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If only he could shake the irritating but persistent tug of obligation.
He stopped to admire a basalt carving of a First Dynasty official, briefly dismissing his family from his mind. His thoughts returned immediately to Diana and how to locate her. He tried to focus on the fine sculpture, noting the monumentality and the way the artist conveyed character. As with everything since Diana had left—since he’d met her in fact—he couldn’t concentrate. Her face intruded between him and all else.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed two modishly dressed women wander into the room. He hardly paid them any attention. Only one woman interested him.
He paused.
Something indefinable sizzled in the air.
He raised his head from his contemplation of the statu
e and looked more closely at the women. His skin tightened, and his pulses started to race.
He was going mad. He saw Diana everywhere.
Their backs to him, the women stopped beside the mummy. Both wore bonnets that concealed their hair. Their quiet murmur was a low, melodious hum in his ears.
Nothing distinguished these women from a thousand others. He swiftly dismissed the one on the right as a stranger. The one on the left, taller, bending over the glass case, she, she seemed familiar.
Could it be?
His heart set up a frenetic pounding. His hands clenched at his sides.
Hell, he wasn’t even sure it was Diana.
Except he knew to his bones it was.
Turn to me.
As if he’d said the words aloud, the woman stiffened and straightened, although her attention remained fixed on the mummy.
Turn to me.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, but inevitably, as if drawn by forces stronger than herself, she turned.
Diana…
He watched gray eyes widen and darken to the color of a stormy sky. He watched the pink seep from her cheeks. He watched her lips part as they did when she waited in breathless suspense for his kiss.
His chest constricted. He’d taken a pace toward her before he realized this was neither time nor place to seize her.
“Tarquin, what is keeping you?”
His aunt’s braying voice harked from a different world. As if waking from a dream, he ripped his gaze from Diana and focused on the countess’s stout figure in the doorway.
“Tarquin!” she barked impatiently. “Charlotte wishes to go to Gunter’s for ices. There’s nothing here of interest.”
He caught the fleeting amusement that replaced the dazed shock in Diana’s face and found himself smiling back at her. How like Mary Goudge to dismiss the treasures of thousands of years as completely below her notice.
His brain clicked into working order. He struggled to convince himself that his breathless wonder when he saw Diana was perfectly natural. Although his heightened awareness of colors and light and textures indicated the world had miraculously transformed in the last few seconds.
He’d found her.
With an aplomb beyond him seconds ago, he strolled up to the woman who had troubled his every moment since she’d disappeared. He swept off his hat and bowed.
“I’ll introduce you to my aunt,” he said under his breath.
At her side, her companion, for whom he’d hardly spared a glance, gasped with shock and drew away. His concentration remained fixed on the tall woman in the striking dark blue ensemble.
