“Marvel,” Rowan said. “You need to head back.”
“Rowan, no!” She turned on him, allowing Spenser to retreat. He tapped Digby on the chest in passing as if to indicate he should follow.
Rowan took Marvel by the arms and watched the transformation as she became an obedient schoolgirl for him, looking up into his eyes as if he could but command her.
“I need you to head on back,” he said firmly but kindly.
“But, Rowan,” she said, her bottom lip beginning to stick out. “We just got here.”
“Which has nothing to do with the fact that they are in no shape to receive us right now.” He ran a hand down her arm and gave her a light push toward her party of gawky relatives and simpering nieces. He turned to Ra who was holding the reins to Rowan’s horse and his own donkey. “Escort her back, Ra,” he said.
“Rowan, no,” she said softly, but he could tell she would go.
“Go on back to Cairo, Marvel,” he said. “I’ll send for you when things have calmed down here, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, he jerked his head to Ra who handed him the reins of his horse and turned back toward Marvel’s group. “Send Ra back once you’re safely on the boat. I’ll let you know when it’s okay to return.”
“You’re going after her,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“Go on now,” he said, patting her shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Spenser was mounted and waiting for him.
* * * *
“You’re telling us she is your wife?” The English fop gave Rowan a look of incredulity. “Why didn’t she mention she was married? Why should we believe you are who you say you are?”
“I don’t give a shit what you believe.”
Rowan stood up in the stirrups and scanned the horizon. Because they had seen no one on the trip from the boat to the camp, Rowan had suggested they fan out in any of the three other directions possible except for the one leading to the river. It didn’t make obvious sense, he knew. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t right.
The American foreman, Spenser, seemed like a solid sort, although he was clearly frustrated with the whole mess. For whatever reason, Rowan saw him eagerly push off the leadership of the expedition onto Rowan, who was watching Digby’s surreptitious conference with his big Arab.
Ella and Julia had been gone nearly seven hours by this time. Rowan had no idea how much water they had with them or how long they could last. It was perplexing that they had not ridden straight to the river. He wracked his brain to understand what their reasoning might have been. Was there a village they were aiming for?
“What’s near here?” he asked Spenser.
The big man shook his head. “Fuck all,” he said. “Some broken down huts they call a village. And of course the desert. About twenty-five thousand miles of sand.”
“If they didn’t head to the river,” Digby said, pursing his lips as if he was encountering a bad smell by riding so close to Rowan, “then they have decided to commit suicide by desert.”
“They probably made a mistake,” Rowan said, looking at him in disgust. “A miscalculation.”
What in the world had Ella been doing out here?
“Their miscalculation was when they stole two horses and slipped out into the night,” Digby said.
“Yeah, about that.” Rowan twisted in his saddle. “What made two civilized women so desperate that they ran away in the middle of the night?” He spoke to Digby, taking in his recently broken nose.
“There was a misunderstanding,” Digby said stiffly.
“They both misunderstood something?” He was talking to Spenser now.
The foreman sighed. “We had it all sorted out,” he said, glancing over at Digby. “They were to be escorted to Cairo. Today, in fact.”
“Did they know this?”
“They hadn’t been told yet,” Spenser admitted.
“Who was to do the escorting? You?”
Spenser glanced at Digby. “He’s her husband,” he said.
“What happened to make them run?” Rowan asked again.
“None of your damn business, Yank! Lady Digby is my wife. This isn’t the United States of Do As You Please. I don’t answer to you.”
“The woman your wife ran off with is my wife,” Rowan snarled. “And she’s not in the habit of doing that unless something is very wrong and she has no other option.”
“I have no idea about any of that,” Digby said, backing his horse away from Rowan.
“Look, Pierce,” Spenser said, “The Viscount and his wife had some problems. And your wife got in the middle of it.”
Rowan looked at him and had to admit that sounded like Ella.
