The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow

‘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.

‘What?’

‘You’re not wearing anything under it.’ This time he spoke through his teeth.

‘Of course not, it is hot and I...’

He closed his eyes and growled again.

‘Definitely grown up,’ he muttered. ‘Get off me.’

‘But where are you hurt?’

‘I am not hurt. Get off me.’

‘I’m trying. You must move your leg for me to...’ She reached between his legs to grasp as much of her skirt as possible and gave it a tug.

This time he groaned, his arms tightening even further, and her supporting arm buckled. She managed to turn her head in time not to slam her chin into his chest once again, but this was worse. Her mouth was just an inch from his neck, she could smell his warmth, a musky scent that made her think of an oasis, green and lush, cool water pouring from a spring. She wanted to taste his skin the way a woman dying of thirst might want to fling herself into that cool water.

Her fantasy shattered as he heaved, rolling her off him, but his leg was still caught in the skirt of her robe and it remained between her legs, a hard, warm, welcome presence. She clung to his shirt as if she was being dangled over an abyss. He was again a dark shape over her, just his narrowed eyes touched with shards of light.

‘I always knew you were trouble.’ The words barely made their way out between his gritted teeth. ‘I just didn’t know how m...’

The word was stifled as she raised herself on her elbow and pressed her mouth to his. She hadn’t meant to do it, it just happened.

It wasn’t what she expected. His mouth was smooth and warm like a polished marble statue out in the sun. But it was pliant, it pulsed with life, and she couldn’t help shifting her lips against it, tucking her lower lip into the parting, drawn by the warmth of his breath until she reached the moist inner curve.

It felt so...perfect.

She could stay just like that while dynasties rose and fell, her lips defined by the contours of his, his breath replacing hers. She sighed and without thinking her tongue came to explore the parting of his, sending a shock of tingling heat through her body and utterly destroying the lethargic beauty of the moment.

The whole embrace could not have lasted more than several breaths but it felt like an eternity, until with a sharp tug he all but ripped her skirt from about his leg, shoved himself to his feet and was striding swiftly down the path.

Sam stood on the veranda that connected Bab el-Nur’s breakfast room to the gardens. The scent of honeysuckle and the first wisps of orange blossom were wrapped around her by the evening breeze that came down from the hills. Beneath it she could smell the Nile, murky and mysterious; could almost feel the dark rush of its waters just a few dozen yards away, night prowlers moving among the reeds.

She shivered and not because of the breeze or the crocodiles.

She had not seen Edge for two years and then she hadn’t even liked him—he’d been a thorn in her side ever since she was a child, even if he’d saved her from coming to grief far too many times.

She didn’t understand how it had all changed. How had Edge shifted in her map of constellations from a large but annoying star to the very centre, a sun warming and tugging all towards it? This rearrangement made no sense at all. Surely the stars would realign?

She wished more than ever that Lucas and Chase were there. She needed them to tell her it would go away. That this was merely an infatuation like the time Chase became all silly over Signora Bertolli when he was sixteen and wrote her poems and rowed his gondola past her palazzo in the middle of the night until her husband lost patience and threw a statue out the window, sinking the gondola and almost starting a feud between the Bertollis and the Montillios. The dousing cured Chase and a month later he was already enjoying the favours of a far more dashing and very scandalous widow.

That was what she would do. In a matter of weeks Huxley would be escorting her and her mother back to Venice where she would be introduced to society and meet all the charming Venetian men she’d heard gossip about. She might even meet Lord Byron and make him fall hopelessly in love with her since he seemed to be completely undiscriminating as he went from one Venetian lady to another as if they were sugar-coated castagnoles. That would certainly show Edge she was not a silly child.

Her defiance flared and faded. She had so looked forward to coming to Egypt for these months. To celebrate becoming a woman here, where she was most herself. Where she was Sam, not Lady Samantha Sinclair.

Now it was ruined.

Because of him.

He must have sensed her malevolent stare because he turned. They had ignored each other all evening, but instead of turning away as he had each time their eyes happened to meet, he squared his shoulders and came outside.

Her heart made a fool of her again, squashing itself down to the size of a pebble and then bursting in a spray of hot honey. She turned away to stare at the wisteria vines Poppy Carmichael tended with such love. When they flowered fully it was one of the loveliest sights imaginable, but she did not want to be here to see it. She never wanted to come to Qetara again.

Because of him.

He looked at her across the mosaic-covered table, his hand spread over the small tiles. He had large but fine-boned hands and now she knew what they felt like on her. It was a strange thought and it made her shiver.

