he merely chooses not to bite the hand that feeds him,’ Tahira said. ‘And the lure of a nice soft cushion to sleep off his night’s exertions.’
Or the lure of a delightful mistress, Christopher thought. Now that they were done with cooking, he had stoked the fire. The flames danced, casting light and shadows on to Tahira’s face. She was smiling softly to herself. Having discarded her riding boots, she sat cross-legged. Her feet were high-arched. Her toes were painted with a scarlet lacquer. He had never seen painted toe nails before. He had never before found toes arousing.
‘This Midas touch you have,’ Tahira said, interrupting his bemused study of her feet, ‘is that why you took up surveying?’
‘No, it was my interest in ancient sites which came first. I was raised near the city of Bath, which the Romans knew as Aquae Sulis for the hot springs which fed the ancient baths there. Though there is no trace of the original baths now, when I was a boy, we were surveying the River Avon for signs of ancient sewers, and I found a Roman coin there.’
‘Your first find! How wonderful. Mine was a mere shard of pottery, most likely from a cooking pot. Were you very young? Did you know what it was? Who did you imagine it belonged to? Do you have it still?’
Tahira’s eyes were alight with interest. Christopher smiled, taking the coin from the pouch where he kept it with the amulet, his smile broadening when she handled it reverently. ‘I was just a boy, five or six years old,’ he said, ‘so naturally I imagined it had belonged to a Roman centurion. Some brave, battle-hardened noble fellow in glittering armour, who saved all his emperor’s coins to send home to his family. The truth,’ he added ruefully, knowing as he did now, that baths and brothels were almost always built together, ‘was likely to have been rather different.’
‘And so you became a surveyor, because you wished to become an archaeologist?’
Christopher’s smile faded. ‘I became a surveyor because I had to earn a living, and because it happened to be the profession of the man who passed his love of the past on to me.’
‘The same man who was with you when you discovered the coin?’ Tahira asked brightly, handing it back to him. ‘You said we were surveying.’
‘Yes. Andrew Fordyce. The same one.’
‘A family friend?’
‘You could say that.’
A faint frown marred her forehead. His curt tone clearly confused her, but he couldn’t do anything about that as he stared down at the Roman coin and the memory of that long-ago, never-forgotten day assaulted him. They were both soaked through from paddling in the shallows of the river, their boots and stockings caked in mud. He recalled the excitement as his chubby fingers closed around the metal disc. ‘Mind now, it might be nothing,’ he’d been cautioned as he stooped to rinse the mud and grime away, whooping with glee as the ancient markings appeared. And then the proud smile, the pat on the back he’d come to take for granted as the years passed. ‘Well done, lad. It seems you’ve a nose for these things, right enough.’
How innocent he had been. How much he had taken for granted. But none of it was as it appeared. What he had assumed to be love and affection were baser feelings, fed by blood money. Christopher opened his eyes, not realising they had been closed. Tahira was looking at him expectantly. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You were a thousand miles away,’ she said. ‘I was asking what your father did for a living, and why you did not follow his profession.’
‘My father...’ He caught himself curling his hand into a fist around his coin just in time. ‘The last thing my father would wish is for me to follow in his footsteps. And it is the very last thing I would wish either.’
Once again his vehemence puzzled her, and more worryingly intrigued her. He could almost read the questions forming and being discarded in her head. ‘We are not close,’ Christopher said, before she could ask any of them. ‘In fact, it would be fair to say that we could not be far enough apart.’ He cast the leaves of his tea into the sand, irked at his lack of self-control.
Tahira frowned. ‘But with your mother dead, I would have thought—and you have no brothers, you said. What about sisters?’
I have five daughters, sir. Christopher winced. ‘I was raised an only child.’
Her expression softened. ‘Oh, how sad. That is, I did not mean—it is only that I would hate to be without my sisters.’
‘Though you would happily do without your brother.’
She smiled faintly at this, but was not to be distracted. ‘So there was no older sister to step into your mother’s slippers, as I did for my sisters? Who then had the care of you as a child?’
Christopher gritted his teeth, tempted to tell her to mind her own business, but reckoning that to do so would only make her more curious, he opted for a form of the truth. ‘The wife of the man who taught me to survey.’
‘Oh.’ Tahira pleated her brow. ‘She was your father’s housekeeper?’
He chose not to answer this. ‘She died thirteen years ago.’
‘I’m so sorry. And her husband?’
‘He died too. Just last year.’
‘Oh, Christopher, how dreadful. Then there is only your father left alive?’
‘As far as I am concerned, my father is also dead. Now, I trust you are you done with digging up my past, because I am most certainly done with talking about it.’
She flinched at his tone. ‘I did not mean to offend you, and I most certainly didn’t mean to upset you, especially when you have done me the honour of inviting me here, and gone to so much trouble to make me feel welcome. I wished only to get to know you a little better. I had no idea the subject of your family was so painful.’
‘It is not painful,’ he said, as much for his own benefit as for hers. ‘It is simply irrelevant.’
Tahira smiled uncertainly. ‘You don’t think it’s rather paradoxical that you should say such a thing? An archaeologist, a man whose raison d’être is digging up the past, but has no interest in his own? You told me that you feel a connection with the past, Christopher, like I do—something tangible...’
‘Ancient history, not my past. My personal history has no bearing at all on my work.’
‘But your work here has everything to do with the amulet,’ Tahira persisted. ‘And the amulet connects you to your mother as my Bedouin star connects me to mine.’
‘The amulet does not concern us tonight,’ Christopher said, thoroughly rattled. Jumping to his feet, he held out his hand to help her up.
‘Indeed, I’m sorry. You’ve had more than enough of my company tonight. Thank you for the lovely meal, and for showing me your home, and...’
‘I didn’t bring you here just to make you dinner.’
‘You didn’t? What else do you have planned?’
Imagining her surprise made it easy to cast aside the spectres she had raised. He caught her hand, pressing a fleeting kiss to her fingertips. ‘Come with me, and
