spoon, he slipped it into a pocket and clumped down the stairs in search of a warmer room. He settled in Sir Henry’s study, where a fire burned merrily in the hearth. A large brown leather wingback chair was drawn up near the fire. On a small round table next to the chair rested a crystal decanter and a small pewter cup. An iron holder with eight tall candles stood nearby.
“This is more like it.” Kit sighed, sinking into the deeply upholstered chair. He stretched his legs and put his feet toward the fire, then turned to address the decanter. It was filled with a fragrant liquid that, Kit decided after a sniff, was probably brandy. He poured a little into the cup and took an ill-advised gulp. The virulent stuff burned his throat and scalded his gullet and threw him forthwith into a coughing fit-which hurt his sore ribs and made his eyes water.
Pouring the contents of the cup back into the decanter, he rose and went to examine the bookshelves lining one side of the cosy room. The books were uniformly large and blocky tomes bound in heavy brown leather. Kit had seen the kind before-under lock and key at his university library. Yet here they were, free to roam about. Intrigued, he fetched the candle stand and brought it closer so he could read the words on the spine. They were all in Latin, and all with incomprehensible titles like: Principium Agri Cultura… and Modus Mundus… and Commentarius et Sermo Sacerdos… and the like.
Kit’s Latin was scant, if not utterly absent, but he could work out a few of the titles. He ran his fingers over some of the spines, tracing the titles and pronouncing the words to himself. “Ars Nova Arcana…,” he said aloud, and became aware that he was no longer alone in the room.
Thinking Giles had joined him at last, he turned to find himself under the intense scrutiny of a young woman standing in the doorway. “Are you a robber?” she demanded, stepping smartly into the room. “A thief? A blackguard?”
“Uh, no-I, um-”
“What manner of rogue are you? A housebreaker?” She fixed him with the most defiant, daring, and challenging stare Kit had ever seen on the face of another living human being. “Well? Speak up! Are you a footpad?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why are you here in Sir Henry’s study? Why are you skulking about? Who gave you leave to enter?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” Kit answered lightly. “I hardly know which one to answer first.”
That was the wrong tack to take. She grew even more irate. “Impudent rascal,” she charged. “I will have you thrashed and thrown out.” Without taking her eyes off him, she called for the steward. “Villiers!”
“Please,” said Kit, “I am none of the things you said. In fact, I don’t even know what a footpad is.”
“Then who are you? Tell me the truth and be quick about it.”
“I suppose you could say I am a guest of Sir Henry Fayth…”
She took another step, coming a little more into the light, and Kit beheld what was probably the most beautiful woman he had ever seen up close in the flesh. Her softly-rounded form was encased in a gown of sky blue satin with shimmering silver embroidery; a row of tiny black ribbons decorated each lustrous satin sleeve all down the long line of each slender arm. The heavy boning of her bodice accentuated the delicious curve of her waist, flattening her stomach and rising to a gently mounded flurry of translucent lace. Her long, elegant neck was adorned by a string of delicate black pearls. But the most striking thing about her was the clarity of her keen brown eyes; her sensual, full-lipped mouth; the fine line of her jaw; her high, smooth brow; the way her long, dark russet curls made tiny waves at the temple…
In truth, there were so many exquisite features Kit took in all at once that he could not decide which was the best of an extraordinarily stunning lot. All he knew was that he was in the presence of a rare vision of loveliness, a goddess, a transcendently radiant creature whom he was wholly unworthy to address. Yet, address her he did. She insisted.
“Well?” she snapped. “Speak, sir! It is insulting and ill-mannered to keep a lady waiting.”
“They are working on-” Kit hesitated again, uncertain how much to say.
“Their secret scientific experiments?” she snipped.
“You know about those?”
“I know all about them,” she replied carelessly. Her accent was softer than most of the others he had heard, and her manner of speaking more inclined to his own. She was easier to understand, and he understood that she was completely and utterly irate. “But I do not know you.”
“I’m, ah-” He caught himself this time. He forced a smile. “My name is Christopher. You can call me Kit.”
Her frown deepened.
“And you are?” he ventured.
“You may call me Lady Fayth,” she replied crisply and with a slight lift of her chin.
“Lady Fayth? Forgive me; I did not know Sir Henry was married.”
“I beg your pardon, sir!” she replied haughtily. “I am his niece-not that that is anything to you.”
“No, of course not, my lady,” replied Kit. On sudden inspiration, he bowed to her and, for all his lack of practice, managed some degree of elegance. “Pray, forgive my thoughtless and entirely reckless presumption. I do apologise.”
His conciliatory manner had the desired effect. She appeared to relax slightly, though she still regarded him warily. “What are you doing in my uncle’s private room? What have you done with Sir Henry?”
Before he could answer, a chime rang from somewhere in the house.
“Ah, saved by the bell,” remarked Kit under his breath. “Perhaps you would allow me to explain myself over dinner. May I escort you to the table, my lady?”
He presented his arm the way he had seen it done in old movies. To his amazement, she accepted-but with a distinctly diffident coolness. “We will discuss this further.”
“Nothing would please me more,” he told her, and meant every syllable.
PART FOUR
The Green Book
CHAPTER 20
In Which Luxor’s Nefarious Trade Is Advanced
Lord Burleigh sat mopping his brow with a limp handkerchief and tried yet again to remember why he had imagined that arriving in Egypt at the height of summer was a good idea. “If the heat doesn’t kill you,” he mused, “the flies surely will.” With that, he gave another informal gathering of the small, biting devils a swish of his horsehair swatter. “Cheeky blighters!”
He sipped from his tall glass of cool apple tea and loosened the starched collar of his second shirt of the day. From the palm-fringed comfort of the Om Seti Lounge of the Winter Palace Hotel, he sat in his big wicker chair and watched the hotel traffic traipsing through the lobby outside: European businessmen in dark suits and panama hats with decorative ladies on their arms, the women in crisp cream-coloured linen, high heels clicking on the polished marble floor; swarthy waiters in white kaftans bearing hookahs or tiny cups of tea on silver trays; sandal-shod bellboys in short satin trousers and red turbans; cigarette sellers with wooden trays of tobacco; wealthy Arabs in spotless white galabiyas.
All passed in languid procession. No one hurried. When merely ambling around in the heat of the day was considered foolhardy, rushing would be suicidal.
Overhead, a fan creaked as its woven rattan blades sifted the stifling air. Burleigh pulled his watch from the pocket of his waistcoat and clicked open the case. He would, he decided, give it another half hour and then call off the chase. If his quarry did not turn up, he would go down to the docklands and arrange shipping for the items held in storage since his last visit. With this thought in mind, he retrieved his wallet from the breast pocket of the jacket hanging on the back of the chair. He opened it and quickly counted his remaining funds and found that he still had a little more than eighty thousand Egyptian pounds.
