Must Have Been The Moonlight Read online

His eyes closed. Empowered by his response, she dipped her hands to his crotch, pressing the heavy length beneath the cloth against her palms. “I’ve never touched a man like this.” With something akin to wonder, she intensified her exploration. He was hard and full, long and alive for her. She started to unfasten his trousers.

  “Christ.” He grabbed her wrists. “Enough.” His jaw tight, he opened his eyes. “I’ve decided this is a bad idea in my uniform.”

  His hands went to her waist and edged her away. Kiss-swollen and heavy lidded, she lifted her gaze. “Is this the end of my lesson?” she queried in mock disappointment, knowing it was and clearly pleased with herself.

  “You’re very bad, amîri.” He rubbed a thumb along her bottom lip. “One look at you and anyone will guess what we’ve been doing in here. I’ve kissed the dust off your face.”

  Her blue eyes flashed with warmth. “Then I won’t have to clean up for lunch, will I?”

  Michael plucked his hat from the shelf and walked back around the shelves. His head nearly brushed the low ceiling.

  Standing beside the door, he watched Brianna slide her arms into a yellow jacket. Her refreshing lack of modesty, her sensual curiosity, and her innocence had made a mockery of his self-control. Still, he couldn’t remove his eyes from her.

  She finished the tiny buttons on her jacket, saw that he was staring, and smiled. “Did you really think of me when you were away?”

  He looked into her face. “Once before breakfast, sometimes before supper, and always before bed.”

  Saying it, he realized that he had thought of her a lot.

  He also realized that it irked the hell out of him that she was going to lunch with another man, even if it was the fastidious Charles Cross.

  “Whatever are ye doin’, mum?” Gracie’s voice snapped Brianna upright.

  Standing naked with her back to the long wardrobe glass, she practically dropped the mirror in her hand. It wasn’t as if Gracie hadn’t seen her naked from the time she was born, but it was embarrassing that her maid would catch her ogling the tiny, minuscule mole on her backside: a mole someone would have to have a magnifying glass to see.

  “Gracie, I do wish you would knock.” Brianna dropped a pink nightrail over her head, only because Gracie suffered from a paroxysm every time she found her sleeping in the nude. She was still damp from her bath. “You’re liable to give me heart failure one of these days.”

  “Pah.” Gracie gathered up discarded garments off the floor. “You’ve got that look in your eye, mum.”

  “What look?”

  “The one what eventually lands ye in trouble with your family. That’s what look.” She wagged a finger.

  Brianna resisted the urge to snap at Gracie, who knew her better than most. Instead, she picked up a pearl-handled comb and sat on the bench in front of her dresser to pick the tangles out of her hair.

  Gracie left a quarter later, after cleaning up the water tins and straightening the room for bed. The moment the door shut, Brianna set down her comb, pulled out a shiny tin box hidden in the bottom drawer and set it in front of her. Carefully, she wedged off the lid.

  A reckless energy came over her when she touched its forbidden contents. How many times this past year had she stolen a glance inside this box as if it were Pandora’s original namesake? Lamplight reflected off the lid as she touched the thin rubber sheaths within. French lettres, they were called because they tied at the open end with a ribbon. Used to prevent conception, it snugly fit a man’s private extremities like a glove—so she’d been told. The savvy young woman who had given her this tin last year had been a nineteen-year-old street bawd that Brianna had met after a suffrage march had landed her in a paddy wagon with twenty other women of questionable character. Brianna had been at the march to photograph the event, and ended up doing a photographic documentary on London’s underlife. It was a book meant to promote social awareness of a wretched problem, and instead had been banned in England, a victim of the establishment’s hypocritical morality laws.

  Her only support had come from her brother, David, the family priest, and Alexandra, who despite Brianna’s faux pas had asked her to take part in the book she’d contracted to do for the British Museum. That’s why she was working so hard at the museum to make everything work—why she’d been there today when Major Fallon found her buried in books.

