Mr. Impossible

  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
making: the way she crooned his name, the way the foreign words sounded in her mouth. His mind conjured harems and concubines and dancing girls and she was all of them, it seemed, all the most alluring women in the world in one.

  Oh, he was in a bad way, a sad, sad way.

  He went to her. Obediently he looked down at the thing in her hand. His mind revolted, and his gaze shifted away, to her bosom. It was mostly exposed, since she’d neglected to fasten the neck of the crepe shirt.

  Except for the obnoxious veils, Egyptians did know the proper way to dress a woman.

  “It disgusts you?” she said.

  “Certainly not,” he said.

  She glanced down at herself, at her barely veiled bosom shimmering gold in the candlelight. “I meant the mummy,” she said. She did not attempt to cover the exposed flesh.

  This lack of modesty was perfectly agreeable to him. Still, it did not make it easier to think. He tried, though he wasn’t sure why.

  “Not disgusting, exactly,” he said at last.

  “The mummies trouble you,” she said. “I remarked it before. They trouble me, too, especially when I find them in pieces, after someone’s torn them apart, looking for amulets and such. But they enchant me as well.” With her index finger she lightly stroked the thing in her hand. “See how beautifully it is wrapped, how lovingly preserved.”

  He tried to see the beauty she spoke of, but he couldn’t. Looking at the thing was too upsetting. He turned away.

  There was a silence. He could feel her thinking, wondering.

  “I saw a mummy unwrapped in London,” he said harshly into the silence. “A great entertainment, with a lot of aristocrats gawking and a physician presiding over the proceedings. It was a woman, naked, the poor creature, once they’d removed her lovingly prepared wrappings. They pretended it was a scientific inquiry, but most of the audience was there for a sensation. It was all a show to them, as though she’d never been a living woman, once, like their wives and sisters and mothers and daughters.” His throat tightened at the recollection. He could say no more. He’d choke.

  “I see.” She set down the mummy and rose.

  He looked at her, and at the thing she’d set aside. He knew she wanted it. He’d seen the longing in her eyes, the same expression she wore when he found her studying the pictures on the walls. Yet she set the little mummy aside for his sake.

  His heart clenched and twisted.

  “It’s only a bird or a cat,” he said. “Somebody’s pet or sacred animal. You found it. You might as well keep it. The next person to come along will trample it accidentally or tear it apart on purpose, looking for treasure. At least you will treat it kindly.” He bent and picked it up. The smell made him gag. He held his breath and offered the thing to her.

  Her eyebrows went up.

  “Yes, yes, take it,” he choked out, resisting the urge to throw it at her.

  “Are you sure?” She took it from him though, the gods be thanked.

  He retreated a pace. “Of course. Didn’t I tell you I’m easy to manage? A lively bout of lovemaking makes me mere putty in your hands. I vow, I am overflowing with kindness and generosity.”

  …and with something else, something different from the sense of well-being he usually experienced. There was an ache, a something not quite right and not quite wrong.

  “But it also makes me devilish hungry,” he added quickly. “As I recall, we’ve bread in the saddlebags.”

  IT MEANT NOTHING to him, that was clear to Daphne. He’d spoken of feelings, but desire was all he meant. He’d satisfied a bodily appetite, no different from hunger. That was the way he saw it. He’d said so: she was in lust with him, and the logical response was lovemaking. For hunger, the logical response was eating.

  In other words, the passionate interlude held no more significance for him than did the simple meal of bread and water they ate a short time later in a corner of the first chamber, surrounded by images of the tomb’s owner and his women and long columns of hieroglyphs.

  Meanwhile, Daphne’s world had come crashing down about her ears. She stared blindly at the hieroglyphs wobbling in the candlelight. She felt as though she’d spent her adulthood in a kind of darkness, translating at least one part of her life into the wrong language.

  “Any idea what it says?” he said.

  She dragged her gaze back to him. He had not put his shirt back on. The faint light glimmered on bronzed skin and traced the outlines of his muscled torso. His eyes were dark, unreadable.

  Not that she could have read them easily, even in better light. Rupert Carsington’s eyes were not windows into his soul, as Virgil’s eyes had been. But then, Rupert Carsington seemed to keep very little hidden. His words and actions were plain and direct. His anger, too. He didn’t hide it behind a veneer of gentleness and saintly patience. He spoke his mind…instead of trying to dismantle hers.

  “You know I don’t,” she said. “I have explained the difficulties of decipherment to you time and again.”

