Dangerous Entanglement

They would never have done this to her father, she reflected bitterly. Maybe she should swallow her pride after all, and ask him to pull strings for her, while there was still time. He would do it, of course; naturally he had been ready to offer any help she needed with her ‘little project’.

Her mouth twisted into a wry smile. Maybe he couldn’t help it, but his attitudes were as ancient and dusty as the mummies he was such an expert on. The illustrious Professor Julian Holloway, reknowned Egyptologist and Fellow of the Royal Society, was a plain old-fashioned chauvinist, and just couldn’t imagine why his only daughter might want to establish a name for herself in her own right.

To be honest, it wasn’t the most important dig in the world. There were hundreds—thousands—of ancient tomb-sites scattered along the banks of the Nile, and there was no reason to suppose this one would have escaped the attentions of grave-robbers when even most of the those in the Valley of the Kings, a little way further downriver, had been comprehensively stripped of all their treasures. The only reason she’d been granted permission to excavate them was that they were about to be destroyed.

She hadn’t expected Alexander Marshall himself to show up, especially alone and in a battered old Land Rover. She had recognised him at once, of course—he was rarely out of the news, if not for his ruthless business dealings then for his outrageous private life. He had even been prepared to shove his own father and elder brother aside to gain control of his company—and the scandal of his divorce, and his numerous affairs, had been a staple of the tabloid front pages for years.

It was obvious how he had earned his reputation, she mused, slanting him a covert glance from behind the useful defence of her dark sunglasses. He had put his own sunglasses on now, but the way he had looked at her before had made her feel…as if she wasn’t wearing any clothes.

He was perhaps even better-looking in the flesh than in those fuzzy black and white newspaper pictures, she acknowledged with some reluctance—the camera couldn’t really do justice to those strong-boned, aquiline features, or catch the crisp curl of his dark hair.

But there was no mistaking his arrogance, nor his ruthlessness—it was written into every cynical line of that hard mouth. And though he was a good many years younger than her father—the newspapers had him down as thirty-five—she would guess that he was just as much of an obdurate chauvinist.

They reached the top of the low rise that hid the tombs from the road. The dark, gaping tomb-entrances were in two rows, six on the lower level, three above, carved deep into the weathered yellow limestone of the hill. She gazed at them with a sharp twinge of regret; three and a half thousand years they had been here, and now in a few more weeks they would be gone.

Alex glanced around the bleak site, one dark eyebrow lifted in faint surprise. ‘Who’s in charge of the dig?’ he enquired.

Joanna’s eyes glittered with icy anger; she might have known he would assume that it would be a man in charge. ‘I am,’ she ground out.

He smiled in wry apology. ‘I see. Have you found anything interesting?’

She shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘No spectacular caches of gold, if that’s what you mean,’ she conceded reluctantly. ‘This site is nothing like as grand as the ones up in the Valley of the Kings. But it’s telling us a great deal about the day-to-day lives of the ordinary people— what they ate, how they prepared their food, how they organised their households. We could probably find out a lot more…’ She slanted him a look of bitter resentment. ‘But of course, now that you’ve arrived, we won’t get the chance.’

He lifted one dark eyebrow in quizzical enquiry. ‘I gather from that remark that you know who I am?’

‘Of course.’ She injected her voice with several degrees of frost. ‘Mr Makram from the D of A warned me you’d be coming—though I wasn’t expecting you until next month.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he responded on an inflection of sardonic humour.

Joanna felt her palm itch to slap that arrogant face. He was just mocking her; he knew full well that there was nothing she could do to prevent him starting work on his contract whenever he liked.

‘Well, if you’ve seen enough, please excuse me,’ she rapped tautly, turning him an aloof shoulder. ‘I’m afraid I have a great deal of work to do.’

Unfortunately the dignity of the effect was somewhat marred when she missed her footing on the rough ground, and slipped. A strong hand caught her instantly, like a vice around her arm.

‘Careful,’ he advised smoothly. ‘If you broke your ankle out here you could be in big trouble.’

A sudden rush of heat flowed through her, and she felt her heartbeat skip oddly. ‘Th…thank you,’ she managed, her voice a little unsteady. ‘I’m perfectly well able to take care of myself.’

‘Really? I’m glad to hear it.’ He let go of her arm. ‘I’d like to take a look at these tombs of yours—if you’d be so kind as to show me?’

She slanted him a look of wary suspicion, sceptical of the interest he was showing. But if there was the slightest chance…She would very much have preferred not to have had to spend any more time in his company, but if she could persuade him to delay starting his quarrying, even for just a few weeks, it would be worth it.

‘All right,’ she conceded somewhat ungraciously. ‘This way. You’ll have to mind your head—the roof’s quite low.’

She led him down the slope, and into the second tomb on the lower level—the best one they had found so far. Picking up her torch, she shone the beam to light the way down the narrow passage carved into the living rock. Every time she came here, she felt again that sense of awe for all the timeless ages that had passed since men had first hewn out this place; just touching the rough walls, she felt as though she was making some kind of tenuous link with those long-past generations.

‘Careful,’ she warned. ‘It’s a steep slope, but it’s not far to the bottom. We’ve put in a rope hand-grip to help. Wait here till I get down, then I’ll shine the torch for you.’

