Haji froze. No. He hadn’t known.
“But then, after the fire, after Ginny left, well…it was clear you did not think of us in the same way because you disappeared.” Sir Robert regarded him with a mildly reproachful look. “I don’t mind telling you it was quite…empty in the house with both you and Ginesse gone. But then, I suppose young men must follow their own course. I do wish you had stayed in touch with us though. Even if you didn’t consider us your family, we consider you ours. Why did you leave, Haji?”
Because of my guilt. Because of my pride. Because I kept the fire Ginesse started burning in order to blame her. I thought once rid of her that the owners of those concessions where she’d been allowed to run amok would notice me, would take me seriously, would teach me.
But they hadn’t. Without Ginesse, there was no reason for Haji to be at those digs. The only one who’d ever truly shown an interest in his education had been Sir Robert, and he’d betrayed him. Haji couldn’t remain in Sir Robert’s house, seeing how much everyone missed Ginesse and knowing he was responsible. And all for nothing. Over the years he’d assuaged that guilt by transferring much of the blame to Ginesse.
“I thought it best,” Haji said and was saved from having to say more by Miss Whimpelhall.
“How…democratic,” she said and smiled brightly.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Please, Jim,” Ginesse said. “I need just a few hours’ rest before we set out.”
It was a new tact, because the old one, where she tried to rationally explain that traveling so soon after a head injury was not advisable, had been getting her nowhere.
Jim, in the process of hunting through the saddlebag Neely had left, stopped and studied her closely. She contrived to look exhausted, which wasn’t hard.
“Bloody Neely,” he muttered under his breath. “All right, Miss Whimpelhall. A few hours, but I have to tell you, Neely didn’t leave us much. There’s no tent in here, no food, no coal. Pretty much all that’s in here is a couple blankets and a change of uniform and tinderbox.”
“That despicable worm—” Ginesse began.
“Gets worse,” Jim said. “That water skin he left has less than a day’s worth of water in it.”
Ginesse stared at Jim, having a hard time comprehending the enormity of Neely’s betrayal. She’d been confident that once Jim had roused, they would continue on more or less in the same vein, simply less a half dozen travel companions. But now she realized that Neely had never meant her to make it out of the desert. Oh, he’d left them an old, one-eyed camel all right, but that had been nothing more than a sop to his conscience. What good would a camel do them if they didn’t have any food or water for days? The camel might survive, but they wouldn’t.
But, Ginesse thought fiercely, Neely hadn’t reckoned on Jim. A dozen Neelys weren’t worth one of him.
“I can’t understand why Neely didn’t take you with him. The fool all but signed his own death warrant,” Jim murmured for what had to be the fifth time. “Especially if I—” he finished in a dark murmur.
Ginesse didn’t reply. Anything she said was bound to smack of fabrication, so she opted to stay mute. Because she sensed that he would be angry with her if she told him that she’d refused to leave with Neely. Very angry.
“The oasis we’re heading for is not the same one you were leading Lieutenant Neely and his men to?” she asked to distract him.
“No. It’s closer.”
“Why weren’t we heading there to begin with, then?”
“Because it’s off the route we were taking by a good twenty miles, and we were carrying plenty of water to make it to the oasis where I’d initially planned to stop.”
Ha! she thought triumphantly. Neely had not counted on there being another, closer oasis. So much for his dire predictions.
“But it’s still a couple days’ ride at best, so we don’t want to waste precious time sleeping when we should be traveling, especially at night when we won’t be sweating.”
Yes, she thought. It made sense. But it made no sense if he ended up face-first in the sand with her unable to move him. “Just a few hours. Please,” she said.
He met her eye and finally nodded. “Look,” he said, “there’s only the one blanket and the camel’s blanket and the camel.”
She frowned.
“That’s pretty much all we have for warmth.”
“And each other,” she said reasonably.