  The memory of his kiss closed her eyes, and the carnal energy he’d stirred gave way to sensual anticipation that no voice of social conscience could contain. Yet, for a moment that afternoon, she’d surrendered more than her body to his kiss.

  Opening her eyes to her reflection, she looked back at the woman in the glass, her blue eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. She was no stranger to the passion of her emotions.

  Only the dangers.

  She thought it ironic that the one person she knew the least was the only person who seemed to understand her, and her feelings had little to do with how she felt when he bent his mouth over hers and kissed her to the soles of her feet. He’d not run from her unconventional quirks as if she was a leper. Brianna was suddenly restless to know what Major Fallon was doing tomorrow that he was too engaged to be with her.

  She put away the tin and went downstairs. A full moon hung in the sky over the ancient city, and she slipped outside into the garden. Her mind opened to the late night air. The garden was in bloom with many of her familiar favorites—larkspur and jasmine. She walked along the stone path to the edge of the water.

  For a long time she stood caught by the breathtaking imagery of the night, the contrast of light and darkness when she looked up and saw him across the waterway.

  Brianna took an involuntary step nearer to the water’s edge.

  Michael Fallon, the man who had agreed to become her lover, who had dared her to kiss him at the museum, who had made the thrill of discovery a defiance of fear—stood on his balcony amid the long row of limestone apartments that butted the shore of the busy channel. He wore a long white robe and sirwal pajamas. She might not have seen him at all from that distance, given the show of flowering vines that draped the backside of the apartments. Except she’d glimpsed his movement, and knew the shocking instant that she recognized him. He’d been leaning in the shadows of his balcony, watching her. The cool breeze tempered her flushed cheeks. Wrapped in moonlight with nowhere to move, Brianna remained where she stood. She saw the glow of a cigarette move. Then she saw the pin of light go out as if ground beneath a boot.

  She couldn’t believe her eyes. All these weeks since her return, he must have been aware of her presence—she’d spent almost every morning and evening with her camera outside—but she’d not seen him at all.

  Until tonight.

  Brianna returned to her room before a servant came out to find her. She sat on the edge of her bed. Slipping out of her nightrail, she climbed beneath the covers and brought the silken sheets to her chin. She now knew where Major Fallon lived.

  Less than a hundred yards of a busy waterway separated them.

  The thought was almost as erotic as if he were in this room with her, as intimate as if his head lay on the pillow beside hers.

  Almost—Brianna placed her hands beneath her head and smiled into the darkness—but not quite.

  The Sabbath came early for Brianna. The chapel on the consulate grounds served the British community, and it was the custom of the Donally family to attend when Lady Alex was with them. But today Christopher and Brianna went to a smaller church in the French section for a more private Catholic service, something they rarely did. Brianna was cordial and sisterly, and at once relieved when they finally returned home. She hurried upstairs and changed. With the pretense that she was going to take pictures, she brought her camera down with her. More than anything, Major Fallon’s itinerary today had aroused her curiosity.

  Christopher was awaiting her downstairs in the entryway. Brianna’s hopes of escape fell. She slowed on the stairway.

  “I thought perhaps I’d go with yo
u today,” he mildly suggested, somewhat reminiscent of a blue-eyed Napoleon.

  “Truly?” She glanced down at her simple split skirt and blouse and wondered what had made him so suspicious. It was the first time he’d suggested that they do anything alone since she’d arrived in Egypt. “You’ll probably be quite bored.”

  “With you?” He adjusted his jacket and gave her a wicked self-effacing smile. “Alex is napping. What better way to spend the afternoon than with my little sister?”

  Brianna fervently desired to go out alone. In the end, forced to take her camera, she decided to tour Cairo in all its ancient glory. Christopher was ever cooperative, and with the passing of the afternoon, she began to relax and enjoy herself.

  Despite the daily passage of nightsoil collectors, the streets in Cairo had much to be desired. Twice, they nearly missed being run down by a camel. Fending off beggars and peddlers, Brianna finally left the camera with Abdul in the brougham and walked the busy thoroughfare filled with tourists.

