by Anne Gracie
Until this morning, when his brother had revealed the terms he and Lady Lavinia had agreed to, without reference to Rafe . . .
Cold rage welled up in him again. Rafe stamped down on it. This was not the place, the time. He was not a small boy anymore. His family could only hurt him if he let them.
The wedding was over, the celebratory dinner consumed, and they’d danced the night away. In the morning the bride and groom had driven off in a joyful cavalcade, Nell incandescent with happiness, little Torie in a basket beside her, and Harry so proud and with a light in his eyes that Rafe had never seen.
The remaining guests left soon afterward, hurrying to get home for Christmas, praying the clear weather would hold. Rafe and Luke, in no particular hurry, were among the last to depart. They’d said their good-byes, and hating to wait around after that, had wandered toward the stables to await their curricles.
“I’m not racing you back,” Luke announced as they crunched down the gravel drive. It was a cold, clear morning, the air dry, with just a light breeze. Perfect for a race.
Rafe inclined his head. “As you wish.”
“I know you,” Luke persisted. “Under that veneer of calm you’re still wild about whatever happened.”
Rafe shrugged. He could have reassured his friend that his driving would be back to normal now he’d made a decision, but he didn’t. Racing wouldn’t purge the anger within him this time. The betrayal. But he knew what would.
They waited in front of the stables, stamping their feet in the cold, watching as the stable lads hitched their teams up.
“Want me to come with you to Axebridge?” Luke offered.
“But it’s almost Christmas.” Rafe was startled. “What about your family?”
“Mother and the girls won’t mind.” Luke was the only living son in a family of girls. His mother was a widow, and all but the youngest daughter were married now, but they still doted on their brother.
Rafe smiled. “You are such a liar.”
“I’ll explain,” Luke said. “They won’t mind when they know it’s you. You know how fond Mother is of you—the girls, too.”
Rafe shook his head. “No. Go home and celebrate Christmas with your family. Give my best to them all.”
“Then come home with me,” Luke said. “Spend Christmas with us. They’ll think it the best gift of all.”
“I’ve already sent your mother a gift,” Rafe told him. As a boy, he’d spent many a happy Christmas with the Ripton family. It was a haven from his own family, a much older brother he hardly knew, and a father who barely acknowledged his younger son’s existence.
“You’re so stubborn,” Luke said, shaking his head. “Very well then, be miserable if you want to. I’ll see you at Axebridge in the new year.”
“Ahh, yes . . . The house party . . .”
Luke gave Rafe a searching look. “You sound suspiciously vague, Ramsey. Cold feet about getting betrothed to Lady Lavinia after all?” He gave Rafe a searching look. “Or is it all off?”
Rafe shrugged. “The house party is still going ahead as far as I know.”
“Well then, I’ll see—”
“I won’t be there, however,” Rafe finished, watching critically as a young stableboy buckled a harness.
“What? Where will you be?”
“Remember who I was seated with at dinner last night?”
Luke wrinkled his brow, trying to recall. “Some old lady, wasn’t it? Must say, thought it was a damned poor place to seat you—”
“Lady Cleeve. Very interesting old lady. Told me an interesting story.”
Luke stared at him. “What the devil are you talking about? Told you a story?”
Rafe nodded. “Seems she’s missing a granddaughter.”
“What do you mean missing? Gal run off with someone?”
“No, nothing like that,” Rafe said. “The old lady thought the girl had died along with her mother more than twelve years ago. Been grieving ever since. Her son died six years ago, and since then Lady Cleeve has thought herself all alone in the world.”
“Very sad,” Luke said, “but what has this to do with—”
“A few months ago, Alaric Stretton—you know, that artist fellow who travels the world and writes books about it—turned up on her doorstep after years in some far-flung corner of the world. Seems they’re old family friends—he used to visit them in India.”
Luke gave him a look as if to say, why are you telling me this?
