Must Have Been The Moonlight (9 page)

“Only somewhat less bored than you. Would you like me to give you an accounting of your daily itinerary these past weeks? Ending with your ride over here today with the young, quixotic Mr. Cross?”

She took offense that he might think her dull. “Mr. Cross isn’t quixotic. He’s merely kind. Harmless.”

“No man is harmless,” he scoffed.

“Are you referring to yourself?”

“I’m not one of your beaux, Brianna.” His voice was almost gentle. “And what you have on your mind is a very bad idea.”

“Maybe I’m not looking for a beau.”

She hated that his gaze caught the subtle shift of her hands as she pressed one over the other to keep them from trembling.

His silvery eyes lifted to hers. His features could have been hewn from granite. “There’s not a whole lot in my future that would interest an indelible romantic. But don’t think I’m not tempted.” He lowered his voice. “If I thought you knew what the
hell
you were doing.”

Her mouth opened. Right before her eyes her prince had turned back into an obstinate toad, and she couldn’t think of a single adequate word that would refute his comment. She’d finally gotten the nerve to throw herself into the fire, and he was leaving her to burn.

“You are
such
a hypocrite, Major Fallon,” she whispered.

“Am I?” His teeth flashed predatory white.

“Maybe you’re the true flirt here.”

“You’re dangerous, Miss Donally.” He took a deliberate step around the chair, then pressed his hands to each edge, trapping her. “If you come near me again, it won’t be conversation we’ll be having against a chair. Or a wall, or maybe even the floor.”

He was absolutely crass, and she laughed, taking care not to avoid his eyes, intending once and for all to banish any thought from his mind that she was a child. “Maybe I’m no more interested in conversation than you are, Major.” She’d forced the breathless words to sound casual. But there was nothing casual about her intent.

Their gazes tangled, locked, and turned hot. Her lungs felt restrained by her corset, unable to inhale. She forgot where they were. Forgot that her brother was upstairs and that someone could step into the room at any moment. His hands remained on the chair’s edge at her back, his fingers long and tanned, his broad shoulders blocking the window. Neither moved as his gaze lowered to her mouth, and the whole world faded to the desire that stormed his eyes, that imprinted itself on her lips, to the one possibility that he would kiss her.

“So you think you want to be my lover?” His tone was deceptively casual.

Her heart raced in panic. Or was she caught by that secret thrill of discovery that someone would enter the room? She felt six years old again when she’d stood dressed in a chemise at the pond out back of her house and let Frankie Carre, the seven-year-old son of a neighbor, see her. Her mother had caught her and sent her to her room without dinner. But it had not removed the wicked thrill of doing something forbidden.

What did it mean to be a man’s lover?

“Are you afraid, Major?” The words were a question, but her tone was a dare. No less the challenge that he’d once thrown at her.

He seemed to contemplate her with a steely-eyed glance, as if to assess not only her, but himself in her eyes. One would think it was commonplace for a woman to throw herself at him, and she didn’t understand his hesitation. Any more than she understand her own motivation to do what she shouldn’t even be thinking about doing.

“I’m not afraid,” he mused, “but you should be. Nothing stays secret in Cairo for long,
amîri
.”

He’d just put a step between them when a feminine voice hailed from the doorway. “Major Fallon?” It was the consul general’s wife.

Brianna felt the surge of blood rush through her veins.

“There you are,” Lady Bess said when he turned to politely greet her. “I thought that I saw you earlier.” Trussed in copper-colored taffeta that matched the color of her hair, she extended her hand to him. “We’ve seen so little of you since your return.”

Grateful for the interruption, Brianna walked to the window behind her, hoping the effort would allow her a moment to compose herself, to cool her flushed face. Others entered the room.

Or maybe they’d been there the whole time and she’d not noticed. The thought made her realize how careless she was.

“I wanted to tell you that you received a letter from England,” Lady Bess said. “I don’t know why it was sent to the consulate. I forwarded it to your office this morning.”

“Thank you.”

“Will you be attending the picnic next week at the palace?”

“If I’m back in town.”

His deep words fell over Brianna. She turned to look at him.

“Of course,” Lady Bess said. “I had forgotten. You’re escorting our dear Mrs. Pritchards to Alexandria tomorrow. Such a terrible tragedy.” Lady Bess’s blue eyes fell on Brianna with discreet curiosity. “Miss Donally,” she said. “I see that Mr. Cross left.”

“He had to get back to the museum.”

Lady Bess smiled up at Major Fallon. “If you wish to find anything in Cairo, ask Mr. Cross. He and my husband share a passion for antiquities and good wine. You will of course come to the function,” she said, attempting to bring Major Fallon back into the conversation. “It should be nice for a change to relax and enjoy the company of the young ladies here. Don’t you agree?”

“I imagine the possibilities are endless this time of year.” Seemingly amused, his gaze met Brianna’s over Lady Bess’s head. “If you’ll both excuse me, I need to prepare for my trip to Alexandra in the morn. Miss Donally…” His eyes touched hers with promise. “Lady Bess…”

After Major Fallon left, Lady Bess chatted a little longer before excusing herself and returning to the parlor. Brianna walked to the long window overlooking the drive and pulled back the heavy velvet draperies. Major Fallon had just mounted a spirited bay. Gripping the reins with a gloved hand, he swung the horse around and raised his gaze to the long window where she stood—as if he’d known that she’d be there—the small turn of his mouth his only concession to her presence. Brianna stared back, making no outward show that her pulse raced and that they had just agreed to become lovers.

Fallon was arrogant and annoying, and positively the most exciting man she’d ever met. Not that she hadn’t met enough men in her life.

But there was something about him that drew her into his flame. Heaven help her, when she stepped into his smoky gaze, she burned.

