The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow
Lara Temple
‘I have a favour to ask… I want you to marry me. ’ Part of The Sinful Sinclairs. Samantha Sinclair was always Lord Edgerton’s complete opposite. But as Edge meets Sam again in Egypt, it’s clear the years have changed her as much as him. So when she blurts out an impulsive, convenient proposal, Edge’s protective urge compels him to accept. Is it possible for two such different people to be together and find the happiness they both deserve?
“I have a favor to ask...
I want you to marry me.”
Part of The Sinful Sinclairs. Samantha Sinclair was always Lord Edgerton’s complete opposite. But when Edge encounters Sam again in Egypt, it’s clear the years have changed her as much as him. So after she blurts out an impulsive, convenient proposal, Edge’s protective urge compels him to accept. Is it possible for two such different people to be together and find the happiness they both deserve?
LARA TEMPLE was three years old when she begged her mother to take the dictation of her first adventure story. Since then she has led a double life—by day she is a high-tech investment professional, who has lived and worked on three continents, but when darkness falls she loses herself in history and romance…at least on the page. Luckily her husband and her two beautiful and very energetic children help her weave it all together.
Also by Lara Temple (#uc4a8a20f-7883-5076-a4cb-251fb91cb4ea)
The Duke’s Unexpected Bride
Unlaced by the Highland Duke
Wild Lords and Innocent Ladies miniseries
Lord Hunter’s Cinderella Heiress
Lord Ravenscar’s Inconvenient Betrothal
Lord Stanton’s Last Mistress
The Sinful Sinclairs miniseries
The Earl’s Irresistible Challenge
The Rake’s Enticing Proposal
The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow
Lara Temple
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08952-4
THE LORD’S INCONVENIENT VOW
© 2019 Ilana Treston
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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Note to Readers (#uc4a8a20f-7883-5076-a4cb-251fb91cb4ea)
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To Lucas and Chase and Sam—
I’ve lived with you and loved with you
and now I have to let you go.
Contents
Cover (#u80427fe3-0ca5-5431-b276-fed29977107d)
Back Cover Text (#uf1bed745-c386-5891-8017-42c3624626df)
About the Author (#u480bf76b-eca9-5e6d-9c29-7f44ee973a20)
Booklist (#u44d7c1a2-93e6-5633-b26e-bb4c25418e1d)
Title Page (#ud5d86caf-92fa-5b6b-8aaf-da1e2aae5efd)
Copyright (#uc2cf78be-fe3b-5bc5-99f0-699bcb9fbf03)
Note to Readers
Dedication (#u678db74e-0127-556a-814b-81cc8a2b0cb5)
Prologue (#u79ec7479-cdc6-4a49-985e-51bf1b0018f8)
Chapter One (#uafb42907-a343-4720-8f77-be0421311236)
Chapter Two (#u38db689e-7786-521f-a840-e342476f179b)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#uc4a8a20f-7883-5076-a4cb-251fb91cb4ea)
‘The Hidden City isn’t truly invisible, Gabriel. Most people are blind to what threatens their world. Life is easier thus.’
—The Sprite Queen, Desert Boy Book One
Qetara, Egypt—1814
‘For heaven’s sake, Lady Samantha, come down before you fall down.’
‘Oh, go away, Sir Stay-Away-from-the-Edge.’
‘Stop calling me that.’
‘Well, Mama says I mustn’t call you Edge any longer because now that I am eighteen it is no longer proper. But I refuse to call you Lord Edward Edgerton; that is even stuffier than you are.’
He burst into laughter. He didn’t often laugh freely, but it always surprised her how it transformed his face, softening the sharp-cut lines on either side of his mouth and between his overly straight brows. With his serious grey-green eyes and hair as dark as any of her Venetian cousins he’d always appeared so adult. Or perhaps it was his insistence on dressing so properly even in the heat of the Egyptian desert.
Next to him her brothers looked like heathens or corporeal manifestations of the gods etched on the temple walls where her mother’s cousin Huxley spent all his waking hours working with Edge’s uncle Poppy. Once those two were caught in the web of their historical weaving, everyone else faded into nothingness—more ghosts in a landscape of ghosts and far less interesting.
He stopped laughing and frowned even more awfully, as if he needed to compensate for his moment of levity.
‘Proper. You have no idea what that means.’
‘Yes, I do. It means doing nothing enjoyable at all.’
‘No, it means showing respect. And it means not climbing on the antiquities.’
‘If this sphinx survived two thousand years, it will survive me.’
‘It is not a sphinx but a ram and Poppy says it is likely at least three thousand years old based on references in...never mind. In any case it should not have to suffer the indignity of being climbed upon. And barefoot, too. One day you will step on a scorpion and that will be the end of it.’
‘You have my permission to dance a jig on my grave if it is, Lord Hedgehog.’
He ignored her latest variation on his name.
‘Don’t be a fool, Sam. Besides, I hate dancing. Why the...why are you up there anyway?’
‘Come see.’
She turned away and waited. He might be as dry as a mummy, but he had his uncle’s curiosity. She wondered if he realised he’d reverted to calling her Sam as he once had. Probably not.
It took five minutes. She heard the scrape of his boots and a muffled curse. Probably something like ‘drat’ or ‘bother’; despite being such good friends with Lucas and Chase, he never participated in their cursing contests. Since his uncle and aunt had brought him to Egypt when he was only six years old he spoke Arabic better than all of them, but he rarely indulged in the very colourful epithets Lucas and Chase mined from the locals, at least not in her hearing. In fact, she sometimes wondered why he and her brothers were so close.
She waited for him to say something unpleasant about her occupation, but though he cast a shadow over her sketchpad he said nothing. She twisted to look at him, but all she could see was a dark shape haloed by the sun.
‘Not bad. You’re improving.’
The temptation to give his legs a shove and send him tumbling off the sphinx...off the ram...was powerful, but she resisted. He had a point—she was now eighteen and perhaps it was time to resist such puerile urges. Still, she smiled at the image, taking some pleasure in cutting him down to size in her mind. When she answered, her voice was dignified.
‘Cousin Huxley believes I am very gifted. He says some of the Sinclairs possess artistic skills. Like my Aunt Celia.’
She spoke her aunt’s name defiantly, waiting for him to attack that as well. But no doubt the scandal of Lady Stanton’s elopement with a spy and their subsequent demise was too much for him to even consider because he merely sat beside her.
‘May I?’
‘Sit? You may. This is not my ram, after all.’
‘No, may I see your sketches?’
He took her sketchpad with all the care he gave to the shards and remains his uncle excavated. She tried not to squirm as he lingered over a sketch of a wall painting from the temple below the cliffs and one of a funerary urn bearing the head of Bastet, the feline god.
‘You’ve a good eye for detail. There is not one mistake here. Very strange.’
She gritted her teeth, but as he turned she saw the wavering at the corner of his mouth and relaxed a little. She could never tell when his peculiar sense of humour would surface. She’d forgotten that about him—under his granite shell there was another Edge, the one who was endlessly considerate of Poppy and Janet and her mother, and who she often suspected was laughing even when he was doing his very best to scold her.
‘Most amusing. You would not be smiling if you know how close you came to being shoved off on to your posterior.’
He frowned.
‘That is most definitely not a proper word in mixed company.’
‘Posterior? It is a perfectly innocuous word.’
‘The word might be innocuous, but its...what it alludes to...’
‘Your behind?’
‘Sam! Will you ever grow up?’
‘I am grown up. In a couple of months I shall make my debut in Venetian society, be crammed into a frilly dress and have no choice but to behave like a simpering simpleton. But I am not there yet and I see nothing wrong with speaking of something completely natural. You and Lucas and Chase did it often enough when in your cups—I distinctly remember you once discussing the attributes of a certain ghawazi dancer in rather off-putting detail.’
He groaned.
‘You are impossible.’
‘And you’re stiff-necked, stuffy and stodgy bundled together and tied with a neat little bow and dipped in vinegar.’
‘Not little. I take offence at that.’
She couldn’t stop her smile. Somehow he always managed to pull the rug of her annoyance out from under her.
‘No, not little. Is being a great big bore preferable to being a little one?’
‘As long as I am great at something.’
She shifted, turning more fully to him and shielding her eyes from the sun.
‘Do you wish to be great at something, Edge?’
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘I don’t know. Probably in some vague way, but not in actuality because it means they must invest effort in it. What do you wish to be great at?’
Even under the glare of the sun and the warmth of his tanned skin she could see the rise of colour in his lean cheeks. He moved his leg as if to slide off the statue and she caught his sleeve.
‘Wait. I won’t press if you don’t wish to talk of it. Is your arm better?’
He rolled his left shoulder.
‘Better. But it was infuriating to be invalided out just before Napoleon abdicated. Have you heard from Lucas or Chase?’
‘They sent word they are to remain in France. Something to do with my uncle. I haven’t seen them in...far too long.’
She clasped her hands, hoping he didn’t notice them shaking. Moving so often meant her only home was her family—Lucas, Chase and her mother in the inner core, and Cousin Huxley and the Carmichaels directly after them. And Edge. Beyond them she had no home, no roots, no anchor. If something happened to Lucas or Chase... It would be unbearable.
‘I miss them.’ The words burst from her. ‘Even with the war ended everything is uncertain. Even now they might not be alive and it could be weeks before I know.’
He placed his hand on hers, warm and firm, but he didn’t try to reassure her. She wished he would break with his nature and offer comfort, even lie to her, but it wasn’t Edge’s way. Talking with him always felt like approaching an island patrolled by a wary navy—being allowed ashore was an arduous process. Perhaps it was because he came to live with the Carmichaels when he was six. She’d never dared ask why. All she knew was that Poppy and Janet loved him deeply and absolutely and were never wary of showing that love, even now he was grown. They’d cried when he arrived and even Huxley and her mother had looked a little damp. In fact, only Edge remained calm during the reunion, though he’d looked different than her memory—familiar but a stranger. Or perhaps she was different, grown up. She didn’t want to be, but everyone told her she was.
She resisted the urge to lean into his strength, searching for something to say.
‘I would like to see London again one day. My mother swore never to return so I have not been since I was a child. Did you visit the British Museum? That would be top of my list if I ever return.’
He withdrew his hand and clasped his arms round his knees.
‘One day you will. Your mother’s decisions after your father’s scandal are her own, Sam, not yours. From what Poppy and Huxley said, he was merely a good man who made a mistake while he was far away from his family.’
‘It is not like you to varnish the truth, Edge. An affair with an engaged woman and a duel with her cuckolded betrothed is a rather serious mistake,’ she scoffed.
