Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

She’d taken refuge in the scenes adorning the tomb walls. She’d wondered who the ladies were and what their flowers signified, so there wouldn’t be room in her head for thinking about him and how attached she’d become to him — though she’d known from the very beginning, perhaps from the moment she’d first heard his voice, that he was made to break women’s hearts.

She’d worked so hard to keep from being hurt again.

Now look what she’d done.

He stroked her head, his long fingers sliding down to her neck. “No weeping,” he rumbled.

Her head came up, and she would have pulled away, but he held her there, his hand gentle but firm against the base of her neck.

“I was not weeping,” she said indignantly. “I am not a weepy sort of woman. I am not emotional. I am not…” To her dismay, a tear spilled from her eye.

“I knew it,” he said.

“I am not weeping over you,” she said. “Or over what happened…just now.” She lifted her chin. “Apparently, it was inevitable, the result of prolonged proximity and excessive emotional upheaval. I have heard of such things, desperate acts after a close brush with death.”

“Ah,” he said. “That was a desperate act?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Really.”

“Yes.” She brushed the tear away. “It means nothing. It is a kind of — of instinct, perhaps. A primitive reaction. Quite irrational.”

He wrapped his arms about her and crushed her against him. “Don’t be daft,” he said. “It was nothing of the kind.”

It took her a moment to collect her wits. They wanted to wander: to the hard chest against which her breasts were squashed, and to the agreeable sensations accompanying being squashed in that way, and to the humid awareness of the contact further down.

Oh, his body was magnificent. Godlike. She oughtn’t think such impious thoughts, but they flooded in, along with the recollections. He might as well be a god, because he’d taken her to paradise and back half a dozen times. Those hands, those wicked, clever hands…

And then, “It wasn’t?” she said. She drew her head back to look at him. Shadows flickered over his handsome face, impossible, as always, to read. But laughter seemed to gleam in the black eyes.

“You’ve been in lust with me since the moment we met,” he said.

“That is not at all —”

“And finally, after behaving in the most deranged manner for this last age, you did the logical, rational thing.” He slid his hand down her back and over her bottom.

Her completely bare bottom.

Daphne became aware, then, of her trousers, in a heap at her ankles. One trouser leg was still tied under her knee. She ought to be mortified. She wasn’t in the least. On the contrary, she felt an almost overpowering urge to giggle.

“What happened was, you finally came to your senses,” he said. “At long last, after deluding yourself with every sort of puritanical poppycock, you admitted the truth: I’m irresistibly attractive.”

She was about to object to this conceited pronouncement when he clapped his hand over her mouth.

“Mmmph,” she said.

“Hush. I hear something.”

Chapter 15

WHAT THEY HEARD WAS THE DONKEY. SHE sounded agitated, though it was hard for Rupert to be sure. Sound carried oddly in here. Small wonder that Mrs. Pembroke, with her mind in ancient Egypt, hadn’t heard him calling earlier.

“Something’s frightened Hermione,” he said. He did not want to let go of the woman in his arms, so soft and yielding. But he could not risk the donkey breaking loose and bolting. She’d provide transport if either of them became injured or sick. She’d provide food if the situation grew desperate.

Gently he set Mrs. Pembroke aside. “I’d better see what the trouble is.” He bent and collected his trousers, pulled them up, and started out, tying the waist string as he went.

“Wait, wait,” she said.

He turned. She was stumbling after him, naked from the waist up, tugging up her trousers with one hand, holding the candle in the other. “Take the candle. I’ve another.”

By Zeus but she was a magnificent specimen of womanhood, he thought regretfully as he hurried out to the hysterical Hermione.

DAPHNE WAS NOT far behind him. She had her kamees on by the time she reached the first chamber, where Hermione was making a fearful row.

“I thought it was a snake,” Mr. Carsington called over the braying. “But there’s nothing moving that I can make out. No snakes, scorpions, or other alarming beasties.”

Daphne crouched down and moved her candle slowly to examine the floor of the chamber. “I see nothing alive, either,” she said. “Bits of rock and plaster. Rusks or dried reeds or dried animal dung or…oh.”

Mr. Carsington was crooning to the donkey. “Come now, my dear, it’s all right. We’re here now. You were afraid of the dark, I daresay, poor girl. We abandoned you, and you started imagining there were monsters.”

“I think it’s this,” Daphne said. She picked up a long, pear-shaped object, slightly mangled. It was composed of a familiar brown substance.

Hermione raised loud objections and tried to back out of the tomb, dragging Mr. Carsington with her. While he struggled with the donkey, Daphne retreated to the opposite end of the chamber.

Hermione quieted somewhat, though she was still restless, still complaining.

“What the devil is it?” Mr. Carsington demanded.

“I’m not sure,” Daphne said. She dripped wax onto the stony floor and set her candle onto it. Then she squatted Egyptian style, to study the object in the light. “An animal or bird of some kind. They mummified cats, you know. And hereabouts, wolves and jackals.”

“Mummy,” he said. His voice was cold, distant. “I should have guessed. Are you sure it isn’t human?”

“Reasonably so,” she said. “It’s still in the wrappings, but it’s too small and the wrong shape for a human, even an infant. I collect Hermione stepped on it. Or sniffed it, looking for food. She is remarkably squeamish, is she not? You’d think an Egyptian donkey would be accustomed —”

“Perhaps you could put it somewhere,” Mr. Carsington said in the same cold voice. “At a distance. Where she can’t smell it.”

Daphne’s mind flashed a recollection: Mr. Carsington gazing at the detritus on the ground near the Pyramid of Steps at Saqqara…the grim expression…the rapid ascent of the sand slope.

“Are you squeamish, too?” she said.

“Certainly not,” he said.

“Amazing,” she said. “I thought you were utterly fearless.”

“I am not afraid of a lump of petrified matter,” he said stiffly.

“Come here,” she said.

“I’m trying to keep Hermione calm,” he said.

“She’s calm,” Daphne said. “It’s far enough away not to worry her. Don’t you want to look? It’s very interesting. I’ve never seen an animal mummy before, at least not in one piece…more or less. It’s only a bit dented.”

“Hermione is not as calm as she appears,” he said. “We’d better not give her an excuse to bolt. If she runs away —”

“You’re afraid,” Daphne said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

“Then come here,” she said.

He petted the donkey.

“Come here,” Daphne said.

He muttered something to Hermione about “silly females.”

“Mr. Carsington,” Daphne said, “come here.”

He stroked the donkey’s head and began to whistle softly.

“Rupert,” Daphne said.

At last he turned to look at her.

“Ta’ala heneh,” she said.

TYPICAL, RUPERT THOUGHT. Make love to a woman, and she thinks she owns you.

Well, maybe she did.

Rupert, she said, unprompted. She called him by his Christian name, and they were not even making love. Yet to his ears it sounded like love