MR. IMPOSSIBLE
LORETTA CHASE
BERKLEY SENSATION, NEW YORK
“THE GODDESS OF REGENCY HISTORICALS HAS RETURNED!”*
Simply wonderful reviews for
Miss Wonderful
“Miss Wonderful is Loretta Chase at her magical best as she spins a deliciously witty tale of an overworked woman, an underchallenged man, and a romance that shimmers with passion, humor, and tenderness.”
— *Mary Jo Putney
“Wonderfully funny, romantic, and sexy — a classic Loretta Chase tale with a wonderful hero.”
— Patricia Rice
“Chase takes a delightfully romantic story, filled with wit and unforgettable characters, and sets it against a rich historical backdrop with some marvelously heated love scenes for a joyous reading experience. Miss Wonderful is a delicious pleasure; we can welcome Chase back with a rousing cheer and heartfelt thanks for a superior read.”
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“A splendidly written tale…Chase’s beguiling blend of deliciously complex characters, potent sexual chemistry, and sparkling wit give this superb romance a richness and depth readers will treasure.”
— Booklist (starred review)
“Wickedly witty, simply wonderful! Loretta Chase delivers a book that delights and charms, tempts and tantalizes. Don’t miss it!”
— Stephanie Laurens
“A wonderful Regency romance…a terrific historical tale.”
— Midwest Book Review
“A remarkably witty tale that also contains an unexpected wealth of tenderness and emotion…a highly entertaining tale that tickles the funnybone and touches the heart; don’t miss it!”
— Romance Reviews Today
“This tale is delightful from beginning to end.”
— Affaire de Coeur
“Miss Wonderful sparkles with humor and witty dialogue…truly enjoyable.”
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“Miss Wonderful is witty, charming, and deeply romantic…extremely engaging. [Chase] is truly one of the wittiest I’ve ever had the pleasure to read.”
— All About Romance
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
MR. IMPOSSIBLE
A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation edition / March 2005
Copyright © 2005 by Loretta Chekani.
Cover art by Dan O’Leary.
Cover design by George Long.
Interior text design by Stacy Irwin.
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ISBN: 1-4295-2732-3
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Contents
A Note on Spelling
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Postscript
A Note on Spelling
An 1898 edition of Baedeker’s guide to Egypt laments the difficulties of rendering Arabic into English spelling. “It is greatly to be wished that the Arabs would adopt a simpler alphabet,” says the author, “with a regular use of the vowel-signs, and that they would agree to write the ordinary spoken language.” In the ordinary spoken language, furthermore, he complains, not everyone pronounces vowels the same way. The consonants are consistent, but some have no equivalent English sound.
More than a century later, we still encounter a mad variety of ways for spelling Arabic and Egyptian words using the English alphabet. I ended up choosing one approach for place names (familiar modern spellings) and one for words and phrases (easiest to read). A number of these words and phrases, like customs — and many monuments — have changed or disappeared since the early 1800s.
Chapter 1
Outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, 2 April 1821
THANKS TO HIS MOTHER, RUPERT CARSINGTON had hair and eyes as dark as any Egyptian’s. This did not mean he blended in with the crowd on the bridge. In the first place, he was easily the tallest man there. In the second, both his manner and attire marked him as an Englishman. The Egyptians and Turks, who judged men by the quality of their dress, noticed, too, that he was not a man of low birth.
The locals had the advantage of the Earl of Hargate’s fourth son.
Having arrived in Egypt only six weeks ago, Rupert was not yet able to distinguish among the numerous tribes and nationalities. Certainly he couldn’t size up social status at a glance.
He could, however, recognize an unequal match when he saw one.
The soldier was large — a few inches shy of Rupert’s six-plus feet — and armed like a man-of-war. Three knives, a pair of swords, a pair of pistols, and ammunition protruded or hung from his wide belt. Oh, yes, he brandished a heavy staff, too — in an unfriendly way at the moment, at a bruised, limping, filthy fellow in front of him.
The poor devil’s crime, as far as Rupert could see, was being too slow. The soldier roared some foreign threat or curse. Stumbling away, the terrified peasant fell. The soldier swung his staff at the man’s legs. The wretch rolled to one side, and the staff struck the bridge, inches away. Enraged, the soldier raised the weapon and aimed for the unfortunate’s head.