She clambered carefully down, and then called up for him to follow, playing the torch-beam on the rough-hewn ground underfoot as he edged his way after her. He was so tall that he had to bend almost double to avoid hitting his head on the roof. As he reached the bottom and straightened beside her, Joanna found herself suddenly a little breathless—but then it was always rather hot and airless down here.

She flashed the torch around the walls, showing him the paintings, thousands of years old but so incredibly well-preserved that they could have been painted only yesterday. ‘This is the first chamber,’ she explained, a hint of proprietorial pride in her voice. ‘We think it was built for a local viceroy of the eighteenth dynasty—that would put it at about the fourteenth-century BC. The decoration is typical of the period.’

‘Very nice.’ He sounded genuinely impressed. He reached out his hand to touch the hieroglyphics carved into the rock. ‘I wonder what these mean?’

‘“Behold Osiris, the scribe of the holy offerings of all the gods. Worship to thee who has come as Khepera, as the creator of the gods,”’ she read fluently. ‘“Thou risest, thou shinest, making bright thy mother, crowned as king of the gods.”

He glanced down at her in astonishment. ‘You can read it?’

She felt a stab of annoyance; did he think she was some kind of amateur? ‘Of course,’ she responded coolly. ‘It’s an inscription from the opening chapter of the Book of the Dead. The painting is of the funerary procession; the mourners are bringing offerings of food and spices to sustain the spirit on its journey to heaven.’

‘I see.’ He studied the mural, a faint smile curving his mouth, and Joanna felt suddenly uncomfortable as she guessed what he was thinking; most of the figures were draped in a white cloth that had been painted to appear almost transparent. ‘Rum lot, those ancient Egyptians,’ he remarked; he had removed his sunglasses, and in the glimmer of the torchlight she could see the glint of mocking humour in his dark eyes. ‘Did they dress like that all the time?’

She forced herself to return him a long, cool look— it was rather disconcerting to have him standing so close, so tall and wide-shouldered and so…uncompromisingly male. ‘Most of the murals of that particular period appear to show a similar style of clothing,’ she responded with frosty dignity. ‘Would you like to see the burial-chamber?’ He nodded, and she shone the torch-beam across the floor. ‘Be careful here—there’s a robbertrap. I’ll cross first, and then hold the torch for you.’

The trap was a deep pit that opened right across the passage. Investigation had revealed it to be about twenty feet deep, but as a deterrent to grave-robbers it clearly hadn’t been too successful—the burial-chamber, when they had reached it, had long ago been looted of its treasures.

They had placed a plank across it, weighed down with sandbags, to make a bridge, and she skipped nimbly across, and then waited for him to follow her. The beam of the torchlight threw his shadow against the far wall, huge and menacing, and she felt her mouth go suddenly dry. They were all alone down here, and the nearest village was five miles away…

She stepped back quickly as he reached her side of the plank-bridge, hoping he wouldn’t hear her heartbeat pounding. ‘This is the burial-chamber,’ she announced, her voice sounding oddly unsteady to her own ears. ‘We found the remains of the sarcophagus, and a few bits of the canopic jars, but all the rest had been stolen.’

‘A pity.’

Was it just her imagination, the way he was looking at her? She retreated a little further into the chamber. ‘Unfortunately, all the other tombs we’ve found so far have been in the same state,’ she rushed on. ‘We were hoping to at least find something that would identify the occupants, but unless we can find a sarcophagus still intact it doesn’t seem very likely.’

‘How many more tombs are there?’ he enquired. His tone was quite neutral, but the way he was standing there, his wide shoulder propped against the wall, gave her the uncomfortable feeling that he was barring her way out.

‘I…I don’t know for sure. We’ve found nine so far, but there could be more.’

‘We…?’

She hesitated, wondering if it was quite wise to let him know how unprotected she was out here. But he would find out anyway soon enough. ‘Just…myself and my assistant, Annette.’

He arched one dark eyebrow in surprised question. ‘Just two women?’

‘Yes.’ She felt a flood of heat rush through her. ‘We’re perfectly capable of undertaking a project like this.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you are.’ There was no mistaking that faint hint of mockery. ‘But isn’t it rather heavy work?’

‘Not with modern equipment.’ She was beginning to find his proximity a little too much to cope with. Mustering as much dignity as she could, she moved past him, back towards the plank-bridge. ‘Well, that’s all there is to see, I’m afraid…’ And if he so much as tried to touch her, he would find out just how strong six months of humping great big stones around had made her.

But he made no untoward move, merely following behind her as she stepped across the plank-bridge and scrambled up the slope to emerge into the bright glare of the Egyptian sun. She drew in a long, deep breath, feeling a little foolish now for letting him unsettle her like that for what had really been no reason.

‘Well…As I said, all the others we’ve found so far are in much the same condition.’ She felt much calmer now—it must have just been an unexpected attack of claustrophobia. ‘But we’ve started to dig lower down— we think there may be another level below this one.’

‘And how long would it take you to find out?’

She glanced up hopefully, searching his face, but all she could see was her own reflection in his sunglasses. ‘Oh, about…three months,’ she suggested tentatively. ‘We’d have to finish by the end of June anyway—it would be much too hot to carry on by then.’