Playing with Fire

by Sandra Heath

  “It seems, among other things, that the papers I burned at Chelworth were not the vital letter.” Randal got up and went to the sideboard to pour himself a large glass of brandy, which he drank in a single gulp. He felt a strange tickle start in his nose and looked around swiftly. A cat? Where?

  Amanda rose, trembling, to her feet. “How can this be? You swore to me that—!”

  “I know what I swore.”

  “You just said among other things? Among what other things? There is more?”

  “Yes, I rather fear there is. They have found the clergyman who originally barried by father to Barguerite Kenny!” Randal’s eyes watered profusely, and he searched desperately in his dressing gown pocket for a handkerchief. Goddamn it all, there wasn’t even a cat in the house! So how…?

  “For heaven’s sake, Randal! Get on with telling me what’s happened!” cried Amanda.

  “I…I believed the buffoon was long dead, but it seebs he is now a herbit on an island off the coast of Scotland.” Randal sneezed violently. “Barguerite Kenny once bentioned his nabe to her dear son, who had the presence of bind to suddenly rebebber it. Richardson’s creatures went to the island and obtained a witnessed statebent that by father did indeed barry Barguerite Kenny! Due to this and the evidence of the letter, the courts are also prepared to take into account a dabbed note I’d forgotten. The scoundrel I ebployed to investigate it all has agreed to give evidence against be.” He wiped his streaming eyes and tried to resist the second sneeze that was tickling his nose.

  “What forgotten note? What ‘fellow’ you employed?” Amanda breathed ominously.

  He poured and drank another glass of brandy, then faced her. He explained about the agent he’d sent here, there, and everywhere, searching for Marguerite Kenny, and then finished with, “I ab afraid I was a little rebiss and forgot the fellow’s note. It was in by pocket, and Liza—” He broke off abruptly, for now was definitely not the time to acquaint Amanda with Liza’s existence as well.

  But Amanda had already pounced upon the name. “Liza? Who is Liza?”

  “Oh, nobody. A baid at Bothenbury.”

  “Don’t lie to me! You had a whore there, didn’t you! You were whispering in my ear, seducing me with your kisses, and all the time you had a trollop warming your bed!” Amanda screamed, and hurled her plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausages at him.

  He ducked, and the scrambled egg spattered his family motto instead. “Abanda, dearest, I—!”

  “So after all our plotting, I’m not Countess of Sanderby after all?” Amanda’s cup of coffee followed the plate. Again she missed her target, but found another instead. Not the mantel this time, but the cook’s fat tortoiseshell cat, Tiddles, the existence of which had not been guessed by the master and mistress of the house. The unfortunate feline had a minute or so earlier slunk in to sun herself on the sill behind the gold-fringed green velvet curtains. It was the first time she had managed to get into the main part of the house, and she was thoroughly enjoying the east-facing window. Now, however, being suddenly drenched in hot coffee and pelted with porcelain, she erupted from her cozy place with a yowl like something from hell itself, and fled from the room.

  Hardly able to credit that one of his greatest aversions had managed to get in the room, Randal recoiled as she passed.

  Amanda screamed again at her husband. “Well? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Abanda, dearest—!”

  “OH, STOP SPEAKING LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF BEDLAM!” she shrieked, so livid and beside herself that every word was uttered at the top of her lungs. If anyone looked and sounded like a denizen of Bedlam, it was she.

  “I CAN’T HELP IT!” Randal bawled back. “Look, Abanda, I didn’t bean things to get to this pitch! I truly, honestly—”

  “Truly? Honestly? You don’t know the meaning of the words!” she cried.

  “But, dearest, we aren’t exactly destitute. I bay no longer have a title, but we have your fortune….”

  Amanda froze. A nerve fluttered at her temple, and her fingers closed over the corner of the tablecloth.

  Randal backed away nervously. “There’s bore I have to tell you….”

  “More?” she repeated softly.

  “Tansy and my half-brother are to be barried next bonth at St. George’s, Hanover Square. Virtually the whole of society is to be there, even the Prince of Wales.”

  With a strangulated banshee wail that was heard the length and breadth of the gracious Mayfair square, Amanda seized the tablecloth and wrenched it ferociously from the table. Everything crashed to the floor, and Randal made a very hasty exit, only to fall over the hapless Tiddles in the hall. He went sprawling, and the cat shot up a curtain to the pelmet, from where it looked balefully down at him, just as certain other furry faces had once looked over a garden wall in Dorset.

  * * * *

  The sea had never been more blue as Tansy and Martin rode along the hilltop behind Chelworth. He wore a pine green riding coat and white corduroy breeches, and she was in a gold velvet riding habit that became her dark coloring very well indeed. There was gold on her finger too, the wedding ring that Martin had placed there at the lavish Mayfair ceremony attended by the grandest society in the land.

  Ozzy and Cleo bounded ahead of the horses. At least, Ozzy bounded, for Cleo was obliged to be a little more sedate due to being in what the genteel termed an interesting condition. No one doubted that the kittens would be a mixture of ginger and tabby.

  London was still abuzz with the Sanderby scandal. Amanda had left Randal, and the last anyone heard she was on her way to join her father in Australia. No one knew what had become of Randal, for he had been much pressed by duns as soon as word got out that he was no longer Earl of Sanderby. He had disappeared one night, and rumor was that he too had left the country. Canada had been mentioned; indeed, there was a whisper, a very sly one indeed, that he had somehow taken passage on no less a vessel than the Lucina, posing as a keeper of the regimental goat. But it was just a whisper.