Rupert broke through the gathering crowd, shoved the soldier, and yanked the staff from his hand. The s
oldier reached for a knife, and Rupert swung, knocking the blade to the ground. Before his adversary could draw another weapon from his arsenal, Rupert swung the staff at him. The man dodged, but the edge of the weapon caught him in the hip, and over he went. He reached for his pistol as he fell, and Rupert again swung the staff. His opponent howled in pain, dropping the pistol.
“Go!” Rupert told the dirty cripple, who must have understood the accompanying gesture if not the English word, because he scrambled to his feet and limped away. The crowd parted to let him through.
Rupert started after him a moment too late. Soldiers were forcing their way through the growing mob. In an instant, they’d surrounded him.
NEWS OF THE altercation, greatly embroidered, traveled swiftly from the bridge to el-Esbekiya. This quarter of Cairo, about half a mile away, was where European visitors usually lodged.
During the inundation, in late summer, the overflowing Nile turned the square of the Esbekiya into a lake where boats plied to and fro. The river being low at present, the area was merely a stretch of ground enclosed with buildings.
In one of the larger houses, a mildly anxious Daphne Pembroke awaited her brother Miles. The day was fading. If he did not arrive soon, he would not get in, because the gates were locked after dark. They were also kept locked during times of plague or insurrection, both regular occurrences in Cairo.
Daphne was only half-listening for her brother’s arrival, though. She gave the better part of her attention to the documents in front of her.
Among them was a lithographic copy of the Rosetta Stone, a recently acquired papyrus, and a pen-and-ink copy of the latter. She was nearly nine and twenty years old, and had been trying to solve the mystery of Egyptian writing for the last ten years.
The first time she’d seen Egyptian hieroglyphs, Daphne had fallen madly, desperately, and hopelessly in love with them. All her youthful studies had aimed at unlocking their secretive little hearts. She had become infatuated with and wed a man nearly thrice her age because he was (a) poetically handsome, (b) a language scholar, and (c) the owner of a collection of books and documents for which she lusted.
At the time, she’d believed they were ideally suited.
At the time, she’d been nineteen years old, her vision obscured by the stars in her eyes.
She soon learnt, among other painful lessons, that her brilliant scholar husband, exactly like stupider men, believed that intellectual endeavors put too great a strain on the inferior female brain.
Claiming to have her best interests at heart, Virgil Pembroke forbade her studying Egyptian writing. He said that even male scholars familiar with Arabic, Coptic, Greek, Persian, and Hebrew had no hope of deciphering it in her lifetime. This he deemed no great loss: Egyptian civilization being primitive — greatly inferior to that of classical Greece — decipherment would contribute little to the store of human knowledge.
Daphne was a clergyman’s daughter. She’d made a sacred vow to love, honor, and obey her husband, and she did try. But when it became clear that she must pursue her studies or go mad with boredom and frustration, she chose to risk perdition and disobey her husband. Thereafter, she continued her work in secret.
Virgil had died five years ago. Sadly, prejudice against women scholars did not die with him. This was why, even now, only her indulgent brother and a select group of friends knew the secret. Everyone else believed her brother Miles was the linguistic genius of the family.
Had he been, he might have known better than to pay two thousand pounds for the papyrus she was studying. However, a merchant named Vanni Anaz had claimed it described the final resting place of a young pharaoh, name unknown — as was the case at present for most Egyptian royalty. The story was clearly the product of the romantic Eastern imagination. No educated person could possibly believe it. Nonetheless, it had apparently captivated Miles, much to her surprise.
He had even gone to Giza again to study the interior of the second pyramid, because, he said, it would help him understand the thinking of ancient tomb builders and aid in locating the young king’s tomb and its treasures.
Though Daphne was certain the pyramids could tell him nothing, she held her tongue. He delighted in exploring Egypt’s monuments. Why spoil his fun? She merely made sure he took sufficient supplies for the overnight stay he planned.
She declined to accompany him. She’d gone with him once to Giza and explored the two pyramids it was possible to enter. Neither contained any hieroglyphic writing, although various visitors had scratched their profound thoughts upon the stones, e.g., “Suverinus loves Claudia.” Equally important, she was not eager for another squeeze through the pyramids’ long, small, hot, smelly passageways.
At the moment, however, the pyramids were far from Daphne’s thoughts. She was deciding that Dr. Young had incorrectly interpreted the hook and the three tails signs when her maidservant Leena burst through the door.
“A bloodbath!” Leena cried. “Stupid, stupid English hothead! Now the streets will run with blood!”
