The Truth Behind Their Practical Marriage (Penniless Brides 0f Convenience Book 3)

by Marguerite Kaye

‘I know that.’ He was still laughing. ‘You meant I was so boring there could be nothing to gossip about.’

  ‘I did not mean that either. But truly I cannot see what they could object to.’

  ‘Thank you for that, Sam. But anything outside the ordinary is suspect to a closed group.’

  ‘Do you mean because Poppy and Janet raised you instead of your parents? Why were you sent to live with them, Edge?’ It was the most daring thing she’d ever asked him and she waited for his usual dismissal, but he merely stared at the horizon, his profile sharp against the sky. She knew him almost as well as her brothers, but she was not certain she knew him at all. Perhaps that was why those people were suspicious of him.

  ‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything of those first six years at all. No... I remember snow and grey, that is all. But if it was anything like what I saw these past months then I’m glad I don’t. My parents... I spent time with my mother because of my sister’s debut. My father thankfully does not leave Greybourne because he could make a funeral procession feel like a fête. They are utterly unlike Poppy and Janet. My mother is very cold and condescending and my father is...rigidly pious.’ He glanced at her. ‘Go ahead, say something about the apple not falling far from the tree.’

  There was almost a snarl in his words which also wasn’t like him and she shook her head.

  ‘I shan’t say what I don’t think. I never saw you condescend to anyone, no matter their choice of gods or their place in society. And as for cold...’ She paused as his frown deepened—she could almost feel him haul up the drawbridge and she realised with surprise that her words mattered to him. She’d never thought that before. ‘I think you do your best to build battlements of ice, but they keep melting because you aren’t really cold. Poppy and Janet could never have loved you so deeply if you were.’

  Her words surprised her as much as they appeared to embarrass him. His high cheekbones turned dark beneath his sun-warmed skin and he planted his hands on the stone as if ready to push to his feet. She almost took his hand and asked him to stay, but his embarrassment spread to her and she waited for him to make his excuses and leave.

  He sighed, his hand relaxing a little on the stone.

  ‘If I didn’t know how honest you are, Sam, I’d suspect you of trying to butter me up for some reason or another. Did you happen to topple some precious antiquity while I wasn’t looking by any chance?’

  She smiled in relief.

  ‘The fallen Colossi of Memnon? That was I.’

  He laughed and she relaxed a little further.

  ‘I hope you do come to London soon, Sam. When you do, I shall take you to the Museum. There is a statue there that made me think of you, a bust of a girl staring at the sky like you do when you make believe you haven’t heard your mother when she summons you to supper.’

  She laughed as well, embarrassed but peculiarly flattered to be compared to a statue and that anything made him think of her at all, let alone fondly. It was so very unlike Edge to say anything remotely nice to her. She smoothed her grubby skirts over her thighs, suddenly wishing she wasn’t dressed in this dusty jumble of eastern and western garb.

  ‘What else did you do in London? Aside from being forced into the company of your unworthy parents,’ she prompted, not wanting him to stop talking. He smiled and the strange lightness about him struck her again. He’d changed so much since his last visit to Egypt two years previously. Or she had. Or both of them.

  ‘I had to attend endless balls and assemblies for Anne’s debut. You would have enjoyed watching me squirm.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. Was it terrible?’

  ‘Sometimes. Other times I actually enjoyed myself...’ He brushed some sand from the stone between them, a frown drawing his brows together. ‘It pulls you in, that world. Everything appears so...easy. We barely survived the war and yet they are all so gay, so full of life. It tips the scales back a little; washes away the blood and dirt and pain and you can begin to believe London is the truth, not...everything else. That you are who they see.’ He hesitated, gathering back the sand he’d scattered into a little mound. ‘Everyone calls me Edward or Lord Edward there.’

  ‘Well, those are your names.’

  ‘I know, but... I have been called Edge for years. Ever since a certain annoying six-year-old on her first visit to Qetara decreed I didn’t look like an Edward or Lord Edward Edgerton and rechristened me Edge.’

  Sam flushed again.

  ‘I still don’t think you look like an Edward, and Lord Edward Edgerton sounds like a particularly pompous character from a morality play, but I hardly forced anyone to call you Edge, they did that all on their own.’

