To Catch a Bride (11 page)

She nodded, relieved Ali would no longer be a hostage. She added to Ali, “Tell Laila I am all right and not to worry.”

Ali nodded, and with a friendly wave to the Englishman, turned to Higgins, apparently unworried about Ayisha’s fate.

“I’ll join you in the sitting room in a moment, Miss Cleeve,” the Englishman said. “You go on ahead. I just need to have a word with Higgins.”

S
he entered the sitting room alone and was swept instantly back to the past. There was the heavy brass lamp hanging from the ceiling; she remembered it swinging gently, making shadows dance.

There were the fans Papa had rigged up as they had them in India. Even the old Persian carpet, spread over the tiled floor was the same, though a little more faded and worn.

The smell was different; no hint remained of the cigar Papa used to smoke each evening. The room had been painted light green instead of cream, and some of the furniture had changed. Otherwise it was the same.

She gravitated, as always, to the bookshelves. To her amazement, many of her father’s books remained, though they were well worn now, their spines cracked, the title lettering faded, read by the various people who’d lived in the house since, people who didn’t worship books as Papa had, who took less care of them than he did.

She ran her fingers lightly over some of the titles left behind, caressing books she remembered, a few she’d loved. How long since she’d read a story?

“Old friends?” The deep voice behind her made her jump. She turned and found him standing close, so close she could smell the clean, distinctive scent of him, the fresh tang of cologne and clean, sun-dried linen, and something darker, more masculine underneath. It made her want to just lean into him, lean against that broad, strong chest and . . .

She swallowed and stepped back, putting some distance between herself and the books, herself and his faint, disturbingly appealing scent.

She pretended to misunderstand him. “Friends? No, I was looking at the books and the pretty patterns.” She stroked the gold lettering. “Is it real gold?”

“Yes, and I’m quite sure you can read the ‘pretty patterns,’ too. You had no trouble finding the sitting room.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to find.”

“No, not for someone who used to live here.”

She turned away from the bookshelf. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed books until she saw these ones again.

“I expect this room has stirred up a few memories.”

Not trusting herself to answer, she gave an indifferent shrug. Stirred up was right: she had to get calm again, regain control. Protect herself. Rebuff him.

He gestured her toward a chair, but it was one her mother had favored for embroidery so Ayisha chose a light rattan chair instead. The Englishman sat in a large, heavily carved armchair opposite her: her father’s favorite seat. Her eyes searched for the stool she used to sit on when Papa gave her lessons, but it was nowhere to be seen.

“Now, Miss Cleeve—”

“My name is Ayisha,” she interrupted. “I am not who you think I am and I won’t go to England with you.” There. It was said.

He leaned back, crossed his long legs, looked at her with those piercing blue eyes, and said, “Why not?”

“Why not?” she repeated. “Because as I said, I am not who you think—”

“Yes, yes, I’ve heard all that before, but even if you are not really Miss Cleeve, why wouldn’t you come with me to England, where wealth and comfort are waiting for you?”

She stared at him, puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

“You are poor, one step away from starvation, living on the streets—”

“I am not living on the streets!”

“Close enough, from where I sit. You are stealing to make ends m—”

“I do not steal!” she said angrily.

“You broke into a private house, last night, armed with two knives—”

“Because you kidnapped a child.”

“I saved a boy from punishment as a thief. I suppose you sent him to steal the picture—”

“I did
not
! I would
never
encourage him to steal. I told him not to go anywhere near you! I strictly forbade him even to follow you and—”

“Nevertheless he tried to steal the picture of you.”

She bit her lip.

“I believe the punishment for stealing here is quite harsh. They cut off a hand, don’t they? The pasha, Mehmet Ali, runs a very strict, law-abiding country, they tell me.”

She swallowed, having no answer for his accusation. She did not send Ali to steal, but it was because of her he’d been tempted.

“So,” he continued, “you are living in poverty, in a country not your own—”

“I was born here.”

He slammed his fist on the arm of the chair. “Your father was an Englishman—a baronet, dash it—and you know perfectly well you belong in England with your grandmother! You’re nineteen, for God’s sake!”

She looked away, shaken by his anger, annoyed by it. What did he have to be angry about? She was the one being bullied.

She felt ashamed of herself even as she thought it; he wasn’t a bully. It was just that she had no answers for him—none that would not make her life even worse than he was making it out to be.

He continued in a hard, even voice, “Look at you! You’re half starved, living a life where you have to disguise yourself as a boy for your own safety, a hairsbreadth from discovery and disaster—and yet when you are offered a home, a fortune, and a safe, comfortable new life, you reject it. Without even giving it a moment’s consideration. Why?”

She frowned.

“You still don’t understand, do you? An impostor wouldn’t hesitate for a moment. A clever little street thief—”

“I don’t steal,” she said automatically, but he ignored her.

“A clever little street thief opportunist would snap up my offer in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t she, Miss Don’t-Call-Me-Cleeve?” He sat back in his chair, those blue, blue eyes boring into her.

The silence stretched. “You said there was a fortune,” she said at last. “How much?” She tried to look eager and conniving.

He threw back his head and laughed at that. “Don’t ever try and earn your living on a stage. You’d never make it as an actress. Too little and far too late, my dear.”

He leaned closer. “I watched your face last night, when we were talking. When I told you your grandmother was lonely and wanted a family, you were genuinely moved.”

