Must Have Been The Moonlight Read online

  “Don’t…please.” She flung herself into his arms. Her body was warm beneath her wet robes. “You can be rich if you choose. I’m wealthy. My brother is wealthy. You don’t have to do this.”

  He could only stare down at her tangled hair as she babbled in English about ransoms, her words tinged with an Irish accent so faint it could almost pass for cultured.

  In the distance, his camel chose that moment to bellow: a sound that resembled a tortuous scream. Magnified by the emptiness of the desert, it ricocheted against the rocks.

  Whatever courage the girl had momentarily lost reappeared tenfold in its echo. He barely evaded her knee, and then only because he’d felt her body tense. She sidestepped him, but he caught her easily in a few steps.

  “Let go!” Her feet flailing in the air, she kicked wildly at his legs. He saw the shadow of a woman slumped against the far rock wall the same instant the terrier in his arms did. “Oh, please”—her fingers tried to pry him loose—“something has happened to her.”

  There were tracks in the sand made by stout English boots, clearly female. No fire lit the clearing. He saw no packs, no food, nor any knapsack that might carry utensils, only one waterskin, all of which he glimpsed as he let go of the struggling woman in his arms.

  The second woman was lying unconscious with her back to the wall, her pale cheek resting on her outstretched arm. She was also European. Her torn clothes bore the evidence of her flight these past days.

  Watching as the dark-haired houri spoke to the woman, cradling the faintly blond head in her lap, he slowly approached.

  And stopped.

  Michael recognized the unconscious woman.

  What Englishman in Egypt didn’t know the aristocrat wife of the minister of public works? Though Michael had been present once or twice at a function that included Sir Christopher Donally, not in the three years since his arrival in Egypt had he personally had an occasion to be introduced to his archeologist wife. Like most men, he had admired the lady from afar. From his sources in Cairo, he’d known that Donally’s sister had arrived in Egypt some months ago.

  These two must have been on the caravan due at Donally’s base camp.

  The caravan he’d been going to meet.

  Michael lifted his gaze—straight into the muzzle of another one of his own damn guns. “Shit!”

  The girl reached one trembling hand to cock the revolver. “I swear…I’ll shoot.” The hand holding the weapon shook. Lady Alexandra’s head rested protectively in her lap. “Go away and leave us alone.”

  “I can’t do that, amîri.”

  He could have attempted to take the gun—and might have been killed for the effort. Hunched on his calves, Michael stayed where he was. His burnoose folded around his knees, the tagilmust fell forward off his shoulder. He braced one elbow on his knee and lay one hand across the other. “There was a second rider trailing you,” he said, keeping his voice level. “I am not he. I am not your enemy, Miss Donally.”

  Her breath caught at the sound of her name. “Don’t come near us. I mean it. How else would you know who we are if you’re not one of them?”

  Donally’s sister hadn’t been in Egypt long enough to know who he was. She probably wouldn’t believe him anyway. Hell, he wasn’t exactly pristine in appearance. “Like your brother, I, too, work for the khedive,” he quietly said.

  The muzzle wavered slightly, but now when their eyes held, he saw that she was confused. “Anyone c-could say that.” She started to shake from the shock and her wet clothes. The gun was too heavy for her to hold steady. He patiently waited for exhaustion to overtake her.

  “Ask me where in England I’m from,” he said, to keep her talking.

  “You speak perfect English.” Her whisper had become strained. “Obviously you’ve l-lived abroad. That’s c-common.”

  Her head held high, the dark tangled ebony of her hair framed her face. Michael felt tight and strange inside. She’d been through hell, and she still fought him like a tiger-cat. For a man who’d known little tenderness in his lifetime and who’d found only mystery in his emotions, he was deeply moved by her courage.

  Unfortunately, it was a battle of wills that she would lose. But then, the Irish always were tougher than they looked.

  She hung on a half hour longer than he’d expected.

  Brianna opened her eyes and lay still for a time, listening. She was lying on her back inside a tent with both flaps raised. The breeze stirred the striped canvas walls of her shelter. She turned her head. A fire outside the tent had burned low, and the aroma of coffee mingled with the night. Someone had set a kettle and coffeepot atop the heat.