‘I wanted to apologise,’ she said, keeping her gaze on the floor. ‘I didn’t mean to...by the statues...that was wrong.’

‘Yes.’ The single word was sharp and she flinched. Before she could continue he spoke again, the words rushed and harsh. ‘It was my fault, too. Everyone takes you for granted and treats you like you are a child who can do as you will and I did the same... I mean, Dora is nineteen, but it never occurred to me... I should have known better than to even be alone with you. That was my mistake, but I never imagined...’

He ran around, looking thoroughly miserable, and she stood rooted, ashamed to the depth of her soul, hating him and hating herself even more. She could think of nothing to say, either to fight back or regain her dignity. She had never been so humiliated in her life and he was not even trying to humiliate her.

‘I don’t mean to upset you,’ he said, his voice almost pleading and in such contrast with his usual matter-of-fact approach a small part of her released enough tension to feel a little sorry for him as well. ‘I only want you to understand, for your own sake, that it is time you grow up.’

What is the point? she thought, holding back from giving the table leg a kick. It was too late.

‘I don’t want to grow up. I know I will have no choice, but I don’t want to. Bad things happen when you do, like Lucas and Chase and you going to war or even worse things like my father being a fool and getting himself killed and my mother still mourning him and...’

And you marrying. You should not.

‘What is so wonderful about growing up?’ she demanded as he remained silent. He looked older. Not serious Edge poring over his books and artefacts, but the man she had felt against her.

‘It is not meant to be wonderful. It just is. There are things in life you do because you have no choice and you make the best of them. That is growing up.’

She covered her face with her hands, blocking it out, blocking him out.

‘Then I want none of it. I am sorry I offended you, but that does not give you the right to lecture me.’

‘You did not...never mind. Whether you want it or not, it has already happened. Your family and upbringing may not be typical among our class, but you are a Sinclair and very wealthy and that means you will be courted by some and regarded with suspicion by others. People will expect the worst of you because they do not know you as we do and if you behave as you did today...’ His voice dropped as he spoke, from smoke to gravel. ‘Whatever you think, I do not wish you to be hurt.’

She turned away. At least it was dark so he could not see the ruin she was becoming under his words.

He took a step nearer and stopped.

‘I don’t wish to hurt you, truly. I only want you to understand...oh, hell.’ He took another step and stopped again. Then he reached out, tracing a line by her brow.

‘You are bruised here. Is that my fault?’ He sounded so bruised himself she tried to force herself to smile.

‘No, I think we already established it was all my fault. It doesn’t hurt. At least it didn’t until you touched it.’

His hand dropped into a fist by his side and she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Perhaps if she’d learned that valuable skill long ago she might have...what? Stolen Edge from the woman he loved?

‘I am sorry, Sa—Lady Samantha.’

Lady Samantha. She moved past him.

‘Goodbye, Lord Edward.’

‘Wait.’ He grasped her arm. ‘Please don’t be angry with me.’

‘What does it matter if I am angry? You have been crystal clear as always, Lord Edward. If it makes you feel any better, your arrows have sunk home. They are deep in my posterior.’

His laugh was a little strangled.

‘Blast you, Sam.’

‘That is at least your third curse today in my presence, Lord Edward Edgerton. You should keep your distance from me henceforth, I am clearly a bad influence.’

He grasped her other arm and for a moment they stood there. Inside she could hear Poppy on the pianoforte and her mother singing. Familiar and horrible. Nothing would ever be the same.

‘Yes,’ Edge said at last. ‘Yes, you are. I am leaving for Cairo at dawn tomorrow. I shan’t see you again. I wish you happy, Sam. Will you wish me the same?’

‘Always.’ That was the truth, whatever the pain.

‘God in heaven, how...’ He actively strangled the words, his fingers pressing into the flesh of her upper arms. There was such confusion in his voice she sank her fingers into his immaculate coat, crushing the lapels as if she could knead the very fabric of time and space and force it to her will. She rose on tiptoes and touched her lips to his cheek. He had not shaved and the stubble caught on her lips and this sign of imperfection filled her with such need she gave a little cry, a puff of a wail against his flesh. He turned his head, just catching it briefly with his mouth, his lips covering hers, drawing her breath from her.

His mouth fit perfectly, she thought. Two pieces of a warm, tingling puzzle. It was so right...

And then she was free again.

She forced herself to speak the dreaded words, proper at last. ‘My congratulations on your upcoming nuptials. Godspeed.’