‘True, but it is still sad when an otherwise good man’s memory is reduced to his worst action. And remember that your father’s death does not reflect on you in any way.’
‘According to society, it does.’
He looked out at the horizon, his voice shifting again, turning stiffer and more hesitant. ‘Society is strange. People separately can be...pleasant, but sometimes together... They are like a mythical many-headed beast guarding a kingdom, full of suspicion and even exultation when one fails to solve the riddle that allows you in.’
She turned to him, concern overcoming her pain.
‘Did they say things about you when you were in London, Edge?’
‘There is always gossip.’
‘But you’re perfect,’ she blurted out and even before he laughed she turned as red as a sunset and hotter than the Nubian Desert in midday.
‘I did not mean you are perfect...’ she said crossly.
‘I know that.’ He was still laughing. ‘You meant I was so boring there could be nothing to gossip about.’
‘I did not mean that either. But truly I cannot see what they could object to.’
‘Thank you for that, Sam. But anything outside the ordinary is suspect to a closed group.’
‘Do you mean because Poppy and Janet raised you instead of your parents? Why were you sent to live with them, Edge?’ It was the most daring thing she’d ever asked him and she waited for his usual dismissal, but he merely stared at the horizon, his profile sharp against the sky. She knew him almost as well as her brothers, but she was not certain she knew him at all. Perhaps that was why those people were suspicious of him.
‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything of those first six years at all. No... I remember snow and grey, that is all. But if it was anything like what I saw these past months then I’m glad I don’t. My parents... I spent time with my mother because of my sister’s debut. My father thankfully does not leave Greybourne because he could make a funeral procession feel like a fête. They are utterly unlike Poppy and Janet. My mother is very cold and condescending and my father is...rigidly pious.’ He glanced at her. ‘Go ahead, say something about the apple not falling far from the tree.’
There was almost a snarl in his words which also wasn’t like him and she shook her head.
‘I shan’t say what I don’t think. I never saw you condescend to anyone, no matter their choice of gods or their place in society. And as for cold...’ She paused as his frown deepened—she could almost feel him haul up the drawbridge and she realised with surprise that her words mattered to him. She’d never thought that before. ‘I think you do your best to build battlements of ice, but they keep melting because you aren’t really cold. Poppy and Janet could never have loved you so deeply if you were.’
Her words surprised her as much as they appeared to embarrass him. His high cheekbones turned dark beneath his sun-warmed skin and he planted his hands on the stone as if ready to push to his feet. She almost took his hand and asked him to stay, but his embarrassment spread to her and she waited for him to make his excuses and leave.
He sighed, his hand relaxing a little on the stone.
‘If I didn’t know how honest you are, Sam, I’d suspect you of trying to butter me up for some reason or another. Did you happen to topple some precious antiquity while I wasn’t looking by any chance?’
She smiled in relief.
‘The fallen Colossi of Memnon? That was I.’
He laughed and she relaxed a little further.
‘I hope you do come to London soon, Sam. When you do, I shall take you to the Museum. There is a statue there that made me think of you, a bust of a girl staring at the sky like you do when you make believe you haven’t heard your mother when she summons you to supper.’
She laughed as well, embarrassed but peculiarly flattered to be compared to a statue and that anything made him think of her at all, let alone fondly. It was so very unlike Edge to say anything remotely nice to her. She smoothed her grubby skirts over her thighs, suddenly wishing she wasn’t dressed in this dusty jumble of eastern and western garb.
‘What else did you do in London? Aside from being forced into the company of your unworthy parents,’ she prompted, not wanting him to stop talking. He smiled and the strange lightness about him struck her again. He’d changed so much since his last visit to Egypt two years previously. Or she had. Or both of them.
‘I had to attend endless balls and assemblies for Anne’s debut. You would have enjoyed watching me squirm.’
‘No, I wouldn’t. Was it terrible?’
‘Sometimes. Other times I actually enjoyed myself...’ He brushed some sand from the stone between them, a frown drawing his brows together. ‘It pulls you in, that world. Everything appears so...easy. We barely survived the war and yet they are all so gay, so full of life. It tips the scales back a little; washes away the blood and dirt and pain and you can begin to believe London is the truth, not...everything else. That you are who they see.’ He hesitated, gathering back the sand he’d scattered into a little mound. ‘Everyone calls me Edward or Lord Edward there.’
‘Well, those are your names.’
‘I know, but... I have been called Edge for years. Ever since a certain annoying six-year-old on her first visit to Qetara decreed I didn’t look like an Edward or Lord Edward Edgerton and rechristened me Edge.’
Sam flushed again.
‘I still don’t think you look like an Edward, and Lord Edward Edgerton sounds like a particularly pompous character from a morality play, but I hardly forced anyone to call you Edge, they did that all on their own.’
‘Yes, well, you had a way of dragging people along with you. And I didn’t object. I liked that it was uncommon. Edward is my father’s name.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes. Edward Raphael something something. The two monikers bestowed upon the first two Edgerton males.’
‘If you don’t like them calling you Edward, tell them so. I’ve certainly told you often enough not to call me Samantha.’
He frowned. ‘As you said, that is my name. It is who I am.’
Sam didn’t understand what he was trying to say, if anything at all—Poppy and Janet and everyone still called him Edge and he had not objected. Absently she traced a little pyramid in the sand he’d gathered between them and he added a crescent of a moon.
‘Deep in the desert, by the light of a silver sliver of a moon...’ he intoned and she smiled. One of Edge’s redeeming features was how well he read aloud. There was little entertainment in Qetara and their small group did their best with the material at hand, from cards to charades to books. Since childhood she’d loved the moment someone handed Edge a book to read aloud. It wasn’t merely the depth and timbre of his voice, but how it would shift and change with the tale. She would close her eyes and see every word he spoke, more vivid than a dream. It was the one quality for which she was willing to excuse all his lectures about her lack of decorum and his ability to ignore her absolutely when she annoyed him. Someone with such an ability to bring a tale to life could not be wholly humdrum.
‘No,’ she corrected. ‘You are telling a different tale—deep in the heart of London, by the light of a hundred chandeliers, they danced that night away...’
He brushed the sand away completely and re-clasped his hands around his knees.
‘Three chandeliers, but enormous. I think each one held a hundred candles. At least it looked that way. I kept worrying the hot wax would drop on the dance floor and we would skid and waltz into a wall.’
She laughed, but something in his voice caught her attention.
‘We?’
He turned his head and then she heard it as well.
‘Daoud’s horn. Come before the flies win the battle for luncheon.’
‘I thought climbing that poor ram yesterday was mad enough, Sam. I should have known you would outdo yourself. Couldn’t you at least wait until they cleared the sand off the rest of the temple before you set claim to it?’
‘Why do you even bother becoming annoyed with me? You know it makes not one iota of a difference,’ Sam said as she looked down at Edge from her perch on the lintel of the temple.
‘Only too well. One day you will fall and crack that thick head of yours.’
‘I shall do my best to land on top of you; you are so stuffed with pomp it will be a soft landing.’
His grin flashed lighter in the shadow.
‘How did you get up there?’
She indicated the enormous twin sphinxes that flanked the sides of the temple. They were still mostly buried in sand, but there was enough accessible to climb from them to the temple roof.
‘I climbed that statue’s arse,’ she said and Edge visibly winced.
‘Sam!’
‘Well, you objected to my saying posterior yesterday.’
‘I admit defeat.’
‘You keep saying that and yet you persevere. Go away, the sun is sinking and I want to finish this today.’
He walked away and she felt the silence around her more keenly. Contrarily she wished he had stayed. Then she heard a grunt and the slither of sand and smiled to herself. He sat beside her again and she noticed a small fresh scratch along the edge of this right hand where he braced it on the roof beside her and she resisted the urge to reach out.
‘You scratched your hand,’ she said instead and he raised his hand, inspecting it.
‘So?’
‘So nothing. It was merely an observation. Or an opening so you can berate me for that as well.’
‘I can hardly blame you for my clumsiness.’
‘It would not be the first time. Remember Saqqara, two years ago?’
His frown fled before another of his surprising smiles.
‘Good Lord, yes. Well, that was your fault. What the deuce did you think you would find clambering over those piles of rubble?’
‘I thought I would make a great discovery. I did not expect to fall into a tomb and be attacked by bats.’ She shuddered at the memory.
‘Of course not. Why would bats congregate in a dark, dank tomb and, even more surprising, why would they take alarm when someone tumbled into their lair and swamped it with daylight?’
‘I did not know there was a shaft entrance hidden under the rubble!’
‘Well, if you had not climbed there, you would not have fallen through and dragged me into it as well.’
‘I apologised. Several times.’
‘So you did. So you should have.’
‘You still hardly spoke to me for the rest of your stay.’
‘I am certain you regarded that as a reward, not a punishment. And since anything I said might have led to a bout of fisticuffs with your brothers, it is good I held my peace. You were a menace, Sam.’
‘Were?’
‘You have mellowed with age, apparently. Despite your tendency to climb the antiquities, nothing horrible has happened since my arrival and, with only a couple days remaining before my departure to England, we might yet scrape through without any disasters.’
He spoke lightly, but there was a peculiar note to his voice and she shivered, as if she was back in that tomb, huddled in a corner while he shielded her from the swooping bats and told her precisely what he thought of her. She’d known he was leaving, but somehow she had managed not to absorb that fact. Now it was unavoidable and so was an equally unwelcome realisation.
She did not want him to go.
Somewhere inside her a pit opened wide. Her cheeks tingled with heat and she closed her sketchbook carefully. She felt she was dangling over a ledge, a little dizzy, a little queasy. What was wrong with her?
She stared at the line of the hill, the sweep and dip and then the ragged collapse into the valley. Though the colours were monotone once the sun rose fully, trapped in shades of pale brown and yellow against a stark blue sky, it was a landscape of contrasts and surprises. Not all of them pleasant.
‘But you were in England only a couple of months ago.’
‘So?’
‘But... I thought you would be joining your uncle on the expedition to Abu Simbel next week.’
‘Not this year. Next year I will likely return with Dora.’
‘Dora?’ The pit yawned wider.
‘Miss Theodora Wadham. I met her in London and we are to be married in June. I’ve asked Poppy and Janet not to discuss it because she is still in mourning over her father’s death, but I’m surprised your eavesdropping abilities haven’t ferreted out the information yet. It hardly matters now since we will announce our betrothal as soon as I return to London. She is looking forward to seeing Egypt. I have told her all about it and she finds it fascinating.’
Dora.
June.
Married.
Edge?
