Here he was, close enough to touch, close enough to hold – but still a world away.
'When do you have to leave?' she asked through trembling lips.
'Right away.' Quaint steeled himself, swallowing back the emotion. 'I have to get to Cairo as fast as I can and try to cobble passage on the quickest vessel out of this country.'
Tiny formations of anxious saliva congregated at the corners of Alexandria's mouth as she tried to speak. 'Will you not stay with me, Cornelius?'
Quaint broke from their embrace abruptly. 'Alex…please don't ask that of me.'
'But why not?'
'Because I might just say yes,' Quaint said. 'Alex, in another world…another lifetime…another me, perhaps…I would stay in a heartbeat. But I have responsibilities that must take precedence. I cannot ignore them. I wish that I could.' His face flashed a brief smile, but his eyes stayed as dark as pitch. 'It seems that once again, Fate has selected me as its plaything…and once again, I find myself being drawn back to England's shores just when I-'
Alexandria cocked an anxious eyebrow at him. 'Just when you what?'
Quaint stopped himself from answering.
'Time is always our enemy, Cornelius,' Alexandria said. 'You and I never seem to find enough of it. Even if we could live for ever…there would still not be enough.'
'You cannot possibly appreciate how ironic that statement is to me, Alex,' said Quaint. 'Maybe I'll come back and tell you one day.'
'I would like that,' the Egyptian woman said, gathering up her courage, wiping away her tears. 'You want swift passage to England, you say? Well, I may just be able to help you out with that.' Alexandria pushed past him through the door to her inner quarters and darted down the whitewashed staircase into her shop.
Typical Alex, Quaint thought, one minute she's begging me to stay and the next she's practically booting me out the door!
Downstairs in her workshop, Alexandria began sorting through pile after pile of material covering a large desk that Quaint had not even noticed.
'I have a friend who owns a spice clipper,' she said. 'Captain Madinah's craft is blindingly fast, superior to all other vessels in the port. From what you have said, I imagine that you will be going after Cho-zen Li as well?'
'Once I disrupt his plans for the Queen…' replied Quaint.
'Well, I have something here you might be able to make use of,' Alexandria said, as she finally produced a dusty old ledger from under a roll of silk, which she discarded absentmindedly onto a nearby chair. 'He placed an order with me, remember? That coat over there that you loved so much? I have his home address, if you want it.'
Quaint's mouth fell open at the serendipitous development, and he tapped upon his teeth with his fingernails. Perhaps some coincidences were not that bad, after all.
'And I suppose you might as well keep this.' Alexandria lifted a dark indigo, almost black, long-coat from the rail at her side. 'I presume that you will have to kill Cho-zen Li, and finery like this is simply wasted upon the dead,' she said, throwing the coat towards Quaint. 'It must be your lucky day!'
'Alex, I sailed halfway around the world to save Egypt from destruction,' he said, with a reflective, melodic tone. 'I have been tied up, beaten, tortured, blown up and almost damn near killed on a number of occasions. I rescued a hot-headed professor from a gang of vile thieves that I was then forced to ally myself with. I defeated an old enemy's plot, only to discover a brand new one waiting in the wings…and now I must race steamship across the ocean to save the life of a queen who is under threat from something that she cannot see, cannot hear and cannot touch.' Cornelius Quaint offered Alexandria a defeatist grin. 'Oh, yes…I have simply fabulous luck.'
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-8bdb12-8710-9b4b-07a0-54b5-747c-01d8a3
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 04.12.2010
Created using: Fiction Book Designer software
Document authors :
Source URLs :
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
The Eleventh Plague cq-2 Page 33