Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

Mr. Carsington’s expression hardened. He moved to the inner door and pushed it open.

“Confound it,” he said, and added with a warning gesture to Daphne, “don’t move.”

She ignored the warning and hurried to the door. He put up his arm, but she pushed it away and looked at what he tried to hide.

Vanni Anaz lay on the floor, staring wide-eyed up at them. A red line snaked across his throat, and a pool of blood spread under his head.

RUPERT DID NOT wait to find out whether she’d faint or not but drew his knife and moved swiftly across the room. He’d seen a door curtain flutter as he entered. The killer couldn’t have gone far.

Rupert couldn’t hear the lurker, but he sensed his presence, an awareness that grew stronger as he reached the curtained doorway. He pushed the curtain to one side — and promptly retreated.

A large stone figure crashed to the floor, exactly where he would have been had his instincts failed him.

He heard Mrs. Pembroke shout, “Don’t!” as he leapt through the doorway and onto the retreating figure. His target went down, but twisted free, and started up onto his feet. He kicked Rupert, who grabbed his foot. His opponent tried to shake him off. With a hard yank, Rupert unbalanced him. The man tried rolling away, kicking and thrashing. Rupert slowed him with an elbow to the head, and soon had him pinned down, a knee pressing on the small of his back.

“Look out!” Mrs. Pembroke cried.

Rupert ducked, and the missile caught him near the temple. He saw stars. He saw, too, the other villain bearing down on him, knife upraised. Rupert flung himself at him. They went down, grappling with each other while falling pottery crashed about them.

Another figure appeared from nowhere, and another voice called out in Arabic. While Rupert knocked away one assailant, he saw out of the corner of his eye Mrs. Pembroke pluck something from the floor and leap into the fray.

He couldn’t tell what it was, hadn’t time. But he heard a yelp, and one of the attackers stumbled away, turbanless, clutching his head. Holding a large object aloft, she went after him, and the fellow ran. Then something struck the back of Rupert’s head. The world went black with flashing lights. The ground opened up under his feet, and down he went.

The lights went out.

THE LIGHT CAME back slowly. Rupert smelled frankincense and ambergris and something else his brain called she. A feminine-scented softness pillowed his head. A pulse beat later he realized it was a woman’s bosom. The pleasant stroking against his cheek was a soft, smooth, lady’s hand. Hers. The exotic fragrance was hers, too. Incense. Goddess scent.

“Mr. Carsington, you must speak to me,” she said.

He’d rather not speak. He’d rather stay exactly where he was, pillowed against her soft bosom and inhaling her scent while she gently stroked his cheek.

“Mr. Carsington.” The hand left off stroking to pat his cheek, with growing impatience.

Remembering the lady had a short temper, he knew the gentle pats would shortly escalate to slaps. He opened his eyes and met her green gaze, where anxiety mingled with vexation.

“Where am I?” he said, though he knew the answer perfectly well. It was a delaying tactic. Her bosom made a perfect pillow. He did not want to leave it.

“On the floor of Anaz’s storeroom,” she said. “You seem to have fainted.”

“Fainted?” he echoed incredulously. “I was knocked in the head. I ought to know. It’s happened often enough.”

“That would explain a great deal,” she said. She started to rise. Aware she would have no compunction about letting his poor, battered head thump to the floor, he quickly sat up.

He looked about him. Broken crockery and small human figures littered the floor. Near him lay a statue, about a foot tall, of a falcon. He picked it up, testing the weight. It was made of polished black stone, and it was heavy. With this she’d attacked the villain.

“The falcon is an incarnation of the god Horus,” she said. “It was the nearest object at hand that would do any damage. Those little figures are sweet, but they’re useless as weapons.”

The painted wooden figures were like the ones on the shelf in her house. He picked one up. “What are they? Dolls? Sacred idols?”

“No one knows,” she said. “These, along with broken bits of pottery and mummy, are what one most usually finds in the tombs. Robbers made off with the treasures eons ago.”

“So many secrets,” he said. He tucked the figure into the breast pocket of his coat and stood. “It seems Vanni Anaz will keep all of his until Judgment Day.”

“Not all,” Mrs. Pembroke said. “While you were blindly charging after villains — without the least idea how many of them there were — I stopped to ascertain whether the man was still alive. He was. Before expiring he said, ‘Cherchez Ramesses.’ That, at least, is what I thought he said.” Her voice was brittle.

