Night Train to Memphis - Elizabeth Peters [135]
‘Would you?’
‘I told you not to ask silly questions. Say it again.’
‘I love you.’
‘That’s what I thought you said.’ He lifted himself on his elbows, freeing my hands. I wrapped them around the back of his head and drew his face down to mine.
I was a trifle distracted, however, not only by the unnatural heat of his skin but by a far-off sound. Turning my head I murmured, ‘We’d better stop this.’
‘Discretion would seem to suggest a more responsible course of action.’ Instead of moving, he kissed the corner of my mouth. ‘I couldn’t tell you the truth. I couldn’t even let you begin to wonder. They had me so boxed in – ’
‘I know. Feisal told me.’
‘I must have missed that part. I hope he portrayed me in a favourable light?’
‘You came out looking like Sir Galahad and me like something that had crawled out from under a . . . Oh, God. John – ’
‘Sorry. Did I hurt you?’
‘Yes. Do it again. No! No, don’t, we’ve got to – ’
‘I did hurt you – that night, after you danced with Feisal. While you were laughing and giving him languishing glances, she was leaning against my shoulder, watching you, and smiling, and saying things under her breath . . . Schmidt turned up in the nick of time. I couldn’t have kept my hands off her much longer. And then when I saw you – you’d been so cool and indifferent, I thought you didn’t care, and . . . But that doesn’t excuse what I did. Can you – ’
‘John,’ I said desperately, ‘isn’t that a dog I hear?’
‘Probably. There are dozens of them around and they howl at . . . Oh.’ He lifted his head and listened. ‘You mean a dog, as opposed to dogs in general. Damned if I don’t think you’re right. That puts a different complexion on things. We might elude human searchers but man’s best friend is another matter. I’m beginning to detest the bloody creatures. First that diabolical hound of yours – ’
‘Get up this minute!’
The lights were closer now. Three separate beams – flashlights, I thought. Not the police, then. They’d have more effective equipment, and they’d be making a lot more noise.
‘How could they know we’d end up here?’ I demanded.
‘Good question.’ John got to his feet. Another outburst of canine commentary floated across the desert, and John echoed it with an outburst of profanity. ‘My brain seems to have crashed. We’d better get into hiding. It may not be necessary, but – ’
My brain wasn’t working any better than his. It had gone back to basics, driven by the same primitive instincts that move all hunted creatures. ‘Right. Hide. Where?’
‘I know a place. I hoped we wouldn’t have to resort to it since I know how you feel about – ’
‘Oh, no. Not a tomb. I can’t, John, I really can’t.’
‘Not a tomb. We couldn’t get into them anyhow; they’ve all got locked gates. Come on.’
The surface under our feet cracked and crunched with every step. The shadows through which we moved weren’t dark enough; the rocks between us and the plain weren’t thick enough or hard enough. If John hadn’t kept shoving at me, I might have sat down on the ground and waited in fatalistic acceptance like some poor cornered rabbit. In a way it was worse for me than it would have been for the rabbit. I knew exactly what would happen if we were caught I had seen what Mary could do when she was just amusing herself. She’d be really annoyed by now.
The face of the cliff was weathered and uneven; I saw a dozen crevices big enough to offer concealment, but every time I headed mindlessly towards one, John pulled me on. I could have handled a nice shallow crevice, no problem. I had a feeling he had something less comfortable in mind. He seemed to know where he was going. How? The question, like a lot of others, ran through my head and out the other side, without hanging around long enough to inspire an answer.
After passing around a low ridge he headed for one of the openings in the cliff. The moon was down but those impossibly bright stars cast enough light for me to see how dark the opening was. Really dark. Very, very