“
It’s
better than the sandstorm,” Daphne said. “Can we move
further inside?” Now that she was out of immediate danger, she
was trembling. “I should like to sit down. But out of reach of
the wind and sand.” Without waiting for him, she started down
the entrance passage.
It was much wider
than the typical pyramid entrance. She could make out figures on the
walls and what appeared to be a block of hieroglyphs further on. It
quickly grew too dark to see, though, and she moved more slowly and
cautiously, keeping close to one wall, testing the way ahead with her
foot, to avoid tripping over or into something.
“
This is far
enough, Mrs. Pembroke,” his deep voice came from behind her,
“We’re well out of reach of the sand, and Hermione is
shaking like a leaf. Let’s wait out the storm in a quiet,
restful manner, shall we?”* * *
REST, YES.
Rupert needed to
catch his breath, collect his wits. He might have lost her in the
sandstorm. He needed a moment to calm down, that was all.
He never meant to
fall asleep.
He’d seen
them all settled inside: the donkey’s saddlebags and—most
important—the leather water bottle, stowed safely, a space
cleared in the rubble, and Mrs. Pembroke seated on a mat. Then Rupert
simply leant against the wall to rest and collect himself.
The next he knew he
was waking up to utter darkness.
And to heat, of
course, the heat that continued to surprise him, though by now he
ought to be used to it.
In England, deep
inside a cave like this would be cold and damp. But not here. It was
like the pyramids. One expected, going down so deep under so many
thousands of tons of rock, it would be cool.
But in Egypt, the
rocks and mountains stored thousands of years of hot desert sun.
Along with
thousands of bodies. Whether it had been the long-dead Egyptians
troubling Hermione, or some donkey superstition, she’d settled
down. He could hear her steady breathing. If anyone else in the
vicinity was breathing, Hermione drowned it out.
“
Mrs.
Pembroke,” Rupert said. He reached toward where she’d
been last time, on the mat he’d dug out from his saddlebag and
laid on the ground for her. The mat was there. Her cloak was there.
She wasn’t there. “Mrs. Pembroke,” he said, a
little louder. Nothing. “
Mrs. Pembroke
.”
Hermione snorted,
but no human voice responded. “Confound it.” Still
groggy, Rupert stood. It took him a moment to recall which way was
out and which way was in. He went toward the entrance first,
recalling how she’d slowed there, captivated, as you’d
expect, by the pictures on the walls.
The hot wind still
blew, whirling sand and bits of rock within the passageway. A dull
light penetrated, but not far. It was hard to guess what time of day
it was. He could see, though, that she was nowhere in the outer
passage of the tomb. He turned and made his way back.
“
Mrs.
Pembroke,” he called. Not a trace of sleep clung to him now. He
was acutely, painfully awake, his heart beating fast, heavy strokes.
“
Mrs. Pembroke
.”
Hermione said
something in donkey talk as he went by, but that was the only sound
he heard apart from his boots scraping along the tomb floor.
Rupert knew he
couldn’t run blindly into the interior. He might easily collide
with a wall or trip over something, get concussed, and then be no
good to anybody. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face
or the ground beneath him. The tomb floor abounded in obstacles and
pitfalls: gaps and cracks, chunks of stone, animal skeletons, and
other debris he preferred not to think about. He thought only of
staying upright and finding her. Alone, in the dark, she might kill
herself in a hundred different ways. She might stumble into a burial
shaft, and fall a hundred feet to end up unconscious—or dead—at
the bottom.
“
Mrs.
Pembroke
!” he roared.
A sound. A voice,
at last. Distant, muffled.
“
Mrs.
Pembroke, where the devil are you?”
“
Oh, the most
wonderful place,” she called. “Do come see.”
He stumbled on,
groping along the tomb walls, endlessly it seemed. He walked into
dead ends and had to grope his way back out. He felt his way along
the sides of a room until he found the doorway. He edged through a
long passageway.
Then at last he saw
the light flickering, and the outlines of a chamber.* * *
THE BACK WALL of
the chamber had three recesses. She was in the central one. On the
rear wall, an ancient Egyptian fellow followed three women carrying
flowers. The man appeared again elsewhere, presiding over a lot of
people and performing what looked like rituals.
Rupert took all of
this in without really seeing it. His attention was on her, alive and
unhurt, occupied with her ancient men and women and never thinking of
him, while he’d been half-mad with fear for her.
“
Candles,”
he said tautly. “You didn’t tell me you had candles.”
“
In my
hezam
—my girdle,” she said, leaning in to study one of the
figures. “That time when we were abandoned in Chephren’s
pyramid taught me to carry a tinderbox and some wax candles. Is it
not beautiful?”
“
You didn’t
tell me you were leaving,” he said.
She must have heard
the tension in his voice because she dragged her gaze from the figure
and looked at him.
“
You fell
asleep,” she said. “I was talking to you, and you
answered with a snore.”
“
I never
snore.”
She shrugged. “It
must have been Hermione, then.”
Rupert wished he
could deny he’d fallen asleep or blame that on the donkey, too,
but there was no getting out of it gracefully: he’d collapsed
with fatigue.
Well, when was the
last time he’d had a proper night’s sleep? And what of
today, when he’d towed her and the donkey up a mountain,
struggling against wind and sand and fighting to drag a morsel of air
into his lungs? All the while he’d been terrified he’d
lose his hold, and the monstrous wind would tear her away and the
sand would bury her so deeply that he’d never find her in time.
