Mr. Impossible (The Dressmakers 2)

She retreated a pace.

“I came looking for you,” she said, her voice strained, as though she’d labored up a pyramid to find him. “I thought you were…lost.”

“Oh, I never get lost,” he said. “Not for long, at any rate. I only went looking for coffee. Turkish coffee is a wondrous beverage, and I thought we all needed a stimulant.”

“Coffee,” she repeated stupidly.

“Yes. And see what I found.” He moved aside. Behind him the twelve-year-old Udail carried the coffee service. “Lucky thing I was in front, eh, Tom, else she might have bowled you over.”

“His name is Udail,” Daphne said.

“Tom,” said the boy, gazing worshipfully up at Mr. Carsington. “Esmi Tom.”

My name is Tom.

In mere minutes, the man had frightened one servant into submission and cajoled another into idolatry.

And he was tying her mind in knots.

Daphne did not believe in genii. At that moment, however, she had no doubt that her trip to the Citadel dungeon had released a dangerous force.

HER MOUTH, RUPERT noticed, was not only soft and full but mobile: forbiddingly grim at one moment and adorably bewildered in the next. He watched it change from bewildered to grim in the instant it took her to recover from their lovely collision.

He’d seen it coming. He’d also seen no reason to prevent it. Quite the contrary.

Her grim look did not trouble him in the least; neither did her telling him he was not to rechristen her servants.

“How would you like it,” she demanded, “if I were to rename you Omar or Muhammad?”

“A pet name, do you mean?” he said. “I shouldn’t object.”

After a visible struggle to rein in her temper she said, “What you do or do not object to is not the point. He is an Egyptian boy, not English.”

“Tom doesn’t mind,” Rupert said. “In any event, I couldn’t tell which part of the earful he gave me was his name.”

“He was probably trying to tell you what happened,” she said. “I have no idea how you occupied yourself on the voyage to Egypt or during your stay in Alexandria. It is clear, however, that you employed not a minute of the time learning the language.”

She turned sharply away and started back into the room she’d just exited: Cairo’s version of a salon or drawing room, with the usual unpronounceable name.

“I thought you were to do all the brain work, and I was in charge of the physical side,” he said. “Surely you weren’t expecting me to interrogate the lad? I had the devil’s own time getting him to understand I wanted coffee.”

They entered the large room. Wadid had left. Leena was there, though. After Tom set down the coffee service — on top of Mrs. Pembroke’s precious papers — Leena grabbed the boy by the shoulders, shook him, then hugged him, talking great guns all the while.

Once Tom had recovered from near suffocation against Leena’s ample bosom, he launched into a very long recital.

Several tiny cups of coffee later, Mrs. Pembroke gave Rupert the shorter English version. Apparently, persons calling themselves police had come, saying they must search the house. When Akmed heard their voices, he ran away.

When the lady came to this point of her narration, Tom attracted Rupert’s attention. Saying, “Akmed” and something else, the boy did a comical imitation of a man limping.

A green glare from Mrs. Pembroke brought the performance to a halt.

Because Akmed ran away, the widow continued, all the other servants did, too. Tom, who was cautiously sneaking back into the house when Rupert entered the cooking area, had ducked into the nearest hiding place.

Mrs. Pembroke returned her cup to the tray. “Since it’s obvious we’ll learn nothing more from the other servants, I see no reason to await their return,” she said. “The only logical course of action is to retrace my brother’s footsteps.”

“We ought to check the guardhouses first,” Rupert said, recalling Beechey’s advice.

“Miles is not in a guardhouse.” She rose abruptly from the divan, all impatience and rustling silk. “The men who came here were no more police than I am. And my brother is not in a brothel or an opium den, so you needn’t get your hopes up about visiting any of those establishments. We shall talk to those with whom Miles most recently associated. We shall start with his friend Lord Noxley.”

“Garnet,” Rupert said as she picked up her hat and veil.

She turned and looked at him, her expression wary. “I beg your pardon?”

“Garnet. If someone asked me what color your hair was, I’d say, ‘Garnet.’ ”

She clamped the hat onto her head. “Did you hear a single word I said?”

“My mind wandered,” he said. “You’re on the tallish side for a woman, I think?” Something over five and a half feet, he estimated.

“I do not see the relevance of my height or hair color,” she said.

“That’s because you’re not a man,” he said.

Very much not. The dress seemed designed to play down her assets rather than enhance them. She couldn’t disguise her walk, though. She walked like a queen or a goddess, chin high, back straight. But the arrogant sway of her hips bespoke a Cleopatra kind of queen, an Aphrodite kind of goddess. The walk was an invitation. The attire was a Keep Off sign. The combination was fascinating.

“To a man, you see,” he continued, “these facts are immensely important.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” she said. “A woman’s looks are all-important. Her mental capabilities don’t signify in the least.”

“That would depend,” he said, “on what she was thinking.”

DAPHNE WAS THINKING it was very hard to think with Mr. Carsington in the vicinity.

She was good at solving puzzles, usually. But the only idea she had about recent events was a ridiculous one, and no more ideas were forthcoming.

She was not easily distracted. One must possess tremendous powers of concentration, not to mention an obstinate and tenacious character, to contend with ancient Egyptian writing.

She might have easily ignored an earthquake or a barrage of artillery fire.

She could not ignore him.

She was aware of his abstracted expression while he calculated her height and decided what color her hair was.

Now, as she sent Udail out to order the donkeys, she was aware of Mr. Carsington’s attention drifting away from her person to the table containing her materials.

She recalled her agitated reaction when she first spied the disorder. What had she said? Had she given herself away? But no, she couldn’t have. The ruse was a hab

it by now, practically instinctive. It was Miles who had the more difficult task, pretending to be the brilliant scholar. Luckily, very few people in the world understood enough about decipherment to suspect him — and he took care not to meet those people face-to-face.

Mr. Carsington was frowning down at the copy of the Rosetta Stone. “That papyrus,” he said. “I collect it was something out of the ordinary.”

She, too, stared at the lithograph, wondering what he saw there. A fragment of hieroglyphic text. Below that another nearly complete section written in the script some scholars called demotic. Then the battered Greek text with its all-important final lines, announcing that all three texts were identical in content.

“Like the Rosetta Stone?” she said. “I wish it had contained some hints in Greek. But it was all in hieroglyphs….” She looked up at him. “Are you asking whether it was valuable?”

He nodded.

“I daresay it was,” she said slowly, the truth dawning as she spoke it.

She hadn’t thought of the papyrus in that way. She knew it had cost more than most, but then, it was a superior specimen. But that’s all it was to her. Perhaps Miles was right, to an extent: She was rather unworldly. It hadn’t occurred to her to lock it up, any more than it would occur to her to lock up a book.

“I suppose one could call it valuable,” she said. “It was expensive.” She related the merchant’s tale of the mysterious pharaoh and his presumably untouched tomb.

“I told Miles he encouraged such tall tales and probably set a bad precedent by paying so much,” she went on. “Yet it was remarkable. Written entirely in beautifully drawn hieroglyphs. Exquisite illustrations. The others I’ve seen are not works of art, and most were written in the script form. None was in such good condition. It isn’t hard to understand why Miles couldn’t resist it.”

Mr. Carsington’s dark gaze shifted from her study materials to her face. He wore a perplexed expression. “And it didn’t occur to you why robbers might want it?” he said. “A guide to buried treasure?”

“No, it didn’t,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine anyone could be so foolish as to believe that story.”