This time he didn’t answer as she left the veranda and made her way back to her room. In the morning he was gone as he had said.

But then Edge had always been a man of his word.

Chapter One

‘No one passes through the Valley of the Moon and emerges unscathed.’

— Lost in the Valley of the Moon, Desert Boy Book Three

Qetara, Egypt—eight years later

Sam stopped at the rim of the Howling Cliffs above Qetara. Below lay the ragged rock-strewn valley and beyond was the gleam of the Nile, a grey-brown ribbon nestled between green swathes of reeds. The sun was hanging low and already tinting the hills beyond the Nile in orange and mauve and touching the white building of Bab el-Nur with pink. She could just make out the edge of the garden where the trees shielded her mother’s grave.

Could it possibly be three years since her mother’s death sent her back to Sinclair Hall in England? The last three months here in Egypt felt more substantial than those three years. More substantial even than the long years that had passed since she married Ricki. As if she’d not truly been awake from the moment she returned to Venice and set out on a quest to mend her tattered heart and pride by finding herself a home.

Not that she knew what a home was. Living on sufferance with her mother’s family in Venice or even as a valued and loved guest at Bab el-Nur with the Carmichaels did not constitute a home. Perhaps those two years in Burford in England when she’d been barely six—she remembered a vague feeling of being safe. Sometimes she wondered if she’d chosen Ricki from all her suitors because she’d discovered his father had a property near Burford, as if that created some magical link between him and her last memories of carefree happiness. They’d both expected the other to be something they weren’t—no wonder they’d both been disappointed.

If only they had been older they might have weathered that disappointment and perhaps even built something on its ashes. And then poor little Maria might still be alive. She would be almost ten years old now had she not drowned. Sam rubbed her face wearily, trying to chase away the dank taste of the canal water. Thoughts of Maria always brought back pain.

She scuffed at the pebbles with the tip of her boot, kicking a few over the ledge and hearing them snap against the stone as they bounced into the valley below.

Egypt wasn’t her home, but she loved it here. Thank goodness Chase and Lucas had all but forced her to return. It had woken her and the thought of slipping back into the half-existence she’d fallen into since her marriage to Ricki was unacceptable. She’d made a terrible mistake marrying him, but she was older and wiser now. Poppy and Janet knew many people in London with ties to Egypt. It was not in the realm of the fantastical that among them she might find someone who would wish to wed her and yet be a good, kind man and father. Someone who would watch the world transform from one magic to another with her. Perhaps even agree to howl with her.

How many times had she and Lucas and Chase and Edge scrambled up these cliffs as children, imitating the night yowling of the jackals? Well, not that Edge howled with them, he had always been too aloof for that, but he’d come none the less. Then they would watch the hills across the Nile turn from ochre to orange to purple and then fade into the indigo of night.

She tilted her head, baring her throat to the rising breeze, and breathed deeply, trying to chase away the murky taste of the canal waters of Venice that always followed thoughts of Ricki.

She chased away all those ghosts, even her own. She was no longer Lady Carruthers. Not even Lady Samantha Sinclair. Only Sam.

I am Sam.

She raised her arms to the world, tipped back her head and told the world that truth at the top of her lungs.

‘I am Sam!’

Edge was viciously thirsty. His heart was beating and his legs burned from the climb, but none of the many physical discomforts concerned him as much at the moment as what he would see when he crested the sandstone cliff.

If he was wrong, if he’d made a single mistake on the crisscrossing camel and goat paths from Zarqa, there would be nothing but more desert—an endless, taunting ochre grin. Even the faint but distinct scent of the Nile could be nothing more than a sarab, a desert illusion like the shimmering trees and water that danced on the horizons until they were sucked under as he approached.

If he was wrong, he might end up like the jackal’s carcass he’d passed hours ago. He should have taken into consideration that eight-year-old memories of terrain were not necessarily reliable. He was older, slower, less alert. But the path had looked so very familiar...

He stumbled a little as he crested the cliff, pebbles skittering under his feet. He stopped, narrowing his burning eyes against the glints that splintered along the broad green scar of the Nile. But it wasn’t the Nile that held his gaze. Or the sprawling city of Qetara on the far side of the bank. It was the green gardens of Bab el-Nur tucked below the cliffs.

Home.

The word shivered in the air like a sarab threatening to disappear. Home. Not any more and not for many years since he’d tried and failed to build his own. They said third time lucky, but he didn’t believe in sayings. Or in anything much any more.

