. She’d been carrying that trunk with her since the day she and Alex had left to photograph the temple. “You’re from the desert, aren’t you, Abdul? Doesn’t that make you a nomad?”

“Pah!”
His large black eyes rounded with insult. “I am the son of a merchant,” he said, as if speaking to someone whom Allah had afflicted with feeble-mindedness. “I used to travel often from the cities to the oases to trade, and would be rich from the Damascus silk that my father sold had he not a problem with dice. Alas, I am now a steward. But your brother pays his staff well. That is good for me.”

Abdul was also one of the few men she’d seen in this country who treated women with any respect. Not that her own countrymen behaved any better most of the time. She’d gotten to know Abdul in Cairo and was glad that he was here. Brianna lifted her camera.

“I will carry that, Sitt Donally.”

“Take the trunk, please.”

She set her camera outside as he dragged the trunk to her feet. Kneeling, she worked the knots out of the leather straps that bound the chest lid. “I’m lucky that I have anything left at all, I suppose.”

“You are most fortunate that it was El Tazar who found you.”

Still crouched, she braced an elbow on her knee. “How is it that you’re so familiar with someone called the Barracuda, Abdul?”

“My cousin, he gives Fallon effendi information. The major, he allows my cousin to live another day. It is a simple trade.”

“Simple?” She was appalled.

At which point he smiled. “The major could have left my foolish cousin to rot in the gaol last year.” Abdul shrugged. “He did not.”

She lifted the trunk lid. “No doubt extortion is an acceptable road to paradise.”

He looked offended. “Show me a man without vice, missy, and I will show you a man who does not breathe.”

Her attention was drawn to the top photograph in the pile. One of the few that came from the positives that had survived the massacre, only because she’d developed the plates, along with the others that she’d taken at the Coptic temple. It was the reason she and Alex had returned late to the caravan that fateful evening.

Leaning closer, Brianna pulled a photograph off the pile and held it to the light. The young man featured was posed with his rifle across his chest. She’d only known him as Selim. Wearing the loose-fitting, ankle-length garment and headdress of his people, he stood with Napoleonic fervor beside a camel. He’d befriended her over a meal of couscous, joking because men did not do the cooking. Yet, he had shown her how to prepare the meal. And now he was dead.

“Will her ladyship be all right?” Abdul asked after a moment.

Replacing the photographs, Brianna looked across the desert. If only Christopher had been here. Tension that had gripped her since the attack tightened. She worried about how she would get Alex back to Cairo. Aristocrats were inherently helpless by birth. It was natural that she felt protective of her sister-in-law, considering all they’d been through.

“You just find a way to get us back to Cairo. I don’t know if Major Fallon will see us that far. I only know that I can’t stay here.”

“Do not worry, Sitt.” His arms filled with her camera pod, Brianna watched him weave a path around the cooking fire, before dragging the trunk filled with her chemicals back inside the tent. She wasn’t worried, she told herself.

Major Fallon was leaning with his back against a tree when she passed the corner of the tent. She didn’t see him in the darkness until he spoke. “If you insist on walking around out here,” he said, and she swung around, “I suggest that you go armed.”

It piqued her that he’d startled her with such ease. Unfolding his arms, he stepped toward her. She dropped her gaze to his hand. “It’s loaded.” He handed her the revolver that he’d taken from her at the watchtower. “Vigilance is the way of life out here, Miss Donally. I’d hate to see that with everything you’ve survived, you end up getting yourself killed because of negligence.”

The message of his warning was punctuated by the glimpse of two guards standing at the camp’s edge. “Major Fallon?” She grabbed his forearm as he’d started to turn. “Thank you for everything that you’ve done. We would not be alive but for you.”

The corners of his lips relaxed. “You’re no quitter, Miss Donally. I’ll give you that much.”

“With five older brothers, if I’d have quit at anything, I’d have been trampled. One learns to survive.”

His gaze went over her. They weren’t separated by more than a hand’s width between his arm and her shoulder. His tagilmust hung loose. “The beard bothers you, does it?”

“Excuse me?” Amusement lurked in his gray eyes as he watched her flustered response. The unexpected question had thrown her off her guard, and her heart did a ridiculous flutter in her chest.

“Did you want me to kiss you, Miss Donally?” he asked clearly, reading the look in her eyes, and remembering her comment in the tent.

“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t know any woman who finds facial hair inviting, Major Fallon.”

“Then you speak from experience?”

“You won’t shock me.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I’ve kissed many times.”

“Aye,
amîri
.” Brianna felt his gaze go down the front of her caftan, the part not covered by the dark robe. The part only he could see. And she wasn’t wearing underclothing. “But how many were grown
men
?”

Her fingers thrummed her elbows, waiting for him to return his attention to her face. “Come to think of it”—she
flashed him a cheeky smile—“only one. But I fear he spoiled me for life.”

She dismissed him and walked back inside the tent.

Stroking the offending beard in question, Michael grinned appreciatively into the darkness. Miss Donally had a nice body.

“How do you do it, Brea?” Alex said for the fourth time that morning, listlessly stirring a fork around in her bowl.

“I don’t think about it, my lady.” Sitting on a carpet, legs crossed, Brianna continued to rub at the camera lens.

“I wish there was some way Christopher knew that we were alive. I can’t bear to think what he’s going through.”

This was a conversation they’d had a hundred times in the two days since they arrived. No reassurances seemed to soothe Alex. She’d wept, argued, and slept, all in the hopeless human need to do battle with forces over which she had no control. Clean from her bath and wearing a dark red caftan, at least she was finally eating something. “Do you think Major Fallon will get us back to Cairo?” she asked.

Brianna looked up from beneath her caftan hood toward the pool where the subject of their conversation was bent over a small square mirror. A long rifle leaned against a date palm beside his burnoose. He’d ridden into the camp earlier and, after handing off the horse, walked straight past them to the pond. Her camera lay beside her, and her hands paused in their cleaning.

He’d tried to insult her last night by suggesting she’d never kissed a real man, only boys. Though the insult hadn’t worked—
mostly
it hadn’t worked—he’d had nerve to imply that a man’s facial hair was a measurement of his masculinity.

Yet, that side of Major Fallon had caught her pleasantly by surprise, contrasting 180 degrees to the man who wielded a knife with ruthless proficiency.

To the man she watched shaving now.

He’d removed his shirt and turban. Brianna raised a cup
of tea to her mouth and took a drink. His hair was not nearly as black or as long as she’d expected. Indeed, it was cropped to his nape, thick and wavy at the top, shorter on the sides. His chest was tan, as if he spent a lot of time without his shirt. The defined, corded tendons and muscles of his shoulders were visible with each swipe of the razor.

Brianna knew she should have been appalled that two grown women would be observing a man performing so intimate an ablution as shaving. Except she wasn’t finished looking. “Do you know him well, my lady?”