As well as the two men outside, who were dressed up like women. They were setting an ambush. “Naturally that makes me feel more at ease. Who protects you?”
“I know what I’m doing, amîri.”
Their faces were close as he worked the turban. So close she tasted the scent of peppermint on his breath, which was pleasant.
It occurred to her in her musings and admiration that he’d experienced worlds she’d only glimpsed in novels and photographs. He spoke the language, had acquired the mannerisms of the people, and hadn’t seemed to fret that two proper English women had gawked at him while he shaved. Her gaze slid past his tanned throat to touch the firm square of his jaw and she focused on his slightly parted lips, which showed the edges of straight white teeth. Her feelings were potent because he’d kept her safe, and he was risking his life to continue to keep them safe. What woman wouldn’t find that a weight on her emotions? It wasn’t as if she were attracted to him. Completely, swooningly attracted, anyway.
She knew when he became aware of her eyes on his mouth. Her lashes lifted another notch, and she found herself staring into eyes the color of fine sterling. A smile was in his gaze and on his lips. Her mind had turned carnal. Curiosity more than anything kept her legs immobile.
“Stay with Abdul,” he said, his voice laced with gentle humor. “I don’t want to get back to Cairo and learn that you’ve been thrown into someone’s harem.”
“I’ll do my best, Major,” she said, her guilty thoughts making her response testy. “Though I have no idea how I’ll possibly control my urge to fraternize. I mean, it’s an awfully long trip.”
His gaze slid over her lips. In the silver glitter of his eyes, she recognized the challenge that she’d thrown at him last night. Indeed, ever since she’d told him that she wasn’t easily shocked, it seemed as if he went out of his way to shock her on purpose. Now that her ladyship wasn’t present, he was behaving obnoxiously.
He splayed his chin. “I did wash and shave.”
“Now you wish me to tell you if your kiss is memorable?” she brazened, unwilling to allow him to intimidate her.
A charged silence filled the empty space between them, forged on her part by recognition that unlike Stephan Williams, this man was not afraid of Christopher. The shock was exciting.
Dangerous.
Unexpected.
She knew she was insane to find him attractive, or to even think about involving herself with someone the khedive called the Barracuda. Yet, she’d discovered to her horror that she wanted him to kiss her.
“How old are you?” he suddenly asked.
“Excuse me?” Her head oddly dizzy, she only knew that she was old enough to kiss a man. “Twenty-two. In six months. Why?” She thought she’d heard an oath. “How old are you?”
“Much older than you are.”
“How much?”
“Eleven years. A decade…”
Her eyes widened in mock horror. “Four thousand days, plus or minus a few weeks.” She despised the implication that she was a child. More so now, because she was feeling her inexperience. Maybe it came from being the youngest in a family, and having to fight for every inch of respect she’d ever received. Or getting no respect at all. “Goodness, Major Fallon.” Stepping away, she put the space of the desk between them. “I still would have been wearing pinafores when you were off doing…whatever it is boys who think they are men do.”
He was leaning against the desk. “While you were wearing pinafores, I was fighting with Gordon in China.”
“I see.” Lord, how had they gotten to this point anyway? “I’m quite capable of making my mind up about men, Major.”
“No doubt you are.”
“It isn’t as if I haven’t seen enough pictures and statues in my lifetime to know what happens between a man and a woman. Christopher collects some of the most erotic eastern artwork I’ve ever seen.” Finding new purpose for her turban, she raised the heavy cloth over her mouth. “It is only art, after all.”
Major Fallon had not responded except to arch one brow. “And here I was thinking, with the ten minutes we have left, we could have all-out lusty sex in the back room, just me and the desert breeze against your hot naked skin.” Exuding potent sexuality, he leaned toward her. Brianna flushed to the roots of her dark hair. Only her blue eyes shone above the tagilmust. “Trust me, Miss Donally, I may be a cad, but I am somewhat discriminating about the women I choose to take to bed.”