  “Yes, but now that you’ve relieved the terrible lust oppressing your mind, I thought you might have a burst of insight or inspiration,” he said.

  “I had an insight,” she said, “but not about hieroglyphs. As to the lust…”

  “Ah, yes. Not quite relieved, I daresay.”

  “That was not what I —”

  “The trick with lust is, you can only eradicate it with steady application,” he said. “Steady, repeated application. So, as soon as it begins to vex you again, be sure to let me know.”

  “That is not what I…” But it was part of what was on her mind, and so she said quickly, to get it over with, “Do you find me womanly?”

  “Did the sandstorm dry up your brain?” he said. “Do you think I mistook you for a man?”

  “I mean, do you find me un womanly?”

  He bent closer and peered at her face, scarlet now, she’d no doubt. “Where?” he said. “In what way?”

  “Not…feminine. Indelicate. Too…” She recalled Virgil’s gentle admonitions, his infuriating patience, and anger burnt away embarrassment. “Too boisterous,” she said tightly. “In lovemaking.”

  “A woman — too boisterous — in lovemaking?” Mr. Carsington said incredulously. “There’s no such thing. Where did you get that fool notion? Never mind. Don’t tell me. I can guess. You shouldn’t have married an elderly man.”

  “Virgil was four and fifty when we wed,” she said. “That is not exactly Methuselah.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Nineteen and a half,” she said.

  “You’d have done better with two husbands of seven and twenty,” he said. “As to the late lamented, he should have married a woman closer to his own age, whose animal spirits were of a similar strength. He might have lived longer. More important, he wouldn’t have needed to cover up his lack of vigor by criticizing his handsome, passionate wife.”

  “His…lack…of vigor,” Daphne repeated. “Was that —”

  “Not that there’s any excuse for him,” Mr. Carsington went on indignantly. “To tell such hurtful lies — and he a clergyman! I hope you made him do without for a long, long time — a fortnight at least — to teach him a lesson. By gad, that was ungentlemanly — and you shackled for life to the brute. He made you feel unwomanly — you, of all women! — when it was he who was unmanly. It makes my blood boil. Come here.”

  “Ungentlemanly?” she said. “Unmanly?”

  “He was a small man,” he said, “else he wouldn’t have tried to cut you down to size.”

  She stared at him, trying to take it in. He said she wasn’t unwomanly — he, a man of vast experience.

  “I must have the truth,” she said. “You must not be tactful. This is important.”

  “Tactful?” he echoed. “I cannot believe that a woman of your intelligence could not see what he was about. It must be obvious to the slowest of dimwits that he was jealous of your brain, because he knew his wasn’t as big. He was afraid you’d accomplish
something and put him in the shade. That’s why he forbade you to study ancient Egyptian writing. Obviously he was jealous of your passion and energy, too. You were too much woman for him.”

  “Too much woman,” she repeated, savoring the words. Not too little. Not too much like a man. Hers wasn’t a man’s brain. It was simply her brain, that was all.

  “You may have noticed you are not too much for me.” His black eyes gleamed.

  “You don’t mind about my brain,” she said.

  “I’m not afraid of your brain,” he said. “Come here. “Ta’ala heneh.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  It was not polite or gentle. It was long and bold, sinfully deep and lascivious, and it melted her muscles, along with the remnants of her morals. She did not even pretend to struggle. She sank back in his arms and let her hands rove over the powerful contours of his chest and shoulders, his arms, his back.

  She was not sure she could ever get enough of touching him. She didn’t know how she’d managed to keep her hands off him for as long as she had. He was warm and strong and fiercely alive…oh, and he was beautifully made, on the grand scale, and perfectly proportioned. Her hands slid down to cup his buttocks, so smooth and taut, and he groaned against her mouth, then drew away.

  She opened her eyes, dismayed. She’d been too bold, disgusted him. But no, he’d told her she couldn’t be too bold.

  “I meant to please you before,” he said. Growled.

  “You did,” she said. She’d never been so pleased in her life. She’d never guessed it was possible to be so pleased — and the word was grossly inadequate.

  “But I was in a hurry,” he said, “after waiting so confounded long for you to come to your senses.”

  “I was perfectly satisfied,” she said. She’d thought she’d die of pleasure and happiness. She’d thought she’d burst from it, from the feelings, so immense.

  “What do you know?” he said. “Your previous lover was an old man.” He kissed the special place behind her ear. He kissed her neck, the base of her throat.

  She didn’t argue. What did she know? Nothing, apparently, when it came to lovemaking.