Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

He turned to the gatekeeper. “Behold, here is the master and his hareem. I told you they would come. The sandstorm tried to eat them, but the master is powerful, and made the jinn spit them out. But he is angry at this place, because it holds evil men who wish him ill. Let him go away with his hareem, and let none out after him, until the proper time. I beg you to do this thing, before he casts the eye upon you.”

The warning alone might not have had the desired effect, but the coins Tom held out did.

The gate opened as little as possible, and closed the instant they were out.

As they were hurrying down to the harbor, Daphne heard angry shouts.

The gate remained closed.

They reached the boat and found the crew awake. They quickly hushed the cries of joy and thanksgiving. Minutes after they were aboard, the Isis slipped out of the harbor.

THEY’D HARDLY STEPPED upon the deck when the women came and bore Daphne away to her cabin.

Rupert had only the dimmest recollection of what happened thereafter. He bathed — or someone bathed him. He ate — or someone fed him. He wasn’t at all sure. Once he’d got her safely aboard the boat, a profound weariness set in, and he went through the motions of bathing and eating like a sleepwalker. He did not remember returning to his cabin or falling asleep.

He remembered the dream, though.

He stood at the bottom of the mountain, at the cemetery, watching a hawk soar overhead. Then he saw her at the entrance to a large tomb. He called to her, but she appeared not to hear him. She entered the tomb. He hurried up after her and inside. He heard her voice coming from the depths of the tomb. He followed the sound, but it never grew any closer. He came to the sepulchral chamber and, heart pounding, went to the sarcophagus. It was open. He looked in. Empty.

He heard weeping and followed the sound, but again it was some cruel trick. No one. Nothing. Not even a mummy fragment. Only a dark, endless emptiness. Then from a distance came a mournful cry.

He woke to heat and bright sunlight streaming through the slits of the window shutters. From outside came the wailing that he recognized as Egyptian music. The sailors were singing, one of their number accompanying on the pipes and another on the earthen drum.

He sat up and looked about the cabin. His gaze met Tom’s. The boy, who’d been squatting patiently by the door, now rose and brought the water ewer, bowl, and towel.

Rupert washed.

“Will you shave, sir?” Tom asked.

Rupert felt his face and grimaced. He hoped this was overnight growth. He hoped he hadn’t scraped Daphne’s delicate skin with these deadly bristles.

Daphne, he thought. Her name was Daphne. It made him smile; he didn’t know why.

“Sir?”

“Yes, yes. Eywa.”

He shaved and thought about her body, and the way she moved under his hands, and the way she tasted. He remembered her running after him, naked from the waist up, holding her billowing trousers up with one hand.

Unself-conscious, uninhibited, passionate…

…and now, he abruptly realized, out of reach.

They were no longer cut off from the world.

They occupied a large boat, but a precious small world. No one knew what had happened in the tomb above Asyut. But everyone would know everything that happened aboard the Isis.

Oh, this was not good, not good at all.

He’d never been good at resisting temptation. He was accustomed to doing as he pleased — within bounds, of course, albeit fairly wide ones. His father’s tolerance had its limits, and Rupert was not fool enough to overstep them. He was not afraid of his father. Rupert was not afraid of snakes, either. That didn’t mean he’d thrust his hand deliberately into a viper’s nest.

Furthermore, even Rupert wouldn’t dream of blackening a lady’s reputation. This was far out of the bounds of gentlemanly behavior.

England was a world away, true. But it was not out of reach of letters. English travelers would pass on scandalous tidbits to their friends and family quite as enthusiastically here as at home. He would have to be discreet. He would have to keep away from her until…

Gad, who knew how long?

He told himself not to think about it. He had no solution, and fretting would only make him disagreeable company. He finished shaving. He dressed.

“I bring coffee now?” Tom said.

“Yes. No. I’ll have it in the front cabin. Is the mistress awake?”

“Awake, yes,” the boy said. After a pause he added, “Not good. Sick, sir. They showed the door to my face.” He put his hand in front of his face.