  Brianna sat up, the blanket slipping to her waist. Her hair was a tangled mass. She wore only a thin cotton chemise, still damp from her trek through the pond. For a moment she sat unmoving and confused.

  Someone had removed her outer clothing and laid a blanket over her.

  She twisted to find Alex asleep beside her, her skirt and jacket torn and stained with dust and dried blood. The blanket had slipped to her side, and Brianna covered her. Alex mumbled something, her dreams unsettled, and Brianna realized her sister-in-law’s restlessness must have been what awakened her. At once, her heart raced.

  She moved to the tent’s entrance to look out. They were camped against a pair of bent trees near the pool. The English-speaking nomad was nowhere in camp. Neither were any weapons that she could see after she’d rummaged through the packs a moment later. But there was food, and Brianna burned her hand lifting the kettle from the fire when she tried to see what was in it.

  With a cry, she sucked at her finger. She saw a discarded tin plate and utensils. Grabbing the fork, she dipped it inside the kettle and speared what looked like a piece of meat. She carefully put her tongue to the food to test for heat, then shoved the piece in her mouth. The food was heaven. Delicious beyond anything she’d ever had. She ate, shoveling forkfuls into her mouth. She guessed the lizards in the rocks had made it into this pot with the rice.

  Bent over the food, she didn’t hear the movement until she looked up, her cheeks bulging with food, and saw her captor enter camp. Carrying a spade and rifle in one hand and a knapsack slung over the other, he slowed when he saw her.

  Noting that she’d gone through his packs, he brought his eyes back to hers. With his other hand, he pulled his wickedly sharp knife from beneath his burnoose and stabbed it in the tree, just out of her reach. “Not that I would give you any ideas,” he said. “I see that you already went through my bags.”

  Brianna swallowed the chunk of food in her mouth. The blanket had fallen around her hips, and conscious of his male presence, she brought it up to her shoulders. Coming to her feet, she told herself that if he’d wanted her dead, she would already be buried. He was taller than most men and broad of shoulder. He and his knife certainly looked capable of carrying out the deed. The growth of beard shadowing his face didn’t hide the kind of decadent looks that a woman noticed. Not that it mattered. And she was appalled that she’d noticed it at all.

  Her chin went up. “Where are my clothes?”

  “Spread on the rocks to dry.” His footsteps made no sound in the sand as he walked to where she was standing and dropped the shovel and pack. “They’ll be dry sometime after the sun rises.”

  He slid a hairy waterskin off his shoulder. “Drink,” he offered. “It will help with your hunger.”

  Reluctantly, Brianna placed her lips to the malleable opening. She tasted coffee and a faint hint of something like peppermint where his mouth had been before hers. Her eyes moved to his. Tipping the skin, she drank the warm milk inside—and nearly gagged.

  “It’s something to which you have to become accustomed,” he said, his eyes faintly amused. “But it will give you back your strength.”

  She did as she was told, only because she’d oft heard that camel’s milk was a life-giving meal. After she drank, she returned the skin to him and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. That he had un
dressed her seemed only logical and of no concern to him at all. At least he’d left her with some modesty intact.

  Tugging the blanket closer, she watched him move around the camp. Moonlight spread silvery ripples over the sand. “What do you intend to do with us?”

  “Return you to your brother,” he said without looking at her. He’d knelt and was pouring himself coffee.

  “Christopher? You know where he is?”

  The firelight caught in his eyes when he raised his gaze. She’d noticed that he seemed to have a perpetual glint of amusement when he looked at her, as if he knew the source of her discomfiture. As if he were used to the way women acted around him. “If you’d ridden south instead of north, you might have hit his camp.” He looked at her from over the top of his cup. “Are you the one who shot that man out there?”

  Without moving nearer to him, she felt her hands clasp the edges of the blanket. “I am an excellent shot. Much to my family’s chagrin, I used to attend the country fairs back home.” She hesitated as she felt her chest tighten. “Did you bury him?” Her gaze dropped to the spade.