Ayisha made a gesture of repudiation.

His voice deepened. “You tried to hide it, but I saw. You were touched, deeply. Then later, when I mentioned her having a fortune you barely made a flicker of an eyelash: you were just waiting for me to stop talking so you could tell me Alicia was dead, and that here, there was only Ayisha.”

“It’s true,” she told him.

He didn’t believe it, she could see. The trouble was, no explanation she could give him would make sense—except the truth. And the truth was too dangerous.

“Very well.” He settled back as if waiting to be told a story. “Explain it to me. If I tell your grandmother I found her long-lost granddaughter but didn’t bring her home, I’ll need a dashed good reason.”

She set her jaw. “I told you what to tell her: that Alicia Cleeve is dead.”

“But you’re not.”

She shook her head.

“Enough of this nonsense. Nothing you can say or do will convince me you are not Alicia Cleeve, so let us be done with this pointless fencing. What happened to you after your father died, Alicia?” He waited. And waited.

She turned herself side on, so she didn’t have to meet those blue eyes.

He went on. “I was told the servants had deserted the house. It must have been very frightening for you, being left all alone with your father lying dead in his bed.”

Ayisha tried not to think about it.

“Did you get sick, too? I know they found two bodies there—Sir Henry and a woman—some kind of servant, they s—”

She cut him off. “I never get sick.”
Some kind of servant.
Mama’s epitaph.

“So did you leave because you were frightened of getting sick?”

The silence stretched. And all the while those intense, blue eyes bored into her.

“I told you I don’t get sick,” she said at last, unable to stand the silence.

He nodded. “I see. But I don’t understand why you left. Why not wait until someone came—the local authorities, someone from the British consulate? They would have looked after you.”

She struggled to keep her face free of emotion. Memories swirled through her, stirred up by this room, his questions . . . Images she’d tried so hard to lock away. The sight of Papa’s body racked and stiff in death. And Mama, so distraught, sick herself, but smoothing his white cotton sheet over and over, in utter despair . . .

She picked up a cushion and started fiddling with the fringe. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I wasn’t here.” She avoided his gaze. She was no good at lying, she knew it. People always caught her out when she tried to tell a direct lie. She could act a lie, that was no problem, but when it came to looking someone in the eye and giving them false words . . . she was hopeless. She felt guilty, so she looked guilty.

It made no difference. He refused to believe her. “But why leave the house? You would have been safer—” He broke off, his gaze sharpening as if he’d just thought of something—or read her thoughts.

He leaned forward. “You didn’t feel safe in the house anymore.”

Of course she didn’t feel safe. Why else would she have left? She gave him a flat look and curled her legs under her on the chair.

“They told me at the consulate the house was deserted and had been robbed at some stage. Was that it? Were you there when the robbers broke in?”

She didn’t respond, just picked at the fringe of the cushion, her face set, her eyes downcast, trying with all her might to focus on the cushion.

Instead she saw the large, bare, dirty feet approaching her mother’s bed . . . stopping . . . just inches away from her face . . . the nails of the man’s feet, twisted, horny, ingrained with filth . . .

Ayisha had lain there for she didn’t know how long, not daring to breathe, certain that she was about to be hauled from her hiding place.

As she had done in nightmares ever since that terrible night . . .

“Ayisha, did men come and . . . hurt you?” he asked gently.

Her eyelids prickled with unaccountable tears. She blinked them away. The softness of that deep voice was insidious. It was a deep siren song, coaxing her, tempting her to trust him, to tell him everything, let him look after her. But if she did, she told herself fiercely, the struggle of the last six years would be for nothing.

She said brusquely, “They didn’t rape me, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She’d been in no danger of rape that night . . . On the contrary.

She didn’t even know what a virgin was then, but she knew they meant her. And that Zamil’s was the slave market . . . for very special slaves.

The Englishman persisted. “Then why didn’t you go to the British consulate?”

Because she didn’t believe she’d be any safer with the men from the consulate than the robbers. English law did not count in Egypt; only the law of the pasha, so for Ayisha the end result would have been much the same. As it could be if this Englishman discovered the truth about her.

She would
not
become a thing.

She shoved the cushion down the side of the chair. “I won’t go to England with you, and this conversation is pointless.” She untucked her legs and started to get up.

“Lady Cleeve needs you.”

“No, she doesn’t,” she flashed. “She doesn’t even know me. But there are people here who do need me, so—”

“Who? Ali? You could take him with you to England. Send him to school—”

She snorted. “And have him treated like a ‘dirty native’ for the rest of his life? I think not.”

“But—”

“Besides, I can just see Ali in a rigid English boarding school. He would loathe it. No, Ali belongs here. And so do I.”

“Is that what you’re worried about?” he persisted. “That English people won’t respect you? Because Ali might encounter those attitudes—though not everyone in England is so blinkered—but it wouldn’t be like that for you. You are the daughter of Sir Henry and Lady Cleeve and granddaughter of the Dowag—”

She stiffened at his words. Aye, there lay the crux of it:
the daughter of Lady Cleeve
. Which she was not.

“No. It is out of the question. I have responsibilities here, and nothing you could say will convince me to go. Tell the old lady Alicia Cleeve is dead.” It was the truth, after all, she thought.

And now,” she said, standing with hands braced on her hips, “Will you release me?”