The Book of the Seven Delights (10 page)

"You act like you've never ridden a horse before."

"I have so." She bobbed as she tried to make her legs support her weight.

"When?" he said. "In the park on Sunday?" He apparently took her silence as confirmation. "Just how did you think you were going to get around in Morocco? Hansom cabs? Gondolas, maybe? Or didn't it occur to plan for a little thing like transportation?"

"I planned. I knew I had to hire horses or camels." She wobbled over to one of the palm trees and braced against it, trying not to show how miserable she was. "I'm just not accustomed to riding bareheaded in scorching sun for hours at a time. Any more than I'm accustomed to having soldiers break down my door in the dead of night, threaten me with guns, and ransack my belongings."

"Welcome to Morocco," he said dryly, maneuvering the horse into the shade and tying him up. Then he sank onto a hummock of dried grass with a weary sound and closed his eyes. When he opened them again they wandered her direction and lingered.

"What are you doing here, Boston? What did you really sail thousands of miles and brave seasickness, thieves, and Legionnaires to find?"

She braced with her chin raised, knowing how it would sound to him.

"Books."

He assessed the defiance in her eyes and the determination in her jaw.

"Books." He sat forward and put his elbows on his knees. "You leave London, where there are bookstalls on every other street, and come to Marrakech, where they've never even heard of moveable type, to search for
books
!"

"I explained it to the monsieur," she said irritably.

"Well, apparently I missed that part of the conversation."

"I'm looking for very
old
books… in the form of scrolls… parchments or papyri… things like the ancient Egyptians wrote on."

"Egyptians? A little off in your calculations, aren't you? Egypt is about a thousand miles—"

"
East
. Yes. Monsieur LaCroix was kind enough to point that out as well. And I'll tell you precisely what I told him: I have convincing evidence that a cache of ancient manuscripts and scrolls is to be found"—she halted just short of full disclosure—"south of Marrakech."

As he considered that claim, a memory apparently shot to the surface. "Those books and papers—that map—you're headed to Timbuktu?"

It was no good denying it; he'd seen the map in her cabin aboard the
Star
.

"Near there," she admitted, dreading his reaction.

"There's nothing
near
Timbuktu but desert." He watched her gaze evade his. "What's so special about these scrolls that you'd travel thousands of miles and endure weeks of desert travel—"

"Weeks?" Her eyes widened.

Apollo groaned. "Yes,
weeks
. What's in these scrolls that's so important that you'd risk your neck for them?"

"I… don't know."

He ran a hand back through his hair, holding some of it for a minute as if it contained the wits he was suddenly at the end of.

"
Guess
, dammit!"

"It could be anything. Religious writings… history… natural philosophy… treatises on governance or agriculture… epic poetry or plays…"

"You've come all this way to search for writings you know nothing about?" He studied her with deepening alarm. "You're certifiable."

He got to his feet and headed for the horse, determined to mount up and put as much distance between them as a single continent would allow. But just as he lifted his foot into the stirrup, she grabbed his arm.

"I'm looking for a library." When he turned, she looked as if she'd just been trampled by the wild horses dragging it out of her. "A lost library."

Apollo lowered his foot to the ground and trained an expectant look on her sunburned face.

"A great library from ancient times," she continued. "From Egypt," he clarified, and she nodded. Then it struck him. "Good God." The blank on his face was a placeholder… until either the disbelief or the horror in him won out. "The Great Library of Alexandria? You're looking for that? Here? In Morocco?"

"You've heard of it?"

"Who hasn't?" Then he stepped back, scowling, realizing why she was so surprised. "Oh, I see…

common cannon fodder like me isn't supposed to know about the glories of the great classical civilizations. We're just supposed to keep to our place and content ourselves with cheap liquor and spilling our blood every time our betters get an empire-expanding fart crosswise."

Five years' worth of resentment rushed up out of his depths.

