Free Mr Impossible by Loretta Chase

it as
it is, immense and impressive.” He turned to her. “Unless
you think we might find a clue at the top?”

    She shook her head.
“Miles said he wanted to study the interior. He seemed to think
it held clues that would help us find other tombs.”

    The guides hadn’t
any useful information about Miles. Yes, they remembered the
Englishman with the “white” hair. He had come a few days
ago. No one recalled anything unusual about the visit.

    Mr. Carsington
climbed down from the stones and joined her. He’d unfastened
the button at the neck of his shirt, which allowed the garment to
hang open in a large V. She directed her gaze away from the expanse
of bronzed chest and toward the pyramid.

    “ Why did Lord
Noxious find your brother’s reason for coming here so odd?”

    “ Lord what?”

    “ You heard
me,” he said. “I wondered how that insufferable bore
could be your brother’s—or anyone’s—boon
companion. But English-speaking fellows are thin on the ground, I
notice. Noxious must have won the position by default.”

    “ You didn’t
like him,” she said. Which was about as astute an observation
as Mr. Carsington’s remarking that the pyramid was big.

    There was too much
male in view—too much insufficiently clothed male. It was
shocking, really. Small wonder she couldn’t think. She ought to
tell him to put his clothes back on.

    “ It wasn’t my liking he was after,” he said.

    Her gaze shot back
to him. The black eves glinted.

    “ How
concerned he was for you,” he said. “So understanding of
your predicament. He didn’t assume your brother was lolling
about in a whorehouse, visiting theGardenofAllahby means of a hashish
pipe. No, indeed. His lordship was properly sympathetic and
desperately eager to do your bidding.”

    “ I should
like to know how this makes him noxious,” she said.

    “ He was so
quick to imagine the worst,” Mr. Carsington said. “Most
men would say, ‘There, there now, I’m sure it’s
nothing to fret about. There’ll be a simple explanation—a
message gone astray or some such.’ Instead, he made a great
to-do about it, shoveling on veiled and unveiled suggestions to make
you more anxious, rather than less.”

    “ I detest
‘there, there now,’” she said. “It is
patronizing. And I vastly dislike being made to feel like a child who
is imagining things. That is how Mr. Salt behaved toward me. It is
exceedingly provoking.”

    “ Maybe the
consul general likes the way your eyes flash when you’re
provoked,” said Mr. Carsington. “And the way the pink
comes into your cheek, right here.” With his forefinger, he
drew a line along his cheekbone.

    He stood well away
from her, yet she felt the touch, as though his long finger grazed
her skin instead of his.

    She felt the heat
climb there, and knew the pink he described must be deepening. She
ought to blush—with shame for being so susceptible. “You
have a knack for straying from the subject,” she said. “You
asked what was odd about my brother’s reasons for coming here.”

    “ Yes. Why
shouldn’t your brother find clues here? Why couldn’t the
mystery tomb be here, in fact? They’ve still another
pyramid to penetrate.” He nodded toward the third, unopened
pyramid of Mycerinus. “And haven’t they uncovered a great
lot of mummies somewhere hereabouts?”

    Her gaze went to
the third pyramid, then shot back to meet his, as innocent as a
little boy’s. She was not a little girl and was not taken in.
“You know all about this place,” she said. “You
were playing with us, asking those absurd questions about where and
whatGizawas.”

    He only smiled and
looked away from her toward the group of guides. “I don’t
feel like a long climb in the blazing sun today,” he said. “But
I’m perishing to have a look inside. I should like to see for
myself what’s so odd about the idea.”

    “ Mr.
Carsington,” she said. She wanted an explanation.

    But he’d
already caught