Mr. Impossible Read online

  Rupert was well aware that the Giza plateau lay across the Nile. He must be blind not to be aware. The famous pyramids were plainly visible from any number of places in the metropolis.

  He’d asked the stupid questions just to see Mrs. Pembroke’s reaction.

  “Mrs. Pembroke, I beg you will allow me to assist you,” said Noxley. “I am sure the consul general wishes to do all he can to help you, but his resources are limited.” He glanced briefly in Rupert’s direction. “Please allow me to put my staff at your disposal. And myself, of course. I am sure we shall get to the bottom of this very quickly.”

  Far more quickly than Hargate’s brainless son, was politely left unsaid.

  Rupert had to agree about the brainless part. He’d blundered badly. Why should she not discard him in favor of a man presenting clear signs of intelligence?

  And how could Rupert blame her?

  Noxious obviously knew her brother better than Rupert did. The man had lived several years in Egypt. He seemed to know everybody. He spoke the language.

  “Why, thank you,” said Mrs. Pembroke. “I shall be very glad to have your help.”

  Idiot, Rupert berated himself. Imbecile. Now Noxious would have all the fun of a search with her, and Rupert would end up in the desert, looking for rocks with writing on them that no one could read.

  Then she and Noxley began to talk, as though Rupert didn’t exist.

  He gave a mental shrug and redirected his attention to the partly open door. The dusky beauty lingered still.

  What a hypocrite Noxious was, acting so prim when Rupert spoke of dancing girls, when a member of his lordship’s harem stood only a few yards away, half-naked and clearly objecting to her lord and master’s attention being diverted elsewhere.

  She disappeared and reappeared at intervals, looking more and more vexed at each reappearance.

  Watching her, Rupert only half-heard the conversation nearby. Noxley had some people he promised to talk to, starting with the men who’d come to dinner the other night. He’d send some servants out to collect the latest street gossip. He’d call on some district sheiks.

  He summoned a servant and gave orders in Arabic. Mrs. Pembroke chimed in.

  The servant exited.

  Then it was time to leave.

  A good deal more subdued than when he set out, Rupert escorted her home. He was vaguely aware of its being later than he’d supposed. He wondered how long they’d been at Noxious’s.

  “Weren’t we going elsewhere?” he said as they reached her street.

  “Weren’t you paying attention?” she said. “Lord Noxley is going to call on the others. It is very good of him. I had not realized how tired I was until now. But I never slept at all last night. I must have a proper night’s rest. I shall be no good at all in Giza otherwise.”

  “Ah, so you’re going to Giza,” Rupert said wistfully. He would like to explore the inside of a pyramid, especially with her. He’d heard the passageways were dark and narrow.

  “Yes, well, he doesn’t know that,” she said.

  Rupert turned sharply toward her. But there was the hateful veil, hiding her expressive face. “How can he not know?” he said. “He’ll see you there.”

  “Lord Noxley?” she said.

  “Who else?” Rupert said.

  “But he’s not going to Giza,” she said.

  “He’s not?”

  “No,” she said. “You are.”

  They arrived at her door. “I am?” Rupert said stupidly.

  She let out a long sigh. “Really, Mr. Carsington, I wish you would try to attend. Surely you heard him. He is like Vir — like Miles. They think women — Oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need to know, and you wouldn’t understand. But do pay attention now. You are taking me with you to Giza, no matter what he says. You are to come and collect me tomorrow at daybreak. Is that clear?”

  “Clear as a bell,” Rupert said.

  He saw her safely indoors, left the house, and with a wave at Wadid, passed through the gate and set off down the street, whistling.

  ONCE MRS. PEMBROKE had gone, all the sunshine went out of his lordship’s countenance.

  Asheton Noxley liked to have things his way — exactly his way. This wasn’t easy anywhere. In Egypt, it was particularly difficult because people here — even, or perhaps especially, Europeans — acted according to no known rules of civilized behavior.

