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Meredith jerked awake, sat bolt upright and thrashed at the blanket covering her body, as though it were suffocating the life from her. Her heart hammered, her palms sweated and the wool crumpled in her fists.
“You're awake,” Lord Archer said from somewhere nearby.
She slowly set the blanket aside as consciousness seeped in, strong sunlight tracing patterns against her eyelids. This was not Montfort, nor was it Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo. She pushed her hands through her hair and blinked in the direction of the voice, her thoughts struggling to catch up with her senses. The past several hours had been populated by dreams she had hoped never to have again. She'd been back at Montfort, watching the seasons change from the windows of the drawing room, the clouds streaking against a changing sky. Dusk had hung about the salon like a heavy mantle, the ghosts of Rowena and Julia's childhood lingering, their laughter mingling with dust motes in the air. The tendrils of the dream clung, along with the horrific sensation that Rowena and Julia both lay dead, beyond her reach and her help. Even now Meredith's chest still clenched at the guilt that she had not done enough to shelter them from the evil she had had a hand in creating. But they were alive. She breathed the words with relief. And Faron was dead.
She opened her eyes to blazing sunlight. Early morning in the desert.
“We need to leave now, Meredith.”
She sat up. Archer. Lord Richard Archer. His physical presence was jarring, even more so now in the glare of the desert sun. He looked as though he'd been up for hours while she'd been sleeping, wrestling with her dreams, on the floor of the abandoned fort. He was smiling faintly, his eyes watching her closely.
She pushed aside the blanket and rose too quickly, anything to avoid remembering what had transpired the night before. She felt myriad twinges everywhere in her body, and she stretched to loosen them before catching sight of the perfect imprint of two bodies on the fine sand beneath her. She blanched, mortified, then quickly shuffled her booted feet over the pattern, hoping to make the evidence disappear.
A horrifying thought crossed her mind. She glanced down quickly to determine that her riding jacket and trousers were still in place and that she had indeed slept in her clothes undisturbed. Silly woman, she thought, as though she were a maiden at risk of being ravished. There were benefits to being a certain age, a matron. The tumultuous events of the day and last evening were simply an aberration. It was best to pretend that nothing untoward had happened, save a few moments of weakness on her part. Archer would most likely be as eager to forget the incident as she was.
“Of course, we should be on our way,” she said. “You might have wakened me sooner, Lord Archer.”
He handed her the silver flask, which miraculously still contained some water. “Have you had your fill?” she asked.
Waving away her concerns, he reached down for his linen jacket, which she had used as a pillow during the night. The image of his placing the bundle under her head sometime in the early hours was disturbing. He paused to swiftly load her pistol and then his, tapping the powder down the barrel, pressing in the ball before returning it to his waistband. Meredith felt she was still in a dream, despite the glare of the morning sun, watching this man with whom she had spent the night loading firearms.
Smoothing her hair and tugging her sleeves over her wrists from long habit, she noted that Archer hadn't said a word in some time. She wondered how he'd passed the night. Sleeping fitfully and watching her twist and turn on the hard ground, wrestling with her dreams? Or thinking about someone in his own past, or present, a woman who was important to him?
Whom had Rowena mentioned? Of course, the young and lovely Countess of Blenheim. Meredith pictured her with soft blue eyes, tipped-up nose and rosebud mouth. She had an amenable disposition and no challenging thoughts in her blond head beyond flirtation. In short, a lovely young widow, her husband conveniently dead. Of course, Archer would find the Countess attractive. Annoyed by her wayward thoughts, Meredith glanced down at Archer's hands, large, capable and elegant at the same time, working deftly. They had touched her last night, overriding whatever little judgment she had left.
She picked up her pistol and secured it in her pocket, the familiar heft reassuring. “We are on our way then,” she said, her voice still husky from sleep.
“If you are agreeable and as long as you are feeling up to it.” He squinted up at another hard blue sky, and she found herself studying him again. His hair was dark brown, almost black with a few threads of silver, and it waved loosely about his temples and ears. And although his jaw was heavily shadowed with whiskers, he looked as though he'd spent the night on a four-poster bed rather than on the unforgiving ground.
“Of course,” she said briskly. “Why risk our good fortune?” The yolk of the sun poured through the jagged remains of the fort. She didn't want to imagine those men returning, or think of the man she had killed.
Her thoughts were a collision of images and high emotion, far from any semblance of coherence. She'd taken a life and a short time later all but offered herself to a near stranger on the bare desert ground, and in moments had been aroused to an adolescent breathlessness. Archer's nearness in the harsh light of day was a shocking reminder of her lack of judgment. For the next minute, his boots scrabbling over the hard ground was the only sound, as he picked up the blanket, shook it out before bundling it into the leather bag. Her wandering thoughts wouldn't stop and she considered whether he'd been entirely unmoved, recalling the heat of his breath over her throat, the hardness of his arms under her hands. Examining the incident with a cooler head told her that the exchange was entirely mortifying and she hoped it would sift away like the sand beneath their feet.
The heat was already beginning to build and she shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand. They should soon be on their way back to the relative civilization of Cairo, where in the elegance of the hotel they could say cordial farewells over a glass of sherry, formalities reestablished and the unfortunate incident forever unmentioned and forgotten.
“I am ready whenever you are, Lord Archer.” She glanced beyond the low wall to their left. “We have your horse, mercifully,” she said.
“It will have to do for both of us. If we leave now we should arrive back in Rashid by noon.”
And yet they stood there, pausing so long it seemed that Meredith had forgotten how to begin and end a sentence. She gave herself another shake, looking at him directly for the first time that morning. “After we arrive in Rashid, there is no need to accompany me further. Despite your promises to Lord Rushford.”