The dizziness was clearing, revealing sharp, distinct quills of anger and pain. She had not even realised she liked Edge. He was annoying and opinionated and always so right one simply itched to kick him. Certainly it made no sense for her whole body to ache like this because he was to be married. No sense at all.
As the silence stretched he took her sketchpad, leafing through it again.
‘You really are very good. I like the way you capture the heat over the valley here. I don’t know how it shows that, but it does. This one I like in particular. That is a strange angle... Don’t tell me you climbed the statue of Horus to sketch that?’ He laughed again. ‘You are bound to break your head; do you know that? This is what comes of growing up tagging around your brothers. I told them you would get into trouble one day.’
‘And what did they tell you?’ she asked dully.
‘To mind my own business.’ He smiled and the pit became a great big chasm with a swamp at the bottom, sludgy and sucking.
‘So why don’t you?’
‘Did I upset you, Sam? I didn’t mean to. Is it because I spoke to your brothers? You needn’t worry, they are loyal to you before anything. Sometimes I think your brothers minded you more than they ever did their commanders during the war. But you really must grow up at some point, you know. You can’t wander around for ever in local robes with your hair down your back. I never understood... I mean, your mother is always so smartly dressed and—’ He broke off at her glare. ‘Anyway. It is no concern of mine, but...perhaps when Dora comes here, if you are here with your uncle next year, she can go with you to Cairo. She has impeccable taste and would probably be glad of a friend here. You will like her; she is very dashing.’
I shall hate her. She had best not climb any statues with me because I shall be tempted to push her off. I hate you.
She stood, shaking out her cotton skirts, suddenly all too aware of her dusty, crumpled state, the hair clinging to her sweaty cheeks and forehead, the scuffs on her hands and the ink stains on her fingers.
Idiot. She hadn’t known she liked Edge this morning and she was damned if she would like him by evening. She would climb the Howling Cliffs and rid herself of this stupid, pointless liking for this stupid, tedious boy. He might think he was a man, but he was only a boy and Dashing Dora was more than welcome to him. She would find someone dashing of her own to like. She would go to Venice and find the handsomest and most charming man of them all and fall desperately in love with him and he would give her a home and a family and they would live happily ever after and...
‘I’m going back,’ she announced, walking across the roof. She heard the scratching of his boots following her and wished he would leave her be.
‘Wait, I shall help you down. That is quite a drop. Careful.’ He shifted past her on to the statue and leapt nimbly down on to the sand.
‘I don’t need your help.’
‘Nonsense. Here, give me your hand.’
If she had not been so upset, she probably would have complied, but she didn’t want him touching her so she began descending as she always did—she jumped. Unfortunately, he reached up to take her arm and her agile leap became a stumble, her bare feet sliding on the sandy surface, and she fell headlong on to him, flattening him on to the sand, her chin hitting his ribs and his chin cracking her forehead.
‘Damnation!’
‘Yina’al abuk!’ Her own curse was muffled as she struggled to untangle herself, but the skirts of her cotton robe were snagged under his leg and all she could manage was to raise herself on to one elbow, her hair falling in a tangle over her face. She shoved it away and glared at him and the annoyance and surprise on his face transformed into a grin.
‘I told you you would fall off one day. Did it have to be on to me?’
‘I would not have fallen if you hadn’t got in my way so it is only proper that you cushioned my fall. Now move your leg so I can...’
She gave her skirt a tug, shifting a little on to her side and nudging his leg aside with her knee. She heard his breath drag in and stopped, glancing up in concern.
‘Are you hurt? Edge? Oh, no, did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to. Where are you hurt?’ She planted her hand by his side, raising herself as best she could to see where he might be wounded, but his arms were still around her and they tightened.
‘Stop moving,’ he growled in a voice utterly unlike any she had heard him use so she froze, worried and unsure.
This was her fault. In her stubbornness and pique she’d ignored his gentlemanly gesture and now he might be seriously injured. Perhaps she had even broken his back. She had seen what happened to a worker who fell from a cliff and broke his back—he’d died in agony a day later. She hardly dared breath, staring at the handsome face beneath her, all her energy focused on willing him to be unhurt.
His eyes narrowed into slits of water green, his lips a little parted. His breath was warm and swift against her neck and she wanted to sink against him and feel her chest pressed to his once more. Underneath her shock her body was avidly mapping the feel of his legs clamped tightly about hers, the muscular force of his thigh pressed against an area between her legs she’d never even thought as a source of pleasure...
‘What are you wearing under that kamisa?’ His question was so unconnected she was certain she misheard. As her mind arranged the words into order, she wondered if perhaps his head had sustained the injury. Certainly he looked strange—his high cheekbones were hot with colour, his nostrils finely drawn.
‘What?’
‘You’re not wearing anything under it.’ This time he spoke through his teeth.
‘Of course not, it is hot and I...’
He closed his eyes and growled again.
‘Definitely grown up,’ he muttered. ‘Get off me.’
‘But where are you hurt?’
‘I am not hurt. Get off me.’
‘I’m trying. You must move your leg for me to...’ She reached between his legs to grasp as much of her skirt as possible and gave it a tug.
This time he groaned, his arms tightening even further, and her supporting arm buckled. She managed to turn her head in time not to slam her chin into his chest once again, but this was worse. Her mouth was just an inch from his neck, she could smell his warmth, a musky scent that made her think of an oasis, green and lush, cool water pouring from a spring. She wanted to taste his skin the way a woman dying of thirst might want to fling herself into that cool water.
Her fantasy shattered as he heaved, rolling her off him, but his leg was still caught in the skirt of her robe and it remained between her legs, a hard, warm, welcome presence. She clung to his shirt as if she was being dangled over an abyss. He was again a dark shape over her, just his narrowed eyes touched with shards of light.
‘I always knew you were trouble.’ The words barely made their way out between his gritted teeth. ‘I just didn’t know how m...’
The word was stifled as she raised herself on her elbow and pressed her mouth to his. She hadn’t meant to do it, it just happened.
It wasn’t what she expected. His mouth was smooth and warm like a polished marble statue out in the sun. But it was pliant, it pulsed with life, and she couldn’t help shifting her lips against it, tucking her lower lip into the parting, drawn by the warmth of his breath until she reached the moist inner curve.
It felt so...perfect.
She could stay just like that while dynasties rose and fell, her lips defined by the contours of his, his breath replacing hers. She sighed and without thinking her tongue came to explore the parting of his, sending a shock of tingling heat through her body and utterly destroying the lethargic beauty of the moment.
The whole embrace could not have lasted more than several breaths but it felt like an eternity, until with a sharp tug he all but ripped her skirt from about his leg, shoved himself to his feet and was striding swiftly down the path.
Sam stood on the veranda that connected Bab el-Nur’s breakfast room to the gardens. The scent of honeysuckle and the first wisps of orange blossom were wrapped around her by the evening breeze that came down from the hills. Beneath it she could smell the Nile, murky and mysterious; could almost feel the dark rush of its waters just a few dozen yards away, night prowlers moving among the reeds.
She shivered and not because of the breeze or the crocodiles.
She had not seen Edge for two years and then she hadn’t even liked him—he’d been a thorn in her side ever since she was a child, even if he’d saved her from coming to grief far too many times.
She didn’t understand how it had all changed. How had Edge shifted in her map of constellations from a large but annoying star to the very centre, a sun warming and tugging all towards it? This rearrangement made no sense at all. Surely the stars would realign?
She wished more than ever that Lucas and Chase were there. She needed them to tell her it would go away. That this was merely an infatuation like the time Chase became all silly over Signora Bertolli when he was sixteen and wrote her poems and rowed his gondola past her palazzo in the middle of the night until her husband lost patience and threw a statue out the window, sinking the gondola and almost starting a feud between the Bertollis and the Montillios. The dousing cured Chase and a month later he was already enjoying the favours of a far more dashing and very scandalous widow.
That was what she would do. In a matter of weeks Huxley would be escorting her and her mother back to Venice where she would be introduced to society and meet all the charming Venetian men she’d heard gossip about. She might even meet Lord Byron and make him fall hopelessly in love with her since he seemed to be completely undiscriminating as he went from one Venetian lady to another as if they were sugar-coated castagnoles. That would certainly show Edge she was not a silly child.
Her defiance flared and faded. She had so looked forward to coming to Egypt for these months. To celebrate becoming a woman here, where she was most herself. Where she was Sam, not Lady Samantha Sinclair.
Now it was ruined.
Because of him.
He must have sensed her malevolent stare because he turned. They had ignored each other all evening, but instead of turning away as he had each time their eyes happened to meet, he squared his shoulders and came outside.
Her heart made a fool of her again, squashing itself down to the size of a pebble and then bursting in a spray of hot honey. She turned away to stare at the wisteria vines Poppy Carmichael tended with such love. When they flowered fully it was one of the loveliest sights imaginable, but she did not want to be here to see it. She never wanted to come to Qetara again.
Because of him.
He looked at her across the mosaic-covered table, his hand spread over the small tiles. He had large but fine-boned hands and now she knew what they felt like on her. It was a strange thought and it made her shiver.
‘I wanted to apologise,’ she said, keeping her gaze on the floor. ‘I didn’t mean to...by the statues...that was wrong.’
‘Yes.’ The single word was sharp and she flinched. Before she could continue he spoke again, the words rushed and harsh. ‘It was my fault, too. Everyone takes you for granted and treats you like you are a child who can do as you will and I did the same... I mean, Dora is nineteen, but it never occurred to me... I should have known better than to even be alone with you. That was my mistake, but I never imagined...’
He ran around, looking thoroughly miserable, and she stood rooted, ashamed to the depth of her soul, hating him and hating herself even more. She could think of nothing to say, either to fight back or regain her dignity. She had never been so humiliated in her life and he was not even trying to humiliate her.
‘I don’t mean to upset you,’ he said, his voice almost pleading and in such contrast with his usual matter-of-fact approach a small part of her released enough tension to feel a little sorry for him as well. ‘I only want you to understand, for your own sake, that it is time you grow up.’
What is the point? she thought, holding back from giving the table leg a kick. It was too late.
‘I don’t want to grow up. I know I will have no choice, but I don’t want to. Bad things happen when you do, like Lucas and Chase and you going to war or even worse things like my father being a fool and getting himself killed and my mother still mourning him and...’
And you marrying. You should not.
‘What is so wonderful about growing up?’ she demanded as he remained silent. He looked older. Not serious Edge poring over his books and artefacts, but the man she had felt against her.
‘It is not meant to be wonderful. It just is. There are things in life you do because you have no choice and you make the best of them. That is growing up.’
She covered her face with her hands, blocking it out, blocking him out.