  Very early in his stay he had learnt that official documents became increasingly meaningless the farther away one was from the official who’d provided them. For instance, the pasha might give him the exclusive right to excavate at such and such a place or to remove this or that object. But if the site was in, say, Thebes, and the pasha four hundred fifty miles away in Cairo at the time, the one who actually got to excavate was the one who either paid the local officials the largest bribes or produced the largest band of thugs and ruffians to insure his rights.

  Lord Noxley had found local officials unreliable. They accepted bribes from rival parties. They were accommodating one day and obstructive the next. They withheld workers, food, and boats when the mood struck them.

  Consequently, he had amassed a large band of men he could depend upon to make people behave as they ought. He now employed agents in most of the major villages between Alexandria and the Second Cataract.

  Though Miles Archdale and his handsome sister didn’t know about it, his lordship was making arrangements for them, too. His lordship was cultivating the brother, reputed to be one of those nearest to unlocking the secrets of the ancient script. They would make an ideal team, Lord Noxley believed. Together they would unearth a great find, greater than anything Belzoni had discovered.

  Equally important, Lord Noxley would make the sister his viscountess. He’d wanted her from the first moment he saw her because she, rather like the papyrus her brother had bought, was a rarity.

  Countless beauties in England had thrown themselves at him, and he’d had his pick of their exotic counterparts in Egypt. Mrs. Pembroke had no counterpart.

  She was not pretty, not beautiful. He was not sure she was handsome. But her face was striking and her figure magnificent, and she was as rich as Croesus. Moreover, she was conveniently here. His lordship need not return to England to renew the tedious search for a suitable bride. He could remain in Egypt for years. When he did return, it would be to great fame and honors.

  But someone had disrupted his plans. Archdale, one of the world’s great linguists, might be in deadly peril. Meanwhile the Earl of Hargate’s hellion son was sniffing about the future Viscountess Noxley’s skirts.

  Lord Noxley sent for his agent Ghazi, who arrived within the hour.

  Ghazi was his lordship’s right-hand assassin.

  Lord Noxley told him what had happened and asked why he was one of the last to know.

  “I will send men to Old Cairo,” Ghazi said. “They will discover who took your friend. But it is very strange. One day they steal the man. This I understand. They do it for a ransom. But today they steal a papyrus? This I do not understand. The merchant Vanni Anaz has an endless supply. He has men who make them, too. The peasants sell them in all the villages. Why go to the trouble of stealing?”

  Lord Noxley explained.

  “Ah,” said Ghazi. “But is it true?”

  “Someone thinks so,” Lord Noxley said.

  “It must be the French,” Ghazi said. “They grow desperate.”

  This was because Lord Noxley’s agents were steadily driving the French away from the richest sites. He wasn’t sure desperation explained it completely, though. Had he erred regarding Archdale, mistaking secrecy for modesty?

  “The question is, who possesses the means and is ruthless enough to undertake such villainies?” he said.

  Apart from Lord Noxley himself, only one man met the requirements.

  “Duval, then,” said Ghazi.

  “I rather think so.”

  “I will talk to his people.”

&nbsp
; The word talk, both men knew, was a euphemism for a very broad range of activities.

  But Lord Noxley knew Ghazi didn’t require specifics. His lordship only added, “And that idiot Carsington.” He briefly described Lord Hargate’s fourth son. “He’ll be in Giza tomorrow. I want him out of the way.”

  Wednesday 4 April

  RUPERT ARRIVED AT the widow’s domicile at daybreak as ordered.

  He found they would travel with a retinue. All of her cowardly servants but Akmed, it turned out, had skulked back to the house by the time she returned the previous evening. She’d decided they must come along to Giza today.

  It took Rupert a while to take this in because he was still trying to digest her appearance.

  She’d abandoned the black silk for a costume: a gold-trimmed maroon jacket over full Turkish trousers of a bright blue. And a turban. They would pretend she was a man, his Maltese translator, she said.

  She did not in any way resemble a man, Maltese or otherwise. She made Rupert think of harems and concubines and dancing girls. In those thoughts clothing of any kind was not a prominent feature.

