Must Have Been The Moonlight Read online

  “It would have taken hours to prepare such a pit.” The ground was hard. Inhospitable. The dry wadi bed fraught with long-thorned fragments of dead Loranthus. “Why spend the time to bury the men at all?”

  And with every question, Michael wondered what had gone so wrong that an armed escort could be ambushed, where only two English women had survived against all odds. Climbing the steep grade past a dead olive tree, he let his eyes go across the barren landscape and waited for instinct to whisper into the silence. Out here, living or dying depended on seeing with more than his eyes. The site had already become known as the Well of the Dead. There was no well or water, though, the most numerous living inhabitants being the black flies thick in the air.

  Donally’s camp had been the caravan’s destination. Tents of the workers, laying the telegraph, pocked the distant landscape like termite mounds. Thanks to Donally’s efforts, modern technology would soon stretch from Cairo to this outer desert oasis.

  Except a week ago, Donally’s base camp had been forty miles southeast of this place. The thought stopped him cold. The caravan had been miles off-course.

  “Who hires the guides, Halid?”

  “Most probably the arrangements come from the chief of the general staff. Donally Pasha might know,” he said mildly. “You could ask him, if he had not left here yesterday.”

  Michael turned. “Donally left? Where?”

  Halid’s shrug was as elegant as his clothes. The son of a wealthy sheikh, Halid savored the unlikely conviction that civilization sprouted from men who sported fashionable attire. Educated in England, he commanded the outpost near this oasis.

  “I only know that when the caravan was overdue, he sent out patrols. After his men found this site, I am told that he went mad. He then gathered two rifles, a pistol, and supplies and headed to El-Musa.”

  “Not Cairo?” Staring across the sands, Michael no longer saw the swirling hot currents. “What would compel a man like Donally to go racing across the desert wasteland to a town where the reigning sheikh is a notorious hashish smuggler?”

  “No man who works as hard as Donally Pasha does for the fellaheen can be a thief or murderer. I believe he has a reason.”

  “I want men sent to the outer oases to search for those missing from this attack.” Michael maneuvered downhill, his burnoose sailing outward with his pace. “Follow the old slave route—”

  “It has been too long”—Halid caught up with Michael’s long-legged stride—“even if the women did survive, everyone knows what befalls those the slavers bring to market.”

  Michael despised the didactic drivel that hovered over female chastity as if virtue alone elevated women to the status of sainthood, or the lack of it defiled them. “Who can account for the intrepid compassion that weighs moral convenience above life? Give me justice, Halid. Not sanctimonious fervor.”

  “You are angry. This is not your fault.”

  “Captain Pritchards was carrying payroll currency that Donally was supposed to use to pay those workers out there. Currency that you are supposed to use to pay your own troops. Information about that shipment was classified, Halid. How many people knew? Think about what that means.”

  The implication was as far-reaching as the moon, too dangerous to ignore. How many other caravans had vanished carrying governmental stores and precious antiquities? Just enough that until now the attacks had looked random.

  “Major…” Halid placed a restraining hand on Michael’s arm, stopping him before they reached the other men. “Without proof, they will court-martial you if you so much as make an insinuating remark against any high public official.”

  “Spare me your Byronic version of decorum, Halid. You speak the Bedouin dialect. Your family lives in the desert. Find someone who might know someone’s cousin or uncle. These raiders have to hide somewhere. The prodigal son needs to return and ask some questions.”

  A faint flush spread across Halid’s face. “I think that you are a—” He waved an indignant hand about the air in front of Michael’s nose. “What is a more descriptive word for the penis of a donkey?”

  “The word is ass, Halid. A-S-S.”

  Unamused, Halid spat in the dirt. “W hasratan, God has afflicted you, O Acerbic One. It is fortunate for you that I am your friend, Englishman. Or you would have nothing left but your barren soul to rule.”

  Watching him swing onto his mount, Michael reached into his robe and pulled out the makings for a cigarette. “Wear blue,” he called. “I wouldn’t want your relatives to mistake you for an Englishman and shoot you.”