‘Then I want none of it. I am sorry I offended you, but that does not give you the right to lecture me.’
‘You did not...never mind. Whether you want it or not, it has already happened. Your family and upbringing may not be typical among our class, but you are a Sinclair and very wealthy and that means you will be courted by some and regarded with suspicion by others. People will expect the worst of you because they do not know you as we do and if you behave as you did today...’ His voice dropped as he spoke, from smoke to gravel. ‘Whatever you think, I do not wish you to be hurt.’
She turned away. At least it was dark so he could not see the ruin she was becoming under his words.
He took a step nearer and stopped.
‘I don’t wish to hurt you, truly. I only want you to understand...oh, hell.’ He took another step and stopped again. Then he reached out, tracing a line by her brow.
‘You are bruised here. Is that my fault?’ He sounded so bruised himself she tried to force herself to smile.
‘No, I think we already established it was all my fault. It doesn’t hurt. At least it didn’t until you touched it.’
His hand dropped into a fist by his side and she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Perhaps if she’d learned that valuable skill long ago she might have...what? Stolen Edge from the woman he loved?
‘I am sorry, Sa—Lady Samantha.’
Lady Samantha. She moved past him.
‘Goodbye, Lord Edward.’
‘Wait.’ He grasped her arm. ‘Please don’t be angry with me.’
‘What does it matter if I am angry? You have been crystal clear as always, Lord Edward. If it makes you feel any better, your arrows have sunk home. They are deep in my posterior.’
His laugh was a little strangled.
‘Blast you, Sam.’
‘That is at least your third curse today in my presence, Lord Edward Edgerton. You should keep your distance from me henceforth, I am clearly a bad influence.’
He grasped her other arm and for a moment they stood there. Inside she could hear Poppy on the pianoforte and her mother singing. Familiar and horrible. Nothing would ever be the same.
‘Yes,’ Edge said at last. ‘Yes, you are. I am leaving for Cairo at dawn tomorrow. I shan’t see you again. I wish you happy, Sam. Will you wish me the same?’
‘Always.’ That was the truth, whatever the pain.
‘God in heaven, how...’ He actively strangled the words, his fingers pressing into the flesh of her upper arms. There was such confusion in his voice she sank her fingers into his immaculate coat, crushing the lapels as if she could knead the very fabric of time and space and force it to her will. She rose on tiptoes and touched her lips to his cheek. He had not shaved and the stubble caught on her lips and this sign of imperfection filled her with such need she gave a little cry, a puff of a wail against his flesh. He turned his head, just catching it briefly with his mouth, his lips covering hers, drawing her breath from her.
His mouth fit perfectly, she thought. Two pieces of a warm, tingling puzzle. It was so right...
And then she was free again.
She forced herself to speak the dreaded words, proper at last. ‘My congratulations on your upcoming nuptials. Godspeed.’
This time he didn’t answer as she left the veranda and made her way back to her room. In the morning he was gone as he had said.
But then Edge had always been a man of his word.
Chapter One (#uc4a8a20f-7883-5076-a4cb-251fb91cb4ea)
‘No one passes through the Valley of the Moon and emerges unscathed.’
—Lost in the Valley of the Moon, Desert Boy Book Three
Qetara, Egypt—eight years later
Sam stopped at the rim of the Howling Cliffs above Qetara. Below lay the ragged rock-strewn valley and beyond was the gleam of the Nile, a grey-brown ribbon nestled between green swathes of reeds. The sun was hanging low and already tinting the hills beyond the Nile in orange and mauve and touching the white building of Bab el-Nur with pink. She could just make out the edge of the garden where the trees shielded her mother’s grave.
Could it possibly be three years since her mother’s death sent her back to Sinclair Hall in England? The last three months here in Egypt felt more substantial than those three years. More substantial even than the long years that had passed since she married Ricki. As if she’d not truly been awake from the moment she returned to Venice and set out on a quest to mend her tattered heart and pride by finding herself a home.
Not that she knew what a home was. Living on sufferance with her mother’s family in Venice or even as a valued and loved guest at Bab el-Nur with the Carmichaels did not constitute a home. Perhaps those two years in Burford in England when she’d been barely six—she remembered a vague feeling of being safe. Sometimes she wondered if she’d chosen Ricki from all her suitors because she’d discovered his father had a property near Burford, as if that created some magical link between him and her last memories of carefree happiness. They’d both expected the other to be something they weren’t—no wonder they’d both been disappointed.
If only they had been older they might have weathered that disappointment and perhaps even built something on its ashes. And then poor little Maria might still be alive. She would be almost ten years old now had she not drowned. Sam rubbed her face wearily, trying to chase away the dank taste of the canal water. Thoughts of Maria always brought back pain.
She scuffed at the pebbles with the tip of her boot, kicking a few over the ledge and hearing them snap against the stone as they bounced into the valley below.
Egypt wasn’t her home, but she loved it here. Thank goodness Chase and Lucas had all but forced her to return. It had woken her and the thought of slipping back into the half-existence she’d fallen into since her marriage to Ricki was unacceptable. She’d made a terrible mistake marrying him, but she was older and wiser now. Poppy and Janet knew many people in London with ties to Egypt. It was not in the realm of the fantastical that among them she might find someone who would wish to wed her and yet be a good, kind man and father. Someone who would watch the world transform from one magic to another with her. Perhaps even agree to howl with her.
How many times had she and Lucas and Chase and Edge scrambled up these cliffs as children, imitating the night yowling of the jackals? Well, not that Edge howled with them, he had always been too aloof for that, but he’d come none the less. Then they would watch the hills across the Nile turn from ochre to orange to purple and then fade into the indigo of night.
She tilted her head, baring her throat to the rising breeze, and breathed deeply, trying to chase away the murky taste of the canal waters of Venice that always followed thoughts of Ricki.
She chased away all those ghosts, even her own. She was no longer Lady Carruthers. Not even Lady Samantha Sinclair. Only Sam.
I am Sam.
She raised her arms to the world, tipped back her head and told the world that truth at the top of her lungs.
‘I am Sam!’
Edge was viciously thirsty. His heart was beating and his legs burned from the climb, but none of the many physical discomforts concerned him as much at the moment as what he would see when he crested the sandstone cliff.
If he was wrong, if he’d made a single mistake on the crisscrossing camel and goat paths from Zarqa, there would be nothing but more desert—an endless, taunting ochre grin. Even the faint but distinct scent of the Nile could be nothing more than a sarab, a desert illusion like the shimmering trees and water that danced on the horizons until they were sucked under as he approached.
If he was wrong, he might end up like the jackal’s carcass he’d passed hours ago. He should have taken into consideration that eight-year-old memories of terrain were not necessarily reliable. He was older, slower, less alert. But the path had looked so very familiar...
He stumbled a little as he crested the cliff, pebbles skittering under his feet. He stopped, narrowing his burning eyes against the glints that splintered along the broad green scar of the Nile. But it wasn’t the Nile that held his gaze. Or the sprawling city of Qetara on the far side of the bank. It was the green gardens of Bab el-Nur tucked below the cliffs.
Home.
The word shivered in the air like a sarab threatening to disappear. Home. Not any more and not for many years since he’d tried and failed to build his own. They said third time lucky, but he didn’t believe in sayings. Or in anything much any more.
He closed his eyes and heard nothing but air moving up the cliff below him, a distinctive hollow presaging the rise of the afternoon winds. He’d once loved this time of day when the sun finally showed signs of exhaustion from its brutal assault and the desert began changing, all kinds of new forces entering its stark stage. New colours, new animals, new sounds.
It had been so long since he’d just...listened. Absorbed. It had been so long since he’d felt like listening. Since he’d felt anything much at all.
He didn’t know if this was a good sign. He liked not feeling.
At least he’d finally made it. More or less in one piece.
A very tired, aching piece.
Edge glanced up at the keening of a bird swooping in and out of tiny indentations on the cliff face and winced as the glare of the sun made his head pound. He’d finished the last of his water some hours ago, a miscalculation on his part. The hiss of the wind cooled the perspiration on his forehead and nape and he smiled at how good it felt now that he no longer feared for his life. His smile itself felt like a crack in the cliff face, sharp and threatening, but he allowed it to linger.
The sound struck him as harshly as if he had fallen off the cliff and hit the ground.
‘Aimsa!’
It carried out over the valley and for a mad second he was willing to consider he had been wrong about his disbelief in all matters supernatural. But somehow he doubted an ancient Egyptian spirit would be yelling at the tops of its lungs. He hurried as best he could on his stiff legs along the cliff and stopped.
The image was worthy of any of the locals’ tales: carved into a sky ignited into a blaze of orange and mauve by the setting sun was a figure cloaked in a pale billowing gown that snapped and surged under the evening wind as if being pulled towards the lip of the crater by desert furies. Then the figure raised its arms and the wind seemed to carry it upwards, as if preparing to hurl it over the cliff like a leaf.
Edge didn’t stop to think, just vaulted over the boulders and ran towards it, his mind already anticipating the image of this woman casting herself off the cliff.
‘Don’t!’ he called in Arabic. ‘Laa! Tawaqfi!’
The figure whirled, one hand outflung as if to hold him back.
They stood facing each other in mutual shock.
His breathing was harsh from the fear of what he had expected to witness and the need to stop it. But his mind was already rushing ahead with a series of realisations—that the woman who had just keened like a vengeful houri at the top of her lungs into the desert air was neither a local nor a hallucination of his, but something far worse.
Egypt had taught him to always expect the unexpected. Especially when it came to Sam Sinclair.
She was dressed in local dress, and local male dress at that, a cream-coloured gibbeh tied with a red cotton sash around her waist over a simple muslin gown. She was still staring at him, her blue-grey eyes wide and far away, but then the pupils dilated as recognition settled in and with it wariness. For a moment he wondered whether he was mistaken. After all, almost a decade had passed and this was no child. She looked very much like Sam and yet she did not.
Well, she wasn’t Sam any more. She was Lady Carruthers, wasn’t she?
‘I thought you were about to jump,’ he said, his breath still short and her eyes focused even further as she glanced from him to the cliff.
‘Why on earth did you think that?’
‘Perhaps because you were standing on a cliff, screaming?’
‘I did not scream, I howled. These are, after all, the Howling Cliffs. I didn’t expect anyone to be listening. I came here to be private.’
Anger was proving to be a wonderful antidote to fear and shock.
‘I am so dreadfully sorry to have intruded, Lady Carruthers.’
His sarcasm kicked up the corners of her mouth, but they fell almost immediately.
‘And I am sorry I frightened you, Lord Edward. I thought it safe to do so since no one dares come here. These cliffs are haunted, you know.’