  “No one will accuse you of murder,” he said softly, as if reading her mind. “I buried him because I don’t want his trail leading back to us.”

  Brianna wasn’t naive. She didn’t dare trust him, and find herself sold to some slaver somewhere, or dead. She’d not come this far to throw herself on the mercy of any dangerous-looking stranger with smoked crystal for eyes and a demeanor that compared to his lethal knife. How did she even know that he wasn’t the second man who’d been following them?

  “Are you really English?”

  “Born and bred.” The succinct clip in his tone bore a faint hint of irony. “And here I am in the Sahara talking to a fellow countryman. Who would have thought?”

  “Where did you attend school?”

  Behind her, Alex made a noise, as something she was dreaming clearly became a nightmare. He sipped his coffee and looked at her consideringly, before tossing the remains of his cup into the sand and standing. “How long has she been like this?” he asked, reaching behind him for the skin that contained the camel’s milk.

  “She needs food.”

  Brianna also suspected that Lady Alexandra might be pregnant.

  Alex was sitting up when the man ducked into the tent, fear evident in her sleepy gaze, until she saw Brianna. Alex looked at the man as he knelt, and she spoke to him in Arabic, to which he responded in kind, his deep voice strangely mesmerizing. She had a wound on her arm, and he checked the makeshift bandage, helping her to sit straight so he could give her the milk.

  “The milk should help you, my lady.”

  Brushing the long end of the tagilmust off his cheek, Lady Alex looked up into the Bedouin’s face. “Major Fallon?”

  Brianna’s gaze shot to the man’s profile. He didn’t seem surprised that Lady Alex would know him. “It’s unfortunate that we could not have met under better circumstances, my lady.”

  A shadow seemed to cross Alex’s face as the memory of the last few days ripped away the gauzy peace that had momentarily enveloped her. Dropping her gaze to her blood-splattered clothing, she wiped her hands over her torn blouse. Brianna, too, felt the terrible sense of desperation drive like a sword thrust into her lungs.

  “I don’t think that I’ll ever close my eyes again and not remember,” Alex whispered, raising her gaze to the major’s face. “Are you as dangerous as they say?”

  Major Fallon tipped her face into the light to look at the bruise. “I should be asking you that question, my lady.”

  Brianna could hear the seriousness in his voice, yet, there seemed to be a hint of deviltry in his words. “I think it is I who will have a headache to remember this meeting.”

  Wiping the strands of damp hair from her eyes, Brianna let her gaze stray to his unshaven profile as they continued to speak.

  She’d heard his name mentioned more than once since her arrival in Egypt. Though she’d never actually met the British officer whom the khedive called El Tazor, the Barracuda, she’d not been immune to the lurid gossip in the ladies’ parlor at the consulate.

  Infamous for his war against the slave and hashish trade in Egypt, Major Fallon was a legend in some circles at the British consulate, heatedly despised by others. To the priggish, he was the man who openly cavorted with a native mistress.

  Lady Alex’s eyes did not leave Major Fallon’s face, bent so near to her own. They seemed to have forgotten Brianna’s presence as he dabbed at her mouth, like some nomadic Prince Charming, which was probably not far from the truth, considering who he was.

  Brianna left the tent.

  Clasping the blanket, she stood immobilized in the clearing before lifting her face to the cool desert breeze. A morass of glittery stars filled the velvety sky, the beauty a harsh contradiction to the horror it shielded. To the horror inside her.

  Afraid to leave the comforting glow of the fire, but ashamed of that fear, Brianna sat on a pack and buried her chin in a blanket.

  She and Alex had endured the terror of being chased by murderers. Even now, as she looked out over the desert, she still felt as if she were running for her life.

  Behind her, she sensed rather than heard Major Fallon’s approach. The dusty toe of his boot came into focus. She raised her head. He looked at her sitting near the fire. For a moment she sat frozen beneath the weight of his stare. Then she watched his gaze take in the surrounding area before he crouched in front of her and poured a cup of coffee.

