The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow

‘Good Lord, yes. Well, that was your fault. What the deuce did you think you would find clambering over those piles of rubble?’

‘I thought I would make a great discovery. I did not expect to fall into a tomb and be attacked by bats.’ She shuddered at the memory.

‘Of course not. Why would bats congregate in a dark, dank tomb and, even more surprising, why would they take alarm when someone tumbled into their lair and swamped it with daylight?’

‘I did not know there was a shaft entrance hidden under the rubble!’

‘Well, if you had not climbed there, you would not have fallen through and dragged me into it as well.’

‘I apologised. Several times.’

‘So you did. So you should have.’

‘You still hardly spoke to me for the rest of your stay.’

‘I am certain you regarded that as a reward, not a punishment. And since anything I said might have led to a bout of fisticuffs with your brothers, it is good I held my peace. You were a menace, Sam.’

‘Were?’

‘You have mellowed with age, apparently. Despite your tendency to climb the antiquities, nothing horrible has happened since my arrival and, with only a couple days remaining before my departure to England, we might yet scrape through without any disasters.’

He spoke lightly, but there was a peculiar note to his voice and she shivered, as if she was back in that tomb, huddled in a corner while he shielded her from the swooping bats and told her precisely what he thought of her. She’d known he was leaving, but somehow she had managed not to absorb that fact. Now it was unavoidable and so was an equally unwelcome realisation.

She did not want him to go.

Somewhere inside her a pit opened wide. Her cheeks tingled with heat and she closed her sketchbook carefully. She felt she was dangling over a ledge, a little dizzy, a little queasy. What was wrong with her?

She stared at the line of the hill, the sweep and dip and then the ragged collapse into the valley. Though the colours were monotone once the sun rose fully, trapped in shades of pale brown and yellow against a stark blue sky, it was a landscape of contrasts and surprises. Not all of them pleasant.

‘But you were in England only a couple of months ago.’

‘So?’

‘But... I thought you would be joining your uncle on the expedition to Abu Simbel next week.’

‘Not this year. Next year I will likely return with Dora.’

‘Dora?’ The pit yawned wider.

‘Miss Theodora Wadham. I met her in London and we are to be married in June. I’ve asked Poppy and Janet not to discuss it because she is still in mourning over her father’s death, but I’m surprised your eavesdropping abilities haven’t ferreted out the information yet. It hardly matters now since we will announce our betrothal as soon as I return to London. She is looking forward to seeing Egypt. I have told her all about it and she finds it fascinating.’

Dora.

June.

Married.

Edge?

The dizziness was clearing, revealing sharp, distinct quills of anger and pain. She had not even realised she liked Edge. He was annoying and opinionated and always so right one simply itched to kick him. Certainly it made no sense for her whole body to ache like this because he was to be married. No sense at all.

As the silence stretched he took her sketchpad, leafing through it again.

‘You really are very good. I like the way you capture the heat over the valley here. I don’t know how it shows that, but it does. This one I like in particular. That is a strange angle... Don’t tell me you climbed the statue of Horus to sketch that?’ He laughed again. ‘You are bound to break your head; do you know that? This is what comes of growing up tagging around your brothers. I told them you would get into trouble one day.’

‘And what did they tell you?’ she asked dully.

‘To mind my own business.’ He smiled and the pit became a great big chasm with a swamp at the bottom, sludgy and sucking.

‘So why don’t you?’

‘Did I upset you, Sam? I didn’t mean to. Is it because I spoke to your brothers? You needn’t worry, they are loyal to you before anything. Sometimes I think your brothers minded you more than they ever did their commanders during the war. But you really must grow up at some point, you know. You can’t wander around for ever in local robes with your hair down your back. I never understood... I mean, your mother is always so smartly dressed and—’ He broke off at her glare. ‘Anyway. It is no concern of mine, but...perhaps when Dora comes here, if you are here with your uncle next year, she can go with you to Cairo. She has impeccable taste and would probably be glad of a friend here. You will like her; she is very dashing.’

I shall hate her. She had best not climb any statues with me because I shall be tempted to push her off. I hate you.

She stood, shaking out her cotton skirts, suddenly all too aware of her dusty, crumpled state, the hair clinging to her sweaty cheeks and forehead, the scuffs on her hands and the ink stains on her fingers.

Idiot. She hadn’t known she liked Edge this morning and she was damned if she would like him by evening. She would climb the Howling Cliffs and rid herself of this stupid, pointless liking for this stupid, tedious boy. He might think he was a man, but he was only a boy and Dashing Dora was more than welcome to him. She would find someone dashing of her own to like. She would go to Venice and find the handsomest and most charming man of them all and fall desperately in love with him and he would give her a home and a family and they would live happily ever after and...

‘I’m going back,’ she announced, walking across the roof. She heard the scratching of his boots following her and wished he would leave her be.

‘Wait, I shall help you down. That is quite a drop. Careful.’ He shifted past her on to the statue and leapt nimbly down on to the sand.

‘I don’t need your help.’

‘Nonsense. Here, give me your hand.’

If she had not been so upset, she probably would have complied, but she didn’t want him touching her so she began descending as she always did—she jumped. Unfortunately, he reached up to take her arm and her agile leap became a stumble, her bare feet sliding on the sandy surface, and she fell headlong on to him, flattening him on to the sand, her chin hitting his ribs and his chin cracking her forehead.

‘Damnation!’

‘Yina’al abuk!’ Her own curse was muffled as she struggled to untangle herself, but the skirts of her cotton robe were snagged under his leg and all she could manage was to raise herself on to one elbow, her hair falling in a tangle over her face. She shoved it away and glared at him and the annoyance and surprise on his face transformed into a grin.

‘I told you you would fall off one day. Did it have to be on to me?’

‘I would not have fallen if you hadn’t got in my way so it is only proper that you cushioned my fall. Now move your leg so I can...’

She gave her skirt a tug, shifting a little on to her side and nudging his leg aside with her knee. She heard his breath drag in and stopped, glancing up in concern.

‘Are you hurt? Edge? Oh, no, did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to. Where are you hurt?’ She planted her hand by his side, raising herself as best she could to see where he might be wounded, but his arms were still around her and they tightened.

‘Stop moving,’ he growled in a voice utterly unlike any she had heard him use so she froze, worried and unsure.

This was her fault. In her stubbornness and pique she’d ignored his gentlemanly gesture and now he might be seriously injured. Perhaps she had even broken his back. She had seen what happened to a worker who fell from a cliff and broke his back—he’d died in agony a day later. She hardly dared breath, staring at the handsome face beneath her, all her energy focused on willing him to be unhurt.

His eyes narrowed into slits of water green, his lips a little parted. His breath was warm and swift against her neck and she wanted to sink against him and feel her chest pressed to his once more. Underneath her shock her body was avidly mapping the feel of his legs clamped tightly about hers, the muscular force of his thigh pressed against an area between her legs she’d never even thought as a source of pleasure...

‘What are you wearing under that kamisa?’ His question was so unconnected she was certain she misheard. As her mind arranged the words into order, she wondered if perhaps his head had sustained the injury. Certainly he looked strange—his high cheekbones were hot with colour, his nostrils finely drawn.