He closed his eyes and heard nothing but air moving up the cliff below him, a distinctive hollow presaging the rise of the afternoon winds. He’d once loved this time of day when the sun finally showed signs of exhaustion from its brutal assault and the desert began changing, all kinds of new forces entering its stark stage. New colours, new animals, new sounds.

It had been so long since he’d just...listened. Absorbed. It had been so long since he’d felt like listening. Since he’d felt anything much at all.

He didn’t know if this was a good sign. He liked not feeling.

At least he’d finally made it. More or less in one piece.

A very tired, aching piece.

Edge glanced up at the keening of a bird swooping in and out of tiny indentations on the cliff face and winced as the glare of the sun made his head pound. He’d finished the last of his water some hours ago, a miscalculation on his part. The hiss of the wind cooled the perspiration on his forehead and nape and he smiled at how good it felt now that he no longer feared for his life. His smile itself felt like a crack in the cliff face, sharp and threatening, but he allowed it to linger.

The sound struck him as harshly as if he had fallen off the cliff and hit the ground.

‘Aimsa!’

It carried out over the valley and for a mad second he was willing to consider he had been wrong about his disbelief in all matters supernatural. But somehow he doubted an ancient Egyptian spirit would be yelling at the tops of its lungs. He hurried as best he could on his stiff legs along the cliff and stopped.

The image was worthy of any of the locals’ tales: carved into a sky ignited into a blaze of orange and mauve by the setting sun was a figure cloaked in a pale billowing gown that snapped and surged under the evening wind as if being pulled towards the lip of the crater by desert furies. Then the figure raised its arms and the wind seemed to carry it upwards, as if preparing to hurl it over the cliff like a leaf.

Edge didn’t stop to think, just vaulted over the boulders and ran towards it, his mind already anticipating the image of this woman casting herself off the cliff.

‘Don’t!’ he called in Arabic. ‘Laa! Tawaqfi!’

The figure whirled, one hand outflung as if to hold him back.

They stood facing each other in mutual shock.

His breathing was harsh from the fear of what he had expected to witness and the need to stop it. But his mind was already rushing ahead with a series of realisations—that the woman who had just keened like a vengeful houri at the top of her lungs into the desert air was neither a local nor a hallucination of his, but something far worse.

Egypt had taught him to always expect the unexpected. Especially when it came to Sam Sinclair.

She was dressed in local dress, and local male dress at that, a cream-coloured gibbeh tied with a red cotton sash around her waist over a simple muslin gown. She was still staring at him, her blue-grey eyes wide and far away, but then the pupils dilated as recognition settled in and with it wariness. For a moment he wondered whether he was mistaken. After all, almost a decade had passed and this was no child. She looked very much like Sam and yet she did not.

Well, she wasn’t Sam any more. She was Lady Carruthers, wasn’t she?

‘I thought you were about to jump,’ he said, his breath still short and her eyes focused even further as she glanced from him to the cliff.

‘Why on earth did you think that?’

‘Perhaps because you were standing on a cliff, screaming?’

‘I did not scream, I howled. These are, after all, the Howling Cliffs. I didn’t expect anyone to be listening. I came here to be private.’

Anger was proving to be a wonderful antidote to fear and shock.

‘I am so dreadfully sorry to have intruded, Lady Carruthers.’

His sarcasm kicked up the corners of her mouth, but they fell almost immediately.

‘And I am sorry I frightened you, Lord Edward. I thought it safe to do so since no one dares come here. These cliffs are haunted, you know.’

‘I do now.’

The smile threatened again, but again failed to materialise. Perhaps this really wasn’t Sam at all. Or perhaps marriage had finally succeeded in taming her where all else failed. If so, it was nothing short of a miracle.

‘Not by madwomen,’ she corrected. ‘But by the protectors of Hatshepsut. Poppy was telling us they think that is probably her temple down there.’

She pointed to the structure at the foot of the cliffs. It and the flanking sphinxes were now completely uncovered as was a broad gravel pathway leading towards a jetty. It looked very small and inconsequential from where they stood, nothing like the sand-covered temple where he’d sat with this woman eight years ago...

A lifetime ago.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. It felt raw and rough with sand.

‘You are staying with Poppy?’

‘Of course. Why else would I be in Qetara?’

Why indeed. His wits had clearly gone begging. Her gaze moved over him again and for the first time he realised how he must look. Filthy, for one. He hadn’t shaved in days, or was it a week now?

‘Where did you come from?’ She looked around, frowning. ‘I would have seen you if you came up from Bab el-Nur.’

‘I haven’t been there yet. I came from Zarqa.’