"Well, hang on to your knickers, Boston." He jacked his shoulders forward, sending her lurching back.

"Some of us grunts and gilhooleys have had enough education to spend our time between bloodlettings trying to maintain what little humanity is left to us. We aren't all dumb brutes and criminals."

He advanced again, taking satisfaction in the way she retreated from him. Suddenly he wanted to see them all retreat—all of the comfortable citizens of the world who sat on their fat bottoms by their smug little firesides while the poor, the uneducated, and the just plain unlucky did their bleeding and dying for them.

"And
some
of us have studied enough to know a cock-and-bull story when we hear it. The Great Library was destroyed in two stages; part of it burned in the great fire that swept the harbor and docks of Alexandria and the remainder was destroyed after the Arab conquest. All that remains of it is the legend of what was lost."

It didn't take her long to recover.

"Until now." She took the offensive with a step that brought her nose to nose with him. "Professor T.

Thaddeus Chilton spent a lifetime searching for a remnant he believed had been carried away by devotees of the library's mission to preserve knowledge. He tracked it through literary references, hieroglyphic evidence, and field work. He came to Morocco himself and was on the verge of finding it when he became ill and returned home, where he died."

"And where he took you into his confidence as he lay on his deathbed."

"No. I never met him. His books and writings and papers were donated to the British Museum, where they came into my hands."

"What were you doing at the British Museum?"

"I work there."

"As what?" His gaze drifted purposefully down her, and then back up.

"I am a librarian."

"A librarian." It took a moment to register. Then it made entirely too much sense—her unworldly air, her inexperience, her obsession with her books and papers—and yet it made no sense at all. He gave a derisive laugh. "Try again, sweetheart. There's no such thing as a female librarian."

Her face reddened and puffed like a pomegranate.

"In Britain, perhaps—where ignorance, stubbornness, and blind adherence to tradition seem to be perennially in vogue. But in
America
, women are leading the way in developing libraries and in training professional, college-educated librarians. I, myself, graduated from the New York State University School of Library Science after graduating from Wellesley College."

He stood for a moment feeling like the finger she was jabbing into him was beginning to penetrate his chest wall.

"You attended university?" he said, recognizing the telltale signs even as he spoke: precision of speech, erudition, stubborn confidence in her own course, and a startling lack of both feminine artifice and deference to the judgment of men. She had bluestocking written all over her!

"College," she informed him. "A fine
women's
college."

"And they hired you at the British Museum?"

"They most certainly did," she snapped back.

For a moment he was speechless. Anger and frustration he couldn't quite explain boiled up in him.

Suddenly, all he knew was that he had to move… had to put some distance between himself and the reminder she had just planted of the way his home had changed… was still changing… beyond his recognition. He backed a giant step, then another, then wheeled and headed for his horse.

"There goes the bloody empire."

"One horse, two arses. We ride by Legion rules," Smith declared, after several minutes of stomping back and forth, arguing with himself, and pulling a hat out of his saddlebag. "Mounted companies are supplied with only one mule for every two men. Legionnaires alternate walking and riding on a 'march.'"

He turned to Abigail. "I'll give you first choice."

She was so furious that she struck off on foot, leaving him to mount up and ride along behind her.

Behind her was a bad place to be, he thought, watching the exaggerated sway of her hips as she lengthened her stride to cope with the rocky surface. She was wearing a starchy white blouse, a neatly fitted split skirt, and well-made riding boots. And that damned cincher. He'd felt it beneath her blouse as she lay across his lap. He took a steadying breath and told himself to ignore her damned undergarments.

And the way her auburn hair shone in the sun. And the way his body came to attention whenever she turned his way.

The woman had a way of finding every sensitive nerve in his body and every sore subject on his mind. If some diabolical fate had handcrafted a female just to torment him, the result would most certainly have been Abigail Merchant. Educated, opinionated, respectable, headstrong, and too caught up in her high-minded pursuits to recognize, much less respond to the lust she inspired.

