Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

Her face grew hot, and she was well aware of heat further down, coiling in the pit of her belly.

She directed her gaze at the mongoose. “Marigold has grown lively while I was ill,” she said composedly. “And friendlier.” Had he won over the mongoose, too? Was there anyone or anything able to resist him? “What’s happened to her precious shirt?”

“She hides it,” Mr. Carsington said. “Today it’s under the divan. You’ll see her check at intervals, to make sure it’s still there. She’s vastly entertaining, now her paw has healed. I hadn’t realized what busy, curious creatures they are. She’s constantly running in and out, to and fro, investigating.”

She left Daphne to run about the divan. The mongoose ran up Mr. Carsington as though he were a tree, sat on his shoulder for a moment, sniffing his neck, then ran down again and out of the cabin.

The baby found this highly amusing. She let out squeals of laughter. She stood up, fell down, and squealed some more.

Nafisah came in, scooped her up, and bore her away, to allow the mistress to enjoy her breakfast in peace.

Daphne settled onto the divan at a decorous distance from Mr. Carsington.

Leena entered then, bearing a large tray heaped with breakfast pastries and fruits. “Well, why do you stand there like a stone?” she cried to Tom. “Where is the coffee for your mistress?”

“I forget because my heart is so full,” he said. “We are all well now, and safe. This boat is filled with happiness. The baby who was dying laughs and claps her hands. My master who was swallowed by the sandstorm came back to us. He brought back our mistress and made her well again when death tried to take her. He will find our master — our other master — and take him from the foreign devils who carried him into the desert. There are twelve of them, but Yusef and I will fight by his side, and we will fight like a hundred demons and devils.”

“What’s he on about now?” Mr. Carsington asked Daphne. She quickly translated. Tom went on with his rant.

“Hold on,” said Mr. Carsington. He held up his hand. “Wait. Stop.”

The boy paused.

“Foreign devils?” Mr. Carsington said. “Twelve of them? How do you know this?”

“But everyone knows,” Leena said. “We heard it in the marketplace. The caravans come to Asyut. They see these men, one or two Egyptians, but most are foreigners — Syrian, Greek, Armenian, Turkish. They keep close watch over a tall, fair man who speaks very strange Arabic and whose camel quarrels with him. Did no one tell you?”

She turned a reproachful look upon Tom. “Did you not tell him? Of the talk in Asyut?”

“Oh, yes,” said Tom. “I told you, sir, when you came on the boat. Everyone told you. Everyone heard of it in the suq.”

“Did you tell him in English?” Daphne said.

The boy considered. Then he lifted his shoulders and hands. “In your tongue, in our tongue, I cannot say. My joy to see you was so great. Tears filled my eyes. So full were our hearts, who can say what words we spoke?”

“Leena, sit,” Mr. Carsington ordered. “Tom, sit. Now, one at a time, slowly, tell us everything you heard in Asyut.”

WITH LEENA AND Tom interrupting each other, and the usual excess verbiage, the report went on for some time, and to Rupert seemed to grow increasingly melodramatic. Daphne’s translation reduced the endless saga to a few bald facts.

Archdale had been seen, alive, only a few days ago, en route to Dendera. If this was true, the Isis was not so many days behind him as they’d feared. Sandstorms had slowed the kidnappers’ progress through the desert. The Isis was not far behind Noxious, either. His dahabeeya had stopped at Asyut earlier in the week.

At this point, the tale took the dramatic turn.

The Memnon was well known in Asyut, the servants reported. As soon as it was spotted, a number of people fled the town and went into hiding, not emerging until the boat was long gone.

“They call this man the Golden Devil,” Tom said, “because his hair is the color of gold. He is English, like you. But he is a devil with an army of men like demons. The people of Upper Egypt have less fear of Muhammad Ali and his soldiers.”

The Golden Devil had become a legend, apparently. When children misbehaved, their mothers told them the Golden Devil would come after them.

Tom went on for some time about the Golden Devil. Daphne provided her usual, concise English version.

She offered it calmly enough.

After Tom left to fetch the coffee and Leena to bring the maps Rupert asked for, he said, “These revelations about Noxious don’t seem to have shocked you.”

Her gaze was distant, abstracted. “After what I have discovered about my late husband, I doubt anything more I learn about any man could shock me. This voyage — or mission — or whatever one calls it — has been highly educational. No wonder Miles said I was naïve and unworldly.”

“He’s your brother,” Rupert said. “Brothers can take the oddest views of their siblings. Perhaps because I’m not your brother, I see you altogether differently. From the first you struck me as levelheaded and clear-eyed.”

“You’ve only known me in unusual circumstances,” she said.

“Maybe unusual circumstances show us what we’re truly made of,” he said. “Maybe your life before didn’t give you room enough to be yourself.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t sorted myself out yet. Lord Noxley is easier. His activities at least fit a pattern. We knew he was at war with Duval, competing for antiquities. As to his lordship’s army of demons and devils, Belzoni said much the same of his rivals’ agents. He said they were lawless men. European ‘renegadoes, desperadoes, and exiles,’ he called them.”

“It’s wonderful,” Rupert said.

Her green gaze shot to him.

“Your mind,” he said. “The way you collect evidence, sort it out, and come to the lo

gical conclusion. It’s amazing, considering how much you’ve got in there.”

She smiled faintly. “It’s the one thing I can do.”

“It isn’t all you can do,” Rupert said.

The faint thread of pink over her cheekbones spread and deepened into rose.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” he said. “That is, it wasn’t all I meant, although you’re brilliant at lovemaking as well, and I do wish —”

Leena bustled in with the maps. She was no sooner gone than Tom entered with the coffee.

Rupert waited until the boy had departed and Daphne had poured the coffee.

He said, “I know why you’ve donned your weeds again. You didn’t need to warn me off. I know we’re obliged to observe the proprieties. That’s why I wish we were elsewhere.”

“It doesn’t matter where we are,” she said. “This isn’t the Arabian Nights. It was exciting, once — twice — to be carried away —”

“Was that all?” he said, and something stabbed inside, making him hot and cold at the same time. “You were carried away?”

“What do you want me to say?”

He didn’t have an answer.

The silence lengthened while he looked for words and couldn’t find any, found only feelings for which he had no names, either.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “But you must say something more than that. You’re the genius, not I.”

“The matter doesn’t require cleverness,” she said. “What we experienced was lust, pure and simple — well, not pure —”

“It isn’t simple for me,” he cut in, stabbed again. “This must be Egyptian lust, because it isn’t at all what I’m used to. I have…feelings.”

DAPHNE LONGED TO ask, naturally, what kind of feelings they were. She wanted to probe, as she would a subtlety of grammar or vocabulary.

She wanted, in short, to grasp at any straw.

But that was emotion, not reason.

Reason reminded her that in normal circumstances she was bookish and reclusive while he was a man who hungered for excitement. He was dashing; she was boring. They came from different worlds. The world of fashionable aristocratic society was far more alien to her than Egypt was.