Even Hercules had
his limits, and Rupert was not a demigod. He was a mortal man who
could endure only so much. He’d needed a moment, at least, of
respite.
Still, he couldn’t
believe he’d collapsed at her side, like a weakling.
Embarrassment did
not improve his mood.
“
You should
have woken me,” he said. “You should not have set out on
your own. You might have fallen into a burial shaft.”
“
I had a
candle,” she said in an I’m-talking-to-an-idiot tone that
only fueled his temper. “Furthermore, the burial shafts are
easy enough to distinguish. If you’d paid proper attention to
the diagrams and cross sections in the
Description de l’Egypte
, you would be aware that the shafts are located in the inmost depths
of the tomb and do not appear willy-nilly underfoot. Burial is an
elaborate matter, and burial places are laid out according to a
careful system. A shaft would be marked with an entrance, actual or
symbolic, like this recess. But of course you did not give the French
illustrations your full attention. They were merely a means of
attracting women to your side.”
He was in no mood
for lectures about diagrams or his morals or anything else.
“
The point
is, you should have stayed with me, instead of making me fumble about
this infernal place looking for you,” he said.
“
I was
bored,” she said, less patiently. “Did you think I should
be content merely to sit by your side in the dark, listening to you
sleep?”
“
I’d
think you’d consider the possibility of snakes,” he
growled. “And scorpions. And pitfalls and booby traps. But
you’ve no notion of caution. When there’s a hieroglyph in
the vicinity, or a god with a beast’s head, you take leave of
your senses. You plunge headlong into danger—”
“
I
?”
she said indignantly. ‘Talk of the pot calling the kettle—“
“
What should
I do if you were hurt?” he exploded. “What should I do if
you were killed? Do you never think of
me
? No, why should you?
I’m merely a great, dumb ox. I have no feelings, so why should
you consider them?”
“
Feelings?”
she cried. “What do you know of feelings?”
‘
This,“
he said. .
In the same breath
he’d closed the space between them. In the next he’d
pulled her into his arms. She didn’t come easily. She tried to
wriggle away, but he held on. And once he’d caught her firmly,
she beat at his chest.
He pulled her hard
against him and kissed her.
She stopped beating
his chest.
Her mouth, taut
with anger at first, yielded in the next instant. And then her hands
were climbing up to his chest, pushing his shirt out of the way and
sliding up, her bare palms against his skin, to his shoulders. She
held on tightly, as he wanted her to, as though she needed him.
She kissed him
back, and he tasted hunger like his own, laced with desperation and
anger.
He didn’t
want to feel this way. He didn’t know why he did, or when it
had come upon him. A moment ago, he was aware mainly of a tumult of
feelings, and they were dark to him, like snakes and scorpions
lurking unseen in the shadows.
She turned the
world dark and bewildering, but now he didn’t care. She was in
his arms, and the taste of her was a strange champagne, and her
curving body was made to wrap with his. The alluring incense scent of
her filled his nostrils, his consciousness. He forgot about his inner
turmoil and about the deadly storm outside and about the ancient dust
and death inside, underfoot as well as in the air they breathed.
Her hands moved
over his skin, over his shoulders and down, pushing his shirt out of
the way as she went. He longed to tear it off, but he didn’t
want to let go of her, either. He dragged his hands down her back to
her waist and down, but the girdle was in the way, a long, wide
scarf, folded and twisted and filled with who knew what. It was the
work of an instant to untie it. Then down it slid, its contents
making a muffled clatter when it hit the stony floor.
He clasped her
waist. So little it seemed in his big hands, with all that baggage
gone and no padded buckram corset to thicken it. In wonderful truth,
there was nothing in the way but the long, snug-fitting vest and the
thin crepe shirt underneath… and the waist of her trousers.
He was aware of all
this, of the construction of clothing, in that problem-solving place
in his mind, the place where a man stored the logistics of undressing
women.
He was far more
aware at present, though, of the supple curves under his hand and the
way she moved when his hands moved over her. She moved like a cat,
lithe and sinuous and unself-consciously demanding to be petted:
yes,
here. Ah, yes, there. More of this. That again. Yes
.
Her mouth left his
to make heat trails over his face and down his neck. Meanwhile her
hands stroked down over his chest under his shirt. There was no
hesitation, no un-sureness: he was hers for the taking, and she knew
it. He fell back against the wall, to brace himself, because she made
him weak-kneed and because he wanted everything at once: he had to
have her then and there that instant, yet he didn’t want to
move, to do anything to interrupt the sensations coursing through
him. He had no names for what he felt. He might be dying, for all he
knew. The pleasure was beyond anything. Let it kill him.
She was welcome to
kill him with heat and pleasure or torture him. So long as she wanted
him, she could take him any way she liked. He was strong; he could
bear whatever she did to him, and happily, too. But he wanted her,
too, and he couldn’t wait forever.
He caught the back
of her head and tangled his fingers in her hair, and drew her head
back and kissed her. Not gently. She didn’t answer gently,
either. Her tongue twined about his, and her hands slid under his
shirt, kneading the muscles of his back until he groaned against her
mouth.
He pushed the vest
from her shoulders, shoved the tight sleeves down her arms, tugged
and wrestled with it until it was off at last. He flung it down. He
unfastened the ties at the top of the shirt’s opening and
thrust the fabric back, exposing her beautiful breasts. Then he
paused, in spite of heat and need and impatience to possess.