Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

He was inching his way to the door when the vessel shuddered. He fell against the door, whacking his head. He heard wood cracking and groaning: they’d run aground.

The human noise outside swiftly abated. A few low voices, none familiar, all speaking Arabic. Splashing. Then no more voices. He waited a bit longer to be sure. He thought he heard footsteps, but that might be the boat breaking apart.

He headed outside anyway, and found the tilting deck nearly deserted. He made out two dark figures in a dinghy tied to the boat. Only those. No other moving figures.

The small landing boat offered his one chance of getting ashore alive. He couldn’t swim; the chains would drag him down. He’d be a fool to wait for rescue. The people hereabouts weren’t known for their charitable impulses. They were probably friends of his kidnappers. Whoever had attacked the boat must be a rival gang of brigands. Freebooters would soon come to steal what they could. Or perhaps had already come. Those two fellows in the dinghy, for instance.

If he didn’t get their boat from them, he was a dead man.

Feet shackled, one small knife his only weapon — the odds for a direct assault didn’t look good.

He would have to use his head.

He thought quickly.

Then he dragged his hands through his filthy hair, making it stand on end.

He let out a groan. The figures froze.

He began walking slowly toward them, loudly clanking his chains and reciting the “Tomorrow” speech from Macbeth in the wailing voice of a vengeful ghost.

Screaming, they dove over the side.

THE ISIS DIDN’T get far on Monday, because the wind turned against them. The reis — the captain — had the crew tow the vessel. This only stopped her traveling backward with the current. Forward, it seemed, was out of the question for the time being.

Despite Tom’s and Leena’s arguing about vocabulary, Rupert did manage to communicate with Reis Rashad, who proved helpful on several counts. Leaving Leena and Tom to quarrel about which winds were the most deadly, Rupert turned his mind to Mrs. Pembroke. She was not going to be happy about the delay.

According to Leena, the lady was awake. She hadn’t joined him in the salon for breakfast, though, and he was impatient to see her.

He and Tom had retired many hours later than the women last night. Rupert had stayed on deck long after the crew was asleep, ostensibly to make sure the boat was properly guarded. Actually, he’d needed to cool off, though there was little the lower evening temperatures could do for the kind of heat he endured.

It was the wanting - to - get - her - naked kind of heat, the wanting - to - get - skin - close kind of heat, the fire - low - in - the - belly kind of heat.

And it plagued him partly because he’d fallen on top of her — well, maybe mostly because of that: the suppleness of the soft body under his, the luscious peach of a mouth with its tantalizing bit of pout, and the green eyes, ocean deep, and the way they’d looked at him.

It was not a “get off” look. It was the kind of look Helen of Troy must have given Paris, the kind Cleopatra must have given Mark Antony. Wars broke out because of looks like that.

But that wasn’t all of it. When Sheik Salim admired her command of Arabic and marveled at her large brain, Rupert wanted to get her naked. When she talked about her papyrus and its beautiful little pictures and its columns of perfectly drawn signs, he wanted to get her naked. When he thought about those books in a dozen languages in her cupboard, he wanted to get her naked.

He didn’t know and didn’t really care why. All he understood was that she stirred him up amazingly.

So much that she kept him awake half the night.

He would have to rethink his plans for a slow siege, he decided as he made his way to the stern cabin.

He found her on her knees, sorting through the heaps of books she’d brought. She barely glanced up when he tapped on the doorframe.

“Is something wrong with the boat?” she said. “We’ve stopped, haven’t we?”

“Something’s wrong with the weather,” he said. “A southern wind. If I understood correctly, it’s called the khamsin.”

All the color drained from her face. Her shoulders sagged, and she sank back onto her heels. “Oh, no.”

“It can’t be helped,” he said. “The wind is dead set against us.”

“But the villains are days ahead of us — nearly a week.”

“Reis Rashad says contrary winds are normal at this time of year,” Rupert said. “That means other boats on the Nile are stymied, too, on occasion. Which means your brother might be a week ahead but not many miles distant.”

The color came back, enhanced with a faint wash of pink at the top of her cheekbones. “Oh, yes, why did I not consider that?” She shook her head. “I am not usually so emotional. Usually, my thinking is clear and rigorous. I do not allow myself to succumb to moods. Nor am I weepy.” She rubbed at the outer corner of her eye. “In fact, I am a predictable, boring person. This —” She waved impatiently at her extraordinary face. “This isn’t me.”

“I know what the trouble is,” he said. He eased down onto the divan, something less than an arm’s length away. “The trouble is, you haven’t enough brothers. The more you have, the easier it is to develop a certain detachment.”

“Are your brothers in the habit of getting themselves kidnapped by madmen?” she said. “Is that the sort of thing one gets used to?”

“No, I think it’s the variety of incidents,” Rupert said. “With five of us, there’s always been one crisis or another. Alistair, for instance, was in the habit of getting himself into expensive catastrophes with women. So when he went off to Derbyshire three years ago, we all more or less expected an expensive catastrophe, and went on about our business.” He frowned. “Actually, it did turn out more calamitous than usual.”

“Is this the one who was so badly injured at Waterloo?” she said. “Good grief, was that not enough? What befell him in Derbyshire?”

“He got himself engaged,” Rupert said grimly. “To be married.”

“Oh, dear. The woman was unsuitable, I take it.”

“No, he became engaged,” Rupert repeated more slowly and distinctly. “To be married.”

She folded her arms and considered him. “I see,” she said. “Marriage is the great catastrophe.”

“Well, naturally you don’t see it that way,” he said. “He was a saint, I collect.”

She looked baffled. “Your brother?”

Rupert gestured at the head-to-toe mourning she wore. “All that black. He must have been remarkable, the — um — departed.”

“Oh, you mean Virgil.” Her voice was wintry. “He was a scholar. A respected theologian.”

She became busy again, shoving back into the cupboard any which way the books he’d so carefully arranged.

“A shame he couldn’t have lived to make this journey with you,” Rupert said. “Egypt seems to be all the rage with scholars.”

“Not with Virgil,” she said several degrees more frostily.

So much for Virgil Pembroke. If the mourning had anything to do with the deceased, Rupert would eat his boots. The forbidding black was camouflage, just as he’d supposed.

“He would have taken me to the Holy Land,” she said.

“I’m sure that’s a worthy —”

“I know I ought to want to make the pilgrimage, but I don’t care,” she said. “If I’m to be hot and uncomfortable, if I’m to eat sand with every meal and look for snakes and scorpions before I put on my boots, there must be a compelling interest.” She threw him a defiant glance and slammed the cupboard closed.

“Well, then, have you a compelling interest in some ruins?” Rupert said.

“Of course I do,” she said irritably. “Egyptian ruins. That is why I am here, not in the Holy Land.”

“Reis Rashad says we’re very near Memphis,” he said. “We can hire donkeys and ride out to the ruins. There’s a broken bit of temple, and a ph

araoh, I’m told. Not far from that is a great lot of pyramids. Maybe you can find a piece of stone with unreadable writing on it.”

DAPHNE WASN’T SURE what she expected to find in Memphis. Recent events had banished all thoughts of exploring. To the extent she had thought about it, she’d vaguely pictured a desert plateau like Giza, containing monuments.