He started. “Well, yes. I was going to suggest—”
“Of course you were. It would be silly not to cuddle together. My brothers and I used to do so all the time. My mum called it a puppy pile. So you lay next to the camel and I’ll curl up into you, like a spoon.”
“Ah. No,” he said. She peered at him, wondering why he sounded so strange. “No, you press up next to the camel and I’ll sandwich you in.”
She shrugged. “All right.”
Perfectly reasonable and innocent-seeming ideas had always been her bête noire, Ginesse realized some minutes later when she lay on her side wedged between the stinky, one-eyed camel and Jim Owens’s taut, hard body. True, he was warm. No, he was hot. It emanated from his skin, seeping into hers. And she felt very safe and secure, but she didn’t know what to do with her hands.
She tried clasping her hands together in an attitude of prayer and nestling them between Jim’s shoulder blades, but that created an unwelcome space between Jim and her, and since the whole object of sharing body heat was to share body heat, that rather defeated the purpose.
Besides, the afreet within her suggested, since all that masculine beauty was now on the table, so to speak, it seemed a shame not to take advantage—just a small advantage—of what circumstance had thrown her way and see whether he felt as good as he looked.
He did. That was the problem. He felt even better than he looked. She looped an arm around his waist, and at once his whole body went still and tight, like he’d received an electric shock. He was so…dense, so hard, like a living statue, like warm granite. She rested her hand on the corrugated planes of his belly that jumped into sharp relief. She laid her cheek against his back and heard him make some sound of discomfort.
“Are you okay?” she whispered worriedly.
“Yes. Yes.” She felt more than saw him nodding vigorously. “I’m good. This is fine. It’s fine. Go to sleep.”
Sleep? How could she ever sleep? His virility flooded her senses, both arousing and soporific at the same time. Amazing. She’d never experienced anything so alien, so exotic, and so delicious. She resolved to stay awake and hoard every moment, catalogue each sensation, each shift of muscle and each heartbeat—
“Are you praying, Mr. Owens?” she asked, certain she’d misheard him.
“Yup,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind I better get back to it.”
It was, Ginesse found, uncomfortable to hold a conversation while sitting atop a camel. Particularly when both participants were sharing the same saddle. Even more particularly when one of the participants, who just happened to be thoroughly male, was sitting behind the other and his arms were looped casually around her waist, his broad chest bolstering her back and his long thighs bracketing her own. And when his breath stirred one’s temple and one’s head fell into a natural lee beneath his chin, well, conversation proved nearly impossible.
They’d been traveling since just before midnight, and it was now only a few hours until dawn, the coldest time of the night. Overhead the Southern Cross sparkled like ice chips against the sable sky. In front of them rose a huge, miles-long sand dune, its rim an undulating knife-edge limned in cool blue light.
“Is it large?”
“What?”
At his barked question, Ginesse started. “Is the oasis large?”
“No.”
He shifted behind her, plainly uncomfortable.
“Will there be other travelers there?”
“I doubt it.”
She frowned. He’d been taciturn ever since they’d
climbed aboard the camel and was only growing more so. It was fine with her if he didn’t want to talk. She was having a hard time concentrating on anything but the feel of being in his arms. Ever since she spent the night curled next to him, all she wanted was to return to that state or some state like it.
She was twenty-one, an independent, modern woman who’d been kissed enough times to realize that there were different types of kisses and different proficiencies of kissers, and she was eager to add to her list of life experiences. Specifically, she wanted the experience of kissing Jim Owens. There, she’d acknowledged it.
Of course, it was futile. He wasn’t likely to make love to another man’s intended. He had too much honor. Besides, even if he were receptive to the idea, she could not allow it. She was supposedly an engaged woman, so committed to another man she’d traveled across the world to be at his side. What would Jim think of Mildred Whimpelhall if she kissed him? For that matter, what would Miss Whimpelhall, the real Miss Whimpelhall, think of Jim Owens if he tried to kiss her? What sort of man kisses another man’s bride?
A man who cannot resist that bride, a man overcome with desire. For whatever reasons.
