Mr Impossible by Loretta Chase

not only slow their progress but hamper his ability to break
villains’ heads.

    “ The
circumstances are far from propitious,” she went on in the same
high-pitched, pedantic tone. “We hear an unearthly scream. The
guides instantly decamp with the only source of light. This leaves us
to the tender mercies of whoever caused the screaming.”

    Her voice was very
near now. Rupert put out his hand, and it slid over a fabric-covered
curve.

    With a sharp gasp,
she stiffened. Then her cold ringers curled about his and lifted his
hand away.

    “ I cannot see
my hand when I hold it an inch from my face,” she said, “yet
you had no difficulty locating my breast.”

    “ Was that the
part I found?” he said. “What amazing luck.” What
a splendid bosom !

    “ When we get
out of this,” she said, “ if we get out of this, I
shall box your ears.”

    “ We’ll
get out of it,” he said.

    “ My mind
reverts, repeatedly, to the portcullis,” she said. “If
they remove the stones holding it up, we’ll be trapped here.”

    “ That’s
too much work,” he said. “It would be easier to wait in
the dark and stab or shoot us as soon as we come close enough.”

    “ I had not
thought of that,” she said. “I was preoccupied with the
prospect of being buried alive. With you. I could not imagine what we
would find to talk about while we died slowly of starvation and
thirst.”

    ‘ Talk?“
he said. ”Is that what you’d want to do during your last
hours? How curious. Come, take my hand. So far, no one appears to be
hurrying to cut our throats. I think we might risk setting out.“

    “ Where is
your hand?” she said.

    There was some
fumbling, during which he found the other breast, eliciting another
sharp gasp and uncompli-mentary muttering under her breath. But at
last he had her slim hand in his. It fit perfectly. His spirits rose
another few degrees while his heart went faster than before.

    “ Your hand is
warm,” she said accusingly. “Does nothing alarm you?”

    He was starting
toward where he estimated the doorway was. “Not this,” he
said. “I am armed, you know, and it’s simple enough to
find the way out.”

    “ It is simple
enough if you can see where you’re going,” she said.

    Searching with his
free hand, he found the edge of the doorway. “And if you
can’t?” he said.

    “ I can think
of half a dozen different ways we could die,” she said. “With
or without villains’ assistance.”

     

     

    DAPHNE KNEW SHE was
jabbering, but talking helped keep emotion at bay.

    Until this moment,
she’d allowed herself to cherish a small hope that her alarms
about her brother were as silly as the men inCairopainted them to be.
She’d let herself hope, though logic rebelled against it, that
Miles was not in trouble, and Akmed had either lied about or
misunderstood what had happened in Old Cairo.

    The scream and the
guides’ abrupt departure did not strike her as simple
coincidence, and the small, silly hope was breathing its last.

    And so she babbled
facts.

    “ The way we
came is one of two ways into the pyramid,” she said. “Parallel
to and below the passage we first entered is another, which leads to
a descending passage. This meets the upper one at the shaft. The
lower entrance is still blocked, however.”

    “ So there’s
only one way out,” he said.

    “ Yes, but it
is easy to go astray,” she said. “We could end up in the
wrong passageway. The lower passage has a shaft, too, and a side
chamber, if I remember correctly.” She wasn’t sure. The
panic she tried to crush was making a muddle of her mind. She could
not clearly picture Bel-zoni’s diagram.

    She was not about
to let Mr. Carsington know the state she was in, however.

    Coolly she went on,
“I trust yours is an unerring sense of direction?”

    “ Yes,
actually,” he said, the supremely confident male.

    “ I am glad to
hear it,” she said, “because it is all too easy, in
absolute darkness like