She tore off the head and face veils she despised but must wear in public, revealing the dark hair and hazel eyes of an older woman of mixed Mediterranean origins. Daphne had hired her in Malta, after her English maid proved unequal to the rigors of foreign travel.
Leena not only spoke English, Greek, Turkish, and Arabic, but could read and write a little in these languages — unheard-of accomplishments for a woman in this part of the world. She was, on the other hand, deeply superstitious and fatalistic, with a tendency to discern the dark cloud attached to every silver lining.
Accustomed to Leena’s histrionics, Daphne merely raised her eyebrows and said, “What Englishman? What has happened?”
“A crazy Englishman has been fighting with one of the pasha’s men and broke the pig’s head. They say it took a hundred soldiers to capture him. The Turks will cut off the Englishman’s head and put it on a pike, but that will not be enough. The soldiers will make war on all the Franks, especially the English.”
Unlike most of Leena’s Impending Doom announcements, this sounded all too plausible.
Egypt’s Ottoman rulers would have been right at home in the Dark Ages. Beatings, torture, and beheading were their methods of maintaining order. Egyptian and Turk alike had no great regard for “Franks,” the despised Europeans. The military — comprising a homicidal assortment of Egyptians, Turks, and Albanian mercenaries — took a hostile view of everybody, including at times their leader Muhammad Ali, Pasha of Egypt. They made Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes look like giggling schoolgirls.
And Daphne was alone, but for her servants, all of whom were, most intelligently, terrified of the soldiery.
She was aware of alarm stirring within, of a chill and a welter of thoughts tumbling one over another. Outwardly she remained calm. Her marriage had taught her how to hide her true feelings.
“This is difficult to believe,” she said. “Who would be so foolish as to fight one of the pasha’s men?”
“They say the man is new to Cairo,” Leena said. “Only this week he has come from Alexandria to work for the English consul general. They say he is very tall and dark and beautiful. But I think he will not look so beautiful when they carry his head through the town on a pike.”
The revolting image rose in Daphne’s mind. She hastily banished it and said briskly, “The man must be fatally stupid. Which ought not surprise us in the least. The consulate has too much to do with persons of dubious character.” This was because the English consul general, Mr. Salt, was here mainly to collect as many antiquities as he could, and he was not overscrupulous about how the task was accomplished.
Now, thanks to his adding a violent imbecile to his staff, the military had an excuse to run amok. No European in Cairo would be safe.
And Miles — on his way back — blond, blue-eyed, tall, and unmistakably English — was all too tempting a target. As was she, a green-eyed redhead like their late mother.
She looked down and saw her hands
shaking. Calm down, she commanded herself. Nothing’s happened yet. Think.
She had a brain, a formidable brain. It must be able to formulate a solution.
She stared at the lines of Greek characters praising Ptolemy while she debated what to do.
Sarah, the wife of the famous explorer Giovanni Belzoni, had a few years earlier donned the dress of an Arab merchant and safely visited a mosque forbidden to women and infidels. With any luck, Daphne could escape Cairo in such a disguise and meet her brother en route. Then they could hire a boat and head upriver, out of danger.
She opened her mouth to tell Leena the plan. At that moment, the courtyard erupted in shouts.
An anguished wail rose above the other voices.
Daphne bounded up from the divan and hurried to the latticed window, Leena beside her. Coming up the stairs from the courtyard was a group of Egyptian men.
They bore the inert body of Miles’s servant Akmed.
The following morning
IN A MANSION in another part of the Esbekiya, His Majesty’s consul general was reflecting with mixed emotions upon the prospect of Rupert Carsington’s head parading on a pike through the city streets.
In the month and a half since the Earl of Hargate’s fourth son had arrived in Egypt, he had broken twenty-three separate laws and been jailed nine times. For what Mr. Carsington had cost the consulate in fines and bribes, Mr. Salt might have dismantled and shipped to England one of the smaller temples on the island of Philae.
He now knew exactly why Lord Hargate had sent his twenty-nine-year-old offspring to Egypt. It was not, as his lordship had written, “to assist the consul general in his services on behalf of the nation.”
It was to saddle someone else with the responsibility and expense.
Mr. Salt brushed sand from the document before him on the desk. “One ought to be grateful, I suppose,” he told his secretary Beechey. “The soldiery might have used this as an excuse for slaughtering the lot of us. Instead they merely demand an extortionate fine and twice the usual assorted bribes.”