  ‘Yes, well, you had a way of dragging people along with you. And I didn’t object. I liked that it was uncommon. Edward is my father’s name.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes. Edward Raphael something something. The two monikers bestowed upon the first two Edgerton males.’

  ‘If you don’t like them calling you Edward, tell them so. I’ve certainly told you often enough not to call me Samantha.’

  He frowned. ‘As you said, that is my name. It is who I am.’

  Sam didn’t understand what he was trying to say, if anything at all—Poppy and Janet and everyone still called him Edge and he had not objected. Absently she traced a little pyramid in the sand he’d gathered between them and he added a crescent of a moon.

  ‘Deep in the desert, by the light of a silver sliver of a moon...’ he intoned and she smiled. One of Edge’s redeeming features was how well he read aloud. There was little entertainment in Qetara and their small group did their best with the material at hand, from cards to charades to books. Since childhood she’d loved the moment someone handed Edge a book to read aloud. It wasn’t merely the depth and timbre of his voice, but how it would shift and change with the tale. She would close her eyes and see every word he spoke, more vivid than a dream. It was the one quality for which she was willing to excuse all his lectures about her lack of decorum and his ability to ignore her absolutely when she annoyed him. Someone with such an ability to bring a tale to life could not be wholly humdrum.

  ‘No,’ she corrected. ‘You are telling a different tale—deep in the heart of London, by the light of a hundred chandeliers, they danced that night away...’

  He brushed the sand away completely and re-clasped his hands around his knees.

  ‘Three chandeliers, but enormous. I think each one held a hundred candles. At least it looked that way. I kept worrying the hot wax would drop on the dance floor and we would skid and waltz into a wall.’

  She laughed, but something in his voice caught her attention.

  ‘We?’

  He turned his head and then she heard it as well.

  ‘Daoud’s horn. Come before the flies win the battle for luncheon.’

  * * *

  ‘I thought climbing that poor ram yesterday was mad enough, Sam. I should have known you would outdo yourself. Couldn’t you at least wait until they cleared the sand off the rest of the temple before you set claim to it?’

  ‘Why do you even bother becoming annoyed with me? You know it makes not one iota of a difference,’ Sam said as she looked down at Edge from her perch on the lintel of the temple.

  ‘Only too well. One day you will fall and crack that thick head of yours.’

  ‘I shall do my best to land on top of you; you are so stuffed with pomp it will be a soft landing.’

  His grin flashed lighter in the shadow.

  ‘How did you get up there?’

  She indicated the enormous twin sphinxes that flanked the sides of the temple. They were still mostly buried in sand, but there was enough accessible to climb from them to the temple roof.

  ‘I climbed that statue’s arse,’ she said and Edge visibly winced.

  ‘Sam!’

 
‘Well, you objected to my saying posterior yesterday.’

  ‘I admit defeat.’

  ‘You keep saying that and yet you persevere. Go away, the sun is sinking and I want to finish this today.’

  He walked away and she felt the silence around her more keenly. Contrarily she wished he had stayed. Then she heard a grunt and the slither of sand and smiled to herself. He sat beside her again and she noticed a small fresh scratch along the edge of this right hand where he braced it on the roof beside her and she resisted the urge to reach out.

  ‘You scratched your hand,’ she said instead and he raised his hand, inspecting it.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So nothing. It was merely an observation. Or an opening so you can berate me for that as well.’

  ‘I can hardly blame you for my clumsiness.’

  ‘It would not be the first time. Remember Saqqara, two years ago?’

  His frown fled before another of his surprising smiles.

  ‘Good Lord, yes. Well, that was your fault. What the deuce did you think you would find clambering over those piles of rubble?’

  ‘I thought I would make a great discovery. I did not expect to fall into a tomb and be attacked by bats.’ She shuddered at the memory.

  ‘Of course not. Why would bats congregate in a dark, dank tomb and, even more surprising, why would they take alarm when someone tumbled into their lair and swamped it with daylight?’

  ‘I did not know there was a shaft entrance hidden under the rubble!’

  ‘Well, if you had not climbed there, you would not have fallen through and dragged me into it as well.’

  ‘I apologised. Several times.’

  ‘So you did. So you should have.’