Rafe continued, “Stretton told her her granddaughter was alive and well and with her father only six years ago. He even produced a sketch of the girl and her father—the one of the little girl is rather touching—he’s a damned good artist. So now Lady Cleeve thinks the girl might still be alive. She’s desperate to find her.”
“Sounds like a load of moonshine to me.”
“It might very well be.”
“But what’s this got to do with you not—” Luke broke off with a stunned expression. “Don’t tell me—this is why you’re going to skip out on your betrothal house party?”
Rafe just smiled. He’d been tempted just to not turn up to the house party; it was what they deserved, after all. But that wasn’t Rafe’s way. Instead, this morning, he’d sent a coldly polite note to Lady Lavinia and another to his brother and sister-in-law, giving his regrets.
Luke flung up his hands in exasperation. “To go on a wild-goose chase after some batty old lady’s mythical granddaughter? Based on a sketch done by some mad explorer who spends nine years out of every ten in the most godforsaken parts of the world?”
Rafe said nothing. He’d made up his mind.
Luke persisted. “I know you have a soft spot for old ladies, but—”
“Lady Cleeve was a girlhood friend of Granny’s,” Rafe said simply. “They corresponded all their lives.”
“Oh Lord, that’s all it would take, then,” Luke said, shaking his head in resignation. “So where was this granddaughter last seen?”
“Egypt.”
Luke’s jaw dropped. “You’re going on a wild-goose chase to Egypt?”
Again, Rafe smiled.
Their curricles were ready. Luke didn’t move. “Rafe Ramsey, you are stark, staring mad.”
Rafe shook his head. “Not mad, dear boy. Just . . . angry.”
“Well, do what the rest of us do when we’re angry,” Luke said in exasperation. “Hit someone! Hit your brother, hit me—hit anyone! It’s better than haring off to Egypt.”
Rafe just smiled.
One
Egypt 1818
There he is, the man I told you of,” Ali said, pointing with a small, grubby finger. “They say his name is Rameses. They say he has come from England to buy a girl, and he will pay in gold.”
Rameses? The name of a great king? From the dim shadows of the alley Ayisha had no difficulty singling out the foreigner asking questions; he was a head taller than any other man in the marketplace.
Rameses. It was a strange name for an Englishman.
He wasn’t like the others who’d come after her in the past.
He was clean for a start.
And beautiful. Not in a pretty-boy way—Ayisha knew all about pretty boys—but with a hard-edged, austere sort of elegance. As if sculpted from marble.
His skin was lightly tanned, but still paler than most people she knew. More like her own color, under her clothes. He wore a light-colored hat to shield his face from the sun, but his clothes were foreign: English and close-fitting, letting no breezes in to cool the body. His dark blue coat was cut tight to reveal a powerful set of shoulders. Beneath it he wore a white shirt with a tie around his neck tied tight in a complicated knot.
Too many clothes, too tight, and the cloth too heavy.
Yet he didn’t look sweaty, hot, and crumpled the way Englishmen new to the country usually did. This man looked cool and unruffled. Hard.
She couldn’t help but stare at the buff-colored breeches molded to long, hard-muscled, masculine
legs and tucked into high, gleaming black boots. They were very . . . revealing.
The men Ayisha saw every day wore loose, flowing robes or baggy pants and loose, long shirts. Their clothes didn’t show the shape of the body. Not like this, almost shamelessly: every hard masculine angle revealed. She swallowed.
If they had, she would never have been able to pass herself off as a boy called Azhar all these years.
She watched the flex and pull of muscles as the Englishman strode through the dust and chaos of the marketplace with the lithe power of a lion.
She felt suddenly hotter, even though she stood in the cool shade.
Rameses. The name suited the man.
“He has a drawing of the girl he wants,” Ali went on. “A Frankish girl. He showed it to many people in the marketplace yesterday. Gadi saw it. He says it could be your little sister, if you had one.”
Ayisha stilled. Gadi said what? Gadi could see a resemblance between a sketch of a young Frankish girl and Azhar, the wily young Egyptian street boy?
