Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

“What did he say?” Rupert said. “The Akmed fellow? He called you ‘mistress.’ ”

“That was Akmed,” she said, unenlighteningly.

“That’s what I said,” he said patiently. Really, there were times when he wondered whether that immense brain of hers contained an empty chamber or two. “He said something, just before I…um…dozed a bit.”

“You fainted,” she said. “Several times.”

“I was a little sleepy,” he said. “I hadn’t slept since they took you. I was…tired. I did not faint.”

Her delicate snort sufficiently expressed her views on the subject.

“I wish you wouldn’t keep turning the subject,” he said. “Who is Akmed and what was he saying?”

“He said you saved his life.”

Rupert thought about this. “He must have confused me with someone else,” he said.

“On the bridge outside Cairo,” she said. “He’d been badly beaten. A Turkish soldier tried to finish the job. But you stepped in the way.”

After a period of cogitation, which went even more slowly than usual, Rupert realized who she was talking about: the dirty cripple on the bridge. “Oh, that fellow.”

“That was why you ended up in the dungeon,” she said accusingly. “You risked your life on behalf of a miserable native you didn’t know from Adam.”

“It wasn’t a fair fight,” Rupert said.

She gazed at him for a good long while. Then she stroked his cheek briefly. “No, it wasn’t,” she murmured. “But only you would care.” More distinctly she added, “Akmed is the servant who went with Miles to Giza. What you saw was the results of the beating the so-called police gave him — the ones who kidnapped Miles. Akmed is the servant who ran away when the men came to my house and stole the papyrus.”

“He’s the servant who didn’t come back,” Rupert said. “Tom’s uncle. The fellow on the bridge. One and the same. And he turned up here? Extraordinary.”

“Not really,” she said. “Akmed knew he wasn’t safe in Cairo and being there might endanger his family as well as me. So he went to Bulaq, to get work on a boat. There he heard Lord Noxley was going to look for Miles. Akmed had no trouble getting hired. He speaks English and a little French, and he is intelligent and hardworking. He thought Noxley was a fine man. Akmed had no doubts about this until the fine man fed a few followers to the crocodiles — very possibly the same ones you and I saw above Girga.”

“But Akmed didn’t run away then?” The lantern light was growing fuzzy — or was that Rupert’s brain? He seemed to be drifting…on a river…no, a cloud.

“He stayed on because he was determined to find Miles,” she said. “Then, when Noxley’s men found my brother, Akmed stayed to look after him and protect him as best he could while avoiding discovery. He’d grown out his beard, and Miles didn’t recognize him. Akmed decided not to enlighten him until he could arrange for an escape for both of them. Then I turned up and complicated matters.”

She went on, but Rupert lost track of what she was saying. Her voice became a distant music, sweet and familiar. And then by degrees the sound, too, drifted away, and he slept.

Saturday 5 May

CARSINGTON DID NOT wake until midafternoon. Sun streamed through the cabin window, and Miles, sitting upon the far end of the divan, had been trying to while away the time reading a book.

He gave up the effort when Carsington pushed up to a sitting position.

“I’m not sure you’re allowed to sit up,” Miles said.

Under lifted eyebrows, the coal-black eyes regarded him steadily.

Miles remembered that the patient was not to be agitated, either. “On the other hand,” he added, “I’m not sure who could stop you. Daphne, maybe, but I finally persuaded her to get some sleep. She sat up all night with you. Worried about a fever, she said.”

“Not very likely,” Carsington said. “How should I look them in the face, I ask you, was I to get infected and feverish and such — over a bit of a cut? They’d laugh themselves sick, the lot of them.”

“The lot of whom?” Miles said.

“Family,” Carsington said. “My brothers. Alistair was at Waterloo, you know.”

“I know.”

All the world knew. Alistair Carsington was a famous Waterloo hero. Why couldn’t he be the Carsington in Egypt? Or any other one of them? Why did it have to be this one?

“They shot three horses out from under him, sliced him up with sabers, and stuck him with lances,” Carsington said. “Some cavalry rode over him and a couple of soldiers died on him. Did he get infected and feverish?”

