The Return of the Disappearing Duke

by Lara Temple

  The image reared up again—that dark-eyed, twisted beast of a man with fingers tighter than steel bands and a mouth spewing hate. His heart stuttered. That wasn’t him any more than he was Mr Grey.

  ‘Rafe,’ he said, brushing his thumb across her lips as if to imprint it on her. His voice was raw. He knew touching her was wrong, dangerous. Birdie had warned him precisely of this. He could not take advantage of the situation. Not with her. Even more so now she’d given him this strange gift.

  His heart, already booming like that infernal cannon, quickened its barrage. She was important. Somehow in this short, intense week, she’d become important enough to demand another level of care, from himself as well. Whatever lay in her future, it wasn’t him. He figured in no one’s future, hardly even his own.

  But his thumb was still gently brushing her lips, gathering her breath, his fingers resting on the soft sweep of her cheek, on the pulse at her neck. Sharp, urgent...

  ‘Rafe...’ It was a slow exhalation that made his body tighten, his mind fizzle and fade as her lips seemed to continue moving against his thumb, murmuring something. Very gently she laid her hand on the centre of his chest. The impact wasn’t gentle at all. A swirling miasma of heat and iciness swept outwards from his centre, lighting his body from within.

  There was a snap as a twig cracked in the fire and a surge of flame lit the walls around them with sunset colours. She smiled, a slow smile that rumbled through him like a herd of wild beasts on the hunt.

  ‘You look like a pharaoh with the carvings behind you,’ she mused, her gaze moving over his face and making his skin tingle as if her fingers were doing the exploring. ‘Beautiful.’

  He half laughed at the absurdity of that word, but it was another layer stripped away from him. He shook his head, trying to gather his strength against the assault of his own senses, but she merely brushed her palm up his chest, his shirt no protection at all. ‘Don’t laugh. You are,’ she insisted. ‘You have eyes that take in the whole world and I like the way those lines near your eyes always deepen when you try not to laugh at me.’

  She touched his jaw, her fingers trailing again over his scars. ‘You think these disgust me, but they don’t. I wanted to touch you. I wanted to do this...’

  She rose against him, her breath caressing his jaw, her hair tickling his cheek and temple as she brushed the lightest of kisses over his damaged skin.

  ‘God. Cleo...’ His throat moved with her name, his hands closed on her waist. He needed to put her away from him, but she was so warm, she smelled so...so good... He breathed her in, that faraway coolness of the fields after the first winter rain that brings life to everything. It was doing the same to him.

  He must be going a little mad.

  A lot mad.

  She sighed deeply against him, her lips parting to allow her tongue to taste the tense sinew of his throat. Painful pleasure unfurled inside him like smoke from the campfire, flickering embers into firestorms.

  He couldn’t stop himself from arching his neck to give her better access. She moaned encouragingly, her hands skimming up his back and he realised she’d slipped them under his shirt. They felt so damn good against his skin. So damned right.

  So absolutely wrong.

  Her nails trailed down his back and with a shattered groan he caught her arms and drew her away before she utterly destroyed him.

  ‘Cleo, please. This is a mistake.’

  * * *

  A mistake.

  There was such anguished insistence in his voice it muted the drums of warmth beating inside her. Cleo leaned back to inspect his face. He was beautiful. But he was looking worried and angry again. She desperately wanted him to feel what she did—as warm and doughy as fresh bread and as light as sunbeams. She knew this was not proper, but it felt right. How could he not feel that, too?

  ‘It doesn’t feel like a mistake,’ she murmured, resting her palms against his chest. His muscles shivered beneath them and it spread to her. She liked that sensation. It filled the great big echoing cavern inside her with incandescent light.

  She had no idea what the morrow would bring but for the first time in...she did not know how long...she felt truly herself. Cleo.

  ‘But it is, Cleo. I can’t take advantage of you.’

  ‘May I take advantage of you, then, Mr Rafe Grey?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘In two months I shall be twenty-seven years of age. Twenty-seven!’

  ‘What on earth has that to say to anything?’

  ‘Twenty-seven and I have never felt this before...this fire. That cannot be right. Even when William and I—’ She squeaked as his hands tightened briefly on her arms.

  ‘Who is William?’

  Clearly mentioning another man while propositioning one was not a good idea. She had a lot to learn about seduction.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. He was an antiquarian friend of my father’s and just as dishonourable. But that was a long time ago and I never felt like this when he touched me. I like feeling like this. It feels as though you are lighting fires inside me, as though—’

  ‘Cleo, please, please stop.’

  ‘I don’t want to stop. Tell me why it is so wrong to wish to kiss you? I am not asking for anything else...’

  ‘Cleo...’

  There was such an entreaty in that one word her fires doused a little further. He looked tense and miserable and with a shaft of pain she realised he really did not wish to do this.

  ‘Is the idea so distasteful?’

  ‘No, Cleo—’

  ‘You think me mannish in these clothes...and ugly.’

  ‘Are you mad? I think... I know you are torturing me. Believe me, I would like nothing better than to do precisely what you are asking. And more. But you placed yourself in my care. Try to understand what that would make me if I gave in to base instincts. It would be a betrayal.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hold you responsible.’