  Halid’s arm shot up in a universal gesture that needed no interpretation. Staring moodily at the cigarette he’d rolled, Michael struck a match to the tip. His gaze went to the sky. The day had already turned to leaden gray, and he’d learned one thing since his arrival in Egypt. Out here in the desert, sanity was relative to the heat.

  Discounting any excuse for his black mood, Michael knew he wasn’t decent company for anyone. Besides, Halid no doubt noticed that the imposing effendi, lord of a million souls in his jurisdiction, had nearly lost his stomach back there at the pit.

  Nor was he indifferent to Halid’s words. Halid had erred if he didn’t think he understood military bureaucracy. The military was no different in its moral perception of justice from any other establishment in Britain.

  But this had become personal in a way he’d not expected.

  The British captain buried in that mass grave had not only been his friend since Eton, but his colleague. Michael had served with Captain Pritchards in China before they’d both come to Egypt almost three years ago. He’d made a toast at Pritchards’s wedding last year.

  Michael drew deeply on his cigarette before tossing it in the sand. Mounting his camel, he went in search of the site foreman. Later, he interviewed the five men who had found the gravesite. The foreman then took him to Donally’s tent, an hour away. No one questioned Michael’s motives for asking to go there. Hospitality was as automatic to a man of his rank as it would have been to the sultan himself.

  A striped awning stretched the length of the entrance where a table and chairs remained on a carpet overlooking a small pond. It was the first touch of greenery Michael had seen in months. Cautiously, he stepped through the entryway. The skirt of the tent was raised to let in the desert breezes. His gaze scanned the strewn cushions, the shelves filled with photos, books, and maps. A red carpet covered the desert floor. It was unbelievable that so bare a place could be made to look like a home.

  “I will have your personal things brought in here, effendi,” a servant said.

  “No.” He turned. “Where are Lady Alexandra and Miss Donally?”

  The servant waved his hand over the sheet of heavy silk that divided the room. “They are asleep. They have not moved in hours.”

  Michael’s gaze went to the screen. He stopped the foreman as he turned to leave. “Is someone attending to my mount?”

  “Yes, effendi.” He bowed slightly before he left.

  The lamplighter, who also served as Donally’s personal steward, sidled apologetically around the close quarters to light the paraffin lamps. Waiting for the servant to leave, Michael leaned over the maps on the desk. Dust had already settled over everything. Behind him, photographs lined the makeshift shelves. One picture caught his attention.

  Drawn by some elemental response he couldn’t name, Michael picked up the image of a man and woman atop a camel, his arm around her waist in a racy pose. Her face was turned adoringly toward his profile. In the background, seen through a gossamer halo of light, the shadows of an approaching eclipse stretched across the pyramids of Giza.

  Compelled by a combination of interest and admiration for the photographer, he held the photograph nearer to the paraffin lamp. The photograph was arresting. Poetic in its contrasts of past and present, darkness and light. Michael switched his attention to the bottom of the frame, where another photo was wedged inside. Edging it out, he found that it was Alexandra Donal
ly, wearing a veiled costume of a belly dancer. The daughter of an earl, Donally’s wife was an interesting study in cultural diversity. Amused, Michael shoved the photograph back into the frame. He again considered her husband and the questions his absence raised.

  “The Donally Pasha’s sister, she is a good image taker, yes?”

  Michael returned the frame to the shelf, the visual memory of the girl standing unflinchingly with a gun trained on him predominant in his thoughts. “Miss Donally took all of these?”

  The servant tipped his head toward the photograph that had been taken in Giza. “Lady Alexandra has been traveling Egypt writing a book for the British Museum. You know her, yes?”

  By choice, Michael didn’t walk the same social circles of Egypt’s anointed elite. Having had enough pomposity in his life to last until his eternal leap into purgatory, he’d left Captain Pritchards to stoke the home fires of social fortitude. Now, he regretted the neglect.

  “Why did Donally go to El-Musa?” he asked.