  ‘You still hardly spoke to me for the rest of your stay.’

  ‘I am certain you regarded that as a reward, not a punishment. And since anything I said might have led to a bout of fisticuffs with your brothers, it is good I held my peace. You were a menace, Sam.’

  ‘Were?’

  ‘You have mellowed with age, apparently. Despite your tendency to climb the antiquities, nothing horrible has happened since my arrival and, with only a couple days remaining before my departure to England, we might yet scrape through without any disasters.’

  He spoke lightly, but there was a peculiar note to his voice and she shivered, as if she was back in that tomb, huddled in a corner while he shielded her from the swooping bats and told her precisely what he thought of her. She’d known he was leaving, but somehow she had managed not to absorb that fact. Now it was unavoidable and so was an equally unwelcome realisation.

  She did not want him to go.

  Somewhere inside her a pit opened wide. Her cheeks tingled with heat and she closed her sketchbook carefully. She felt she was dangling over a ledge, a little dizzy, a little queasy. What was wrong with her?

  She stared at the line of the hill, the sweep and dip and then the ragged collapse into the valley. Though the colours were monotone once the sun rose fully, trapped in shades of pale brown and yellow against a stark blue sky, it was a landscape of contrasts and surprises. Not all of them pleasant.

  ‘But you were in England only a couple of months ago.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘But... I thought you would be joining your uncle on the expedition to Abu Simbel next week.’

  ‘Not this year. Next year I will likely return with Dora.’

  ‘Dora?’ The pit yawned wider.

  ‘Miss Theodora Wadham. I met her in London and we are to be married in June. I’ve asked Poppy and Janet not to discuss it because she is still in mourning over her father’s death, but I’m surprised your eavesdropping abilities haven’t ferreted out the information yet. It hardly matters now since we will announce our betrothal as soon as I return to London. She is looking forward to seeing Egypt. I have told her all about it and she finds it fascinating.’

  Dora.

  June.

  Married.

  Edge?

  The dizziness was clearing, revealing sharp, distinct quills of anger and pain. She had not even realised she liked Edge. He was annoying and opinionated and always so right one simply itched to kick him. Certainly it made no sense for her whole body to ache like this because he was to be married. No sense at all.

  As the silence stretched he took her sketchpad, leafing through it again.

  ‘You really are very good. I like the way you capture the heat over the valley here. I don’t know how it shows that, but it does. This one I like in particular. That is a strange angle... Don’t tell me you climbed the statue of Horus to sketch that?’ He laughed again. ‘You are bound to break your head; do you know that? This is what comes of growing up tagging around your brothers. I told them you would get into trouble one day.’

  ‘And what did they tell you?’ she asked dully.

  ‘To mind my own business.’ He smiled and the pit became a great big chasm with a swamp at the bottom, sludgy and sucking.

  ‘So why don’t you?’

  ‘Did I upset you, Sam? I didn’t mean to. Is it because I spoke to your brothers? You needn’t worry, they are loyal to you before anything. Sometimes I think your brothers minded you more than they ever did their commanders during the war. But you really must grow up at some point, you know. You can’t wander around for ever in local robes with your hair down your back. I never understood... I mean, your mother is always so smartly dressed and—’ He broke off at her glare. ‘Anyway. It is no concern of mine, but...perhaps when Dora comes here, if you are here with your uncle next year, she can go with you to Cairo. She has impeccable taste and would probably be glad of a friend here. You will like her; she is very dashing.’

  I shall hate her. She had best not climb any statues with me because I shall be tempted to push her off. I hate you.

  She stood, shaking out her cotton skirts, suddenly all too aware of her dusty, crumpled state, the hair clinging to her sweaty cheeks and forehead, the scuffs on her hands and the ink stains on her fingers.

  Idiot. She hadn’t known she liked Edge this morning and she was damned if she would like him by evening. She would climb the Howling Cliffs and rid herself of this stupid, pointless liking for this stupid, tedious boy. He might think he was a man, but he was only a boy and Dashing Dora was more than welcome to him. She would find someone dashing of her own to like. She would go to Venice and find the handsomest and most charming man of them all and fall desperately in love with him and he would give her a home and a family and they would live happily ever after and...

  ‘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 tha
t 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.