It was then Rupert noticed the dark stains on her cloak. She’d probably knelt to help the dying man as she’d done Rupert. She hadn’t swooned or shrieked or run away. She had burst into the storeroom, snatched up a weapon, and fought the villains alongside him.

It was a stupidly brave thing to do.

Strange things happened inside him — a sudden rush of feeling he hadn’t a name for. Lust was involved, naturally, since he was a man, and it would want far more than a few bloodstains on her clothing to make that go away.

Lust, though, was a hanger-on, an old friend as natural as breathing. The thing it hung upon was as strange and puzzling as the wooden figure tucked inside his coat.

He didn’t understand the feeling and didn’t try to. He did understand that she was upset. She had reason.

“That was rather a lot of dead men in only two days,” he said, starting toward her.

She held up a hand. The tremble was so slight he might have missed it had he not been so acutely riveted upon her.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t even think of comforting me.”

Even for him it was instinctive. He knew how to hold a woman and let her cry on his shoulder while he gritted his teeth and endured the weeping. He hated it, but he could do it. Not that he would hate holding her. It was the weeping he could do without.

“You’ve had a shock,” he said. “You can’t be in the habit of finding men with their throats cut.”

“I don’t want comforting,” she said. “I want a bath. And a cup of tea. Those two, in any order. But first…” She closed her eyes, shook her head, opened her eyes again. “We’ll have to notify the authorities.”

“Have your wits wandered?” he said. “You’ve blood on your clothes. You pointed out, recollect, how fantastically stupid the local police are. They’re bound to think we killed the rug merchant.”

“Running away will appear a good deal more incriminating,” she said.

Rupert, too, wanted a bath — and a drink of something stronger than tea. He did not want to go to the guardhouse again and watch her argue with brainless bullies. He couldn’t calm anybody down or lighten the proceedings with humor, because he didn’t know the language. And he most certainly did not want to spend another night separated from her in a jail, unable to protect her.

He didn’t want Beechey to come to release them, and to decide that perhaps, after all, it was not such a good idea to assign Rupert Carsington to look after Miles Archdale’s sister. Rupert did not want the secretary to suggest to Mr. Salt that perhaps it would be better, after all, to allow a civilian volunteer like Lord Noxley to assist the lady. Perhaps, after all, it would be wisest to banish Mr. Carsington to the desert, where, w

ith any luck, a three-hundred-ton obelisk would fall on him.

Most of all, Rupert didn’t want to reveal any of these thoughts to her.

He donned an amiably stupid expression and said, “As you wish, madam. You’re in charge of thinking.”

WITHIN AN HOUR, Mr. Beechey, the police, the district sheik, and a translator had gathered in the shop. At present they stood in the front room. This, apart from the bloodstains on the floor, appeared undamaged. The storerooms beyond, however, had been ransacked — perhaps, Rupert suggested, while one villain kept Anaz busy in front.

“Maybe they made too much noise,” he theorized, “and when Anaz went to investigate, the first villain cut his throat.”

When this was translated, the sheik frowned and moved away to examine the corpse. When he was done, the body was taken away.

Meanwhile Beechey quietly let Rupert know that the situation could become most unpleasant. Vanni Anaz was not one of hundreds of insignificant Egyptian merchants; he was an important foreigner who’d performed numerous services for Muhammad Ali and for whom the pasha had, consequently, a great affection. He was, moreover, the third person to get himself murdered in Mrs. Pembroke’s and Mr. Carsington’s vicinity in two days.

Fortunately, Sheik Salim proved to be a more thoughtful and logical character than the police. Having studied the body, he went on to examine the storerooms and question people in neighboring shops.

He came back to report that neighbors had seen men running from the rear of the shop, one runner bareheaded.

An adult non-European male not wearing a turban was as rare and strange a sight on the Cairo streets as an adult male wearing one would be on those of London.

The sheik concluded that all the evidence accorded with the explanation the “learned gentleman” — meaning Rupert! — had given.

It was Mrs. Pembroke who’d explained, to be sure of a correct translation. But when she spoke, the sheik looked at Rupert, not her, and answered Rupert, not her. She might as well have been in Northumberland.

Rupert was sure it vexed her — even he found it provoking — but whatever she felt, she hid it well. Or perhaps she was simply too weary or too shaken to care.