“Lady Digby probably overreacted,” Spenser continued, “and your wife went along to be a good friend. We’ll find them, okay?”
“We’d better,” Rowan muttered, giving Digby a last angry glance. He didn’t know the specifics of the man’s involvement yet but he would. Oh, he would.
Ella was worried. They should have made up their lost miles and reached the river by now. She didn’t dare look at the sun. Although it was steadily dropping, it was still hot. Her pith helmet felt like a toaster oven sitting on her head. But removing it was not an option, so punishing were the sun’s rays. At one point, she had the mad idea that she and Julia could make the horses stand still long enough that they could sit under them. Anything for a bit of shade!
She thought of the old saying that when the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers. She knew her prayers were about to be answered when dusk came—only to be replaced by a drastic drop in temperature that neither woman was dressed for.
How could this have happened?
Parched, exhausted and nearly hysterical with fear and dread, they had both stopped speaking hours earlier. There was nothing to say. Every step might take them closer to the river or a village so they had to keep moving. Ella was surprised that Julia hadn’t fallen from her pony in a dead faint yet. She stayed mounted, although Ella could see she had let go of her reins and was now clutching the pommel to stay upright. How much longer could they continue like this?
She was grateful that Julia had not succumbed to crying. As thirsty and dry as they were, it was almost as if she knew on some basic level that that would be the last thing that would help.
Ella had planned on riding through the night when the sun wasn’t bearing down upon them, but they were both so tired that the thought of continuing was ludicrous. As the light faded above the far-off cliffs on the horizon, she felt the first chill breeze gently ripple her cotton shirt. Damp from sweat, she shivered.
“Julia,” she croaked. “Let’s stop.”
Without looking to see if she had heard her, Ella slid out of the saddle to the ground, feeling her knees instantly give way as she tumbled to a seated position next to her horse’s legs. Before she gained the strength to pull herself back up using the saddle’s stirrups, she heard the distant howl of the first jackal.
“I say, a fool could see that they didn’t come this way, and meanwhile we are ill-provisioned to continue this folly!” Digby stood on the ground, the foot of his horse in his hands. He had stopped to remove a stone.
In all this sand, Rowan didn’t find the excuse plausible. Digby had been falling further and further behind.
“It is now, officially, a wild-goose chase,” Digby said to Spenser. Rowan was concerned to see that Spenser appeared to be listening. Rowan knew the foreman would prefer to quickly resolve the crisis and get back to work at the dig site.
Digby pointed to the sun which was now just above the horizon. “We are not equipped to spend the night out here,” he said. “And we have no idea of which direction they went.”
“He’s got a point,” Spenser said, removing his pith helmet and scratching his head. “We’re nearly at the point where we can’t see anything even if there is something to see.”
“They can still hear us,” Rowan said, bringing his horse back to where the o
ther two were standing. “I say we go on. They could be right over that rise for all we know.”
“The key phrase being for all we know,” Digby said, positioning his foot in the stirrup and hoisting himself up in the saddle. “It makes more sense to go back and properly provision for a longer expedition.”
“That’s bullshit,” Rowan said. “Every minute counts and you know it. Going back would sign their death warrants out here in the desert.”
Spenser held up a hand to stop the bickering. With what looked like a longing glance in the direction of the Valley of the Kings, he said, “We’ll camp here tonight and restart the search at dawn.”
“That’s madness!” Digby said.
“We’re losing time!” Rowan said at the same time.
Spenser ignored Digby and turned to Rowan. “You don’t know this desert like I do,” he said. “They should be able to survive one night now that the sun’s gone down. I’ll bet we find them as soon as it’s light. We’ve got enough water for at least two more days.”
Rowan let out an agonizing breath. “Okay. But at the very first light.” He could see that Digby was not at all pleased to be continuing the search on any terms.
Now why would that be, I wonder?
Spenser built a small fire and the group bedded down near it in blanket rolls. Rowan watched as Abdullah moved furtively into the shadows toward the horses and disappeared into the night.