  “Donally Pasha was not himself, effendi. When he returned from the gravesite, he was a man possessed. He packed only a few of his belongings, took his rifle and pistols, and left.”

  “Alone? Over a hundred miles across the desert with no guard?”

  “You travel alone. What does it matter when numbers do not protect a man? He speaks the language and has traveled much.”

  Finding no logical argument, Michael dropped his gaze to the photograph. Maybe Donally was no milquetoast Eurocrat. If he possessed half the courage of his sister, then he was a man who could survive hell.

  Michael certainly appreciated his taste in photography.

  “I will bring lamb stew.” The servant bowed.

  “That will be fine,” he told the servant.

  “I am Abdul,” he said. “I will revisit this evening with dinner.”

  Returning his gaze to the loving pair in the photograph taken in Giza, Michael started to roll a cigarette before he caught himself. It wasn’t smoking the Turkish tobacco that had stopped him. It was the craving that he refused to let control him—and something else that he hadn’t felt in a long time as he looked at the photograph.

  Lady Alexandra had been raised in the same elitist society that had surrounded him his whole life. That she had somehow escaped the narrow confines of her world intrigued him. That she’d married an Irish commoner impressed him.

  Hell, Pritchards’s death had unhinged him. The man the last ten years had shaped was not prone to either whimsy or regret. Michael lay on the cot, both feet rooted to the floor, a position he favored. With one hand behind his head, he closed his eyes. He never wanted to get too comfortable, as if staying in one place for too long would somehow grow on him. He was bone weary in every part of his body. He should be thinking about his plans to get back to Cairo. To hunting Donally down, if only to return the man’s sister and his wife to him. A position that had fallen to him by virtue of default.

  But for just a moment he would remain here.

  He didn’t awaken when Brianna approached that evening, as the sun had set and the air grew cold, with a blanket. She looked down at his unshaven features refined by the shadows, the dark smudge of his lashes resting on his cheek. Even in repose he exuded a vibrant, male vitality that contradicted the vulnerability she saw.

  Lying on the cot, Major Fallon looked uncommonly long and lean, with broad shoulders that she remembered all too well when he’d fairly frisked her bones. His burnoose had fallen open, revealing the knife tucked in the crimson sash at his hip. His thighs were well formed beneath the once silky white sirwal trousers. They had ridden for three days in the dirt and the grit. They had ridden when she thought she could go no more, and he’d carried Alex when there had been no more strength for her to sit atop a camel.

  Brianna covered him with the blanket. Then, turning, she started to extinguish the lamp beside the cot, and felt his fingers wrap around her wrist.

  With a start, her gaze slammed directly into his.

  His eyes, half lidded and astonishingly silver in the light, eased over her. He was still asleep, settled in the shadows of some dream.

  Brianna held her hand still and returned his look, but for all of her talk about equality for women, and her emboldened demeanor, she still possessed more Victorian mores than she cared to admit. Michael Fallon made her nervous. And she was never nervous around men.

  For the most part, members of the opposite gender annoyed her with their condescending nature and patronizing platitudes, and she’d never had a problem dismissing them. Except for Stephan. Her once betrothed.

  There had been security in the predictability that she’d found with Stephan. Security that she’d never appreciated, and on more than one occasion taken for granted. At twenty-five, he was three years older than she, and studying to become a barrister, a crown jewel in England’s justice system. She’d never loved anyone but him. They might have been married upon his graduation, except for one fatal flaw in her plans.

  Stephan had wanted children and a wife who would make him a home in his perfectly respectable, sedate life. Yet, for all her dreams of being in love, not once had she looked upon Stephan Williams with anything more than a girlish adoration—which faded immeasurably compared to the curious intensity she felt when she looked upon Major Fallon.

  A dangerous thrill ran through her.

  Dangerous because she’d had her hands on him before and ached to do so again.

  He pushed up on one elbow and looked around the tent. “What are you doing here?” His voice was raspy, awake now.