Oh, hell and ruination and bother over what Mildred Whimpelhall would have thought. Ginesse Braxton didn’t care. She wished Jim Owens would kiss her, and as sad a comment on her own moral probity as she knew it to be, Ginesse Braxton wouldn’t think less of him for it.
Perhaps if she told him who she really was…But if she did, he’d likely just turn around and take her back. So, she might as well rest in his sheltering arms and enjoy it.
Time passed and she relaxed. The camel’s gait was as lulling as a rocking chair, moving her gently against Jim with each step. His heat soaked through the layers of thin cotton into her back and spine and hips and lower. She snuggled deeper into his embrace and felt his thighs tense and…and something more, lower, pressed intimately against her.
She should have been mortified, horrified, aghast, at the very least embarrassed. She wasn’t. Pure feminine empowerment leapt within her, startled out of dormancy by the meaning of that hard, masculine ridge. Jim Owens was as aware of her as a woman as she was of him as a man. She smiled triumphantly into the darkness. So, he had no more interest in her than his hypothetical sister, had he?
“Say something,” he suddenly said. He sounded strained.
“Excuse me?”
“You haven’t said a word in half an hour. Say something. Tell me about the history of saffron or how to make Chinese cricket cages or the ritual uses of obsidian. Something. Anything.” More than strained, almost desperate.
She half turned to face him. His eyes glittered, catching the rebounding light off the dune. With a sound deep in his throat, he suddenly slipped a big hand beneath her knee, lifting her leg up and over the pommel, rotating her in the saddle so that she now rode sidesaddle, cradled sideways against him, her legs draped over his thigh.
He breathed out a low whistle of relief. “There. Now. Talk.”
He was, she realized with a thrill, more than aware of her. He wanted her. And while part of her, that newly awoken feminine djinn, wanted to test her powers, the sensible academian knew better.
She cast about for something to say. “Napoleon Bonaparte estimated that should one use the materials in the Great Pyramids to build a wall around the country of France, the completed structure would be ten feet high.”
“Hm.” He stared fixedly in front of them.
“A fifteenth-century Florentine is responsible for making Cupid synonymous with love. During Carnival he visited his ladylove dressed as Cupid, wings and all, and brought with him a hundred and fifty men to serenade her, conveying before them a brilliantly festooned cart. At the end of their songs, he threw his wings atop the cart and the whole thing burst into flames, setting off devices that shot arrows into the air. One, so it’s said, piercing his lady’s heart and winning her favor. When the display was over, he coaxed his horse backwards all the way down the street until he was out of her sight, swearing he would never turn his back to her.”
“Good Lord,” Jim said at that, “the man sounds like a complete imbecile. How many people got hit with his arrows—besides his lady friend?”
“It was romantic. But then, I forgot I was addressing someone who thinks romance is juvenile,” she said, aware it made her unhappy and she had no right be unhappy over Jim Owens’s romantic inclinations or disinclinations. “Let me see, what would interest you…?” She furrowed her brow. “The Luxor Temple was begun by Amenhotep the Third, an Eighteenth Dynasty ruler, but enlarged by Ramses the Second when—”
“No,” he said.
She blinked. “No, what?”
“Nothing more about Egypt’s dead kings and pharaohs, their tombs or papyri. No more recitations. Tell me something you are interested in.”
His words penetrated slowly. “I am interested in these things.” Then why did she sound so doubtful? “I am.” And so defensive?
He looked down at her. “No, you’re not. You’re trying to impress your…impress Pomfrey. As soon as you start talking about pharaohs your voice gets all tight and determined, like you’re taking oral exams. It’s not a prerequisite, you know.”
“What’s not a prerequisite?”
“You don’t have to know every Egyptian ruler’s name and burial site in order to live in Egypt.”
“That’s not it at all,” she said stiffly, all thought of kisses and female power vanished. “I find it fascinating. The various dynasties and houses, the empires…Don’t you?”
