Page 127 of Tomb of the Sun King

“I know,” Neil blurted back abjectly. “I was an utter…” His brain skidded to a halt as the full implication of Constance’s words cut through the fog of his shock.

I had been considering it…

Constance released the ties of her corset with a neat tug. She popped the clasps at the front of the lacy garment and tossed it down beside her wrung-out gown.

A strangled sound emerged from the back of Neil’s throat.

“Just take off your trousers already,” Constance snapped. “Or don’t, and freeze. It hardly makes any difference to me.”

She plopped down onto the ground in her chemise and drawers, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring out into the night.

Neil was starting to shiver. The Egyptian night was reasonably warm, but the water had been fairly bracing, and standing in a stone box while wearing soaked clothes was bound to leave one feeling a chill.

It’s fine,he told himself numbly as he struggled free of his clinging waistcoat, mortification burning through him.It isn’t like it means anything,he thought as he tugged his shirt over his head, the fabric sticking against his arms.

They were in desperate circumstances, and it was only Constance, he reminded himself as he squirmed free of his undershirt. He’d known her since she was in pinafores. It wasn’t as though… She was practically his…

I had been considering it…

His hands froze on the buttons of his trousers as the room started to spin.

“I can’t,” he blurted out, his face hot as a frying pan. “I’m sorry.”

“Suit yourself,” Constance retorted without looking at him.

Neil slumped down against the wall and let the exhaustion and humiliation wash over him.

“Who do you think they were?” Constance asked.

Neil opened his eyes to see her looking at a pair of statues carved into the wall near the tomb’s entrance. They were deeply weathered, the soft sandstone reduced to little more than the most basic forms of a man and a woman standing side-by-side in the thin silver moonlight.

“Old Kingdom,” Neil blurted automatically, resting his head back against the rough-cut stone. “Some minor Eighth Nome official and his wife.”

“How can you know that?” Constance pressed with a mix of irritation and curiosity.

Neil shifted uncomfortably. His wet trousers clung unpleasantly to his thighs. “The carvings on the wall are sunken relief rather than bas relief. That usually means Old Kingdom.”

“What about the Nome?” Constance studied him narrowly through the gloom. “What’s that, and what makes you think this fellow was part of one?

Nomes,Neil thought distractedly, her question brushing past him like a rogue butterfly.Nomes and gnomes.

He almost giggled. Apparently, a slight edge of hysteria was the natural outcome of a surplus of terror, shock, and mortification. “A Nome is an Ancient Egyptian administrative unit. And who else would he be?”

“Hmm.” Constance frowned as she continued to pin him with a thoughtful gaze.

The burst of manic energy faded, letting Neil’s rational mind slowly reassert itself—not that it remotely liked what it saw when it did.

“Mr. Forster-Mowbray’s sword was on fire,” he said, the words spilling involuntarily from his lips.

“You don’t say,” Constance huffed in reply.

Neil closed his eyes. “It was a flaming sword. An Anglo Saxon twist-welded flaming sword.”

“Julian called it Dyrnwyn,” Constance reported tiredly.

“Dyrnwyn?” Neil echoed, feeling as though the ground beneath him was sliding away even further. “As in the sword of Rydderch the Generous, King of Strathclyde? Dyrnwyn of the Thirteen Treasures of Britain?”

“He said it would only flame up for someone well-born or worthy. I’m not sure he realizes that those aren’t necessarily the same thing,” Constance added dryly.

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