Mr Impossible by Loretta Chase Read Free Book Online Page A

in
some ways. And he had a romantic streak.

    Her romantic streak
had shriveled and died years ago. Her marriage had mummified it.

    “ No educated
person could believe that Vanni Anaz or anyone else knew exactly what
was written on that papyrus,” she said. “No one—I
repeat— no one can read hieroglyphic writing. But the
papyrus did contain symbols associated with royalty. Naturally Miles
planned to look for those symbols inThebes. A number of tombs have
been discovered there. More will certainly be discovered. Whether any
remain filled with treasure is impossible to know.”

    “ Someone
believes it,” Mr. Garsington said. “Someone went to a
deal of trouble to steal that papyrus.”

    “ But what
good will it do them?” she said impatiently. “They can’t
read it .”

    “ My eldest
brother Benedict takes an interest in criminal proceedings,”
Mr. Carsington said. “He says the average felon is a person of
low cunning, not high intelligence.”

    At that moment the
absurd idea she’d kept pushing away stomped to the forefront of
her brain.

    Miles kidnapped.
Papyrus stolen.

    “ They believe
Miles can read it,” she said. “Good grief. They must be
completely illiterate—or desperately gullible—or—”

    “ French,”
said Mr. Carsington.

    “ French?”
she said. She gazed at him in plain incomprehension.

    “ I hope
they’re French,” he said. “My brother Alistair was
atWaterloo.”

    “ Killed?”
she said.

    “ No, though
they did their best.” He clenched his hands. “He’ll
be lame for the rest of his life. I’ve been waiting for a
chance to repay the favor.”

     

     

    NOT VERY FAR away,
in another corner ofCairo, an elegant middle-aged man stood by one of
the windows overlooking his house’s courtyard. He did not gaze
out of the latticed window but down, reverently, at the object in his
hands.

    Jean-Claude Duval
had come toEgyptwith Napoleon’s army in 1798. Along with the
soldiers had come another army—of scientists, scholars, and
artists. These were the people responsible for the
monumental Description
de VEgypte . To Monsieur Duval, this army of savants was proof of French
superiority: unlike the barbaric British, his

    countrymen sought
intellectual enlightenment as well as military conquest.

    He had been
inEgyptwhen his compatriots found the Rosetta Stone and, being
intellectually superior, instantly understood its value. He was here
in 1801 when the English defeated the French atAlexandriaand took the
stone away, claiming it was “honorably acquired by fortune of
war.”

    He was still here,
and he still hated the English for a long list of reasons—including,
most recently, their employing the infuriatingly lucky Giovanni
Belzoni—but their “stealing” the Rosetta Stone
constituted Reasons Number One through Five.

    Duval had spent
twenty years working to even the score.

    However, though he
had sent toFrancea great number of fine Egyptian artifacts, he had
found nothing approaching the Rosetta Stone’s significance.

    Until now.

    Very cautiously he
unrolled the papyrus. Not all the way. Only enough to reassure
himself that this was the one. His men had blundered enough already.
But it was the one—his chief agent Faruq was no fool—and
M. Duval closed the document up again, with the same gentleness, and
no small degree of frustration.

    The first time he’d
seen it, he’d understood it was above the common run of papyri.
Even so, he had not believed the story the merchant Vanni Anaz told
to justify the insane price he asked. Only the most ignorant persons
would believe it. Everyone else knew that no one could read
hieroglyphs or any other form of ancient Egyptian writing; therefore
no one could tell what this papyrus said.

    Still, it was a
rare specimen, and Duval had determined to get it.

    But before he could
arrange to have it stolen, Miles Archdale, one of the world’s
foremost language scholars, had gone to Anaz’s shop, listened
soberly to