Worse still, he was starting to feel like a first-class heel for dragging her into his problems. When he saw LaCroix send his men off to recover her bags and watched them come back with only two out of the three, he had known what was happening. He headed for LaCroix's office and found the Frenchman's men with the third bag, starting to pick the lock. Knowing full well they would recognize him and report his presence to LaCroix, he still charged in and stopped them before they got it open.

Sooner or later the Frenchman would have learned he was alive and back in Morocco, he told himself.

And he had to get that bag away from LaCroix's thugs; Abigail Merchant wasn't the only one who had valuables in it.

He emerged from such thoughts to find himself staring fixedly at her hair. She had pinned it up earlier, but in the mad scramble out of Casablanca some of it had come loose and was bobbing with each step she took. It was soft, he knew. Silky. Red-gold lights spun through it. Probably still held some faint scent of soap. He could almost feel it sliding through his—

Oh, no. Not that. No damned way.

Abigail's eyes were narrowed to aching slits and her head felt like her brain was beginning to sizzle when something plopped down over her head and blocked out the punishing solar rays that caused it. She looked up to find an oversized wide-brimmed hat providing much-needed relief.
His
hat. Innate good manners and a sense that it might be a peacemaking gesture of sorts forced a response from her.

"Thank you."

He, apparently, felt no such compulsion where manners were concerned. There was no answering

"You're welcome" or "Think nothing of it."

Her anger cooled to mere annoyance as she concentrated on walking… an effort which surprised her with its necessity. The weedy, reddish ground was littered with sharp rocks perfect for turning ankles and lacerating shoe leather.

She was in Morocco and headed for Marrakech… so far, so good. But she was also afoot in a difficult country with a wanted man being pursued by a small army… not so good. She glanced over her shoulder at the horse and the man on it. He was arrogant and annoying and probably even more dangerous than he looked. But right now she didn't have an alternative to traveling with him; she had to get to Marrakech in order to begin her search.

"So, do you know where we're headed?" She finally broke the silence, thinking that she would trade her virtue for a cool drink of water just then.

Dehydration Madness… Tropical Medicine… the 610's. '

He surveyed the countryside and pointed toward a spot in the distance where the mountains on the left and the plains on the right seemed to meet.

"We have to avoid the main road. A day's ride straight south is a small village. There will be food and water and perhaps another horse."

"A day's
ridel
How long will it take
walking
? I'm dying of thirst."

He reached behind him and then held out a military style canteen to her. She looked up briefly as she accepted it. When she turned away, the image of him, Sahara-hot and Barbary-fierce, was burned into her mind.

"Do you know this country well?" she said, taking a long second drink before replacing the stopper and handing it back to him.

"You could spend a lifetime in Morocco and still not know the place."

"How long have you been in Morocco?"

"You should know. I arrived on the same ship you did."

"But you were here before, in the French Foreign Legion. For how long?"

"A full enlistment. Five bloody long years."

"If you served a full enlistment, why do they call you a deserter?"

"Someone must have decided that I hadn't quite finished putting in time." He looked around before letting his gaze return to her. "For every day you spend in a guardhouse cell, they tack two onto your obligation."

"And I take it, you spent a good bit of time in a military jail."

"My share."

"For what?"

"Drinking and fighting, striking an NCO, striking an officer. The usual."

"That's usual?"

"For a Legionnaire."

"That's… depraved."

He sobered.

"No. Feeding men so poorly that they get sores on their bodies and paying them so badly they have to sell their clothes to get a drink of whiskey—
that's
depraved. Forcing underfed men to 'march or die'

thirty miles a day under a boiling Sahara sun… that's
depraved
. Drinking when liquor's available and battling bare-knuckled for some respect from your comrades… that's just surviving as best you can."

She was silent for a moment, studying his defense of his fellow soldiers.

"They said you fled during battle, deserted comrades under fire."