by Lara Temple
‘It looks like a rock.’
‘So do you, at the moment. Surely they are not natural, are they?’
‘They are. The stone around here is soft and the wind has sculpted it over millennia in an Aeolian...’
‘Oily Inn?’ Sam asked, sitting down and unwrapping a cloth parcel. The scent of honey and dates snaked around him and his stomach tightened with another form of hunger. Blast Sam.
‘Aeolian. Named after the Greek god of wind, it means quick-moving wind and sand scour away the softer rock to reveal harder stone beneath. According to Hutton’s Theory of the Earth...’
‘Do take a seat.’ Sam patted the sand next to her and Edge surrendered again. He sat, brushing his hands on his dusty trousers, and took the slice of cake Sam offered. She smiled and licked her fingers and a little earthquake roared through him. The memory of his mouth on hers in the dark—her taste...
‘So. What is Hutton’s theory of the earth?’ she coaxed and he wished it was polite to snarl.
‘That the earth is balanced on the back of a camel stumbling about inebriated with raki which is why there are earthquakes.’
She laughed, handed him the cloth-wrapped cake and began sketching.
‘That is a marvellous image, but I thought you were constitutionally incapable of mouthing an untruth.’
He held the warm parcel in his hands, wishing his conscience was less developed. For a moment he considered telling her the truth about the scope of his powers of confabulation.
‘I know how to lie when I must, Sam.’
‘About what?’
Her smile faded, her pencil poised above her drawing. Already in a few strokes she’d outlined the horizon, the twisted rock formations rising like billows of smoke from the ground. He could already see the finished illustration—that mysterious foreign landscape, beckoning the reader, drawing them in to a world promising adventure...and eventually salvation. What would she do if he told her that he was the author of the Desert Boy books? That all these years...
He gathered air for the admission, but the foolish image he’d created faltered, the camel stumbling, the earth rolling off its unsteady back and down a crack to...nothingness.
No, that was one Pandora’s box best kept sealed. It simply was not worth the risk.
When he didn’t answer she returned to her sketch and for a while there was no sound but the muted voices of al-Walid and Poppy from inside the temple and the scrape of Sam’s pencil on paper. It had always been a puzzle to him how mercurial Sam could be as still and precise as any watchmaker when she was sketching. He knew he’d disappeared for her, he felt he himself was disappearing a little into the world she was weaving for him without even knowing it was for him.
Ever since he’d asked Durham to commission her as illustrator of his books he’d seen again and again how precisely she captured what he wasn’t even certain he’d conveyed in words. There was a terrifying gap between what he saw in his mind and what he was able to write. By some strange magic Sam closed that gap as if she could crawl into his mind and harvest the first vivid images that stood at the heart of each chapter, the sensations that gave it the beating heart and drew the readers in. That sense of encroachment had even made him suggest finding another illustrator, but Durham would have none of it.
‘Heaven forfend!’ Durham had objected. ‘It is true there are more talented illustrators in matters technical, but I do not know of another who could capture the emotions that quiver between the characters of your tales. One always feels that any moment that world will come to life and we shall all be swept into the adventure. I fear readers already attached to her images might feel cheated by any change midstream, so to speak, and that might affect our sales, Lord Edward.’
I don’t give a rat’s ass about sales, Edge had wanted to respond, but it was not true. The first book was published when Jacob was barely a year old, just before he fell ill. Edge had loved reading to Jacob—his son’s cinnamon eyes would light with pleasure at the cadence of his reading and his laugh made Edge’s heart expand to encompass the universe. Edge had no idea if his stories reached Jacob, but he knew without a doubt the illustrations did—whenever a page contained an illustration, Jacob’s plump, stubborn fingers would stop Edge from turning the page until Jacob looked his fill.
Unlike the Egyptians Edge did not believe in life after death, neither in heaven or hell or anything in between. But he wanted desperately to believe in it so he could imagine Jacob still existed somewhere other than in his dried husk of a heart. And if that was so, every book he wrote, and every illustration Sam drew, was for Jacob.
‘What is wrong, Edge?’
He hadn’t noticed she’d stopped drawing or that she was watching him. He turned away.
‘It’s boiling out here. At least come inside the temple. There’s even a statue of Senusret in there for you to climb on. You just might fit on his lap.’
Well, that was a mistake. The sharp knife of grief did lose its sting, but it was replaced by the image of her lush posterior on the statue’s granite lap, wriggling as she settled, the stone warming...
‘Help me up, then.’ She extended a hand and he took and helped her to her feet, her hand warm and dry in his. She gave a little moan as she balanced herself on the shifting sand. ‘My legs are still stiff after that ride yesterday. I wish women could go to a hamam and have someone—’
‘Blast it, Sam,’ he interrupted before that image also took root in his already disordered mind—his hands moving over her legs, kneading the taut muscles, skimming up her thighs, warm... ‘You cannot speak of such things in public. I thought you’d finally grown up.’
He saw anger flash in her eyes and was almost grateful for it. He’d be grateful if she pushed him off the temple roof if it countered his deteriorating impulses.