Her thoughts flew at once to a sketch made more than six years ago by an English visitor who’d stayed with them once. He could draw to make a person come alive. She still remembered the wonder of it, watching his pencil flying over a page, and then, her own thirteen-year-old face staring back at her from a sheet of white paper.
It couldn’t possibly be that drawing . . . could it?
No, that Englishman had taken the sketch with him when he left Egypt, heading for China. She’d been too shy to ask him for it.
How could that drawing have fallen into the hands of this Englishman? And even if it had, why would he bring it to Egypt?
Why would he show it around? And offer money for the girl in the picture?
It could be your little sister . . .
That sketch could ruin her life.
She stared across at the tall foreigner, trying to read the answers somehow in his face. Behind her in the spice souk, a spice seller was roasting sesame, coriander, and cumin seeds with nuts to make dukkah. Her stomach rumbled at the delicious aroma, but she did not take her eyes off the Englishman. As if he sensed her interest, he changed direction and walked toward the alley where she was hiding.
The crowd split before him like the parting of the waves, and not just because he was tall and foreign. It was something about the man himself. He moved like a pasha, like a sultan, like a king—not swaggering, but with an unconscious air of assurance, of command bred in the bone—and the crowd responded instinctively.
He was a man accustomed to going wherever he wished.
A man accustomed to getting whatever—or whoever—he wanted.
Not this time, she vowed silently. Not her.
“They say he’s an English milord,” Ali said. “They say he has gold to buy whatever he wants and spends it like water. But why come all this way to buy a girl? Don’t they have girls in England?”
Ayisha sniffed. “Yes, of course. A fool and his gold are soon parted.” Brave words. They belied the cold shifting in the pit of her stomach.
“Gadi said if you were younger, he would dress you as a girl and sell you to this Rameses and make his fortune.” Ali laughed heartily at the joke—the private and the public joke. In all of Cairo, only he and Laila knew Ayisha was a girl.
Ayisha’s throat tightened. She had to get that picture, get it and destroy it. Gadi thought she resembled the girl in the drawing . . . Gadi was a stupid young man. He knew nothing. But if he kept making that joke to everyone who would listen . . .
Bile welled up in her throat.
Gadi’s uncle had been one of those who had pursued her, all those years before. If he saw the picture now . . . if Gadi made his joke to his uncle . . .
Gadi’s uncle was a lot smarter than Gadi. Gadi’s uncle knew what she looked like before.
Once people started picturing her as a girl—even as a joke—it would not be long before someone realized . . .
Gadi’s uncle was not the only one who’d hunted her, all those years ago.
“Gadi talks a lot of rubbish,” she told Ali.
Ali shook his head. “No, Gadi knows much about the world.”
Ayisha said nothing. The ten-year-old orphan had a tendency to hero-worship the most unsuitable men.
Why could the boy not choose someone decent to emulate?
Not that there was much choice for a fatherless boy. The backstreets of Cairo were not exactly crowded with decent men. Poverty and slum life didn’t typically breed decency. Who knew better than she?
She leaned deeper into the shadows and waited for the Englishman to come nearer. She wanted to see him close up, close enough to look into his eyes. It was risky, but she needed to see for herself what manner of man she was dealing with.
Know thy enemy.
He strode through the milling crowd, indifferent to the noise, the movement, the dirt. She’d never thought of men as beautiful before, but this man had a spare, hard, manly beauty that made her want to stare. And stare.
He was like someone out of one of Mama’s tales; beautiful but deadly. Mama always told wonderful, terrible stories, and though some were true, most weren’t. The difficulty was in discovering the difference . . .
But Ayisha was no longer a wide-eyed, gullible child, and she was no man’s easy prey. Six years on the streets had turned her into a different person. She was skilled, clever, cunning as a fox, as a vixen.
The Englishman paused, pushing his hat back on his forehead and turning his head as if seeking a breeze in the still, dusty air. She was close enough to see his face clearly, the sculpted lines of a hard jaw, a straight, bold nose, a broad forehead.