She laughed, rolling her eyes. The man had the morals of a camel. Not in her whole life had anyone ever spoken such candid filth to her. Her reaction was purely self-defense. “I happen to know that you have a mistress. So, you’re quite safe from me and my cap.”
He’d crossed his arms. His heavy sleeves covered his hands. “You mean Yasmeen?” He gave her a wicked smile that did not reach his eyes—a perfect sphinx version of his usual grin. If he was disconcerted that he was a familiar topic among the ladies at the consulate, it didn’t show. “It seems that you have me at a disadvantage. I don’t know anything about you. Except that you’re a photographer.”
“A very good one, too.” She released her turbulent exhalation. How many people in her life actually knew her? “I like the sunrise and the way the air smells in the morning. I love roses. I miss the rain.” She’d left her self-extolment a trifle seraphic, for she was also a member of the temperance society for city children. She’d marched in London with the ladies of suffrage, had seen the inside of more than one gaol, and, after having had her most recent publication banned in England, found herself exiled by her family to Egypt. Now, for someone who was supposedly in love with another man, she was experiencing myriad feelings that she didn’t understand. “And I think that you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” she finished by saying, and watched the mockery slide from his gaze. “They’re not quite blue. They are…”
“Gray, ashen, stormy?”
“One might even say they’re very nice to gaze into.”
“And what do you say, Miss Donally?”
“I say that it’s unfortunate you only want what you cannot have, Major.” She’d seen the way he’d looked at Alex on more than one occasion. “But I suppose, wanting what you cannot have gives you a reason to remain angry with the world.”
The silver gaze he fixed on her didn’t waver, and where his formidable authority had lent him only certitude moments ago, she now glimpsed something else in his expression that defied description. It pleased her that the intrepid Major Fallon was human after all.
The sound of an approaching horse intruded. Her heart began to beat harder. Her body double had arrived and, at any moment, a servant would be walking into the tent to announce his arrival.
“I don’t suppose I’m going to get that kiss after all?” She just had to be cocky. It was in her nature: when things got tough, she turned into an ass. Clearly not amused, Major Fallon pushed off the desk and walked to the cot, where he retrieved a rifle.
“You aren’t going to shoot me, are you?”
“Now there’s a thought that never crossed my mind.”
The servant entered then, bringing the guard with him. Their places now exchanged, Brianna listened to the Arabic discourse. Excluded by virtue of her ignorance, she glanced briefly at Major Fallon. Her gaze traveled from the tensile strength of his hands as he spoke, the rifle gripped in his hand, before rising to his profile, and found him watching her.
For an instant he held her pinned with his gaze, and she forgot the other men in the tent. “The moon is waning, so the light won’t help you much tonight.” His voice was sure, in control again, having relegated whatever had just passed between them someplace else. “Abdul will be waiting for you when you get to the edge of the camp. The gray horse is yours,” he added. “The Arabian is valuable and probably once belonged to some sheikh before she ended up where she did. You might find that you want to keep the mare.”
The horse was hers by right of conquest. She’d not asked a
bout it before because she was unsure of her emotions on the topic. The Arabian was one of two horses that Major Fallon had been unwilling to leave at the watchtower oasis. There was something undefined about a man who had no qualms in killing another human being, yet, at great risk to himself, could bring an animal and two strangers three days across hostile territory. Knowing it wasn’t over yet brought a shock of tears to her eyes. She was suddenly afraid for him.
He lifted her tagilmust as it fell lose. “I meant what I said about maintaining your disguise and staying with Abdul.”
“The last thing I want is for you to worry, Major.” Then, knowing she might never see him again, Brianna did something she knew she shouldn’t have. Goodbye. She stepped forward on the balls of her feet and kissed him.
Without waiting for the drumming in her ears to subside, she pulled away to leave, only to meet the steel of his hand at her nape. Her gaze snapped up to his. He’d gathered the cloth of her turban and tipped her head back, his silky eyes sliding to her mouth. Her lashes drifted shut the moment his mouth touched hers, feather light at first, inquiringly, as if tasting her, testing her response with solicitous efficiency. Altering his lips subtly, he touched his tongue to the full curve of her bottom lip, and the kiss that had been chaste before began to burn with a strange exotic blue flame fanned by her racing heart.
