To Catch a Bride (13 page)

Ayisha shrugged. “Does he? Maybe. I don’t know him.” Her voice sounded bored, uninterested. She hoped Gadi hadn’t noticed the way her pulse had leapt.

“He says your father owes him something.” Gadi watched her face carefully.

Ayisha gave him a look of mild puzzlement. “My father? Maybe. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen my father since I was very small.”

“My uncle says your father was a rich Englishman.”

Ayisha stared at him a moment, then laughed. “An Englishman? Oh yes, behold me, the rich English boy in my rich English clothes.” She walked a few steps with a mocking swagger, then laughed again.

Gadi looked doubtful, but persisted. “You have light skin and strange eyes. You could be English.” Under the guise of checking for national traits, Gadi scrutinized her face for signs of femininity.

Luckily he was one of those quite feminine-looking youths himself, and his beard had not begun to grow.

“Pppht!” Ayisha made a scornful sound. “There are many in Egypt with light skin and eyes these days—Franks, Greeks, Albanians—and look at you—your eyes are almost gold.” Ayisha gestured. “My mother told me my father came from Venice, but she said he was a big liar, too, so maybe he was English. But what does it matter?” She spat in the dirt. “He sailed away from us years ago, and your uncle’s money with him.”

They walked on in silence. Up ahead was the fork in the street where she would turn right to the river and Gadi would turn left to the marketplace. It couldn’t come soon enough for Ayisha.

“I remember the first day I saw you on the streets,” Gadi said. “You just appeared, from nowhere.” Again his gaze dropped searchingly to her chest.

Ayisha snorted. “From Alexandria, you mean. It took me forever to get here. My feet nearly fell off.”

His gaze dropped to her feet. “You walked from Alexandria? All that way?”

“How else? You think my rich English father bought me a camel that I might ride into Cairo like a lord?” She laughed. “I wish I did have a rich English father. Oh, the life I would live . . .”

The turnoff was almost upon them. Gadi made one last try. “Did you hear about the Englishman with the picture?”

“Of course, the whole marketplace is talking.” She decided to take the bull by the horns. “Everyone tells he has a picture that looks a lot like me. In fact Ali says I should dress as a girl and see if I can get money from the Englishman.”

Gadi frowned. “Hey, that was my idea!”

She snorted and said in a sarcastic voice, “Do you think the Englishman would be that stupid? I know I’m small. I might be able to pass for a woman from a distance, but up close? And the girl in the picture is supposed to be English. How am I supposed to speak to this man in English, eh?”

“Oh.” Gadi hadn’t thought of that.

She could almost see him deciding his uncle had made a big mistake: because if the Englishman was looking for her and if she really was a girl, why would she not go to him? The pickings were bound to be good.

Gadi’s uncle hadn’t told him everything, that was clear.

“Well, my uncle still wants to talk to you.”

Ayisha turned toward the river, wondering how Gadi could have missed the pounding of her heart. It was almost deafening.

“Surely,” she said over her shoulder. “But not today, Gadi. I have much work to do.”

To her relief, he let go of her arm and turned away. Ayisha continued to saunter casually on, aware that Gadi turned and watched her with a frown.

She’d convinced him this time, but for how long? Gadi’s uncle would not be so easily fooled. The net was closing in on her. Her options were narrowing, but she could still, perhaps, get something from the Englishman . . .

 

 

 

 

A
short time later Ayisha stood by the gate of the Englishman’s house, dithering. It was not like her, but something about this man undermined her resolve. Part of her kept insisting the only safe thing to do was to stay away. Another part of her said she should make a bid for what she wanted, that fortune favored the bold. Or was it the brave?

Or the brazen? That was the part that Ayisha was doing her best to squash; the part that leapt with excitement the moment he stepped out the front door in those long, close-fitting buff breeches and his glossy high boots.

He saw her straightaway, of course, and that at least gave her a decision, for she would not let him see her run like the coward she suddenly felt like.

Get it over. He could only refuse. Nothing ventured and all that.