‘I do now.’
The smile threatened again, but again failed to materialise. Perhaps this really wasn’t Sam at all. Or perhaps marriage had finally succeeded in taming her where all else failed. If so, it was nothing short of a miracle.
‘Not by madwomen,’ she corrected. ‘But by the protectors of Hatshepsut. Poppy was telling us they think that is probably her temple down there.’
She pointed to the structure at the foot of the cliffs. It and the flanking sphinxes were now completely uncovered as was a broad gravel pathway leading towards a jetty. It looked very small and inconsequential from where they stood, nothing like the sand-covered temple where he’d sat with this woman eight years ago...
A lifetime ago.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. It felt raw and rough with sand.
‘You are staying with Poppy?’
‘Of course. Why else would I be in Qetara?’
Why indeed. His wits had clearly gone begging. Her gaze moved over him again and for the first time he realised how he must look. Filthy, for one. He hadn’t shaved in days, or was it a week now?
‘Where did you come from?’ She looked around, frowning. ‘I would have seen you if you came up from Bab el-Nur.’
‘I haven’t been there yet. I came from Zarqa.’
Her eyes widened, managing to look both surprised and suspicious.
‘You’d best fetch your donkey or camel and come down. It will be dark soon.’
‘I don’t have a mount. I walked.’
Surprise turned to shock and then to outrage. He’d forgotten how expressive her face was.
‘You walked from Zarqa. On foot. On your own.’
‘Yes, on all counts. Is that an offence?’
‘Only against good sense! And what on earth were you doing up here? The desert path leads directly through the valley to the Nile, not to the Howling Cliffs. Were you lost?’
‘I wanted to see the view first.’
Her lips closed firmly on whatever was straining to be said. Then she gave her skirts a slight shake, as if dislodging something distasteful.
‘Well, it’s your hide if you wish to risk it. But I suggest you abandon this romantic conceit and make your way down before dark or you’ll find yourself at the bottom of the cliff more rapidly and painfully than you would like.’
She set off down the path and he followed. The reversal of scolding roles was as peculiar as everything else about his return to Egypt. She was right, though. He’d been tempting the fates walking from Zarqa in the first place and going along the cliff path in his present state was...
Romantic conceit. No one had ever accused him of being romantic. Conceited, yes. Romantic—he’d only been romantic once in his life and that had cost him dearly. He sighed. The path which he’d climbed and descended hundreds of times in his youth felt endless and his legs were a mixture of wool and fire when they finally reached the gate in the high whitewashed walls.
‘It has changed a little since you were here last,’ Sam said as she secured the gate behind them and he forced himself to look up.
She was right. Bab el-Nur used to be a sprawling but modest whitewashed structure surrounded by neat gardens, but Poppy had constructed a second storey and the gardens were a lush jungle of trees and flowering bushes surrounded by high mudbrick walls.
‘Good God, he’s constructed a fortress!’ he exclaimed as the house came fully into view.
She laughed over her shoulder, her face transforming, and for the first time the cool woman from the cliff and the girl in his memory connected.
‘It is even more amazing inside and Janet has made a marvel out of the gardens. I have been sketching...’ She paused and shrugged and it was like watching a flower furl its leaves as night fell, a physical and spiritual diminishment.
They continued through the garden, scents and memories engulfing him. It was already dark and the palm trees were weaving above them in their evening dance. The packed earth of the path gave way to the stone floor of the veranda and suddenly there was a flurry of movement.
‘Good heavens, Sam, who is...?’
Edge looked up and his uncle’s question melted away.
‘Edge. Dear Lord. My boy!’
Poppy wasn’t quite as tall as he, but he was a burly man and his embrace was powerful, his arms catching Edge in a vice, his bushy grey hair surprisingly soft against his cheek. For a moment Edge just stood there in shock. It had been so long since he’d seen this man, though he’d been closer than a father to him. How had he allowed so much time to pass?
‘Edge...’ The one word was a cracked whimper, then he was suddenly thrust away, his shoulders grabbed in Poppy’s considerable paws. ‘What have you done to yourself, boy? You look disgraceful! And why did you not tell me you were in Egypt? Janet! Edge is here!’
The last words were a bellow worthy of a call to prayer from the minarets and their effect was immediate. A plump figure hurtled into the room followed by others and Edge found himself being handed around like a parcel, embraced, scolded, questioned. He tried to keep his feet steady as he greeted everyone, but the room was beginning to move around him and suddenly a pair of blue-grey eyes were in front of him and he felt his hands clasped in a cool, strong grip.
‘When did you last eat, Edge?’
Eat?
‘This morning.’
His answer set off another bustle of activity, but at least it was away from him. Within moments a glass of tea infused with mint was shoved into his hand. It was so sweet it made him wince, but he drank and when they brought him food he ate and when they led him off to be bathed he went meekly.
It was very strange, being home.
‘The poor fellow is still asleep,’ Poppy announced as he entered the breakfast parlour and sat beside Janet.
‘I know,’ Janet said as she handed him a small porcelain cup of bitter coffee. ‘I couldn’t resist and peeked. He looks better now he’s washed and shaved, but he’s too thin, Poppy. You could cut stone with his cheekbones. I’ve told Ayisha to prepare the lamb stew he loved as a boy.’
‘Don’t fuss, Janet. You know he hates it.’
‘I never fuss.’
Sam smiled to herself at how Edge’s appearance had transformed her hosts. She’d forgotten how deeply they loved Edge. Janet was lit from within, her movements sharper but more abstracted, and after his heartbreaking show of love when he’d embraced Edge, Poppy now appeared taller, more resolute.
‘He isn’t ill?’ Sam tried not to sound worried. He’d looked so haggard yesterday she’d lain awake a long time, waiting for the sounds of a household bustling around a sickroom. She knew desert fevers could be deadly.
‘No, child, merely exhausted. Nothing food and sleep won’t remedy.’ Poppy’s words were a little too hearty and Sam knew that, though Edge might not be ill, Poppy was worried.
‘Did you know he was in Egypt?’
‘No. We received a letter from him only a couple of months ago from Brazil, but it must have been sent long before.’
‘Good morning.’
Janet wavered. Clearly she wanted to rush to Edge, but perhaps it was the sight of a very different but far more familiar Edge that stopped her. Daoud had done more than shave him, he’d trimmed his hair and found a set of clothes left by Lucas or Chase.
In the flowing gown and the long cotton strip worn like the natives to protect the head and face from the sand and sun Sam had hardly recognised him. Now she was thrown back eight years to the last time she’d seen Edge—in this very room, she realised. He’d stood just as straight and withdrawn and watchful. And yet this was a different man. He’d lived a whole lifetime in those eight years, as had she.
‘Good morning, Edge. Would you care for tea?’ she asked. His gaze moved to her and then settled on the tea pot by her hand.
‘Yes, thank you, Lady Carruthers.’
Oh, for heaven’s sake, Edge.
The words almost spurted out of her, but she held them back and held out the cup.
‘Your tea, Lord Edward.’
‘You are very kind, Lady Carruthers.’ Something almost like amusement flickered in his eyes, but then Poppy’s patience ran out.
‘Now, boy, tell us when you arrived, why you didn’t inform us of your arrival, and what on earth—’
‘Let him eat first, Poppy,’ Janet interrupted and Edge sat by her.
‘It is all right, Aunt. I cannot stay long so you may as well hear everything now. Rafe has disappeared.’
‘Rafe? What is that fellow up to now? I’d expected he would be settling in as the new Duke of Greybourne.’
‘Unfortunately not. I received a communication from the embassy in Istanbul that Rafe was killed alongside the Khedive’s son Ismail in Nubia. The Greybourne lawyers instigated an inquiry, but that could take months so I came myself.’
‘He...he is dead?’ Janet faltered and Edge smiled, reaching out to take her hand. The transformation was so extreme Sam felt herself tense as if she’d just noticed a crocodile moving in the reeds.
‘No, I don’t believe so, Aunt. In fact, I have reason to believe that letter was sent by Rafe himself. I need to find out why.’
‘But you cannot go there,’ Janet said, horrified. ‘That whole area is in upheaval. You could be killed!’
‘I am glad I didn’t stop here on the way, then, Aunt Janet. I wouldn’t wish for you to worry.’
‘You already went?’
‘Yes. There are still skirmishes, but Defterdar Bey has the area well under his brutal thumb. I don’t know quite what Rafe is about, but I do know he did not take part in those battles.’
‘How do you know? He is a mercenary, is he not?’
‘He is, but for several years now he has chosen to involve himself in financial rather than political concerns. More to the point, Ismail was killed in November of last year and I spoke with a...an acquaintance of Rafe’s who met him and his valet Birdie in Alexandria only last month before he headed south. I followed his trail and there were enough people who recognised my description. They call him Nadab.’
‘Scar,’ Poppy translated, frowning.
‘Yes. I never imagined I would be grateful for Rafe’s accident. In Syene he was joined by a young man and they hired a guide and camels to take them north through the western deserts. I was several days behind so I decided to try to cut around them by way of the river.’
Sam watched Edge as he spoke. She’d forgotten how blank his face could be. People showed more emotion speaking of the weather. But she knew better—she could see tiny signs, in the dip of his long eyelashes that shielded deep grey-green eyes, the flicker of tension in the lines cut on either side of his mouth.
Janet sighed. ‘I know he swore not to take a penny of Greybourne money as long as your father lived, but why must he continue in this stubbornness now he is Duke?’
‘I don’t know,’ Edge admitted. ‘Six months ago he told me he intended to return to England and tried to convince me to go with him.’
‘Were you planning to return?’ Poppy asked and Edge’s smile turned wry.
‘No. But that is beside the point. What matters now is that I hope I have gained some ground on them by coming by way of the river, perhaps even enough to outflank them if I come through the oases. Which made me think of al-Walid. No one could cross his territory without him knowing, correct? If you could give me some testimonial, I will proceed there and if I find nothing I will continue to Cairo. I paid dragomen there and in Alexandria to keep an eye out for him so hopefully at some point my luck will turn.’
‘You appear to have had more than your share of luck already, my boy. Walking from Zarqa! What next?’
‘It seemed the most reasonable option.’
‘Reasonable! One more day and you wouldn’t even have found us here. We were to leave for Cairo tomorrow and then back to England.’
‘Then I am glad you are here, but I am certain Daoud or Youssef could have helped me. All I need is a camel or a good sturdy horse and some form of message for—’
‘We will come with you, Edge,’ Janet interrupted softly. ‘We can continue as well from Bahariya as from here and in truth it has been far too long since we visited al-Walid.’ She held up her hand as Edge tried to protest. ‘You might be younger and stronger, Edge, but Poppy and I are more practised at desert travel. Good, now that is settled I shall have a word with Ayisha and Daoud about provisions, and of course we must bring gifts. I know just the thing. Come along, Poppy dear.’