Only then did Rupert notice how quiet the lad had been. Normally, Tom jabbered away at a ferocious rate in a bewildering mixture of Arabic and English. Belatedly, the words sank in.

“Sick?” Rupert repeated, his heart racing.

Yes, very sick. The women chased Tom away from the door because he made too much noise with crying. But he couldn’t help it. The enraged jinn of the sandstorm had struck the mistress’s heart because she escaped from him. She was a very good mistress, Tom said, a good mother to him. She would never allow him to be beaten, even when he broke things. She took care of him when he was sick. She brought back his uncle Akmed from the dead. The boy commenced bawling.

“Stop that row,” Rupert snapped. “She isn’t dying.” All the same, he hurried from the cabin and down the cramped passage to the stern cabin. He tapped on the door.

Leena opened it a crack. “My mistress cannot come to amuse you,” she whispered. “She is too sick.”

“What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong? She was well yesterday. Why didn’t anyone wake me?”

“She does not wish to see you,” Leena said. She started to close the door.

Rupert pulled it open.

Daphne lay curled up on the divan. Her face was taut and bone-white with pain.

His chest hurt as though he’d been running for miles.

“What is it?” Rupert said softly. “A bilious fever?” Had she caught it from the baby, after all? But he knew what to do. She’d told him. A cool bath. A decoction of…of what?

“Go away,” she said. Her voice was taut as well.

He knelt beside the divan and laid his hand over her forehead. It was damp but not feverish.

“Go away,” she said.

“You have to tell me what’s wrong,” he said. “Tom’s bawling his head off. The instant the crew stop singing, they’ll hear him, and everyone will be weeping and wailing.”

He leant closer, dropping his voice still lower. “Daphne, you know how emotional these people are. They all love you because you mend their broken thumbs and sun-baked brains and bring their dying children back to life. You must not let us — them — imagine the worst. What’s wrong? Tell me how I can help you.”

“You can’t help me.” She turned a little to look at him. She winced. He winced, too, in sympathy.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m not dying. You’ve nothing to worry about. Really. Nothing.”

“But you’re not well. Even a great, dumb ox can see that. Shall I make you some hot, strong tea? Or is there something you need from your medicine box? A decoction of — of

something.”

She turned more fully toward him then and managed a wan smile. “All I need is time,” she said. “It’s my monthly courses.”

He sat back on his heels. “Oh.”

“Perfectly normal,” she said. “The pain is rather more unpleasant than usual, but it won’t kill me. There’s nothing one can do but wait for it to be over.”

Nothing to worry about. He hadn’t impregnated her. He was relieved, yes, of course he was. He needn’t think about…complications. It was a female problem, not his fault and none of his business. The women would look after her. He should go away, let her have her privacy.

He did not like to leave her alone, suffering, even if it wasn’t his fault and the only cure was time.

“For such a clever woman, you are woefully ignorant,” he said. “There’s a great deal one can do.”

He had no idea what one could do. He had no sisters, and even if he had, they would have kept this secret from him as every other woman did. Even his mistresses had used a code phrase to signal that the time was not convenient. They had certainly not expected him to nurse them. He had not realized, in fact, that women were in need of nursing at such times. He’d never seen one laid so low on such an account.

To see her laid low — she, so bold and brave and brilliant…

It was very disturbing.

“What you need is…um…a cool cloth on your head,” he improvised. “And your back rubbed. And I do not understand why you lie there suffering pain when you have a full stock of laudanum in your medicine box.”

“It is for acute pain, for emergencies,” she said. “It is ridiculous to take laudanum for a perfectly natural monthly event.”

“If you cannot get up from bed, if you lie there clutching your belly and curled up like a baby, I reckon the pain qualifies as acute,” he said. “And this isn’t a perfectly natural monthly event. Consider what happened in Asyut. You were not only dragged through a sandstorm and up a mountain, but you had to dig your way out of a caved-in robbers’ tunnel. Among other things.” He gave her one of his impudent grins, though he was not feeling at all impudent.

He felt all at sea.