Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

She came up to the divan. Her remarkable face wore a guarded expression. “Such as?”

“Even I collected a few clues,” he said. He held up his thumb. “First, we are not dealing with common miscreants but an organization.” His index finger went up. “Second, the man in charge is clever: kidnapping, papyrus theft, and today’s events — all neatly arranged. Recollect that it was two ordinary Egyptians who were killed at Giza. We were not harmed, except in our pride. Our man knows how far he can go.”

“Egyptian life is held very cheap,” she murmured, nodding.

Rupert continued to keep count with his fingers. “Third, he knows how to manipulate the police. Interesting, isn’t it, how they were on the spot as we came out, how they arrested us first, then went looking for the bodies.”

“Bribed,” she said.

She began to pace, innocently unaware of the enticing way the thin trousers slid against her legs, the way they concealed then revealed the turn of ankle and calf and thigh, the way the fabric shifted with the sway of her hips.

He watched, not at all innocent or unaware. “Fourth.” He paused briefly. “It grieves me to admit it, but Noxious was right about one thing: French or not, our villain has an impressive network of spies.”

“How else would he have had time to arrange events at Giza?” she muttered, still pacing. “There cannot be many men in Cairo who meet these criteria. It must be someone who has lived here for some time. He is well connected to the local underworld. He probably moves freely in the European community. He may be a member of the pasha’s court. Anyone close to Muhammad Ali has influence, power.”

“How many people qualify?” Rupert said.

“I’ve no idea,” she said. “Egypt attracts opportunists. People who would be considered disreputable in their native countries can achieve a degree of respectability here.”

She stopped abruptly, glanced at him, then away again.

After a moment she came back to the divan and sank onto it with her usual quick grace. She sat much nearer to him than she’d previously done, not quite an arm’s length away.

She poured coffee, her gaze abstracted. Two cups. Apparently, he was forgiven. For the moment.

Rupert took his cup and drank happily. There was nothing like Turkish coffee. Or Turkish trousers on an attractive Englishwoman. He wished the jacket were equally revealing. He imagined her draped in gauzy silks, her intriguing body stretched out upon the divan while he with hands and mouth ascertained her precise dimensions.

He looked up to find her gazing steadily at him.

It was unsettling. For a moment he believed she could see straight through into his brain. Not that there was much to see. Still, he doubted she’d feel more amiably toward him if, for instance, she could discern how vast an amount of mental space his fantasies of seduction occupied, compared to the cramped corner devoted to the problem of murdered guides and corrupt police.

“Before we go any further, I must say something,” she said. “I have a temper.”

“I noticed,” he said. “It’s quite exciting. I don’t know what you were saying to the police at the guardhouse, but you didn’t seem to be trying to win them over.”

“You guessed correctly,” she said. “I was pointing out how illogical it was for us to kill our guides and leave ourselves in utter darkness.”

“Is that what you were telling them?” he said. “It sounded a great deal more complicated.”

Her color rose. “I may have commented unfavorably on their intelligence and added one or two unflattering references to their parentage.”

“That is exciting,” he said. “It’s a wonder they didn’t behead us on the spot.”

“I was not thinking clearly,” she said. “I have never been arrested before. It was infuriating. The thickheadedness of the police was beyond anything I have ever before encountered, or even imagined.”

“Yet somehow these thickheads penetrated your masterful disguise,” he said.

She looked down at herself. Her eyes widened. She put her hand up to her head. “Good grief,” she said. “I’d completely forgotten.” She rose hastily. “I am not at all presentable.”

Her idea of “presentable” was buttoned up, pinned up, and covered up, all in black. Rupert vastly preferred the disheveled and temperamental version — especially the tumbled hair, which begged his fingers to tangle in it.

“It’s only me,” he said, helping himself to a date. “I don’t mind if you’re a bit of a mess.” He threw her a look of innocent inquiry. “Or were you were wishing to make yourself more attractive to me?”

She sat back down. “I was explaining about my temper — and perhaps I ought to mention your genius for setting it off.” She shut her eyes, and after a moment opened them again.

Rupert wondered if she was counting to ten. People often did that when conversing with him.

“I wish to apologize,” she said.

“That isn’t nec —”

“It is necessary,” she cut in. “I should have been wretched if you hadn’t taken me to Giza. And we did learn something, as you said.”

He didn’t want or need an apology. He didn’t mind her temper in the least. Liked it, actually. Still, it was sporting of her to apologize.

She’d displayed the same pluck in Giza. Since she did seem to have a morbid aversion to being shut up in dark places, she must have been sick with fear. Yet she’d gritted her teeth and kept on, emerging in fine fettle for battling the police.

Even a night’s incarceration had not shaken her.

Meanwhile he, who’d abundant experience with jails, had not spent the most comfortable night. He’d told himself the police wouldn’t harm her. They’d restrained themselves during her tirades, hadn’t they? All the same, he’d spent the night sharply alert, listening for any indication that she was in distress.

He banished the puzzling recollection. She was a handful. He’d seen that from the start. Not a restful sort of female. She even obliged him to think from time to time.

He did so now, eager to put the apology behind t

hem.

“Obviously, our villain is trying to delay and mislead you,” he said. “That tells us your brother is unharmed and probably not far away.”

She nodded, but her green gaze was abstracted, shifting from side to side.

Rupert returned to eating while he watched her think.

After a few minutes’ hard cogitation, she said, “All our clues point to a clever, powerful, and dangerous person. Surely someone in Cairo would know who the most likely suspects are. Lord Noxley…” She shook her head. “No, we need to talk to someone who’s made his home here, someone who knows everybody and everything.”

She looked up at him, then past him at the row of inscrutable wooden figures on the shelf. “Good grief. The merchant.”

Rupert looked that way, too.

“We bought most of those figures from the same man who sold Miles the papyrus,” she said. “That’s where we should have started, with Vanni Anaz. Who told him the story of the lost pharaoh’s tomb? How many people did he tell? How many showed an interest in the papyrus?”

“Excellent point.” Rupert swallowed the last of his coffee and rose. “Begin at the beginning. And we’d better do it sooner rather than later — before our villain guesses our next move.”

“Now?” she said. Her hand went to her head, and she looked down at herself in dismay.

He picked up the turban she’d flung down. “I’ll help you,” he said.

Chapter 6

DAPHNE’S MIND WASN’T AT ITS SHARPEST. SHE’D lain awake last night straining to hear what was happening elsewhere in the guardhouse and berating herself for losing her temper with the police. If they beat or tortured Mr. Carsington, it would be her fault.

Her beastly, unwomanly temper. Five years of Virgil’s gentle reproofs had not helped subdue it. On the contrary, the reproofs only made her angrier.

Mr. Carsington did not mind her temper at all. Exciting, he called it — though she might have got them both killed.

She looked up at him as he wrestled with her hair and the turban.