Michael slammed the door to his apartment and walked past the front room into his private chambers, where he pulled at the buttons on his uniform. Outside the window overlooking the narrow streets—similar to a thousand others that meandered through Cairo—noise rumbled through the walls. He pulled out the makings for a cigarette from a drawer, dipped beneath the arched doorway into his office
and opened the glass doors in the back. Still working his hands around the tobacco, he leaned a hip against the iron rail. Donally’s marble palace—as he termed the luxury—sat across the narrow lake. Michael had spent every day at dawn the past few weeks watching the sun rise over that house. Sitting amidst a garden paradise on a jut of well-protected land, the residence once belonged to a powerful Mogul bey.

Michael had been astonished that Donally had come to his defense against Omar, which rendered his current circumstances a sudden dilemma. He was unused to facing his conscience, or waging war on his lust. Both were usually manageable. The problem now was that he liked the entire family, down to the retinue of loyal servants. There was something refreshing and intriguing about a family willing to defy the mores of the time and stand outside the protected club and sport society that made up Cairo’s elite. Nor had he ever met anyone who embodied romantic fantasy with courage and a complete disregard for prudence as Brianna Donally managed to do with a single glance of her tilted-blue eyes.

He wanted to press her against the wall and bury himself in all that life force that seemed to glow around her like sunlight.

“Aye.” He attempted to rub the fatigue of the past few days from his eyes. He
was
insane if he let her wrap him in her romantic fantasy. What she wanted from him had nothing to do with love.

So why did he balk?

Turning back into his office, Michael walked to the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed, his uniform jacket hanging open as he leaned forward to find a match from the drawer in the nightstand.

He’d never noticed how neatly partitioned and tidy his private space was. Unlike the boxed clutter of his office, which contained floor to ceiling files of his work, his bedroom was nondescript, bare of memorabilia, bare of extravagances, and empty of his presence. He kept little of his life
or his work in his living space. The walls were limestone pale, the furniture inexpensive, and today the noise from outside on the streets was intrusive.

Little of who he’d once been had survived the bloody wars in China. Indeed, the man the khedive had labeled El Tazor was not the man who had left England in disgrace twelve years ago.

He remembered a time when he did belong somewhere, when he’d hunted London’s clubs and the Season’s circuit of marriageable young ladies. As the third son of an old aristocratic family, he’d never been expected to take over the reins of the family fortune. He’d fallen in love and dreamed of all the things an idealistic fool dreamed when he was twenty and naive. Before his father taught him that societal comportment and appearance were thicker than blood. Thicker than a son’s heart, and more important than the world he’d tried to build for himself.

In the end, Michael had learned that the only person he could truly count on in this life was himself, and with his emancipation came the satisfaction of a job well done. Some would say that he’d excelled in the art of violence. In the twelve years that he’d walked away from hearth and heritage, he would argue that it was survival.

And now, for the first time in all of those years, he was suddenly looking across a lake at a family that didn’t belong to him, and wanting something more than he had.

With an oath, Michael slammed the drawer shut.

He dropped the unlit cigarette on the nightstand and plowed his fingers through his hair. Fifteen minutes with Brianna Donally and he was driven to smoke, and it was his damn luck there wasn’t a match to be had.

Half dressed, he walked through the living room toward the kitchen, when he stopped dead and, every sense alert, turned.

Halid sat on one of the pair of chairs that made up the furniture in the living area. With his legs crossed at the ankles, he watched Michael frown.

“By the grace of Allah, it has only taken thee thirty minutes to see me.” He clicked shut the silver watch fob. “Fortunately, I am under no one’s payroll but yours.” His teeth flashed white.

An indulgent spark of humor lifted a corner of Michael’s mouth. The last time he had seen Halid was at Donally’s desert camp. Halid still wore the blue robes and turban of his tribe. “Remind me to put a chair beneath the door latch in the office.”

As if that would truly hold anyone at bay, but at least he’d have noticed the broken glass. The French-designed door had been his one concession to frivolity in his quarters.

Halid walked to the table and tossed down a leather packet. “Your secretary gave me this. He said that you had requested a routing survey of the telegraph Donally Pasha is constructing. And this.” Halid held out the letter that Lady Bess had forwarded to his office.

Michael hesitated. He would recognize his sister-in-law’s flowery script anywhere. He tore it in half. Caroline had no business writing him, as if she were the sole arbitrator of his family’s sins.

Or his.

Halid eyed him curiously. If he thought Michael’s behavior odd, he wisely didn’t comment. “It is fortunate you have been busy because I found nothing in my quest, except that my parents want me to marry and populate the earth with their grandchildren.”

Michael eyed his friend with amusement. “They still like you, then, if they think you’re worthy of carrying on the line.”

“You would make yourself worthy if you saw my future bride.” Halid crossed his arms and leaned against the table. “I have been thinking that it is time, perhaps. There is too much death not to celebrate life when it is within thy grasp to do so.”

Michael set the papers in his hand down. “Then congratulations are in order.” Halid’s comment touched him more
than he wanted. For the first time in years, he was beginning to see how vast and void of simple pleasures his life had become. “If you drank, I would toast your health.”

“A strange English custom, this drinking for health.” He pushed away from the table and they clasped hands in another British custom Halid didn’t understand. “For thirty minutes today you had me worried,
Englishman
. I am told that you will be going to Alexandria.”

“Unfinished business, Halid. I’ll be there a few days. I’ve had someone watching the Donallys’ estate since their return to Cairo. I want you to take over the sentry on Miss Donally.”

“Only the younger one?”

Michael turned into the hovel that served as his kitchen and withdrew a flask of brandy, the morning’s bread that he’d purchased from the market, and a bottle of jam from the pantry. “Other than her brother, she’s the only one who leaves the house.”