  * * * *

  The pyramid soared against the sky, and Tansy and Martin reined in beside the entrance. The cats lay on the grass, Cleo quite thankfully, for she found so much exercise quite a trial. Not that anything would have persuaded her to stay behind in the house when there was an outing to be had. “It will look very regal here indeed when Uncle Julian’s new sphinxes are built,” Tansy said, gazing at the pyramid.

  Martin nodded. “An unforgettable landmark,” he said, shading his eyes to look out to sea, where a frigate very like the Lucina was beating eastward for Portsmouth.

  “Do you miss the navy?” Tansy asked anxiously.

  He shook his head. “Not enough to rejoin, if that is your fear. Besides, I have estates to run now, and retainers for whom I am responsible. I can’t do that if I’m sailing around the Mediterranean.”

  “When are we leaving for Sanderby Park?” Sanderby Park was in Westmorland, and it seemed very far away.

  “Next week. It is all arranged.” He reached across to put his hand on hers. “If you do not like it there, we will not live there.”

  She summoned a smile. “I’m sure I will be happy wherever we are.”

  “I adore you, Lady Sanderby.”

  “And I adore you, my lord.”

  Martin glanced down the hillside toward the house.

  “I wonder if Sir Julian and his new fiancée have progressed in their battle with the hieroglyphs?”

  “I do hope so, for they have both become quite unbearable about it.”

  Sir Julian and Hermione, who were to celebrate nuptials of their own in the fall, spent every possible hour studying the inscriptions on the slab of black basalt, and when they were not poring over that, they were absorbed by the mysteriously joined papyrus instead. They talked of little else, and if the conversation at dinner shifted at all, it was merely to other aspects of Ancient Egypt. There was no doubt indeed that they would regard it as a calamity of the highest order if someone else sol
ved the mystery first.

  Tansy smiled again. “Shall we try to prevent them mentioning Egypt at dinner tonight? Just to be a little wicked? I love to see them squirm because there is only the one thing on their minds and they haven’t the time or patience to discuss anything else.”

  “You are a minx, Lady Sanderby.”

  “True.”

  They were about to ride on home when a metallic sound made them both look down the steps to the entrance to the pyramid. Ozzy and Cleo got up swiftly and uttered little mews. Their ears were pricked, and their bodies quivered with interest.

  “What was that?” Martin asked.

  “I don’t know. It sounded like….” Tansy shook her head. “It can’t be, because I know I left it on the mantel in our room.”

  “The figurine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Tansy, since when has where it was left had any bearing on things? I think we should investigate.”

  He dismounted, and then reached up to help Tansy down as well. Hand in hand they went down the steps, preceded by Ozzy and Cleo, who were impatient for them to open the door, but it opened anyway, as if someone inside were about to welcome them all.

  Tansy’s steps faltered a little nervously. “Martin…?”

  “Come on, I have a feeling that everything is all right,” he said, and led her into the room where she had been held prisoner a few months earlier.

  The bright May sunlight flooded in from behind them and fell directly on the wall opposite. Once again there was a painting there, but not of King Osorkon and his cat. Instead they found themselves looking at Tel el-Osorkon as it had once been, with the statue of Bastet crowning the hill.

  Tansy’s fingers curled tightly in Martin’s, and she knew she was holding her breath but couldn’t help herself. Something rolled across the floor. It was the bronze cat, and it came to rest between Ozzy and Cleo, who were crouching in front of the painting, their bellies to the floor, their heads lowered.

  “What’s going to happen?” Tansy whispered, shrinking closer to Martin, who pulled her to him.

  “I don’t know,” he replied; then they both took involuntary steps backward as the painted statue of Bastet came to life. The goddess stepped down from her throne, and from the wall itself, an elegant, graceful, cat-headed woman in the robes of Ancient Egypt, with kittens playing about her feet. She bent to take the figurine from the floor, then turned to place it at the very spot where Amanda had first trodden on it. Then she looked down at Cleo and beckoned. Cleo’s ears pressed lower, and she didn’t move. She was the picture of wretchedness.

  “Oh, no!” Tansy cried then, suddenly understanding that the goddess was summoning her attendant back to Tel el-Osorkon. “Please don’t take her! She’s happy here with us, and with Ozzy!”

  Bastet straightened, her amazing feline eyes looking directly at Tansy, whose heart was thumping so much that she was sure it could be heard. Time seemed to hang, and then Bastet turned back toward the wall. Accompanied by her throng of kittens, she returned to Tel el-Osorkon and became part of the painting once more. Then the whole scene faded, until there was just the plain wall again. Ozzy and Cleo did not wait for the goddess to change her mind, but scuttled out of the pyramid as fast as their paws could carry them.

  Still filled with wonder, Tansy turned to look at Martin. “Did that really happen?” she whispered.

  “If it didn’t, we shared the hallucination,” he said.

  “I wonder if anyone else will ever step on the bronze cat?”

  He slipped his arms around her waist. “I think there is a definite chance, but as to whether another heir will ever be restored to the inheritance denied him by his wicked brother, well, that is another story. Although, there is Tusun, of course….”

  “Yes! His uncle stole everything. Oh, I do hope Tusun goes to Tel el-Osorkon again. Martin, we must make sure that he does. When the war is over, we must return to Egypt, find Tusun, and tell him everything. If Bastet has replaced the bronze figurine, we must make Tusun tread upon it, and maybe it will all start again. Can we do that? Please say we can.”

  “Of course we can,” he promised.

  She linked her arms around his neck to kiss him, and the wonderful warmth that was conjured between them had no need of the bronze cat’s magic.

  Copyright © 2002 by Sandra Heath

  Originally published by Signet (0451205502)

  Electronically published in 2014 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San

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  This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.