His skin was smooth and lightly tanned, free of pockmarks and blemishes, just one small, straight, silvery scar next to his mouth. It drew her eyes to his mouth . . . and what a mouth. Firm, chiseled lips, tight and compressed at the moment. She wanted to slide a moistened finger over them . . . see if they softened.
But his eyes drew her most; heavy-lidded eyes, almond-shaped and sleepy-looking.
Sleepy? A cold prickle ran through her. Sleepy as a cobra, his eyes missed nothing. He was looking straight at her.
He could not possibly see her clearly, she reminded herself—not with the sun so bright in his eyes and with Ayisha in the darkest shadows the narrow alleyway afforded. She’d picked this spot with care. The spice souk was the darkest. Sunshine was not good for spices.
Still he did not move, his eyes, no longer sleepy-looking, boring into the shadows, straight at her, as if he could see her, spear her with his gaze. She froze, as still as a mouse facing a python, and as she looked into his eyes, a steely coldness ran down her spine.
They were like no eyes she’d ever seen—a cold, pale blue, like the sky just before dawn, the hour when hope ebbed lowest and souls departed this earth. They held no warmth, no hope, no pity. A man to whom life or death made no difference. No wonder the crowd parted before him.
She pressed herself against the bricks, becoming one with the deepest shadows. He could not possibly see her, but the directness of his gaze was very unnerving.
Nearby, the spice seller began to crush the dukkah mixture with salt.
If he made the slightest movement toward her, she’d run. There were a dozen escape routes; she knew this city, every alleyway and souk and drain. She would not be caught. She waited, breathlessly, every muscle tense.
The stench of crushed and roasted spices thickened in her nostrils, threatening to choke her.
His dark brows tightened, his eyes narrowed, and his nostrils flared slightly, as if he scented game. English lords liked to hunt foxes. Papa had told her all about it, had promised that one day he would take her to England, take her hunting.
Papa had also been a teller of tales. She’d believed every word of them, for who could ever doubt Papa in anything?
But Papa had died, and his tales turned out to be less truthful than Mama’s made-up stories. Ayisha would never see England, the green and ple
asant land of her father’s stories.
And even if she did, nothing, no English lord could ever make her go fox hunting.
She’d been hunted too often to take sport in such a thing.
This was the first time an English lord had come, however. Was he bored with English foxes that he should come all this way to hunt . . . a girl?
A sudden crash and shouts came from the other side of the market—a squabble at the orange seller’s—and the pitiless blue gaze shifted, just for an instant. In a flash Ayisha moved, leaving the dark alley and diving under the covers of a stall.
She watched through a crack between fabrics as he took in the scene at the orange seller’s stall, then returned his gaze to the alley. To the exact spot where she had been.
His brows snapped into a faint frown as he scanned the surroundings. He glanced at the stall and his eyes narrowed, as if he knew she was there, crouched under the table, hiding behind some pink-and-orange striped fabric, and he could not, it was not possible, not unless he was a djinn or a wizard.
Ayisha didn’t believe in such things. The superstitious folk she’d lived among for the last six years might believe in djinns, afrits, and other evil spirits. Ayisha did not. She was educated—a bit—could read and write in several languages—a bit—and was a Christian, besides. Evil eye, what nonsense.
She crossed herself, just in case.
And then suddenly he moved, continuing on his way, striding through the marketplace, the intense blue eyes under their sleepy lids missing nothing.
Ayisha breathed again.
No, he was not at all like the ones who had come after her before. He was much, much more dangerous.
She waited until he’d reached the far side of the marketplace, turned a corner, and disappeared, then she slipped out from under the stall and found Ali heading purposefully toward the far corner of the square. She grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and hauled him backward.
“Ow, what are—”
“You’re not to follow that man,” she told him in a stern voice. “He’s dangerous.”
Ali snorted. “But I can—”
“I mean it, Ali.” She gripped his skinny shoulders tightly. “Don’t follow him, don’t even speak to him—do I make myself clear?”