“Miss Cleeve, come in out of the heat and let me give you a nice cool drink,” he said, with every evidence of pleasure—only he was secretly crowing with triumph, she could tell. He’d said she’d be back and she was.

She didn’t want to accept, but Egyptian manners demanded she be polite and accept the offer of a drink, at least.

As Higgins set a glass of lemonade before her, she gave Rafe a narrow look. “You said you want to help me. That you don’t like the way I live. And that my grandmother worries about me.”

“Yes,” he said cautiously.

“Then why not help me?”

“How?”

“Give me the money you say my grandmother will give me.”

He raised a dark brow. “How much?”

She named a huge sum, a bold sum. Laila would have a fit at her asking for so much, but why not? She really was the old woman’s granddaughter. It would solve all their problems. She and Laila and Ali could escape Cairo and start a new, good life, free of her past, and best of all, free of Omar.

“And what would you do with this sum?”

“Buy a house in Alexandria,” she said without hesitation.

He steepled his fingers and eyed her over them. “I see. And who would live in this house?” His tone was noticeably cooler.

“Ali and me and Laila,” she told him. His expression made her hesitate, but she should make a push for the money, she decided. It was the least Papa could do for her. “So will you give me the money for that?”

“No.”

She scowled. He hadn’t even bothered to consider it. “Why not?”

“Because Lady Cleeve didn’t ask me to come all this way to set you up in a house with other people. She asked me to find you because she’s damned well fretting herself to flinders worrying about you. She’s an old lady who’s all alone in the world, and her heart’s desire is to bring you home so she can love you and ensure your future.”

Ayisha looked away, trying to hide the way his words made her feel. He painted a very appealing picture, but those kind, warm, loving feelings were for another girl, a dead girl, not Ayisha.

She tried to harden her heart against the unknown old lady. She wouldn’t want to love and care for her son’s by-blow, his illegitimate daughter by a foreign woman. Ayisha would probably be a huge embarrassment for her. The old lady would want her gone. Out of sight.

“But if I had a house in Alexandria—”

“I made a promise,” the Englishman told her. “And I keep my promises.”

“I don’t care, you cannot make a promise for
me
,” she said fiercely. “And you can’t make me go.”

The Englishman tilted his head and gazed at her thoughtfully. It wasn’t a challenging sort of look, she decided, it was as if he’d just noticed a smut on her nose. Which was ridiculous. There was more than a smut. She’d been lavish with the dirt today. Apart from it being her usual disguise, it was a message to him: she was not—and never would be—an English lady.

Still that cool blue regard continued.

“What?” she said defensively. “What is it?”

“I won’t give you money for a house in Alexandria, but I will buy one for Laila and I’ll find a job for Ali, too.”

Relief filled her. “You would—”

“But only if you come with me to England,” he finished.

She fell silent. He’d put her in an impossible position.

Without Ayisha, Laila would never have the courage to escape her brother. Not without help. And Ayisha had to get out of Cairo now that Gadi’s uncle was sniffing around. A house in Alexandria was the solution to all their problems.

This cool, uncaring Englishman could idly offer her their dream on a plate—and all it would cost was her freedom.

He was as bad as Gadi and his uncle. Almost.

Ayisha wished she could just fling his offer back in his even white teeth, but it was too tempting. Far too tempting. And he knew it, the smug swine.

“I will consider it.” She needed time, time to see if she could think her way around this, time to see if she could have what she wanted and still stay free.

“When will you give me your answer?”

She put her nose in the air and responded in his own cool, care-for-nobody manner. “Soon.”

 

 

 

 

B
axter, I need a house in Alexandria,” Rafe said when he was ushered into the cool, dark inner room of Baxter’s establishment. “Do you have connections there?”

“I have connections everywhere. What sort of house?” Baxter was seated cross-legged on a pile of cushions, smoking tobacco from a hookah, the very picture of an Oriental potentate.

“Small, just for two people, and with a yard big enough to build an oven. The woman bakes bread.”

Baxter put the mouthpiece of the hookah aside. “You’ve decided to stay?”