“No.”
Her mouth fell open, stunned. The words he’d uttered were not only inconceivable, in her family they were tantamount to sacrilege. “You don’t?”
He shrugged, the nonchalant gesture effectively consigning her world, her life, and her family to a negligible hobby. “Oh, I think it’s interesting in small doses, but dynasties are built on graves. I prefer the living.”
She refused to believe it. “But I was under the impression that you were…that you made your living due in a great part to your knowledge of ancient Egyptian history and artifacts. You’ve worked at the concessions!”
His mouth quirked up at the corner, and he looked down into her face with some amusement. “I know my way around a tomb site, but that’s just my job, Mil—Miss Whimpelhall.”
She didn’t know how to react. Her entire life had been centered in one way or another around Egyptian archaeology. It was what defined her entire family: her great-grandfather, her father, her mother, her brothers…and, of course, herself. She frowned, looking away, and felt his chest rumble against her arm. He was chuckling, she realized.
Her scowl deepened. He had no right to laugh at her, to question her interest, her ardor, or commitment. Who was he to say what she found fascinating and what she didn’t? He didn’t know her. He thought she was Mildred Whimpelhall, a spinster from London.
Jim had never met Ginesse Braxton. How could he begin to understand how important this was to her that the name Ginesse Braxton be included in her family’s illustrious ranks? He couldn’t because he couldn’t fathom what it was like to be the cuckoo in the nest. Not that she was a cuckoo. She wasn’t! She’d proved that by earning a degree in ancient studies. She was proving that by discovering Zerzura, and it was fascinating!
She hadn’t thought of the lost city in days, and now this reminder of what was at stake and the reason for her journey came racing back to her. She hadn’t precisely forgotten, she’d just been caught up in their day-to-day travel and Mr. Owens’s mysterious history, and her silly scribblings and their conversations and his grave-eyed charm and his warm embrace…Zerzura had simply slipped to the back of her mind. She had so completely immersed herself in her role as Mildred Whimpelhall, she’d forgotten who she was.
“I’m sorry you don’t share my enthusiasm for the ancients, Mr. Owens,” she said stiffly. “But you’re quite, quite wrong. I am passionately interested in Egyptian history and archaeol
ogy.”
“You know,” he said, looking more puzzled than chastised, “if you think this will impress Pomfrey, you’re wrong. He knows nothing about archaeology and cares less than nothing for tombs and pharaohs. You don’t have to be anyone but yourself, Miss Whimpelhall. Believe me,” he said, his voice softening, “that is enough.”
“Sometimes it isn’t,” she said so softly she couldn’t tell if he’d heard.
“All right,” he said, with a touch of resignation. “Then tell me something I’ll be interested in.”
“I have a better idea,” she said, unwilling to follow the path his questions had set her on. She did not want to examine too closely what had brought her to this point, to this masquerade, to deceiving Jim. “You tell me something.”
There was a subtle change in his body. Not a stiffening precisely, more like an inner retreat, a distance developing between them as surely as if he’d set her on the ground.
“What would you like to know?” he asked.
“Colonel Lord Pomfrey wrote that you are a scoundrel.”
“Did he?”
She slanted a glance from under her lashes and nodded. “Are you?”
“Define scoundrel.”
“Someone of questionable integrity.”
“Then he’s right.” He shifted her in his arms so that she was lying back in the crook of his elbow, looking up into his face. His mouth was relaxed, his voice composed, but there was a hard quality to the gaze fixed on the landscape ahead.
“Yes,” she admitted then, “Colonel Lord Pomfrey said you are a ruffian, too.”
“Right again.” A small muscle leapt in his jaw.
“And Colonel Lord Pomfrey said you were rough and uncouth,” she continued, adding before he could accept the fault for these sins, too, “but I do not find you either.”
This won a startled glance from him.
“But he says you are in league with the bandits and,” she demurred from using the word “jackal” as Pomfrey had in his letter, “outlaws.”
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