‘Well, I thought the same of you. You were hardly such a prude last night.’ She moved past him towards the bank of sand and this time he did not try to help her down.
* * *
Sam knew the moment they entered Bahariya that news of Rafe had arrived. There was a welcoming committee, led by Aziza with Janet by her side standing almost on tiptoe in her excitement. Edge reached them first.
‘They’ve found him?’
‘News of him, my dear.’ Janet grasped his hand, her other extended towards Poppy. ‘They stopped in Farafra several days ago and so are likely in Cairo by now.’
Edge turned to al-Walid.
‘Please convey my gratitude to your people. This means I must leave tomorrow at dawn.’
Sam followed Janet and the women, her thoughts stumbling over each other. Following Edge to the temple had only jumbled her thoughts further. She felt both more uncomfortable and comfortable with Edge than anyone she knew and that wasn’t helping in the least. There would be no time to explore her half-formed thoughts and plans. They’d only muddied the waters further. Tomorrow Edge would be gone and she would soon be returning to London and to whatever future she could build for herself.
Nothing had changed.
A small, sharp voice spoke at her very core.
You are right. Nothing will change unless you change it. So do something, Sam Sinclair. You are tired of being swept along, rudderless. So do something...
Chapter Four
Leila knelt by the silvered rim of the lake, placed her hand on the cool water, and called up her fate.
—Lost in the Valley of the Moon,
Desert Boy Book Three
‘Edge? Are you awake?’
For a moment he thought he’d mistaken the whisper of the wind for her voice. But then the cloth entrance shifted and a figure slipped into his tent. He surged to his feet, his whisper grating in his ears.
‘What the devil are you doing here, Sam?’
‘I need to speak with you.’
‘We can speak tomorrow before I leave. No
w go away before you are seen.’
‘By whom? I hardly think any of al-Walid’s people will denounce me to the patronesses of Almack’s.’
A pale blur showed as her mouth curved into a smile and his hands twitched. That smile was attached directly to an inner core of heat and here in the darkness, after a very unfruitful attempt not to sink into equally unfruitful fantasies, his defences were especially weak.
He could see her more clearly now, the oval of her face and the deeper shadows of her eyes. He was as tense as if a wild animal searching for shelter had just prowled into his tent. No, Sam bent on testing him to his limits was more dangerous than any desert predator.
‘That is hardly the point. Surely this can wait until morning?’
‘No it cannot. It requires a degree of privacy. For heaven’s sake, Edge. I shan’t pounce on you, you know.’
Oh, hell. I wish you would.
‘Very well. Just be quick about it. I would rather not be discovered entertaining you here.’
‘You aren’t entertaining in the least at the moment, Edge. Though you might be entertained yourself once I tell you why I’m here.’
He frowned. Her voice was high and raspy. She was nervous; very nervous. She kept shifting her weight, too, as if preparing for a bout of pugilism.
‘I have a proposition, Edge.’
A proposition.
His body felt fractured—heat pulsed from his stomach muscles while a cold weight pressed at his lungs and shoulders like a mantle of snow. He didn’t like the feeling. He was tired, worried, confused. He wanted to recapture that pleasant numbness he’d worked hard to attain since Jacob’s death.
But... A proposition. From Sam.
The words echoed through his mind, intermingling with the thoughts that had been keeping him from sleep—memories of her taste, the feel of her in the darkness. Her scent—even arm’s length from her it engulfed him. It was like standing in a garden in mid-bloom. Spring. She smelt of spring and he was as hard as the rock formations she’d admired.
And why not? They were both widowed and had no ties. The physical attraction was undeniable and Sam was clearly no stranger to such encounters. He’d been isolated from gossip after Jacob’s death, but he’d heard enough about Sam’s many flirtations before her marriage in Venice. The Sinclairs were always newsworthy and Dora and her mother delighted in gossip even when it was being played out in foreign climes. The fact that it involved an Austrian prince, a Russian count, and the very dashing Lord Ricardo Carruthers all vying for the attentions of the scandalous Sinclair sister had pushed it to the forefront of London gossip that summer.
So why not assent to a proposition? Perhaps it would finally put to rest the foolish fantasy she’d planted in his mind all those years ago and the hunger she’d fanned since he’d seen her on the Howling Cliffs. There was nothing wrong with acting like the animals they were. These sensations might be the only things that were right in his life at the moment.
‘You think too much, Lord Glower-from-the-Hoity-Toity-Ledge,’ she’d told him often enough. Well, she was right. For the moment he should stop thinking. It was hell on his libido.
‘Edge?’
He dragged himself out of his thoughts.
‘What?’
‘All I ask is that you listen to me before you say no or call me mad. Because it is a little mad, well, more than a little. But I think, perhaps, it could benefit us both. Well, benefit me more than you, but perhaps it might offer some...oh, the devil, I’m blathering. No, don’t say anything yet, please. Just listen. Please.’
Her hands rose, two pale smudges, fingers spread wide, as if warning him to keep his distance. He took a deep breath, his body tingling with far greater disappointment than he wanted to credit. This did not sound like the proposition he’d begun to imagine.
‘Very well. I am listening.’
