Must Have Been The Moonlight Read Free Page B

intact.
    Tugging the blanket closer, she watched him move around the camp. Moonlight spread silvery ripples over the sand. “What do you intend to do with us?”
    “Return you to your brother,” he said without looking at her. He’d knelt and was pouring himself coffee.
    “Christopher? You know where he is?”
    The firelight caught in his eyes when he raised his gaze. She’d noticed that he seemed to have a perpetual glint of amusement when he looked at her, as if he knew the source of her discomfiture. As if he were used to the way women acted around him. “If you’d ridden south instead of north, you might have hit his camp.” He looked at her from over the top of his cup. “Are you the one who shot that man out there?”
    Without moving nearer to him, she felt her hands clasp the edges of the blanket. “I am an excellent shot. Much to my family’s chagrin, I used to attend the country fairs back home.” She hesitated as she felt her chest tighten. “Did you bury him?” Her gaze dropped to the spade.
    “No one will accuse you of murder,” he said softly, as if reading her mind. “I buried him because I don’t want his trail leading back to us.”
    Brianna wasn’t naive. She didn’t dare trust him, and find herself sold to some slaver somewhere, or dead. She’d not come this far to throw herself on the mercy of any dangerous-looking stranger with smoked crystal for eyes and a demeanor that compared to his lethal knife. How did she even know that he wasn’t the second man who’d been following them?
    “Are you really English?”
    “Born and bred.” The succinct clip in his tone bore a faint hint of irony. “And here I am in the Sahara talking to a fellow countryman. Who would have thought?”
    “Where did you attend school?”
    Behind her, Alex made a noise, as something she was dreaming clearly became a nightmare. He sipped his coffee and looked at her consideringly, before tossing the remains of his cup into the sand and standing. “How long has she been like this?” he asked, reaching behind him for the skin that contained the camel’s milk.
    “She needs food.”
    Brianna also suspected that Lady Alexandra might be pregnant.
    Alex was sitting up when the man ducked into the tent, fear evident in her sleepy gaze, until she saw Brianna. Alex looked at the man as he knelt, and she spoke to him in Arabic, to which he responded in kind, his deep voice strangely mesmerizing. She had a wound on her arm, and he checked the makeshift bandage, helping her to sit straight so he could give her the milk.
    “The milk should help you, my lady.”
    Brushing the long end of the tagilmust off his cheek, Lady Alex looked up into the Bedouin’s face. “Major Fallon?”
    Brianna’s gaze shot to the man’s profile. He didn’t seem surprised that Lady Alex would know him. “It’s unfortunate that we could not have met under better circumstances, my lady.”
    A shadow seemed to cross Alex’s face as the memory of the last few days ripped away the gauzy peace that had momentarily enveloped her. Dropping her gaze to her blood-splattered clothing, she wiped her hands over her torn blouse. Brianna, too, felt the terrible sense of desperation drive like a sword thrust into her lungs.
    “I don’t think that I’ll ever close my eyes again and not remember,” Alex whispered, raising her gaze to the major’s face. “Are you as dangerous as they say?”
    Major Fallon tipped her face into the light to look at the bruise. “I should be asking you that question, my lady.”
    Brianna could hear the seriousness in his voice, yet, there seemed to be a hint of deviltry in his words. “I think it is I who will have a headache to remember this meeting.”
    Wiping the strands of damp hair from her eyes, Brianna let her gaze stray to his unshaven profile as they continued to speak.
    She’d heard his name mentioned more than once since her arrival in Egypt. Though she’d never actually met the British officer whom the