Her eyes widened, managing to look both surprised and suspicious.

‘You’d best fetch your donkey or camel and come down. It will be dark soon.’

‘I don’t have a mount. I walked.’

Surprise turned to shock and then to outrage. He’d forgotten how expressive her face was.

‘You walked from Zarqa. On foot. On your own.’

‘Yes, on all counts. Is that an offence?’

‘Only against good sense! And what on earth were you doing up here? The desert path leads directly through the valley to the Nile, not to the Howling Cliffs. Were you lost?’

‘I wanted to see the view first.’

Her lips closed firmly on whatever was straining to be said. Then she gave her skirts a slight shake, as if dislodging something distasteful.

‘Well, it’s your hide if you wish to risk it. But I suggest you abandon this romantic conceit and make your way down before dark or you’ll find yourself at the bottom of the cliff more rapidly and painfully than you would like.’

She set off down the path and he followed. The reversal of scolding roles was as peculiar as everything else about his return to Egypt. She was right, though. He’d been tempting the fates walking from Zarqa in the first place and going along the cliff path in his present state was...

Romantic conceit. No one had ever accused him of being romantic. Conceited, yes. Romantic—he’d only been romantic once in his life and that had cost him dearly. He sighed. The path which he’d climbed and descended hundreds of times in his youth felt endless and his legs were a mixture of wool and fire when they finally reached the gate in the high whitewashed walls.

‘It has changed a little since you were here last,’ Sam said as she secured the gate behind them and he forced himself to look up.

She was right. Bab el-Nur used to be a sprawling but modest whitewashed structure surrounded by neat gardens, but Poppy had constructed a second storey and the gardens were a lush jungle of trees and flowering bushes surrounded by high mudbrick walls.

‘Good God, he’s constructed a fortress!’ he exclaimed as the house came fully into view.

She laughed over her shoulder, her face transforming, and for the first time the cool woman from the cliff and the girl in his memory connected.

‘It is even more amazing inside and Janet has made a marvel out of the gardens. I have been sketching...’ She paused and shrugged and it was like watching a flower furl its leaves as night fell, a physical and spiritual diminishment.

They continued through the garden, scents and memories engulfing him. It was already dark and the palm trees were weaving above them in their evening dance. The packed earth of the path gave way to the stone floor of the veranda and suddenly there was a flurry of movement.

‘Good heavens, Sam, who is...?’

Edge looked up and his uncle’s question melted away.

‘Edge. Dear Lord. My boy!’

Poppy wasn’t quite as tall as he, but he was a burly man and his embrace was powerful, his arms catching Edge in a vice, his bushy grey hair surprisingly soft against his cheek. For a moment Edge just stood there in shock. It had been so long since he’d seen this man, though he’d been closer than a father to him. How had he allowed so much time to pass?

‘Edge...’ The one word was a cracked whimper, then he was suddenly thrust away, his shoulders grabbed in Poppy’s considerable paws. ‘What have you done to yourself, boy? You look disgraceful! And why did you not tell me you were in Egypt? Janet! Edge is here!’

The last words were a bellow worthy of a call to prayer from the minarets and their effect was immediate. A plump figure hurtled into the room followed by others and Edge found himself being handed around like a parcel, embraced, scolded, questioned. He tried to keep his feet steady as he greeted everyone, but the room was beginning to move around him and suddenly a pair of blue-grey eyes were in front of him and he felt his hands clasped in a cool, strong grip.

‘When did you last eat, Edge?’

Eat?

‘This morning.’

His answer set off another bustle of activity, but at least it was away from him. Within moments a glass of tea infused with mint was shoved into his hand. It was so sweet it made him wince, but he drank and when they brought him food he ate and when they led him off to be bathed he went meekly.

It was very strange, being home.

‘The poor fellow is still asleep,’ Poppy announced as he entered the breakfast parlour and sat beside Janet.

‘I know,’ Janet said as she handed him a small porcelain cup of bitter coffee. ‘I couldn’t resist and peeked. He looks better now he’s washed and shaved, but he’s too thin, Poppy. You could cut stone with his cheekbones. I’ve told Ayisha to prepare the lamb stew he loved as a boy.’

‘Don’t fuss, Janet. You know he hates it.’

‘I never fuss.’

Sam smiled to herself at how Edge’s appearance had transformed her hosts. She’d forgotten how deeply they loved Edge. Janet was lit from within, her movements sharper but more abstracted, and after his heartbreaking show of love when he’d embraced Edge, Poppy now appeared taller, more resolute.