He slipped his tongue between her lips to dance with hers, the cadence between them becoming a beat, a velvet rhythm that only they heard in the dimness of the night.
She had no idea what her body was doing. Sliding her hands to his neck, she rose on her tiptoes, seeking more of the heat that enveloped her. He held the rifle gripped in one hand; his other had drifted down the curve of her back. Heat branded her flesh. She became lost and alive at once, every sense heightened to the body pressed against hers, singularly aware of the contrast between the softer burnoose he wore and the hardened male beneath. Then, as if by mutual assent, the kiss deepened and flared into something more primal. There was no gentleness in his possession as he deliberately dragged her into a sensual tide so elemental that any sense to protest was swept away by the roaring in her veins and her groan of surrender. Or did that sound come from him?
She basked in the sensual feast, teetering on the brink of a shivery exhalation, a miasmic bog clouding her brain, when reality intruded. Some noise outside the tent reminded them where they were.
She opened her eyes to find him looking down at her. Her lips throbbed. Beneath her fingertips she could feel the slight bump on his head where Alex had hit him with the rifle. She withdrew her arms.
His thumb eased over her bottom lip. “This will make for interesting gossip,” he said, referring to the other men in the tent.
A keen sense of horror fell over her. Although there was no amusement in his eyes, neither was there admiration or devotion. Where she had lost control, it was clear that he had not. This was probably regular fare for him, the ladies throwing themselves into his arms. He’d only answered her challenge, granting what she’d sought. Major Fallon was no innocent, and she’d stumbled before the dance had even begun.
He held out the rifle. “If you ride past Abdul in the darkness, one of my men will let you know.”
She reattached the tagilmust with trembling fingers before she took the rifle. “Will your man whistle, Major?”
“Would you come if he did? Somehow I doubt obedience is in your nature, amîri. Or that you’re as easy as you seem.”
Brianna had no problem affecting the walk of a man, especially in her agitated state. Men had surrounded her entire life, men who could have invented the masculine persona for Irish arrogance—none of whom held a candle to the very British but not so very proper Major Michael Fallon.
Michael motioned two men standing near the fire to follow Brianna. Without taking his eyes off the pale figure riding like the wind away from him, he reached beneath his burnoose and withdrew his tin of peppermints. “Is everything ready?” he asked the guard behind him.
“Yes, effendi,” the man said, then added, “Do not worry. The men will die before they allow anything to happen to Donally Pasha’s family.”
The idea was not comforting. But if he was to have any hope of protecting them, he had to do his job. The caravan leaving from Baharia was over seventy strong. Many were on their annual pilgrimage. Brianna and Lady Alexandra would be with Donally’s returning staff and the physician who would accompany her back.
Out of the corner of his eye Michael caught the movement of the two men dressed in Lady Alexandra’s and Brianna’s clothes. They were talking. He thanked God for thick veils and darkness. The two made the homeliest pair he’d ever seen. But they knew how to use a knife, and that’s why he’d brought them from the outpost.
Michael dropped the tent flap. The faint scent of roses lingered in the tent. A vase of flowers bloomed on the shelves next to the photographs. He held the photograph that Brianna had taken in Giza to the single lamp.
Brianna had not read him as thoroughly as she’d thought. He’d been drawn to Lady Alexandra’s softness and grace. She reminded him of home, of something gentler than he was. But where he was wont to treat the one like a lady, the other made him believe in sin. Some women just knew how to move in their bodies, some innate sense that had little to do with experience and everything to do with lack of inhibition. Brianna Donally was earthy and sensual, a rarity in the western world. He hadn’t expected it from Little-Miss-Spoiled-For-Life-With-One-Kiss.