  Small shops selling goods from food to carpets lined the colorful alleylike streets. Peddlers of sweetmeats wended through the crowd. The air smelled of curry, deep-frying oil, and fish that overlaid the musk of slaked dust and sweat so cloying that it seemed to have been embedded into the very walls.

  “Alex and I used to do this every Sunday,” Christopher said.

  Brianna loved the energy that surrounded her. “People here enjoy their bazaars, don’t they?” She laughed with lighthearted ambience as she took her brother’s arm and merged into the colorful drove.

  Christopher shopped for Alex, while Brianna shopped for herself. She bought henna for her hair and solid glass bangles, as fragile and beautiful as delicate seashells. Within a couple of hours she’d filled Christopher’s arms with packages and beauty products that claimed to make hair shinier and teeth whiter. A few moments later Christopher dipped his tall frame through a narrow doorway of a Turkish tobacco shop, while Brianna stopped at a stall that sold jewelry and beautiful bolts of silk. She held an amulet in her palm. A love charm.

  The sensation came slowly, and she felt it first between her shoulder blades—someone watching her. The feeling grew so powerful and frightened her so that Brianna turned to where her brother had entered the shop. The alley was crowded. She looked left then right.

  That was when her gaze passed over Major Fallon. If it had not been for his height, she wouldn’t have seen him in the crowded aisle a block away. Looking much as he did the first time she’d ever seen him in his snowy robes and Bedouin headdress, he stood in front of a fruit stall haggling with a vendor. What felled the smile on Brianna’s face was the demure woman at his side. She was veiled, with only her dark kohl-rimmed eyes showing above the silk—and he looked anything but English standing so tall beside her. The woman carried a child. A child that he took from her arms and gave a wedge of fruit.

  Brianna dropped her gaze. Noise receded.

  The shock of her emotions struck her with dreadful force.

  Brianna had never considered that he might have a child.

  This is what he did on Sundays. Gracie had oft spoken about the time he spent in the Old Quarter.

  “You might wish to remove your gloves.” Christopher startled her.

  She saw that her hand had not moved from the cloth. “Do babies wear red silk?” Her attempt to inflect humor into her voice failed.

  Her brother’s long eyelashes gave his blue eyes a dark penetrating look, and as if following the invisible trail of her thoughts, he turned to glance over her head.

  “What do you think of this one?” She held up a thick square of cerulean silk, hoping to distract him, forcing herself to stand there and moon over a few yards of irrelevant cloth to prove that she could.

  “It is very beautiful, yes,” the Arab vendor replied, eager to make a sale and spreading it over his arm. Without even haggling, Brianna paid full price. Moving like someone in a trance past Christopher down the stalls, she continued shopping. Major Fallon had a way of making her feel young and foolish. By the time she’d reached the grounds where rows of horses milled behind corrals, she’d told herself a hundred times that she didn’t care what he did.

  She hadn’t been attracted to him because he was a pillar of society. He’d never pretended to be anything other than what he was.

  But a child?

  Nor did she own him—didn’t want to own him—and it wasn’t as if she cared whether he had his own personal harem, or whether she ever tasted his mouth against hers again.

  Or smiled at her with eyes as beautiful as moonlight.

  He was a complete nincompoop!

  “Slow down, Brea.” Christopher grabbed her arm. “Our brougham is this way.”

  Packages filled his other arm. He didn’t tell her that all of Cairo knew about Major Fallon’s native mistress. It wasn’t a secret that Fallon had even kept from her.

  Silence dragged out. “Let’s go home, imp,” he gently said.

  Brianna became less disconsolate as the evening passed, as a dull resignation took the place of the bruise on her heart. There was still her love of photography and her book, which during the next few days swallowed her attention. She and Charles Cross had already begun mapping what they could of the old Coptic sites within the city. He was so eager to help that Brianna didn’t have the heart to turn away his expertise. He knew Egypt’s history.

