You must have learned something from Gareth.
Perhaps if she sent word to her solicitor in London, he could do something in time. But she’d wager her best pearl necklace St. Arles was having her every move watched, including every cable she sent.
“The Turks will think it’s jollier than old Humpty Dumpty.” He snickered. “Don’t try to open it; you won’t have the key, of course.”
“You need an American woman,” she said slowly. Was this clue a glimpse into an oasis or a mirage? “Is this for yourself or the Crown?”
He stilled, like an angry rattler ready to strike.
“A matter of state?”
His hand shot out for her throat. She automatically jerked away, trained by far too much practice, and Sir Graham growled.
St. Arles dropped his hand an inch short of her jugular. He glared at her, the promise of gory death lurking behind his slitted eyes.
Old terror tried to climb back into her veins but she shook it off. She was not his puppet any longer, required to spout the prattle he fed her whenever she walked among other diplomats’ wives.
“Good God, St. Arles, what are you planning to do? Buy conspirators for some harebrained scheme?”
“It’s none of your affair. Simply do as you’re told and there’ll be no trouble from me for your friends.”
What was in that trunk to evoke such a sharp reaction?
“Why me? Surely you could have found somebody else, perhaps paid a man to take it there.” If she understood better, surely she could convince him to change his mind. He usually did, given enough money.
He laughed harshly, the noise as jarring as a crow’s cry heralding death among these scented gardens.
“Not at all, my beloved former wife. You see, this is how you will work off your debt to me.”
“I don’t owe you a penny, St. Arles. You know perfectly well my dowry wiped out your father and brother’s gambling debts on our wedding day. After that, you spent the spare change on cleaning up your home.”
“A million pounds.”
Even her heart stopped beating at the far too familiar sum.
“Yes, I thought you might recognize the amount. Or should I call it five million dollars? You owe me that much for rushing our divorce through.”
“I owe you nothing!” Portia violently swept petals off a planter’s rim.
“Remember the trust from your mother that you inherited on your twenty-fifth birthday? Townsend should have told me about it.”
“What of it? Mother inherited it from her mother and it would pass only to her daughters. Father had nothing to do with it, so of course he didn’t think of it.” Her heart was beating like one of those erratic drums in a bazaar.
Stay calm, Portia. Gareth always remained poised during battle. Oh, dear Lord, if only he could walk by right now…
“If you’d contested the divorce, if it had taken the usual amount of time, we would have been married on the day you came into it—and all of that wealth would be mine. I would have the gold and Amabel’s fertility a few days later, rather than your useless barrenness.”
“You’re…” She wet her lips at the deadly poison in his eyes.
“Angry? Logical? Exactly so, my dear,” he sneered. “Don’t think to tell anyone, even your precious companions here in Cairo. You’re holding a Crown secret once again, as you’ve already surmised. Whitehall deals very harshly with loose lips and the ears they pour foolishness into.”
If she was sixteen again and this was only a prank, Gareth would appear to tell her how to deliver the ugly chest to the Sultan. Instead, he’d walked out and she had to outmaneuver her poisonous rattler of an ex-husband by herself.
She had to agree. It was the only way to play for time.
“Very well.”
Blast the man, he’d undoubtedly have her watched every second from now on. But maybe a carefully phrased cable to Uncle William and Aunt Viola would make it through.
And surely the Constantinople police would not be as ridiculously fearful as St. Arles implied. It was far more likely her fiendish ex-husband simply wanted to make her miserable yet again.
Chapter Fourteen
Saladin’s Citadel, Cairo, two days later
The wind pummeled Gareth the instant he stepped outside the ancient stone fortress. Saladin, the mighty leader who’d thrown back Richard the Lionheart’s armies from Jerusalem’s walls, had first fortified this steep hill. Mamelukes, that legendary warrior caste, had fiercely defended this castle for centuries until the last ones sallied forth from this gate to meet their doom less than seventy years ago. Their corpses paved the