Smiling to himself, Michael pulled the cork from the wine bottle sitting on the desk. He’d leave the moment Abdul returned with word that the two women were safe. He had business to take care of in El-Musa. And with any luck, he’d be followed all the way there.
Chapter 4
There was no dawn like the sunrise that rose over the desert. Crisp air still cool from the night swept off the Nile. Michael eyed the mix of mud houses, minarets, and spires that swam in the misty morning light. It seemed that there was something symbolic in the gentle beauty that illuminated the countryside. El-Musa was not an unattractive town, but Sheikh Omar, the governor-mayor of the region, was rotten to his core. He and the governor-mayor were old enemies. Educated in England, the sheikh was related to the khedive, and in usual political proviso, Michael had been warned after past altercations to leave Omar alone. But somewhere here, Michael was sure he would find Donally.
After waiting for his men to secure the perimeter of the house, Michael signaled them to move inside the courtyard. The neo-Byzantine palace belonging to the sheikh stood at the edge of the town, pale pink in the sunrise. Inside, a muddle of English and opulent native furnishings cluttered every room. Michael’s boots made a tap-tap sound on the stone floor as he waded through a cluster of irate servants.
Michael motioned to one of his men to remain on the stairway. A rifle braced across his chest like an Egyptian demigod, he halted the progression of panicked servants on their way to the upper level. Without breaking stride, Michael entered the master’s chambers, a cavernous room embellished by tapestries, colored marble, and gilt furniture. Red silken drapery the color of blood fluttered in the morning breeze.
Cocking the hammer on his revolver, Michael nudged the sleeping sheikh with the dusty toe of his boot. “Rise and shine, my lord.”
Black hair, black-eyed, his beard streaked with gray, the man on the cushions stirred. A naked girl spooned against him opened her eyes and screamed. Sheikh Omar shot straight up.
“Major Fallon!” He slid back against the plush wall of pillows. “Allah save me from crazy Englishmen. Not again.”
“Where is he?”
“If you mean that madman Donally, he was here when I returned last night from the camel mart, mind you, on legitimate business.”
Michael smiled. “I haven’t slept for days, Omar. Do you want to know why I haven’t slept?”
“You do not want to kill me, Major.”
“Oh, but there you are mistaken. Donally may be willing to overl
ook certain iniquities to do his job, but I am not.”
“He is not above compromise. Have you not noticed? The railroad went through here two years ago. There is no peace for him unless he makes peace with the men upon whose lands he builds upon. My men guard the tracks and the telegraph. Down the river it is someone else.”
“Yet, he thinks that you had something to do with the attacks on a particular caravan some weeks ago. Why would he think that, Omar? Why would he ride alone seven days across the desert to reach you?”
Michael spoke over his shoulder. “I want every man present checked for a tattoo. A scarab on the wrist.” Omar tried to rise, but Michael trapped him with a boot. “Three men ambushed me on my way here. Unfortunately, two didn’t survive. But the one who did brought me straight to you. He had a tattoo.” Michael checked both Omar’s arms. “A scarab—an insect resembling a cockroach.”
“I swear you’ll pay for this insult, Fallon.”
“Why would Donally think you’re involved?”
“He assumed that I knew about the gold because I’ve occasionally handled stolen goods taken in raids. But that was years ago. Go ask him. He is down the corridor.”
“Then who did know about the gold Pritchards was carrying?”
“I don’t know. I swear, I am a man of honor.”
Michael eased off the revolver hammer. “You feed opium to children, Omar. Where is the honor in that?” He turned to the two men standing behind him. “Stay with him until I return.”
“You said that you had a witness…the attack on you—”
“I lied. No one survived.” Michael shoved the gun into his sash. “My men are very proficient at what they do, Omar.”
“Bastard!” Omar spat at Michael’s legs.
“Consider us even for the beating your men gave me in El-Kharga last month. Next time I may just accidentally shoot you.”
“Laugh, Fallon. I swear it will be your last time. You will pay for this outrage.”
Must Have Been The Moonlight Page 5