“And despite the fact you were attacked by three men last evening.” His expression tightened. “You expect me to walk away and leave you unprotected.”
Meredith held her head higher and then made a noncommittal sound which won her a sideways look and an upraised brow.
“I don't require heroics, Archer.”
“I'm well aware,” he returned. “I simply wonder how you expect the dead man's body to disappear.”
The man she'd murdered. Meredith swallowed hard. “I shall take care of it. I shall alert the British Office to send someone to collect the remains.”
“And tell them what, precisely?”
“That I was attacked and I acted in self-defense. Entirely true.” Misgivings formed in the back of her mind.
“They will ask questions which you know you will refuse to answer. Aren't you in the least suspicious as to why and how your guide was chosen?”
“Are you intimating that the British Office had something to do with Murad's betrayal?”
“I don't know. But I wonder if you can afford to raise the questions.”
Meredith eyed him warily. “And you can make all of this go away, if I surmise correctly.” She paused. “And what do you wish in return?”
“Nothing. Consider it a favor to my old friend Rushford.” She responded with silence. “Why you don't trust me?” He paused. “Or is it all men?” Or one man, he might as well have asked.
A tiny flame of suspicion reignited in her chest. She leaned back against a wall, where a thin shadow shielded her from the sun and his questioning. Why was he here? Why had he followed her? She rubbed her forehead and tipped her head back against the wall, closing her eyes briefly before daring a reply. “None of this is any of your concern.” Her voice hardened, and her fingers closed into a fist.
“I know you don't wish to talk of it. About Faron.”
The name landed like a blow between her ribs. She was speechless. For a moment, she didn't dare breathe and could only stare back at him.
“That's the danger here, Meredith. One you shouldn't ignore.”
She bounced her fists softly against her thighs. “He's dead.”
Archer was still studying her, steadily, as though he was looking for a point of entry. “How can you be so certain?”
“I know,” she said more evenly this time.
Because I can feel it. In my heart
.
It was as though he had read her mind, heard the unsaid words. He smiled faintly. “I wouldn't have taken you for a romantic, Lady Woolcott.”
He was dangerous, Lord Richard Buckingham Archer.
“We are wasting time with this nonsense,” she said evenly, although it cost her great effort. Anything to make the subject of Faron go away. “I absolve you of whatever Lord Rushford or Rowena and Julia asked of you. As a matter of fact, I shall cable them directly when I return to Shepheard's so you may go about your business with a clear conscience.”
To her surprise he nodded, although it was not quite a surrender. “You are correct about one thing at least. We are wasting time. We can continue this discussion once safely back in Cairo.”
The subject was closed.
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They left the fort by the north entrance, going down narrow, cobbled steps in silence. Archer scanned the horizon as they passed into the remains of the fort's garden, the air heavy with heat. Only the bitter tang of creosote spiked the air, as the austere landscape loomed before them. Danger was on the horizon, Meredith thought, cutting a sidelong glance at Archer, and moving back into her life.
Her every instinct warned her to back away, to send Lord Archer on a swift return to London. This man, even in claiming to protect her, opened up possibilities she never wished to contemplate again. His mount waited, tucked into the coolness of an alcove. The terrain became more uneven, steepening. Archer moved ahead of her, then turned quickly to slide his hand around her waist.
“I can manage, surelyâ”
Too late. He lifted her easily while her hands grabbed instinctively at his shoulders, their bodies once more entirely too close, her fingers curling into the linen of his jacket. They were face-to-face, his implausibly blue eyes inches from hers, her pulse hammering a staccato beat. It was only a moment before he lowered her down his length. But the ground was suddenly unsteady beneath her feet and she reminded herself to remove her hands from his broad shoulders. Archer still grasped her waist, his heavy palms warming her skin through the fine wool of her trousers. She remained there, looking up at him until his horse neighed, rending the silence.
He released her waist. And she lowered her hands. Perversely, her pulse did not slow and his warm masculine scent lingered in a cloud. Meredith was agonizingly aware of Archer as a man. She would have to share a saddle with him, traverse the desert in a cocoon of heat and wind, even though she knew that he was not for her, with his lean hard face and those penetrating eyes that promised more danger than help.
It was worse than Meredith expected, a struggle to hold her body away from his as they rode along the same path which she'd traversed just twenty-four hours previously, with Murad at her side. She sat back in the saddle, her hands held tightly against her waist. The air was like cotton, soaking up her thoughts, and after an hour's ride, the wind picked up, and the shifting sand made a deafening roar around her head, pummeling her ears and making it impossible to keep her thoughts straight. Archer appeared oblivious, urging the mount beneath them to keep a steady pace.
They passed some scraggly brush, leaning so far over it looked as though it would be torn up by the roots and blown into the horizon. Clouds of red shimmered in the distance, causing the sun to take on a copper hue in the haze. Meredith pulled her bonnet low over her eyes as the sting of grit bit into any exposed skin. The horse began to struggle against the onslaught, ears pinned back. Archer said something over his shoulder, his words swallowed by the roar of wind and sand. Around them the desert shimmered, a flatly undulating expanse offering no shelter from the gathering sandstorm. It was among nature's most violent and unpredictable phenomena, unleashing a turbulent, suffocating cloud of particles into the air and reducing visibility to almost nothing in a matter of moments.
Archer urged his horse off the narrow road, toward a low sand dune in the near distance. It made sense to seek higher ground and in moments they both slipped from the saddle. “This is the best we can do until the worst is over,” Archer said, motioning to the leeward side of the dune. “At least we will not be struck by flying debris.” Reaching quickly into the saddle bags, he procured a bandana, moistened it from his flask, and slipped it over the horse's mouth and eyes. Then the blanket reappeared.