She wandered out as she spoke, patting Edge on the head as she passed, as if he was still the young boy they took in almost thirty years ago rather than a man of thirty-four who was taller than she even when seated.
‘Uncle...’
‘Admit defeat, my boy. You know our Janet.’
The room fell very silent as Poppy closed the door. Sam poured more mint tea into her cup and after a moment’s hesitation refilled his cup as well. He watched, his mouth tense. She knew that expression, having been so often the recipient of it. He was annoyed.
‘Can’t you convince her this is unnecessary, Lady Carruthers?’ he said. ‘You used to wrap her around your little finger. Tell her you prefer to travel by dahabiya.’
Sam’s little finger tingled, but so did her temper. It was a peculiar feeling; she hadn’t been angry in quite a while.
‘Tell her,’ she repeated and his eyes narrowed.
‘It was a suggestion, not a command. For your own benefit and comfort.’
‘No, for your benefit and comfort. As usual.’
‘As usual?’ There was a dangerous lowering of his tone and the peculiar feeling quickened—anger tasted warm, thick. She’d forgotten that.
‘Yes. Ten years ago you convinced Poppy not to allow me to join the expedition to Bahariya.’ She felt rather foolish raising this old grievance now and rather surprised by how sharp it still was.
‘Precisely, ten years ago. I was perfectly justified in objecting to taking a child into the middle of the desert. Your brothers and I very nearly didn’t make it back.’
‘From what I heard Poppy tell Janet you and Lucas and Chase would not have been in danger either if you had not strayed from the town on your own. Since I would have remained, sensibly, with Poppy and Huxley and al-Walid, I would have been safe. Besides, I was sixteen. Hardly a child.’
He bent his glare on his teacup.
‘Would you care for some more tea?’ she asked and had the satisfaction of making him snap,
‘No. Thank you.’
‘You are welcome.’ She braced herself as they moved from annoyed to angry. Good.
‘Perhaps you weren’t a child, but you acted like one. Within a week of our return you had me thrown in gaol and then Poppy and Huxley were almost chased out of Qetara when you kidnapped Sheikh Khalidi’s cats.’
‘Oh! That is unfair! You were thrown into gaol because Khalidi’s daughter was fool enough to fancy herself in love with you and came to Bab el-Nur to beg you to stay in Egypt. I certainly didn’t ask you to try to break Abu-Abas’s nose when Khalidi sent him to return Fatima home.’
‘What the devil was I to do when you threw yourself between him and Fatima like a demented Don Quixote?’
He had a point so she moved swiftly to more defensible ground.
‘Besides, if I hadn’t tried, and failed, to kidnap Khalidi’s adored cats you probably would have remained in that horrid gaol far longer.’
‘He planned to release me anyway—he was merely making the point that not even foreigners could assault his men with impunity. Simply because your actions did not end in disaster does not mean they were justified. It was reckless and foolish and you could have been seriously hurt. You always had more luck than sense.’
She’d forgotten fury. She’d forgotten wanting to launch herself at someone as she had at Abu-Abas when he ordered the soldiers to take Edge away. But she was no longer a child and she would not gratify his insults by confirming them.
‘And you always had more sense than heart, Edge. I promise you, next time you are tossed in gaol I shan’t lift a finger. I shall reserve my loyalty for people who appreciate it.’
He turned away, but she saw the flush that showed darker under his sun-browned skin.
‘I don’t know why I am arguing with you,’ he grumbled. ‘I don’t argue with anyone but you and as usual it’s a waste of time. Come to Bahariya if you wish.’
‘How magnanimous.’
‘Don’t be snide. You’ve won, Lady Carruthers.’
It didn’t feel like a victory. She felt as weary as he looked.
‘It is not a contest, Edge. And please stop calling me Lady Carruthers like that. If you object so much to my presence, I will travel with Ayisha and the luggage on the dahabiya while you go with Poppy and Janet.’
He didn’t answer. All she could see was his profile, an outline that was etched in her mind with the familiarity of a childhood landscape—the kind you woke up to every day and hardly noticed until you went away. Without thinking she leaned across the table, hand extended.
‘They probably want you to themselves anyway, Edge. They’ve missed you terribly.’
His hands curled around his cup and his long eyelashes lowered further. She started to rise, but he reached out and caught her hand on the table.
‘Wait. You might as well come. They won’t be calm thinking of you on the dahabiya without them. I apologise. It is only that... I am worried about Rafe.’
She tried to concentrate on his words, not on her hand which felt like a large and dangerous animal had rolled over in its sleep and pinned it to the table.
‘You said he is a mercenary. Surely he is able to care for himself?’
‘He is, but I don’t understand why he came here in the first place. He always told me he would never come to Egypt.’
‘Oh. Why?’ She sat down again, careful not to dislodge his hand.
‘Why?’
‘Why not Egypt? One would think he would be curious, knowing how much you loved it.’
His eyes finally fixed fully on hers—with the sun filtering in through the shutters behind him they now looked a deep forest-green. She could almost see shadows moving between the trees.
‘Rafe and I assumed most of our childhoods that we were each the one being punished—me by being sent away, he by remaining. Life is rarely what one thinks. In any case he came to hate the idea of Egypt so whatever brought him here must be serious. If he is in trouble, I must find him.’
His hand was still on hers, warm and large and rough against her skin. The gesture and the admission were both so unlike Edge she did not know what to do. She thought of her brothers—she would cross deserts for them and not think twice.
‘I’m glad you care for him so much, Edge.’
He took his hand away and went to the door.
‘I owe him a great deal. More than I can repay. I must speak with Poppy now.’
Chapter Two (#uc4a8a20f-7883-5076-a4cb-251fb91cb4ea)
Jephteh pointed to the darkness below the cliff, his fingers biting into Gabriel’s shoulder. ‘Mortals are prodigiously foolish, boy. You will die the moment you strike those rocks, yet you waste your precious last moments wondering what lies in those shadows.’
—Captives of the Hidden City, Desert Boy Book Four
Bahariya wasn’t quite what Sam had expected. Once they’d passed the rippling tan and gold sand dunes, what met her gaze was not an encampment of tents, but a sprawling town of mudbrick structures tucked between date groves.
At least they were finally there, she thought with relief, because every last inch of her ached and she had to consciously stop herself from licking her lips because they dried so quickly in the desert breeze it felt like they might crack open like overripe fruit.
Her body felt like it had taken a beating but her pride was faring the worst.
Edge must be almost as out of practice at riding a camel as she, but he sat as gracefully on the dusty cloth saddle as Daoud and Youssef while she felt her joints might need re-attaching.
She tried to rub her leg without being obvious and Edge glanced at her briefly, but as usual she could not tell what he was thinking, or if he was thinking at all. It was like riding beside a living statue. She wished she could draw him just as he was—with the protective cotton scarf and his skin darkened by the sun he looked like he belonged here.
At least until he looked at you with those deep-water eyes. They’d always reminded her of moonlight reflecting off a lake, leaving you wondering if it was merely inches deep and full of nothing more than muck and algae or a crevasse stretching miles into the earth and filled with fantastical creatures like the Lake of Sorrow in the third Desert Boy book.
She wondered if Edge had ever come across the Desert Boy books, or if Poppy and Janet ever told him she was the illustrator of the novels that had become one the most successful novels in England. It was part of this silly descent into childish impulses since his arrival that she wanted him to know. He would probably not be impressed and he definitely wouldn’t understand how important the Desert Boy books were for her. She hardly dared admit it to herself. Other than Lucas and Chase, who were already fading away from her into their marriages, the books were the one firm anchor in her life. Which was ludicrous considering she didn’t even know who wrote them.
A trickle of perspiration ran down her cheek and she brushed at it, grateful for the faint coolness it brought with it. Out here in the emptiness of the desert everything felt insubstantial. Perhaps she could just keep on riding, aching joints and all, and never have to make a decision about her future.
‘Almost there.’ Edge guided his camel closer to hers and she scowled at his commiserating smile.
‘That sounds suspiciously like “I told you so, Sam”.’
‘I never strike an opponent when they’re down. You look like one nudge would topple you from that poor camel.’
‘Trust you to pity the camel, Edge.’
His smile widened, but his attention was drawn away by the crowd gathering as they entered the town. They were mostly women and children in plain cotton robes, eyes wide with curiosity. They stopped near a well between the buildings and Sam gathered her resolution to dismount, but before she could move Edge was beside her, holding out his hand.
‘It’s been years since you’ve ridden a camel let alone for so many hours, Sam. You’ll need help.’
He’d unwound his headscarf and his face and hair were dust-streaked, his temples and cheeks marked by dark rivulets of perspiration. She could only imagine what she looked like, she thought with a rush of embarrassment. But even unkempt and dusty he looked unfairly handsome. No, even more handsome than usual. He looked raw and unvarnished, like a statue before it was sanded into perfection.
‘Well? You can’t stay up there all day. If there is trouble awaiting us, we will need you to scare them off.’
It was an olive branch and she felt foolish at the magnitude of her relief.
‘How do you do that?’ she asked.
‘Do what?’
‘Laugh without laughing.’
The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened.
‘Years of training. It wouldn’t do to encourage you.’
He unhooked her leg from the saddle and swung her down to the ground before she’d even adjusted her balance. She grabbed hold of his arms, steadying herself and thoroughly resenting that he was right—her legs were as stiff as logs and bursts of sparkling pain danced up from the soles of her feet. She managed to snap off her groan by gritting her teeth.
‘That bad?’ he murmured, his arm supporting her, his other hand splayed on her waist as she half-leaned her elbows against him.
‘Someone has put needles in my boots while I wasn’t watching,’ she replied, trying not to think of the hard surface of his chest, the dark, warm smell of his body so close to hers.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have allowed you to come.’
‘You did not allow me, Edge. I’m not a child.’
‘No. You’re not.’ He let her go, turning to follow the others towards a series of large tents pitched beside the date groves. She bit back a curse and steadied herself against the camel instead. He was the only man who could ensure she acted like a child, blast him.
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t fall into her old behaviour around him. Any of her old behaviours. And yet here she was, either prickling like the hedgehog she used to call him or being aware of every nuance of his expressions.
She wasn’t a child any longer and her foolish infatuation was a thing of the past. She was now an experienced widow and could appreciate what a fine specimen of manhood he presented without making a fool of herself. And that was that, she assured herself as she hobbled after him to join Poppy and Janet.
