Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

Searching with his free hand, he found the edge of the doorway. “And if you can’t?” he said.

“I can think of half a dozen different ways we could die,” she said. “With or without villains’ assistance.”

DAPHNE KNEW SHE was jabbering, but talking helped keep emotion at bay.

Until this moment, she’d allowed herself to cherish a small hope that her alarms about her brother were as silly as the men in Cairo painted them to be. She’d let herself hope, though logic rebelled against it, that Miles was not in trouble, and Akmed had either lied about or misunderstood what had happened in Old Cairo.

The scream and the guides’ abrupt departure did not strike her as simple coincidence, and the small, silly hope was breathing its last.

And so she babbled facts.

“The way we came is one of two ways into the pyramid,” she said. “Parallel to and below the passage we first entered is another, which leads to a descending passage. This meets the upper one at the shaft. The lower entrance is still blocked, however.”

“So there’s only one way out,” he said.

“Yes, but it is easy to go astray,” she said. “We could end up in the wrong passageway. The lower passage has a shaft, too, and a side chamber, if I remember correctly.” She wasn’t sure. The panic she tried to crush was making a muddle of her mind. She could not clearly picture Belzoni’s diagram.

She was not about to let Mr. Carsington know the state she was in, however.

Coolly she went on, “I trust yours is an unerring sense of direction?”

“Yes, actually,” he said, the supremely confident male.

“I am glad to hear it,” she said, “because it is all too easy, in absolute darkness like this, to become disoriented and wander the few simple passageways endlessly. Or tumble into a shaft.”

“If you don’t want to become disoriented, I recommend you keep close to me,” Mr. Carsington said.

“I ought to remind you as well,” she went on testily, “that even if none of these mishaps befall us, it is possible for villainous persons to close the single way out. They’ve only a small space to block, after all: four feet high, three and a half feet wide. They might roll a few large stones down the passageway without great difficulty.”

“I should think the guides would notice if anybody started hauling large stones up to the pyramid entrance,” he said. “And I expect they’d strongly object to anyone’s trying to block the passage. Taking people into and out of the pyramid is their livelihood, recollect.”

Yes, yes, of course. Why hadn’t she thought of that?

Because she was living one of her worst nightmares, trapped in a closed space in utter darkness. Panic had suffocated logic and reason.

She was lost, following blindly, clinging to his large hand as they proceeded slowly but unhindered through the taller horizontal passageway and thence into the inclined smaller one. There she had to let go of his hand and grope along behind.

She knew she could not continue holding his hand while traversing the small tunnel. One part of her mind — the small part still functioning — understood the necessity. But the rest was too chaotic to understand anything, and when she let go, she felt wretched and lost and alone.

Telling herself to stop being so childish, she followed as closely behind as possible, listening to his footsteps while she slid her hands along the passage walls. What seemed a very long time later, though she knew they could not have traveled many feet, he put his hand back, touching the front of her turban.

“We’re at the shaft, I think,” he said softly. “There’s room for you to stand upright, at any rate. But stay a moment while I find the ladder.”

Another long wait. Daphne heard rustling, then his familiar rumble, too low to understand. Then a degree more audibly he said, “You’d better let me carry you.”

“Have the villains broken the ladder?” she said.

“No. Where the devil are you?” His voice was clipped and distant. One large hand found her forearm, the other her hip. “Where’s your waist, confound it?”

Though the pyramid’s interior was far from cool, she was acutely aware of a very different warmth where he touched her, and of a strength that the childish part of her wanted to lean into.

She retreated. “I can climb up the ladder without aid,” she said. “I climbed down it, did I not?”

“As you wish, madam. Try not to step on the bodies.”

“Bodies,” she repeated.

“They’re human, they haven’t been dead for very long, and they’ve fallen or been flung onto the pile of stones near the ladder,” he said.

“Good grief,” she said.

“Don’t faint,” he said. “I’ve pushed them out of the way as much I could, but space is limited. If I can get you onto the third rung, you should be clear of them.”

She quelled a shudder. If she gave way, she’d soon be trembling uncontrollably.

“Very well,” she said. She groped in the darkness, about where she reckoned his shoulder must be. She found it, rock hard and warm. Only the thin linen of his shirt lay between her palm and his skin. Within her a welter of unnamable feelings stirred, a hurrying and a prickling and a piercing recollection of her youth and its not-quite-forgotten longings.

She beat them down and quickly worked her way from his shoulder to his hand. She grasped his hand and brought it to her waist. “Here I am,” she said breathlessly.

Two big hands circled her waist. “What in blazes is that?” he said.

“My waist,” she said.

“I mean the sash thing you’ve wound about it. Have you rocks in it?” He patted a place near her left hip.

“It is called a hezam,” she said.

“Yes, but what is it?”

“A scarf girdling the waist,” she said. “Useful for stowing things. Like my knives.”

“Have you the least idea how to use them?” he said.

“I know that you hold it by the handle and the sharp end is the part you stick in,” she whispered impatiently. “What else do I need to know?”

“Hold it with the sharp end aimed upward rather than downward,” he said. “More control, better aim that way.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yes. I see.”

“Good.” He grasped her firmly about the waist — or the hezam, rather — and lifted her smoothly up. He held her until she had her feet firmly planted on the rung and her hands clutching the sides.

Then, “Don’t move,” he said in an undertone. “We don’t know what’s up there.”

“I don’t hear anything,” she said.

“I’d better go first all the same,” he said.

“There’s only one ladder,” she said, “and I’m on it.”

“I’d rathe

r not climb over the corpses,” he said.

“No, no, of course not.”

“I’ll have to squeeze by you, then,” he said.

“Will the ladder hold two persons?”

“We’ll soon find out.”

She felt his hand travel up her back and along her arm to where her hand grasped the ladder. She squeezed to one side, to leave room, but there was little room to leave. A moment later, she felt his hard torso against her back, then a long, muscular leg pressed against her thigh. She sucked in her breath. Flames raced up from the place of contact, and even the cold shame instantly following couldn’t altogether douse them.

Then he was past, and she concentrated on getting out of this beastly place and away from the horror a few inches away. She listened to him climb out, then to the muted sound of his boots moving away from the shaft. She became aware of her own breathing, too fast, and the matching tempo of her heartbeats. Her mind darted to the bodies nearby, then to unknown others, still alive, lying in wait for him.

Panic flooded in, and with it a mad grief. Finally, she heard his returning footsteps. Relief wiped out panic, and the wild grief sank back into whatever dark cave of her being it had come from.

“All’s clear at the moment,” he said.

The ladder was nearly perpendicular. Daphne all but ran up it. At the top rung, she paused and released her death grip to feel for the floor of the passage. Her searching hand found his knee.

Then strong fingers circled her wrist, and she grasped his in the same way. “Hold on,” he said. “I’ll steady you.” His other hand slid down from her shoulder over her breast, then caught her firmly under her arm. If he lost his hold, her madly working mind told her, she’d fall to the bottom — or on top of the corpses. But his grip was firm, and in a moment she was clambering over the edge of the shaft and sinking onto her knees, while her heart raced and her breath came in racking gasps.

“Steady,” he said. He did not let go of her.

She tried to steady herself, but her hands trembled, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.