“Did he not?” Miles said.

“Well, not very much,” Carsington said. “He lived, didn’t he? If he could live through that, I can jolly well live through a nick in the belly.”

“I hope so,” Miles said. “I think Daphne would take it very ill, were you to require planting.”

He couldn’t imagine what she’d endured when she believed Carsington dead. He felt like a fool for not realizing she’d become attached. But she had concealed it so well.

Besides, Daphne never noticed men — or if she did, it was to regard them with mistrust. Why should Miles think Carsington’s case any different? Why should he, of all men, turn out to be the one she’d risk her life for? Miles could scarcely believe his bookish sister had risked her life on his own account, and he was her brother.

Belatedly he recollected the instructions and explanations she’d given before departing the cabin. “I’m to offer you a glass of water,” he said. “Daphne said she’d given you some laudanum, and you might wake up feeling dry.”

“I feel as though someone moved the Arabian Desert into my mouth while I was sleeping,” Carsington said. “Along with the camels. Am I allowed to have a wash and a shave and clean my teeth at least? But never mind what she allows. She’s asleep. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

“Yes, but you really must move as little as possible,” Miles said. “To avoid putting pressure on the wound. You will not want all her work to go for naught?”

Carsington instantly stilled. “No, of course not. She was picking out bits of cloth — the merest threads — for hours, it seemed. What a beast I should be, to undo all her efforts.”

Miles blinked, once, twice. He was not sure what he’d expected. He knew Carsington was unmanageable. Everyone in the world knew it. Even his formidable father appeared to have given up the case as hopeless.

Miles did not wonder at his lordship’s sending his fourth son to Egypt. He only wondered at the earl’s not sending the son to China, or Tierra del Fuego, or the Antipodes.

“I’ll valet you,” Miles offered. He collected the bowl, ewer, and towel. He found Carsington’s toothbrush and shaving kit, and placed all within easy reach.

While he was playing manservant, the mongoose ran into the room. She rose up on her hind legs and watched the proceedings.

&nbsp

; When Miles had settled back into his place, she crawled into his lap and watched from there. “I heard her name is Marigold,” Miles said.

“She’s in love with your shirt,” Carsington said.

Miles had already heard the story, and put two and two together. While Carsington set about his toilette, Miles told of his adventures in Minya and the limping mongoose he’d fed.

“Obviously it’s the same one,” Carsington said. “What a wicked deceiver she is. I thought she was fond of me. Yet I’ve never seen her sit still for so long. She usually grows bored with my shaving in a minute or two. I now realize she was only using me to while away the interval until she saw you again. You’re the one she truly loves.”

Miles stroked the creature. “You seem to have collected several strays on the way upriver,” he said.

“Marigold collected us,” he said. “The rest is Daph — Mrs. Pembroke’s doing.”

At that moment, Miles silently bore what he hoped was the last of the shocks. Daphne had not simply formed an attachment. She had formed an intimate attachment.

With Rupert Carsington, Lord Hargate’s famously wild and famously untamable scapegrace son.

Still, Miles reminded himself, there were worse men in the world. Noxley, for instance. Pembroke.

Meanwhile this man had beyond doubt won the affection and loyalty of the crew and servants. They had nothing but praise for him. They’d fought for him. The mongoose liked him, too.

Even the cats had wandered in once this afternoon and deigned to sit at the foot of the divan and stare at him while he slept.

When the toilette was done, Miles helped him into a fresh Arab-style shirt, of the style that came nearly to the ankles. It was not elegant, but it was cool. The long front opening allowed easy access to his wound.

When he was dressed, and Miles had helped prop him up with another pillow, Carsington made him feel a little better by saying, “That was wonderfully quick thinking on your part last night: the torch and the papyrus.”

“That curst papyrus,” Miles said. “I should be glad to be rid of it, if not for Daphne. She had done so much work, and it was a fine manuscript, superior even to the immensely long one illustrated in the Description de l’Egypte. Now the French will have this one as well, plague take them.”