Julia could not stop convulsing. It had started out as simple trembling from the cool night air and quickly escalated into uncontrollable body shakes. While the temperature had dropped significantly, Ella couldn’t believe it was cold enough for them to actually die of hypothermia. They were in a desert for heaven’s sake! She held Julia and rubbed her shoulders through her thin cotton blouse to create some warmth. She spoke to her, too, as if her voice might reach the irrational part of Julia that was insisting on expiring from the simple state of being extremely uncomfortable.
“Come on, girl,” Ella said. “You’re plucky, remember? You’re tougher than this. It’s cold but it’s not the arctic. It’s a desert. Come on, sweetie.”
Julia’s only answer was the rather loud clattering of her teeth.
“Let’s think of warm things, okay?” Ella said. “I’ll start. Hot chocolate so hot it burns your lips. Cancun at high noon when all you can feel is the sweat and the sunscreen dripping down your ribs and the sun beating down your face. How about any moment we just lived through today, right? Plodding along endless sands with the sun burning down your neck? Remember, sweetie? Remember it was so hot we felt like our skin was crisping up? Julia?”
Suddenly, Ella heard a noise that hadn’t come from her or Julia or one of the horses. She stopped talking and held her breath. The only sound in the quiet night was Julia’s chattering teeth.
“Julia,” Ella said, shaking her friend. “Julia, shut up a second.”
Ella’s stomach clenched with excitement. She heard voices! Voices coming across the sands toward them!
They were rescued!
“Julia! We’ve been found!” she said. “They’ve found us! We’re saved!”
Ella jumped up and ran to their hobbled horses. She was horrified to see her horse was lying down and not moving.
“Hello?” she called into the night. “We’re over here! Help!”
She heard the voices stop when she called and it occurred to her that that was not a good sign. She tried to see in the darkness but could make out nothing. She took a tentative step back to where she had left Julia and realized at some instinctual level that she was now attempting to be secretive.
Why would the voices stop when she called to them?
She turned to run back to Julia but halted in horror after two steps.
Four men stood over Julia. They were dressed in rags, their faces covered by beards. As Ella watched, two of them turned toward her. One pulled a long scimitar from a loop in his belt as he advanced toward her.
Chapter Fourteen
Rowan stood holding the punctured water bag and stared at the wet puddle that had soaked into the desert floor hours before. They had a smaller bag but it wasn’t going to last long.
“How could this happen?” Rowan said, his voice shaking with anger as he held the bag in his hands. He wanted very badly to punch something.
“Son of a bitch!” Spenser strode across the few yards that separated them and snatched the bag out of Rowan’s hands. He stared at the darkening stain on the ground. “It’s been cut with a knife!”
“I say, chaps,” Digby said. “I fear I am the unwitting and totally unfortunate perpetrator of this terrible—”
He didn’t finish his sentence before Spenser socked him in the jaw, knocking him flat.
“Are you trying to kill us, you idiot?” Spenser shouted. “Slashing our water in the desert?”
“It…it was an accident!” Digby said, spitting blood into his hand. “I was using my knife to get to the beef jerky I keep in my saddle bag and in the dark I failed to…I had difficulty distinguishing between the—”
“Shut up!” Spenser said, throwing the water bag at Digby on the ground. “Just. Shut. Up.” In an attempt to get his anger under control, Spenser stomped over to the campfire and scooped up his own water bag. He looked bleakly at Rowan.
“There’s not enough water to go forward,” Rowan said, interpreting Spenser’s look.
“There’s barely enough to make it back,” Spenser growled.
Rowan remembered Abdullah slinking off into the night.
“I say, chaps,” Digby said, picking himself up off the ground. “I am frightfully sorry. Nobody more so. Am I to deduce that this means we will have to return to camp?”
“Something like that,” Spenser said with disgust as he began to kick the fire out.
“I’m going on,” Rowan said.
