Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

Except that she wasn’t peaceful.

She couldn’t concentrate. She wasn’t at all easy in her mind about Miles, but that wasn’t the whole trouble.

She knew she’d crossed a line on the day they left Minya. The outburst itself wasn’t unreasonable in the circumstances, but what she’d said wasn’t half of what she’d felt.

She’d become attached to him, which was the stupidest mistake, because he was not the sort of man who could become attached to anybody, and most especially not to a dull bookworm nearly thirty years old.

She was glaring with helpless incomprehension at a set of cartouches in her notebook when she heard footsteps in the passage, then a tap at her door.

She flung the notebook aside, went to the door, and opened it. And her heart opened up, too, and had a little party, with dancing.

Udail/Tom stood in the passage bearing the coffee tray. Behind him stood Mr. Carsington, in one of his Arabian Nights costumes. Deeply tanned, his black hair wind-blown, he looked more untamable than ever.

“Leena says you’re cross,” he said.

“I am not,” Daphne lied. “I was working.”

“No, you weren’t,” he said. “You haven’t got ink all over you.” He looked over her shoulder into the cabin. “Your papers and notebooks are not scattered about the divan.”

“Arranged,” she said. “My materials are carefully arranged. I told you, there must be order.”

“Your idea of order looks like a muddle of books and papers to me,” he said. “But then, I’m an idiot.”

“Mr. Carsington.”

“You need coffee and sweets to stimulate that immense brain of yours,” he said. He patted Udail on the shoulder, and the boy carried the coffee tray into her cabin and set it down on the low stool near the divan.

Having completed his assignment, the boy departed.

The aroma of freshly brewed Turkish coffee filled the small cabin. Daphne settled onto the divan once more. Mr. Carsington set one broad shoulder against the doorframe and lounged there.

“Oh, come in,” she said. “You know I cannot eat all this fateerah by myself. Not to mention how ridiculous it is to pretend you meant to go away directly when the tray is set for two.”

“You’re so clever,” he said. “I did have an ulterior motive.” From the folds of his shirt he withdrew a roll of heavy paper. “We need to look at the map and decide how many stops we ought to make before we come to Asyut, where we’re obliged to stop.”

While he spoke he came in and sat on the divan, folding up his long legs as easily and naturally as though he were the Arabian prince he so closely resembled.

“Asyut,” she repeated, blank for a moment, then, “Oh, yes. The crew bakes bread there.”

“We must give them the whole day,” he said. He poured coffee for them both.

She would not let herself think about how intimate the gesture seemed, even with the door properly open. She would not let herself be stupid anymore.

“I can think of no reason to stop before then, except for the night,” she said. “It’s most unlikely anyone will give us information. One of the two warring sides will have bribed or terrified the locals to hold their tongues, and you cannot go into every single village and knock people about to encourage them to talk.”

She took the map and turned a little away from him to unroll it and look for the place. “Ah, yes. Asyut will do very well. It is an important town. The caravans stop there. We can send the servants into the marketplace to collect gossip.” She studied the map. “We have passed Beni Hasan, I don’t doubt, at this rate.”

“Long past,” he said. “Reis Rashad expects to stop for the night at someplace unpronounceable. Some famous ruins nearby.”

“West or east bank? Antinopolis is to the east.”

“West.”

“El-Ashmunein, then,” she said. “The ruins of ancient Hermopolis are nearby. It was dedicated to Thoth, the Egyptian god of learning. He is the equivalent of the Greeks’ Hermes and the Romans’ Mercury. According to Plutarch, Thoth was represented by the ibis, and had one arm shorter than the other.”

“I read Plutarch,” Mr. Carsington said. “That’s all we read. Greeks and Romans, Romans and Greeks.”

She looked away from the map toward him. He was reaching for another piece of fateerah, the supply of which had noticeably dwindled in the last few minutes.

“You had a sound classical education, in other words,” she said.

He ate his pastry, his black brows knit, as though she’d said something vastly puzzling.

She set aside the map and sipped her coffee, wondering what on earth could cause him to deliberate…about anything.

After a rather long time, he spoke. “I daresay my schooling was sound enough,” he said, “but it was ghastly dull. The same authors and subjects are much more entertaining when you talk about them. I thought at first that was because you are so agreeable to look at.”

It was nothing, a mere handful of words uttered in the most offhand way. He drank his coffee and scarcely looked at her.

She didn’t know where to look. The idiotish dancing had recommenced in her heart.

She knew men liked her figure very well. Even Virgil. That, apparently, was all he’d liked.

She was aware that her face, while not pretty, was not repellent to men, either.

All the same, she was moved. Everything inside her seemed to open up, like fresh blossoms. “Oh,” she said, aware of the blush simmering in her cheeks. “A compliment.”

“It’s a simple enough fact.” His voice dropped lower, to a rumble that vibrated deep within her. “When I don’t understand what you’re talking about, I pretend I’m in a picture gallery and you are all the pictures.”

She thought she must burst with pleasure. No one, no one had ever said anything like that to her before. It was more than a compliment. It was…it was…poetry, almost.

“But it isn’t simply your looks,” he went on, his gaze elsewhere, reflective. “It’s the enthusiasm. The love of what you do. You make it interesting because you love it. You may talk of the driest stuff, yet I feel like Whatshis-name, listening to Scheherazade.”

His face changed then, darkened. If it had been any other man she would have thought he blushed.

But his dark gaze came back to her, and he shook his head, and laughed in his usual carefree way. “I am like a child, you see, easily entertained. Why do you think the fellow — the god, I mean — was misshapen?”

20 April

IT WAS NEAR daybreak.

Lord Noxley’s dahabeeya, which had stopped at Girga overnight, set out well before the sun had cleared the horizon. A mile or two upriver, the Memnon approached a sandbank where half a dozen crocodiles slept. They were the first to be seen on the journey thus far, for the creatures had, over time, retreated from their haunts farther south.

Moments later, his lordship watched as the two men who’d run away from the “ghost” were bound and tossed into the water. At the first splash and scream, the reptiles woke and had breakfast.

Most of the company, accustomed to the Golden Devil’s methods, watched as he did, with no evident emotion.

A few of the company, who were not accustomed, turned away.

One of these was Akmed.

Until now, he’d thought Lord Noxley a good man. Like Akmed’s beloved master, this Englishman paid well, never shouted or abused those who served him, and did not permit beatings.

Now Akmed saw why the shouting and abuse were unnecessary and why everyone aboard worked diligently.

Now it dawned on him that he might have made a terrible mistake.

But it dawned on him, too, that his master needed him now more than ever.

Running away was out of the question.

Chapter 14

Asyut, 21 April

THE ISIS SAILED ON, THE WIND CONTINUING true and strong, dying away at sunset only to return, fresh, at dawn.

On the fourth day after

leaving Minya, they reached Asyut.

The bustling market town was the site of ancient Lycopolis, whose people worshiped the jackal or wolf. The Description de l’Egypte contained cross sections and other detailed illustrations of some of the more elaborate tombs carved into the nearby hills.