  ‘But I would.’

  For a moment they both remained there, facing each other in the firelit temple.

  She should not argue with him. Lust had not completely killed her common sense, yet she couldn’t stop herself.

  ‘And if I weren’t in your care?’

  ‘I don’t...dally with innocents.’ He would have sounded priggish if his voice hadn’t all but cracked midway through the sentence.

  ‘What a silly word. What if I weren’t innocent?’

  ‘You’re impossible.’

  ‘Oh, just tell me the truth.’

  ‘If you were experienced and not in my care, I would fall over myself to coax you into the nearest bed, Cleopatra. But you aren’t and you are. And that is that.’

  ‘No, I’m not and it isn’t. I’m not an innocent. William saw to that.’ Again, possibly not the best thing to reveal to a man one is trying to seduce. ‘So you see, you would not be doing anything wrong.’

  ‘What did the bastard do to you?’

  She shrugged, the memories dousing her passion. Ten years later, it still stung. She’d been almost eighteen and he close to forty, her father’s age. But to her he’d been...freedom. He’d listened to her and made her laugh and made her feel...beautiful. Day by day, he’d peeled away her embarrassment and prudish concerns with teasing and little fleeting touches that seduced her. Little gifts and complicit smiles and then...promises. Of a shared life, a house and a family in England. A home, children. Security.

  Except he already had a home and children. And a wife.

  At least he’d had the decency to tell her the truth before he’d scuttled off. There’d been some mercy in that. Amputation was healthier in the end than the slow gangrenous rot of wondering what she had done wrong. She’d told her father, still naive and hopeful enough to think he’d take her side, maybe even comfort her. Well, another lesson learned. He’d been more furious at her hav
ing chased off his partner and ruining their trade in faux Greek statuettes than at William’s betrayal.

  That was the last time she turned to her father for comfort or aid. From that moment on it had been her and Dash and she’d been better for it.

  ‘Cleo. Answer me. Did he hurt you?’ Rafe said insistently, dragging her out of the past.

  ‘You needn’t sound as though you want to hunt him down and shoot him. It happened ten years ago and he did nothing worse than take what I offered willingly and then tell me he could not marry me because he already had a wife in England.’

  ‘Nothing worse? Where the devil was your father in all this?’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘He was blaming me for chasing away his business associate. But it was my mistake for trusting either of them and it has nothing to do with now.’

  He drew a deep breath, as if pulling back on invisible reins.

  ‘Cleo, these feelings are natural. Especially when you are in danger and afraid. But they wear off and when they do they leave a bitter taste because you think you are choosing, but it is not a true choice. You deserve someone who can promise you happiness.’

  Somehow this hurt more than everything he’d said before.

  ‘I don’t want anyone to promise me anything and certainly not something as ephemeral as happiness. My whole life has been built around a string of empty promises, being shunted about from one dream to another, none of which were mine, and watching all of them turn to cinders.’

  He did not answer and they stood in silence for a long while. He still held her lightly, his fingers gentle against the sensitive inside of her arm. She could hear his breathing—slow and deep and forceful, like the surf beating on the stone walls of Acre. She’d always felt those waves were the sound of the whole world breathing.

  ‘Right now the sum of my dreams is to find my brother, reach England safely, and make a life there. All I want from you is...this.’ She rested her hand once again, very gently on his chest. ‘Rafe...’

  He let go her arms abruptly and stepped back.

  ‘I’m going for a walk. I’ll sleep at the entrance tonight.’

  * * *

  Rafe spread his bedding outside the entrance to the chamber and pulled his blanket over him. He settled heavily on his aching shoulder and lay still for a long while, watching the moon blur as a ragged cloud crept up on it in the dark. He heard nothing from inside the temple but the snap and crackle of the small fire. The temptation to go inside was excruciating, but he remained where he was, a solid, aching barrier between her and the world.

  He waited, as tense as a drawn bow, for her to come to confront him. Even for her to wish him goodnight. But no sound came. It was hellishly unfair that she could fall asleep so easily after kicking him off a cliff into purgatory.

  It didn’t help that a pack of jackals was carousing somewhere in the darkness. The jackals’ long yowls reminded him of drunken soldiers after a battle—caught between the relief and sadness of surviving, and the need for human touch.

  He wished the pack would find some other corner of the desert to annoy.

  He turned on his back, staring at the immensity of the sky, and drew his leg up to ease the thudding pressure in his groin. A whole year without a woman was bound to wreak havoc, but that was no reason to indulge his body’s juvenile fascination with Cleopatra. Or her fascination with him.

  I like feeling like this.

  So do I, damn it.

  He turned on to his side again and opened his eyes, trying to chase away the ruinous images playing across his closed lids. But his mind was busy stacking the cards against him, pulling them out one by one like a vindictive Tarot card reader—what if she was no longer under his care? After all, she said she was not a virgin...

  His mind stumbled over that for a moment. William. Of course she would fall in love with someone named after her precious bard.

  You’re an idiot, Rafe. Lust is bad enough right now. Don’t add jealousy and anger to the mix.