  Major Fallon dropped by the house twice. Brianna had missed him both times. She smiled to herself as she slipped naked beneath her sheets those nights and hoped he knew that she’d discarded him. He wouldn’t find her at the museum either, because she’d moved her work this week to the Geographical Society, and when she wasn’t there, she worked at the mission all day. She’d ended up giving her silk purchases to the reverend who ran the school. Tomorrow, she and Mr. Cross were attending the consulate picnic.

  Brianna went outside in the gardens to watch the sun set over the lake. Supper had been served earlier, while she was gone, and now she climbed the garden path back to the marble patio that opened to the dining room. To her shock as she stepped through the doors, Major Fallon was there with her brother.

  They stood casually braced with their palms on the table where a large map took up much of the polished surface. A vase of flowers had been pushed aside. At her entrance, they both looked up. Brianna was trapped. Hot color rose from her throat to the roots of her hair. Her eyes stayed too long on Major Fallon’s amused gaze. He knew bloody well that she’d been avoiding him, and didn’t seem the least bit contrite.

  “Why, Major. How wonderful to see you.” She wouldn’t flee now if her life depended on it. To her brother, she said, “I didn’t know that you had company.”

  Recognizing the belligerent challenge in her eyes, Christopher didn’t seem too pleased to have her there either. “This is business, Brea—”

  “Then I’m sure you won’t disturb me.” She looked down the end of the long table. “I probably won’t even hear you unless you shout.”

  She smiled prettily at him as she adjusted her skirts on the chair and had the servant bring her supper. Major Fallon’s voice flowed over her in a dark, hushed monotone. With sure quick strokes of his capable hands, he was drawing a perimeter on the map, and at once Brianna’s interest piqued. His military helm sat beside the vase. His shoulders stretched the red wool of his uniform.

  “…the caravans had all originated from Cairo,” he was saying, returning to the map over the table. Brianna heard the pencil scratch. “I’ll wager that someone has been following the telegraph, using it to send and receive advance warning of an approaching caravan.”

  “The guides were hired at random.”

  “Obviously not so random.”

  “What about Omar?”

  “He has the means to disperse stolen goods, and he’s neck deep in slavery. If he were involved, it would be a simple task for him to get his information from the ministry. I’ve run a check on every man who works in my office.” Major Fallon
handed over a list. “It’s impossible for me to know if there might be more than these people who were privy to Captain Pritchards’s shipment.”

  Christopher, standing in his white colonial garb, remained serious as he held the paper to the lamp. Major Fallon looked across the vase of flowers directly into her eyes. She dropped her gaze abruptly and hastily spooned peas into her mouth.

  Abdul entered and salaamed. “There is someone here to see you, Donally Pasha.”

  “It’s my secretary,” Christopher said. “I asked him to bring the survey plats when he finally gathered them together.”

  After Christopher left, the room grew quiet. She squirmed, and resisted looking up.

  “The child you saw was not mine.”

  She wanted to curl into a speck of dust and float away. “Whatever gave you the absurd idea that I care, Major?”

  “Michael.”

  “Major.”

  Ignoring his presence was like trying to ignore a wart on the end of her nose or a bonfire lit too close to her back. She knew he was looking at her. She finally glanced up from her plate.

  “I saw you at the suk,” he said.

  Brianna’s knife scraped the plate as she cut a wedge of fish. “I’m not your keeper, Major.”

  “If you had looked closer you would have seen a little boy standing at my knee and another behind me.”

  “That’s very comforting to know.”

  “I would have introduced you to Yasmeen.”

  Was he insane? “Your mistress?”

  “People say a lot of things.” He’d moved to the end of the table where she sat. “Most are true. Just as often, the gossip is not.”

  The chokehold on her neck loosened. Despite her best efforts, tears filled her eyes. “Are you saying you don’t have a mistress?”

  He squatted on his haunches beside the chair so she wouldn’t have to look up at him. “Will you come riding with me tomorrow morning?”

  “I can’t.” She shoved around her peas. “The consulate picnic is tomorrow. I already have plans—”

  He tipped her chin. “We can talk about my exclusivity and yours. Among other things. It’s time you and I finish what we’ve started.”