  “She has a fever.” He handed Brianna the cup. “But she’ll sleep better now that she has something in her stomach. She’s been shot.”

  “Yes, I know,” Brianna said, her hands wrapped around the cup. “Lady Alexandra wanted photos for her book.” For a long time she said nothing else, then suddenly the words were on her tongue, and she couldn’t pull them back.

  “We weren’t in the camp when the raiders attacked,” she explained, holding the cup in her hands. “We’d gone to find the Coptic temple that we’d glimpsed that day. The temple had never been documented. This was to have been a big opportunity for her. We’d left with one of the guides and a soldier to escort us.” Brianna drank. “We were there longer than we should have been. We must have been less than a mile from the camp when the attack came.”

  She looked up to find Major Fallon’s gaze intent on her face. “One always imagines how one would react when faced with danger. It wasn’t how I’d ever expected. I could only stare in frozen horror as riders swarmed over the dunes from the west. I don’t know how long we all sat on our camels. Maybe ten seconds, maybe five minutes. I don’t know.

  “Then the man—our guide—raised his gun and shot the soldier in the back of the head. He turned his gun on Lady Alexandra. But she’d pulled the camel around and the bullet hit the camel’s head. The shot must have grazed her arm. When she went down, I thought the fall had killed her. When the man turned on me, I already had my revolver in my hand. I shot him.” Her hands held the tin cup tightly. Much needed heat infused her. “After that…” Brianna raised her gaze. “I took the rifle the soldier had been carrying and managed to get Lady Alex from beneath the camel. We rode away on my camel. I stayed to the harder ground for a day. When we reached the sand, I dragged the canvas tent that I’d used to develop my photographs to hide our tracks. The sand shifts so fast, you see…” she said, her voice trailing away. “There were merchants’ families traveling with us. Children.”

  “Who was the officer in charge of the detail, Miss Donally?”

  Brianna remembered the dashing officer in charge with the sunburn on his nose. “Captain Pritchards.”

  His quiet oath focused her gaze on his. “You knew him?”

  He was looking at her, or rather, through her, when she felt herself come into focus in his gaze. The contact brought breath into her lungs.

  “You should sleep before we leave in a few hours.”

  She stood when he stood. He hesitated when her palm to
uched his forearm. She felt the coiled strength of him beneath her fingertips. “What about the other man who was trailing us?”

  Major Fallon looked down at her hand before raising his gaze back to hers. She felt her pulse quicken. His expression was half indolent and half…something no decent woman should ever think about with a stranger. Brianna could feel it pulsing through her.

  With a hot flush, she removed her hand and stepped away.

  “The second man is no longer a threat, Miss Donally.”

  His footsteps made no sound in the soft sand as he walked fifty feet to a place at the wall to set up watch.

  She’d heard no gunfire. But then, gunfire would carry for a long distance, and Major Fallon didn’t seem the kind of man who would advertise his presence. Brianna remembered the lethal-looking knife.

  Later, when she lay down to sleep, she tried to find comfort from her position on the sand. The tent remained open to the breeze. She smelled Turkish tobacco. Turning into the crook of her arm, she found the robed figure of Major Fallon. He sat against the stone wall, the rifle casually drawn against his knees. He was half facing the tent. The tip of a cigarette glowed orange as he inhaled. As if sensing her eyes on him, he turned his face, and she felt the strange impact of his gaze.

  It was a long time before Morpheus claimed her in his arms.

  Chapter 2

  “I know that the captain was a friend, Major Fallon.” Halid al-Nahar’s shadow lay over the perfectly square hole painstakingly dug in the hardened earth. He’d spoken the words in Arabic.

  “What of the women and children who belonged to the merchant families on that caravan?” Michael observed Halid from over the tagilmust that covered his mouth and his nose. “Miss Donally said there were many.”

  “We found only the men.” Glancing up the horseshoe-shaped berm behind them, Halid’s fingers tightened on the serviceable-looking talwar at his side. “The jackals uncovered the mass grave, or Donally Pasha’s men might have missed it entirely.”