  But he couldn’t help it. Every time he thought he’d plumbed the depth of her father’s callousness, she let drop another pearl. What kind of bastard blamed his daughter for being seduced and lied to by his own friend? Osbourne was very lucky he was dead because if he’d been alive...

  Except he wasn’t; he was dead and Cleo was alone and for the moment she was his responsibility. Which meant there could be no ‘all I want from you is this’.

  He groaned and rubbed his face, blocking out the filigree of stars. He could have come just listening to her. That voice and her big gold-brown eyes all sleepy and warm and... He was so tempted to go back into that temple and curl himself around her and feel her mouth on him again, that soft sweep against his neck...

  There was something wrong with this world that women had to deny animal desire unless sanctioned by ceremony. He’d turned his back on that nonsense; why should he impose it on someone as unconventional as Cleo? She wanted it honestly and that was all she wanted from him...

  The pin finally fell into the groove and with it the snap of affront.

  Of course, that is all anyone wanted from him—some service to be performed: save me, solve this problem, scratch this itch...

  God knew he wanted to scratch this particular itch, just not at any cost.

  She was no different in the end. She’d dragged admissions out of him he’d only ever told a handful of people, charmed them out of him with the lightest of touches and that aphrodisiac tincture of compassion. Then she’d come in for the kill with those impossibly sensual eyes pouring honeyed heat over him.

  ‘May I take advantage of you, then, Mr Rafe Grey?’

  He should have said yes and the hell with worrying about being manipulated and used. He didn’t care. He just wanted...

  He half rose, only to lie back down.

  In the end, the only thing that should matter was that she was in his care until she was safe. He had so few codes left in his life, so few truths. If he took advantage of her...and it would be taking advantage of her as much as she wanted to take advantage of him...

  A shiver of heat raced through him, like a rat roused from its hiding place.

  Blast and double blast the woman.

  He kept his eyes resolutely closed. A stone-hard cock had yet kept him from sleep when he knew he had to be rested and he was damned if he was going to let it do so now. He had trained for years to deal with situations where he needed sleep and his body rebelled.

  He began counting backward from one hundred, each number taking him down a step towards a blank door. At fifty he vaguely noticed he wasn’t holding his pistol as he always did during the count. Strangely it was suspended beside him without any contact. A railing had appeared there instead, smooth under his hand. He kept counting even as he wondered where it had come from.

  He started floating at thirty, much later than usual, and even then almost lost his count when a dark-eyed little boy sitting on the steps holding a toy horse smiled up at him.

  He felt his hand settle on the familiarly warm downy hair and then the numbers finally fell away.

  Chapter Nine

  Cairo—three days later

  ‘Home sweet home.’

  Rafe dropped his pack on to a scuffed wooden table at the centre of the room and rolled his shoulders. Cleo laid hers down more gently and looked around.

  The house was well situated, close to the wharves of Boulaq, but within easy distance of the centre of Cairo. It probably belonged to a well-to-do merchant for it was large and clean and the wooden latticed shutters were in good repair. She peeked through the shutters—the sun was low and beyond the rooftops the Nile was a swathe of silver and copper scarred by the white sails of feluccas and the flat ferries cutting towards Giza. Below she could hear the shopkeepers and the distinctive gaggle of men from the coffee house, and above the scent of the river and the spic
e store below she caught the warm scent of coffee and the muskier tang of the shisha pipes.

  She closed her eyes and let the sounds and smells waft around her.

  Home sweet home.

  For a little longer only.

  She had not thought she would miss this city, but now she knew her days here were numbered she felt the squeeze of sorrow that this, too, must be left behind. She was becoming truly maudlin. She hadn’t cried when William abandoned her, yet she’d cried on Gamila’s hairy neck, saying goodbye to her and to Gamal.

  Gamal, wealthier by five camels and several gold coins, had reassured her it was in the stars that she would return one day to the desert with her man and children and then they would ride Gamila’s calf. It was a lovely image, however unlikely, and she’d accepted it for the gift it was.

  ‘Hungry?’

  She nodded at Rafe’s question. He was still by the table and was watching her. The back of her nape tingled with awareness and the resurgence of embarrassment. Neither of them had referred to the events in the temple at Kharga and Rafe had made every effort to behave as if the interlude had never happened.

  Perhaps to someone like Rafe, who’d seen so much in the world, her behaviour was easy to dismiss. Still, he’d been uncomfortable with her ever since. When they’d reached Asyut and she’d curled up to sleep at the bow of the felucca they’d hired, he’d gone to sit at the stern.

  ‘Tired?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘You look like you’re propped up with scaffolding, Cleo-Pat. Take off that turban and sit down.’

  ‘I should go to Ezbekiya and see...’

  He came towards her and she tensed as she had every time they’d come within touching distance since her failed seduction. He looked even more like a corsair in this civilised setting. Nothing had outwardly changed—his plain cotton shirt was open at the neck, his dark hair disordered and his jaw covered with stubble except where the scars left it pale and bare. In the desert his raffish air looked far more natural than the rigid dress code of many visiting Englishmen. But here in the small room with its prosaic table and chairs and a faded painting of some Mameluke patron, he looked like what he was—a mercenary. Capable, dangerous, calculating.