  She raised a brow fractionally and her gaze dropped to the band of steel still holding her wrist. “Are you going to kiss me, Major? Or let me go?”

  She’d seen the look in his eyes when he first touched her, and wondered now, as he awakened fully, who he’d been thinking about.

  Their eyes held for a fraction longer before he looked around again as if to reaffirm his surroundings. “I’ve been asleep.”

  He released her. “For the whole day, it would seem, sir.”

  Her hair had come undone, and she tucked a wisp behind her ear. She’d given up trying to comb it out and had tied the mass off her face with a leather thong. “Where do you have to go, Major?” she asked readily. “Why don’t you remove your boots and sleep?”

  The tent flap opened and Christopher’s servant entered. He stopped when he saw her standing beside the cot, and a smile lit his bearded countenance. “Sitt Donally, I am so glad that you are well. I did not get to see you when you arrived.”

  “Abdul.” She took the wizened hands clasped in front of him. “It’s good to see you as well.”

  He wore his white turban and a belted long-sleeve tunic that reached his knees. “If only your brother had waited another day before he left. You would not have known him, Sitt.”

  His voice was quiet, and afraid that Alex might be awake, Brianna turned to Fallon, who’d not moved from his position on the edge of the cot. “Abdul, please bring in his gear. He’ll be sleeping here.”

  “But he asked that I not do so.”

  “Do it, Abdul,” Fallon said tiredly, one eye squinted up at her. “And a bowl of water if you will. I need to wash.”

  “And to shave as well, Major.” Brianna smiled after Abdul scurried out. “Pity the poor woman you’d kiss tonight, otherwise.”

  A slow grin curved the edges of his mouth, a flash of white in the shadows of his face. “Are you always so bold with men, Miss Donally?”

  “Only with those who have already seen me undressed. We’ve rather bypassed polite formalities, have we not, Major Fallon?”

  She could tell by the wary look that came into his eyes that she wasn’t at all what he’d expected. That was just fine with her. There was nothing worse than being predictable. Putting space between them, Brianna escaped the tent when Abdul entered with a tray of food.

  Christopher’s tent had been erected near a large pool of water. An enormous star hung low on the
horizon. It was ironic that such stark beauty gave life to a barren plateau of sand. Some distance away, a boy herded bleating goats. Behind Brianna, the tent flap opened. Major Fallon’s robed figure filled the opening. His gaze found her standing near the fire. Then she watched him take in the surrounding area.

  He didn’t like their neighbors; she could see that in the narrow look that came into his eyes. Turning her head, she tried to see what he saw. Did he think they were still being followed?

  Abdul squeezed through the opening. “I have dinner prepared, Sitt. Shall I have food brought to her ladyship?”

  “Only if she’s awake. Where has the baggage that was brought in on my camel been stowed? I haven’t found my camera.”

  “Come with me, Sitt.”

  Without a backward glance at Major Fallon, Brianna followed Abdul. She glimpsed a woman leaving the pond. “Why aren’t some women veiled?” she asked as he led her around the larger tent to one in back.

  “It is not uncommon among nomadic women to go unveiled.” Abdul held back the flap and Brianna’s heart leapt.

  She’d found her camera.

  Nothing seemed broken in the trunk holding the photo chemicals, black cloth, and plates. She’d been carrying that trunk with her since the day she and Alex had left to photograph the temple. “You’re from the desert, aren’t you, Abdul? Doesn’t that make you a nomad?”

  “Pah!” His large black eyes rounded with insult. “I am the son of a merchant,” he said, as if speaking to someone whom Allah had afflicted with feeble-mindedness. “I used to travel often from the cities to the oases to trade, and would be rich from the Damascus silk that my father sold had he not a problem with dice. Alas, I am now a steward. But your brother pays his staff well. That is good for me.”

  Abdul was also one of the few men she’d seen in this country who treated women with any respect. Not that her own countrymen behaved any better most of the time. She’d gotten to know Abdul in Cairo and was glad that he was here. Brianna lifted her camera.