‘I know you have more important matters on your mind, but all I ask is that you consider it. And I mean truly consider it, not just be your proper self and say you will consider it while you tell yourself inside that this is only Sam being foolish Sam...’
‘Sam, tell me what it is you want. If it is something I can do, within reason, then I shall.’
She laughed and dropped her hands.
‘Within reason. That is a matter of opinion...’
‘Sam!’
She breathed in sharply and almost exhaled the words.
‘I want you to marry me.’
She might have struck him right in the sternum with a cannonball and had less of an impact. He even pressed his hand to his chest as ice-cold shock burst through him. The closest he’d felt to this was when the unseen French voltigeur’s shot caught him in the shoulder that day at the foothill of the Pyrenees. Disbelief and denial had been as powerful as the pain. As if by a force of will he could unmake those fateful moments.
But now disbelief wasn’t laced with denial, but with heat. The ravenous panther that had burst into being since he’d been foolish enough to touch her again was clawing at his back, trying to push past him and devour her whole.
‘Say something.’ Her voice was still shaky so he tried to steady himself. He shoved the panther back into the shadows, trying to see her expression in the gloom of the tent.
‘I’m a rather dull fellow, as you pointed out, Lady Carruthers. If this is a jest, you will need to explain it to me.’
‘This is no jest. I am sincere...oh, never mind, you idiotish clod. I might as well try to talk to a lump of clay as evoke a human response out of you.’ She sounded on the verge of tears and Edge moved between her and the entrance.
‘Wait.’
‘I don’t wish to speak to you any more.’ She grabbed his shirt and tried to haul him aside.
‘Well, too bad.’ He caught her hands, but did not try to detach them from his shirt, just wrapped his own around them. ‘You cannot say something like that without... explaining.’
‘I can say what I wish. I’m tired of thinking about everything I say. I had an idea and you said it was a bad one. No surprise there. After all, I’m only Sam the impulsive madcap...’
‘Sam, stop.’
‘Let me go, Edge. I didn’t mean it.’ She squirmed and gave a little tug to her hands, but not enough to pull them free. Her knuckles were pressed against his chest and he could feel the beat of his own pulse hammer against them, each strike followed by a shower of sparks coursing through his veins, spreading heat.
‘You never say anything you don’t mean, Sam. That is part of your problem.’
She closed her eyes and breathed in and he saw again the shift between Sams—this one was a strange mix of measured Sam and a Sam he wasn’t familiar with.
‘Yes, you are right,’ she replied. ‘I did mean it. These past months, since I returned to Egypt...this is the first time I’ve felt alive in years. I don’t want to return to England and sink back into that half-life I lived. Yes, I’m wealthy and could find a companion and travel the world, but I want more. I want to travel and return often to Egypt, but I also want a family and a home and I want to have that with someone I can trust and talk to and who knows me, good and bad. Then I realised these are all things that I have...with you. And then there is...this.’
‘This?’
She rubbed her knuckles against his chest and this flooded him with liquid fire.
‘This. I’m not a child, Edge. I couldn’t imagine marrying someone I did not wish to share...intimacy with. It would be...unbearable. None of the men poor Janet introduced me to in Cairo had this. I haven’t felt this in...in years. I might have been a child eight years ago, but even then I felt this. For me, at least, it is rare.’ She looked up. He could feel her trying to read his expression in the dark. ‘It isn’t just me, is it? You do feel a...an attraction?’
She’d slipped back into hesitation and even though he knew he wa
s on dangerous ground he needed to chase away her doubt.
‘Yes, Sam. I thought that was obvious. I’ve never been a good actor.’
She sighed with relief, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt and even if he’d lied, his body couldn’t. It was aching, pleading with him. He moved closer, aware he was stepping out on to the same plank as she.
‘That’s true.’ She laughed a little, her breath cool against the perspiration at the base of his throat. ‘When you did allow anything past your stony façade one could be certain it was purely you. And that is why... Edge—if there was time I would try to be patient and plot your downfall in a civilised manner, but there isn’t time. Tomorrow you will be off again and I might not see you ever again or at least until we are old and grey and I cannot bear living with the regret of not asking if you would consider marrying me. I feel this is the right thing to do, the best thing to do. You say I’m impetuous and I dare say this proves everything you’ve ever said about me, but I couldn’t not try, do you see?’
‘Sam, you do realise what you are offering...it means the rest of your life.’
‘Of course I realise that, Edge. I think...you are lonely as well, aren’t you? I know there is part of you that prefers to remain that way, but doesn’t part of you want something more than to return to your exile in Brazil? I’m tired of mine. I want more.’
Brazil. His lungs constricted just at the thought. That bridge had burned behind him and he’d not even realised it. Sam had opened a Pandora’s box and he didn’t think he was strong enough to close it.
Another chance. At being a husband, a father. With Sam.
He’d set down that path with Dora in good faith eight years ago and ruined both their lives. He shouldn’t even consider it with Sam of all people. To be responsible for her future happiness. He shouldn’t consider it, but merely by asking she was changing the course of his life.
‘No,’ he answered. ‘There is nothing to return to.’
‘Then what shall you do when you find Rafe?’