They were escorted to a large tent set in the shade of palm trees and greeted with effusive warmth by the white-haired Sheikh and his wife Aziza. Sam’s Arabic had improved since she’d returned, but there were still times when her weary mind stopped making the effort to understand and this was just such a time. She surreptitiously worked away at the needles still tingling along her legs until she noticed everyone had turned to her.
‘So. You are the youngest Sinclair, yes?’ al-Walid said, slapping his knees. ‘You are very like your brothers.’
‘You remember them?’ Sam asked, not certain if this was a compliment.
‘Of course. There was trouble when they came here last. Remember?’ He turned to Edge.
‘Of course. A Bedawi tribe took offence at our exploring Senusret’s ruin. We had a worrisome moment until you and Poppy came to our rescue.
Al-Walid laughed.
‘A worrisome moment! You three were nearly skewered on a spit like lambs over a fire! I forgot you speak like a rock after sitting out in the coldest night. I named you well, Geb.’
‘Geb?’ Sam asked and al-Walid’s laughing eyes turned to her.
‘Geb. God of earth. You do not know the story?’
Sam shook her head, her curiosity sparked as much by Edge’s annoyed frown as by al-Walid’s enthusiasm.
‘Good. Now I have something to share by the fire tonight. But first—Aziza’s honey cakes!’ he announced as women entered the tent bearing trays.
‘You like?’ Aziza’s smile was confident which was hardly as surprising as Sam reached for her third helping of the date-filled cakes. Sam laughed and nodded, licking the sticky residue on her lips.
‘These are dangerous; it is impossible to eat only one!’
‘Truly these are the only reason al-Walid married me.’ Aziza sighed, but her smile belied her words and al-Walid gave a snort of dismissal.
‘It is lucky I had not tasted your cakes before I bargained with your father or I would have dispensed with your dowry completely. Whenever the neighbouring tribes stir the dust, I remind them that to insult me is to forfeit these delights. Our disputes rarely pass the rising of a new moon.’
‘A very interesting negotiation tactic. We never thought to employ anything so sensible during the war.’ Edge smiled at Aziza.
‘That is because you are English,’ al-Walid dismissed. ‘The French would win every battle. You are lucky your stubbornness compensates for your lack of taste. Now tell me why you are here, Geb.’
‘Why do you presume we are here on my business and not Poppy’s?’
‘Because you are simmering like a pot on a campfire and your brow is as dark as a sandstorm on the horizon. Or would you prefer to discuss this in four eyes?’
Edge shook his head.
‘No, I would be grateful for Sayidti Aziza’s thoughts as well. You are right, it is my problems that bring us here. Or rather my brother’s.’
When Edge finished recounting his quest al-Walid beckoned to one of the men beside him and after a few swift words the man departed and with him al-Walid’s solemn mood.
‘By darkness tomorrow we shall know if your brother has come through our desert. Now go rest and tonight we shall hold a feast to celebrate old friends and new.’
‘Good Lord, I shall need a camel to move me,’ Poppy groaned as he rose and helped Janet to her feet from the low cushioned stools beside the campfire outside al-Walid’s tent.
‘You are retiring for the night so soon?’ al-Walid asked.
‘You must excuse our old bones, my friend.’
‘Of course, but the young must at least remain until I fulfil my promise to tell them about Geb and Nuut, yes?’
‘That excuses me, I dare say,’ Edge said, beginning to rise.
‘Sit down, Geb.’ al-Walid waved him back. ‘You are still but halfway on your journey through life.’
Edge grimaced.
‘That is a depressing thought.’
Janet touched his arm as she passed.
‘The second half shall be better, Edge.’
Sam waited for Edge’s expression to reflect his disdain of such a very Janet-like comment, but though he shook his head he smiled at her.
‘From your mouth to Allah’s ear, Aunt.’
Al-Walid leaned back, staring at the darkened sky. Sam eyed the cushions next to her with longing, wishing she was brave enough to stretch out like al-Walid. In her previous life she would not have thought twice about doing just that. Behind them the fabric of the tent flapped as the evening winds pummelled it like a beast trying to escape, but beyond the vain flapping the only sound was the shushing of the wind in the palms.
‘This is a good wind,’ al-Walid said. ‘It will be cool tonight and some dew tomorrow. Shu is hard at work.’
‘Shu?’ Sam asked.
‘The god of air and wind, aanisah.’
‘Do you believe in the old gods, then?’
‘We believe first in Allah and in Mohammed his prophet, but the old gods are part of this land my ancestors came to before our memory began. It is smart to heed them because they gathered much wisdom about the desert. Shu was the father of Nuut, goddess of the sky. Have you heard of her?’
Sam had, but she wanted to hear al-Walid’s tale so she shook her head. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of Edge’s smile, but ignored him. She didn’t care if she was behaving like a child. She felt like one again and it was wonderful.
‘Nuut and Geb were inseparable and one day the greatest god of all, Ra, grew jealous of their closeness so he set Shu to keep the lovers apart—that is why the air stands between the earth and the sky, do you see?’
‘Yes, but how sad!’
‘Awful,’ Edge interposed, his voice as dry as the desert. ‘He was such a successful guardian they only succeeded in siring five children.’
‘It is still sad. Five stolen encounters hardly amount to a happy relationship.’
‘Five children would naturally imply a great many more than five encounters,’ Edge replied. ‘Given the limited likelihood of conception at each encounter that would mean—’ He broke off and Sam couldn’t help laughing.
‘Must you ruin the story with both pedantry and prudishness, Edge? Where is your sense of romance and excitement? Besides, these were gods—perhaps part of their divine properties was to time their encounters perfectly and each encounter was so magical as to...’
‘Yes, very well. Why don’t you allow Sheikh al-Walid to continue?’
Sam smiled at his discomfort and turned back to al-Walid.
‘Did Ra punish them?’
‘No, their children prospered and ruled the earth, but also caused much strife. In the temple of Senusret beyond the valley you can see the images of Geb and Nuut—Geb is composed of earth and trees and Nuut is arced above him, made of the night sky and stars with hair both dark and touched with sunset. Very like you, Najimat al-Layl.’
Sam gasped in surprise. ‘That is what Ayisha our housekeeper calls me; how did you know?’
‘Poppy effendim has spoken much of his household over the years. Your name was well chosen, Night Star—your eyes are like stars and your hair shades of darkness.’
‘It was not meant as a compliment, Sheikh al-Walid,’ Edge interposed. ‘Ayisha named her thus because Sam... Lady Carruthers often wandered at night and set the whole household searching for her.’
‘Thank you for clarifying that, Edge,’ Sam said with a bite and Edge bowed.
‘You are welcome, Sam.’
She turned her shoulder to him.
‘But why do you call Edge Geb, Sheikh al-Walid?’
‘Ah, yes. The name was given him by the tribe that tried to capture him and your brothers at Senusret’s temple. It is told that at the peak of the battle the god Geb appeared on the temple roof in the form of a statue with emeralds for eyes and brought with him a great sandstorm, whipping the very earth from under them. We came across them riding away from this apparition and they warned us not to risk our souls by proceeding and angering Geb.’
‘But that could not possibly have been Edge,’ Sam said primly. ‘He does not approve of climbing on the antiquities. Do you, Lord Edward?’
‘Under normal circumstances I do not. I was merely trying to assess how many men we were facing and whether they were trying to outflank us. I believe self-preservation justifies my actions rather more than your habit of using antiquities as a painting perch.’ His voice was pure Edge, but his mouth was relaxed and indulgent.
‘Of course it does, oh, mighty Geb,’ she replied. ‘I’m certain you always have a reasonable excuse for breaking your own rules.’
‘Not always, Sam.’ His eyes narrowed into the jewelled slits that had helped send the Bedawi warriors into flight. She felt it, too, the quivering of the earth beneath her, as if a herd of horses burst suddenly from their pen. He might not have been referring to that moment eight years ago when he kissed her back, if such a brief response could have been called a kiss, but the memory rose as clear as yesterday, erasing the chasm of time between them.
The wind picked up, her hair snaking about her face and neck. She brushed it back, but her hands felt clumsy, twice their size and filled with sand.
‘Shu is hard at work,’ said al-Walid. ‘Perhaps he feels he must intercede more forcefully than usual. Insha’alla tomorrow brings good news, Geb. Rest well, Najimat al-Layl.’
He wandered off and Sam was immediately aware of the silence. It wasn’t soundless, but filled with the threshing of the palms and the huffs of animals further away. But it was still a silence that wrapped around them like the emptiness of a great ocean. Edge was staring into the darkness, his sharp-cut profile gilded by the last glimmers of the campfire. Above them the stars were growing, multiplying, gathering into a lacy ribbon arced across the sky. Even in Qetara she had never seen so many or so clearly.
‘We are lucky there is no moon. It is rare to see such an abundance of stars,’ Edge said in reflection of her thoughts and she shivered. ‘Are you cold?’
‘No, not at all. It’s the...weight of them. I could never paint this in a million years.’
He nodded and stood and she felt a burst of pain, like a surprise blow to her chest. She didn’t want to retire yet.
‘Come. There is still too much light and noise here,’ he said, holding out his hand.
Come?
Without asking he helped her to her feet and led her past the well.
‘Edge. The house is over there.’
‘In a moment. You should see this. Even in the desert a night like this is rare.’
Within moments the remnants of sound and light from the encampment fell away. The ground was hard and pebbled and at first Sam stumbled a little on the uneven earth, but Edge held her arm firmly but without pressure. He seemed to know precisely where he was going though there was nothing to see but the faint milky surface of the ground.
The further they walked, the less her eyes strained to see. The ground became luminescent, a cream swathe of silk pockmarked by the indigo shadows cast by each pebble and rock. Above them the sky was everything, a massive dome hung with a myriad of silvery eyes, blinking or staring but strangely still. Sam didn’t even notice they’d stopped. She was reduced to nothing but an awareness of being both insignificant and part of everything. The fabric of space was breathing with her, in and out, shimmering and dancing through her.
‘I’m breathing stars...’ she whispered. ‘I’m swimming in them.’
‘Don’t swim away. I’ll never find you in this infinity.’ His voice was low and rough as the ground beneath them. ‘If you walk twenty yards in the wrong direction, you will be lost and might never find your way back.’
Sam turned. Very faint in the distance behind them was the pale glow of what could be the village, but other than that there was no sign of life, of anything. She looked up at the darkness that was Edge. Even this close he was nothing but a monolithic form with faint outlines of the same silky cream as the ground, as if he’d been transformed into a statue of obsidian and alabaster—hard and soft. Pared down to his truth.