“You can’t,” Spenser said with exasperation. “Even if you did find them, you’d have no water to give them and none for yourself. How would any of you get back? You would only find them in time to die with them.”
“Every hour they’re out there weakens their chances of surviving,” Rowan said.
“That’s true,” Spenser said, more calmly now, “if they are out here. They might be in a village. They may well have doubled back to the camp by now. They could be sitting in a chair at camp drinking lemonade and waiting for us. And if they are, gentlemen, I’m warning you now I’ll likely take a switch to them myself.”
“That’s true,” Digby said, still rubbing his jaw. “They’re probably back at camp.”
Rowan looked out at the forbidding desert. Unless the women found shelter or help soon, they would die. That was clear. His only hope now was that they never made it this far.
“Okay,” he said with resignation. “We head back.”
Somewhere in the Egyptian Desert
The leader of the Bedouins rode stiff and rigid on his Arabian mare at the head of his miscreant gaggle of thugs. Ella sat in front of him, her legs to one side as he cradled her between his arms as he held the reins. At one point, she twisted around to try to see Julia. Julia’s billowing skirts flounced obscenely against the front of her captor’s saddle as she leaned against his chest. There were five men in total, each more malodorant and filthy than the other. Each rode their mounts aggressively, punishingly.
Whether Julia had fainted or just succumbed to general discomfort when the men found them, she revived quickly enough when the first man began ripping her clothes off. Ella watched in horror, herself held in the iron-vise grip of one of the men, as they attempted to find an opening into Julia’s tangle of textiles. Ella realized she must have been screaming because when the man holding her slapped her, she slid to her knees in the sand and the volume of the night reduced to just the crude laughter and talk of the men.
Before the men were able to gain entry into Julia’s fortress of clothing, a tall man wrapped in flowing robes and wearing a dark hijab around his head and neck, came from out of the
darkness. He spoke a quiet word and they dropped Julia in the sand like a broken doll. Ella jerked away from her captor and ran to her. Before reaching her, the tall man grabbed Ella around the middle and swung her over his shoulder. Ella didn’t struggle. It would have been futile. The man held her as if she were no more an armful than a squirming kitten. He spoke to his men who grabbed Julia and dragged her to the horses that Ella could see stood just a few yards away. The leader dropped Ella on the ground and swung up into his saddle. Before she could react, he pulled her up and set her in front of him.
One thing was becoming quickly clear: fighting these men would do no good. Ella had no idea if there was a code of conduct in these wild bands that would relate to the treatment of women. She didn’t have a good feeling about that. She assumed rape was a given at some point. She prayed murder wasn’t also.
Howard Carter’s Camp in the Valley of the Kings
Digby stood at the front of his tent smoking a large cigar. He watched Pierce come and go from Miss Steven’s tent all morning. The man was a nuisance. Constantly barging into people’s conversations, demanding answers, insisting on fresh provisions to mount another expedition.
The women had not come back to the camp.
He watched Pierce as he carried a saddle to the front of his wife’s tent and began tying a series of empty goat skin water bags to it. His boy, a thief from the Cairo streets from the look of him, complete with lupine hungry eyes, was ever at his side to fetch, carry, and run his master’s errands.
While Digby had to admit that an actual body would have made him feel much better about proceeding with his plans, it was a fortuitous and tidy turn of events to have dear Julia expire in the desert all on her own. Actually, once he got past the part where he didn’t have any actual proof of her death, it was a jolly nice story to tell at all the house parties whose lists of preferred and esteemed guests he had no doubt he would now belong to. It was all very well to be widowed so soon—especially with a large fortune from the dead wife to help assuage his grief—but to do it hand in glove with a story as tragic and colorful as lost in the desert while excavating with Howard Carter? Digby smiled. Yes, if it only weren’t for the blasted no-body situation—and really, it was no more than a gnat’s sting, that—it was clear that providence had smiled upon Viscount Edward Digsby.
Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) Page 14