“It’s not for me, but a woman and a boy—Miss Cleeve has been living with them.”

Baxter sat up at that. “You’ve found her then? The Cleeve girl?”

“I have.”

“Where? How?”

“She, er, dropped in on me at her father’s house.” The fewer people who knew Miss Cleeve had been living on the streets of Cairo disguised as a street boy, the better.

“Just like that? From out of nowhere?”

“Mmm. More or less.”

Baxter sat back. “Second cousin to an oyster, as the saying goes. I can arrange a house, five percent commission, and you can take possession by the end of the week.” Baxter scribbled on a piece of paper, rang for a servant, explained in Arabic, and sat back as the man hurried off. He gave a faint grin. “I heard you caught a young street thief. Don’t suppose that was Miss Cleeve?”

“Close,” Rafe said. Baxter was not the sort of man to gossip. “The boy is her young foster brother. He tried to steal the picture, and she came to free him from my clutches.”

“I see . . .” Baxter gave him a hooded glance.

“She was disguised as a boy,” Rafe clarified. “And apparently not in anyone’s evil clutches. This house is for the woman who has taken her in, and the boy, Ali, who she seems to have adopted as well.”

“This house is to be their reward?”

Rafe nodded. “And because Miss Cleeve won’t go with me unless they are well provided for.”

Baxter raised his brows.

“Loyal to the backbone,” Rafe confirmed.

A servant brought coffee and tiny sticky pastries. Rafe took a ginger sip of the coffee. It was as appalling as ever.

“That brings me to the next matter,” Rafe said. “I have a proposition for you. You have a considerable business empire, do you not?”

Baxter gave a noncommittal shrug.

“Would you have a place in Alexandria to train up an intelligent young boy?”

Baxter sipped his coffee thoughtfully, then grimaced. “Burned again. My cook had to return to his village, and ever since . . .” He set down the tiny cup on a brass tray. “A boy, you say? Your little thief? Her foster brother?”

“Yes, he’s a thief, but a damned inept one. Unpracticed is my guess.” He gave Baxter a direct look and said, “I would prefer he gets no further practice. After eight years in the army, I know men and young boys. He’s a promising lad.”

“How old?”

“Ten or thereabouts, I’d guess.”

Baxter gave him a shrewd look. “You want to rid her of her encumbrances and allow her to leave with a clear conscience.”

“Bluntly put, yes. I’ll pay for his education—I presume there is a decent school in Alexandria—if you’ll train him to be part of your business and keep an eye on him.”

Baxter thought for a moment, then leaned forward and held out his hand. “Very well. Bring me this boy and if I like him, I’ll give him a trial.”

 

 

 

 

W
hat am I to do, Laila?” Ayisha paced the tiny yard restlessly. “He has made it impossible for me to refuse.”

Laila swept the cobbles. “There is always a choice,” she said placidly. “A house, a job for Ali—these things do not matter. What matters is you.”

Ayisha stared. “What do you mean, they don’t matter? It’s everything we wanted.”

Laila stopped sweeping for a moment. “This is not about what we wanted. This is about what you will do with your life. Will you take your life in your own hands and try to make something of it, or will you go on hiding from the world as you have since you were a child?”

Ayisha blinked. “But you know why I hide.”

“I know it,” Laila agreed. “And there has been good reason for it, it is true. But you cannot live your whole life like this. It is time to stop, to face what you are, to risk yourself for the possibility of happiness.”

Ayisha frowned. “Are you saying I have been a coward? But I take risks every day.”

Laila patted her cheek. “I know you do, and nobody would call you a coward. But you guard your heart; you are afraid to love.”

“That’s not true. I love you and Ali—”

“I know you do, but you are a woman now, and it is time you let yourself love a man. I know, you want to hide, to pretend you do not care, but this is me, who has known you since you were a child. I do not know this man who stirs your anger and your fear; I do not know if he is a good man or not, if he is the one for you or just a messenger. That is up to you. But you must leave this place, Ayisha, though it grieves my heart to say so. This country is not for you. You cannot be whole here. And you know it in your heart.”