  He remembered how surprised he was when he lifted her off the donkey: she was smaller than he’d guessed, though quite as generously curved. He could almost feel it still: the inward turn of her waist…the flare of her hips where the edge of his hand had rested. A familiar heat, having nothing to do with the morning’s temperature, settled into his nether regions. As a consequence, a long moment passed while he tried to get his mind on business.

  The ludicrous turban didn’t help matters. It begged him to unwind it by spinning her round and round like a top until she was giddy and giggling…then pick her up…

  But he couldn’t. Not yet. If he moved too quickly and put his mouth or hands where she thought they didn’t belong, she’d send him back to Salt. Rupert would end up toiling in the desert, supervising natives shifting sand and rocks. Lord Noxious would have the fun of a search with her and fights with unsavory, very likely French, persons, while Rupert died of boredom.

  Picturing Noxious with his hands on her waist promptly squelched Rupert’s lascivious urges.

  He turned a skeptical eye upon the cringing servants. He made his expression stern, and adopting the same disdainful tones his father used on such occasions, said, “I should like to know, madam, what good you expect this lot to do, except give you a prime view of their backs the instant trouble threatens.”

  “We cannot travel unaccompanied,” she said. “Not only is it not respectable, it is not at all safe. And we haven’t time to apply to the local sheik for replacements.”

  If they had to apply to a sheik for servants, it would take forever. While Rupert understood almost nothing of Arabic, he knew that phrases such as “make haste” or “we must not lose a minute” or “I mean now” were not in the local lexicon.

  In short, he must make do with the material at hand.

  “Leena,” he said, “please be so good as to tell these fellows that there will be no running away today. Tell them that no matter what terrible thing threatens, it will not be half so terrible as what I will do to them if they desert their mistress.” He provided a brief, vivid description of what he would do to them, emphasizing with gestures.

  Leena rapidly translated.

  “For all the good it will do,” Rupert said, half to himself. “I should have to catch them first, shouldn’t I?”

  “They won’t run away,” Mrs. Pembroke said.

  He turned back to her, and his stern demeanor crumbled before the turban and the strange, heart-shaped face that didn’t belong under it.

  “Won’t they?” he said, smiling helplessly.

  “Rumors have spread that you are a genie,” she said. “Wadid by now has told them what you did to him yesterday, and the feat has been exaggerated beyond all recognition.”

  “Good,” Rupert said. “That saves me deciding which of them to use for the demonstration.”

  A WHILE LATER, fists on his hips, the long, muscled legs straddling a gap between masses of broken stone blocks, the man who’d brought Daphne to Giza without a murmur of objection stood looking up at Chephren’s pyramid.

  By swift degrees, Mr. Carsington had discarded his gloves, hat, neckcloth, and coat. Now barely dressed and glowing in the sun’s glare, he seemed a bronze colossus.

  Daphne was only dimly aware of the pyramid, one of the world’s wonders. All she could see was the man, and far too much of him: the shirt taut across the broad shoulders, the thin fabric almost transparent in the harsh light, revealing the contours of muscular arms and back.

  It was some comfort to know she wasn’t the only one whose gaze he drew. Her servants cast him frequent, wary glances. The men who loitered about the pyramids to help visitors ascend to the top or penetrate its interior also watched him from a respectful distance.

  And she might as well have been his shadow. The guides hardly noticed her or seemed to care who or what she was.

  They all felt it: the magnetism of that tall figure, the danger crackling in the air about him. All understood that an unpredictable, uncontrollable force had come among them.

  Daphne had felt it even before she could see him, when he’d been only a shadowy figure in the dungeon’s gloom.

  “It’s big,” he said at last.

  “Yes, it is,” she said. “I suppose you want to climb it.” Men could not resist.

  “Not at the moment,” he said. “If I climb to the top, it’ll only be a prodigious long stairway. No, for the present I like it as it is, immense and impressive.” He turned to her. “Unless you think we might find a clue at the top?”

  She shook her head. “Miles said he wanted to study the interior. He seemed to think it held clues that would help us find other tombs.”