She tried to push the thought away—it was nervousness brought on by the vastness of the desert, the memories of this old life of hers when she’d still felt so real, so alive, so absolutely unthinkingly herself.
It was deceptive, just like the sense of distance in the darkness was deceptive. Edge was right—if you allowed yourself to go too far into this strange dream, you might never find your way back.
‘That is why I depend on you, Edge,’ she said lightly. ‘I know you will never allow yourself to lose track of the real world. I dare say you know precisely how far we have come and when to stop so we do not lose our way.’
‘You think me a very unexciting fellow, don’t you, Sam?’
She flushed.
‘I think you do not allow yourself to be carried away. But there is nothing wrong with being sensible. There have been many, many times I’d wished I was more so.’
‘You’ve changed.’
‘Of course. Eight years is a long time. It would have been surprising had I not changed.’
‘It isn’t the years, Sam. What happened to you?’
‘What happened to me? Good God, Edge, you do nothing in half-measures, do you?’
She tried to laugh but a whole sky’s worth of pain was filling her, expanding like the inundation of the Nile—swift and unstoppable. ‘Let’s return.’
‘Not yet. Are you crying?’
‘Not yet, but I shall if you keep prodding. I’m tired, my legs ache and I’m terrified of returning to England and it is all too much. You may be made of stone, Mr God of the Earth, but I’m not. If you wish to stay here, I shall find my own way back.’
‘Perhaps it would do you good to cry out here where no one can hear you. I need to make amends for interrupting you on the Howling Cliffs.’
She didn’t know whether to laugh or kick him for his dispassionate practicality.
The truth was she didn’t want to return yet. She wanted to stay cocooned in the night, wrapped in the strange thoughts bubbling inside her, but somehow separated from them by his presence. In the dark she made out the shape of a large flat boulder and sat with a sigh.
‘I never really understood you, Edge.’
‘There isn’t much to understand about a lump of rock.’
His voice was flat, but suddenly she could hear the currents beneath, as if not seeing his face she could hear things his expression would never give away. There was bitterness and resentment and darker things.
She held out her hand without thinking.
‘Come sit with me.’
‘I had better not.’
‘Don’t play the prude, Edge. Just sit.’
He sat and she closed her eyes, soaking up the warmth of his body so close to hers. Above the silvery scents of the desert night air and the ochre of the earth there was his scent—it was out of character—warm and encompassing, like the sensations sparked by the deepest, darkest of wines. She wanted to lean into it and then sink.
She touched her palm to her chest. The pain inside her was gone. Strange—it had been so harsh and enormous just moments ago and it was gone. All she felt now was...heat, as if the desert still held the warmth of the noon sun and was sending it upwards through her, through him...
‘You are the least lump-like person I know,’ she said and he laughed, bending forward to lean his arms on his thighs as he picked something up from the desert floor. But he didn’t speak so she continued, working her way through her thoughts.
‘You are like watching the sea from a ship’s deck on a moonless night—you never know quite what is beneath the surface, but you are quite certain a great deal is going on there and that one is safer on solid ground.’
Where on earth had that come from?
‘I am not certain if being the dark abode of sea monsters is any better than a rock.’
‘No,’ she agreed, a little scared of the image she’d conjured. ‘Perhaps not. I meant it as a compliment, though. Clearly I am not very adept at them.’
‘You were always more honest than was comfortable, Sam.’
‘In other words I always spoke before I thought. Madcap Sam.’
‘Don’t make it into an insult. Your honesty was never cruel or cavalier. Sometimes you put too much thought into it, in fact. What will you do when you return to England?’
Sam wanted to stay on the topic of her honesty. Or rather on his strangely complimentary interpretation of her. But she accepted his change of subject.
‘I do not know. Now my brothers are married I shall have to find a solution.’
‘They don’t want you living with them?’
‘It is not that. They do, but soon they shall have children and—’ She broke off, realisation hitting her, her hand closing over his. ‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry, Edge.’
He placed his free hand over hers, hard.
‘Don’t tiptoe around me, Sam. I can’t abide it. Especially not from you. The worst is no one will talk about Jacob or they do what you just did—apologise and run away. Jacob was the best thing that happened in my life. I would not have traded a moment of my time with him for anything else.’
Her hand was buzzing under his and it was a struggle to stay still.
‘I’m glad you had him.’
The image of Maria flashed in her mind, starker than usual in the darkness. The three-year-old’s dark curls woven into the sky, her smile shimmering with stars. She’d had only a year with Ricki’s natural daughter, but she’d loved her and when she’d drowned it had cracked Sam’s heart all over again. It could not compare to Edge’s loss, but she understood what he meant. She wanted so much to share the story with Edge, but guilt held her silent. Ricki bore the brunt of responsibility for Maria’s death, but none of it would have happened if Sam hadn’t been fool enough to think she could escape her pain and loneliness by marrying the charming and gregarious Lord Carruthers.
The silence stretched until he spoke again.
‘I heard Janet telling Poppy she plans to introduce you to some of the younger antiquarians when they reach London.’
‘It is rude to eavesdrop.’
He tossed the stone he held and picked up another.
‘They thought I was asleep.’
‘Still rude.’ She could feel him watching her, her whole left side felt branded and fuzzy. ‘Janet is probably right and it would be best. I am tired of not having a corner of my own.’
It sounded so weak, so utterly out of proportion with her fears and half-formed hopes. Watching her brothers find such contentment had brought back this thirst inside her—to create a home of her own. A family. But after the mistakes she had made with Ricki she was too afraid to trust her judgement about men. The thought of finding herself in that hell...again. By choice...again. She didn’t think she could do that.
‘You miss your husband.’ Edge’s words cut through her fog and they were so far from the truth her throat closed with shame and guilt. A memory returned, vivid and bitter—Ricki rising from the last time he shared her bed, his body slick with sweat as he loomed over her, flinging insults and threats, but all she could hear was the scream inside her head and the prayer that he would hold true to his threat never to touch her again until she begged him to. A shiver of remembered disgust at both of them rippled through her and Edge stood abruptly.
‘It is late. We should return.’
She rose as well, feeling utterly defeated and not even sure why.
‘You have changed,’ he said after walking a while. ‘In the past you never would have agreed to return without at least a token argument. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, Sam.’
‘Make up your mind, Edge. You spent years lecturing me for being wild and now you’re bemoaning how tame I’ve become. Be damned to you,’ she snarled and marched off.
‘Sam...’ He caught up with her, but she walked faster.
‘I don’t want more of your twisted brand of wisdom, Edge. Go away.’
‘You’re heading the wrong way.’
She stopped. Her jaw ached with a kind of fury she could not remember ever feeling, not even at Ricki. It felt like it might raise the whole of the desert around her into biblical eruption. Maybe this was what desert sandstorms were—somewhere a woman unleashed them when the ferocity she held inside could be contained no longer. Sandstorms, volcanos, typhoons... She felt she could unleash them all right now.
I am Sam. I am Sam. I am...
‘No one will hear you if you want to howl at the world again.’
‘Don’t be nice to me, Edge,’ she snapped.
‘I’m merely stating a fact.’
‘You will hear me and probably say something obnoxious. Again.’
‘Here. If I say anything, you have my permission to throw this at me.’
He held out a fist-sized stone. Without thinking she took it and threw it. Hard. It hit a boulder with a sharp clack and a small burst of dust visible even in the darkness.
‘You’ve a good arm,’ he observed without heat. ‘Were you aiming for that, or was it mere chance?’
‘You are lucky you waited to speak until after I threw it. Don’t you ever lose your temper?’
‘Not often. Not for a while at least.’
‘When was the last time?’
‘When?’ He looked up at the sky, frowning. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘You used to lose it often enough at me.’
He smiled, still at the stars.
‘That was different. I was different back then.’
‘Why don’t you take a dose of your own medicine and howl at the sky? It might do you more good than me.’
He let out a long breath and began walking again.
‘I used to. That was one benefit of living on a lonely stretch of shore with only fishermen around me. Whenever there was a storm that is precisely what I did the first year I was there. Then I didn’t feel like it any more.’
‘Do you feel like anything any more?’ She retorted, still angry and determined not to let the image of Edge raging at the storm soften her. She wanted to be angry at him. But he just shrugged again, as if shaking her off.
‘No, not really. It is quite pleasant this way. It suits me. But it doesn’t suit you.’
‘Go fall down a well, Edge.’
‘I dare say I will if I spend enough time with you. Or into the Nile like the time you took the felucca without Daoud’s permission.’
‘I would have been fine if you hadn’t insisted on coming aboard when I was pulling away from the jetty.’
‘Probably. I always did make bad worse, didn’t I? I deserved every one of your nicknames. It would have been far better if I’d listened to you instead of you to me. Then I might have...’
She heard the clean note of pain at the memory of his son and she took his hand again without thinking. It was warmer than hers and a little rough, his callouses rubbing against her palm as his hand wrapped around hers in turn. The sky felt like it was pulsing above them, a deep, steady throb. She watched the outline of his chest as he breathed, a slow rise and fall like the thick rolling waves of the Mediterranean. With strange panic she felt her own breathing fall into the rhythm, like a musician entering the orchestra late. Her heartbeat was completely on its own, though—hard and slapping at her insides as if trying to wake her from sinking into a dangerous sleep.
Into a dangerous dream.
She’d fallen into it once, but she wouldn’t again. It was the result of being back in Egypt with memories of everything that had happened... Edge standing below the ram’s statue, looking exasperated, but with that glimmer of rueful amusement she’d often missed or misunderstood. She’d seen only what he chose to show the world and not the conflicting currents that clashed beneath his wary surface.
Again she thought of al-Walid’s story.
‘I keep thinking of what they saw,’ she said and he turned to her.
‘Who?’
‘Those men who saw you on the temple with the sandstorm rising behind you. It must have been terrifying.’
‘I was certainly terrified. We thought that might be our final misdemeanour.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant and you know it. They must have thought you conjured the storm yourself.’
‘Which makes as much sense as believing you conjured the stars in the sky behind you... On second thoughts, I could well believe that right now, Najimat al-Layl. In fact, I’m surprised the wind has fallen. Shu is failing in his role.’
Edge truly had the most amazing voice, Sam thought as her heartbeat whipped up again, her mind groping to remember what al-Walid had said about Shu and Geb and Nuut.
And intercourse.
The desert turned cold at night, but Sam didn’t feel it in the least.
‘Come, we should return.’ He reached out his hand.
‘I’m not ready.’
‘Don’t be foolish, Sam. It is late. Come.’
‘But I want to do something foolish. It has been far too long.’
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