  The guides hadn’t any useful information about Miles. Yes, they remembered the Englishman with the “white” hair. He had come a few days ago. No one recalled anything unusual about the visit.

  Mr. Carsington climbed down from the stones and joined her. He’d unfastened the button at the neck of his shirt, which allowed the garment to hang open in a large V. She directed her gaze away from the expanse of bronzed chest and toward the pyramid.

  “Why did Lord Noxious find your brother’s reason for coming here so odd?”

  “Lord what?”

  “You heard me,” he said. “I wondered how that insufferable bore could be your brother’s — or anyone’s — boon companion. But English-speaking fellows are thin on the ground, I notice. Noxious must have won the position by default.”

  “You didn’t like him,” she said. Which was about as astute an observation as Mr. Carsington’s remarking that the pyramid was big.

  There was too much male in view — too much insufficiently clothed male. It was shocking, really. Small wonder she couldn’t think. She ought to tell him to put his clothes back on.

  “It wasn’t my liking he was after,” he said.

  Her gaze shot back to him. The black eyes glinted.

  “How concerned he was for you,” he said. “So understanding of your predicament. He didn’t assume your brother was lolling about in a whorehouse, visiting the Garden of Allah by means of a hashish pipe. No, indeed. His lordship was properly sympathetic and desperately eager to do your bidding.”

  “I should like to know how this makes him noxious,” she said.

  “He was so quick to imagine the worst,” Mr. Carsington said. “Most men would say, ‘There, there now, I’m sure it’s nothing to fret about. There’ll be a simple explanation — a message gone astray or some such.’ Instead, he made a great to-do about it, shoveling on veiled and unveiled suggestions to make you more anxious, rather than less.”

  “I detest ‘there, there now,’ ” she said. “It is patronizing. And I vastly dislike being made to feel like a child who is imagining things. That is how Mr. Salt behaved toward me. It is exceedingly provoking.”

  “Maybe the consul general likes the way your eyes flash
when you’re provoked,” said Mr. Carsington. “And the way the pink comes into your cheek, right here.” With his forefinger, he drew a line along his cheekbone.

  He stood well away from her, yet she felt the touch, as though his long finger grazed her skin instead of his.

  She felt the heat climb there, and knew the pink he described must be deepening. She ought to blush — with shame for being so susceptible. “You have a knack for straying from the subject,” she said. “You asked what was odd about my brother’s reasons for coming here.”

  “Yes. Why shouldn’t your brother find clues here? Why couldn’t the mystery tomb be here, in fact? They’ve still another pyramid to penetrate.” He nodded toward the third, unopened pyramid of Mycerinus. “And haven’t they uncovered a great lot of mummies somewhere hereabouts?”

  Her gaze went to the third pyramid, then shot back to meet his, as innocent as a little boy’s. She was not a little girl and was not taken in. “You know all about this place,” she said. “You were playing with us, asking those absurd questions about where and what Giza was.”

  He only smiled and looked away from her toward the group of guides. “I don’t feel like a long climb in the blazing sun today,” he said. “But I’m perishing to have a look inside. I should like to see for myself what’s so odd about the idea.”

  “Mr. Carsington,” she said. She wanted an explanation.

  But he’d already caught the eye of a guide, to whom he signaled. The man quickly joined them. Mr. Carsington pointed to the entrance Belzoni had discovered three years earlier, now a black rectangle on the north face of the pyramid.

  The guide summoned another, and the two men led them up through the clearing in the rubble that had for so many centuries concealed the entrance.

  Daphne knew it was wiser to save her energies for the ordeal ahead. She reminded herself that she was doing it for Miles’s sake, that she loved him dearly and would do whatever she needed to bring him back safe. She told herself that what she felt in the small passageways was irrational, mere emotion. She was a rational being. All she had to do was concentrate on facts.

  THE ENTRY PASSAGE was four feet high, about three and a half feet wide, a hundred and four feet five inches long, and descended at an angle of twenty-six degrees, Mrs. Pembroke informed Rupert.