Beneath a Burning Sky

by Jenny Ashcroft

  She felt Edward’s hold, his strong arms around her, heard his heart. I have you.

  She decided she would go to the polo after all. She couldn’t quite admit to herself why she dressed with such care, choosing her finest stockings, her favourite gown: a cap-sleeved, full-skirted frock that had a dipping bodice and pearl-buttoned back.

  Whilst Ada pinned her hair, she fingered a silver butterfly comb of her mama’s that Clara had given her. She sighed at its intricate beauty, and then for the first time slid it slowly, reverentially into her waves. She caught her reflection, and from somewhere in the depths of her mind, an image spun. It nearly choked her, so vividly and so rapidly did it surface.

  She saw her. For the first time in fifteen years, she was there. Her mama.

  Her mama.

  It was as though she had never been gone. She was sitting at a dressing table, just like the one Olivia was at now, in a lace crinoline. Mama. She was laughing, eyes playful in the looking-glass. You’d like to come tonight, my little Livvy? What fun that would be. Her voice, the love, it came like a mist.

  There was someone else there too, just beyond the shadows. Olivia thought it might be Clara. She closed her eyes, desperate to see. But the figure remained coy, hiding. All she could grasp was her mama. She reached her fingers out, as though it were possible to touch her face, trace the echo of her smile. She felt the chambers of her heart fill with the same strange heat of belonging she had experienced when Imogen had held her in her driveway the other morning.

  And this time, even when she opened her eyes, none of it went away.

  Fadil returned in time to take her to the Sporting Club. As he drove the carriage, she questioned him on what had brought him to the beach. He told her she should ask the sayed, it wasn’t his place to say. His dark eyes were apologetic. Olivia felt his sympathy, his regret.

  The polo was in full, thundering swing when they arrived. Imogen was on the pavilion, in the self-same spot Olivia had caught Edward and Clara talking, all those weeks ago. Olivia tried not to dwell on it as she filled Imogen in on all that had passed at Montazah. And she kept what she had seen of her mama to herself, just for now. She still felt dizzy, light with wonder, to have remembered; she was greedy for more to come back, to know her mama better, see her papa… Clara. She was hovering on the edge of a dome, and the filmy barriers keeping her out were wavering, fit to fall. As she stood beside Imogen on the terrace, watching the horses gallop, she played the memory of her mama laughing in the looking-glass again, and again. She held it. It was as though a part of her had been slotted into place; one gap fewer in the puzzle of her missing pieces.

  The crowd on the terrace clapped at a goal. Edward and Tom were both on the pitch, whacking up the score in the late afternoon sunshine. As Olivia watched them, her damp curls rose and fell on her neck, running to frizz in the humidity. A brooding wind had blown up, hot with sand. It streaked through air abuzz with chatter and the clink of glasses, and brushed the animated faces of Alexandria’s high society: red-faced men in top hats, ladies in bonnets, whispering behind frantically batting fans.

  Olivia leant against the railing; gingerly, she shifted on her stung leg. Ada had poured vinegar on it (literal as opposed to the figurative kind), it seemed to be getting better. She raised her gloved hands to her brow like pseudo-binoculars, and followed Edward as he propelled the ball forward with a knock and pulled his horse around. He didn’t know Alistair had gone away, not yet. Olivia hadn’t spoken to him. She’d barely let herself think about what the coming hours might hold. But she felt a shiver of nervous anticipation, just thinking about them.

  ‘They’re winning,’ said Imogen beside her. Her hair, in contrast to Olivia’s fly-away waves, was as glossy as jet beneath her cream hat. ‘It will be over soon, we can talk to Tom and Edward, find out what Fadil wanted.’

  There was guffawing from a table at the periphery of the crowd. Olivia recognised the men there as policemen, all British, part of Wilkins’ staff. They wore stiff-collared shirts and tightly buttoned jackets that had the cut and sheen of budget tailors. They lounged with an awkward forced ease. They often came to the club, admitted but never really belonging, which must have got under their skin. A bit like how Olivia had used to feel around the relatives of her school friends. Everyone would be nice to her, polite, but there was always that hint of confusion as to what place in the world she occupied. She wanted to go over and tell the police to go home, not to bother. None of this means a thing, none of it’s real.

  ‘I wonder where Wilkins is,’ said Imogen, following her gaze. ‘Dining out? Dining in?’

  Olivia laughed shortly. ‘He was calling on Jeremy earlier,’ she said. ‘Maybe he’s still there.’

  ‘I’ll go and ask them,’ said Imogen, and, in a flurry of petticoats, a flash of satin slippers, she was off.

  The men cowered at her approach, apparently as intimidated by her silk skirts and parasol as they’d surely be in the face of the hardiest criminals. Imogen’s stance was imperious as she fired questions at them. Suddenly, her brow creased in confusion. Olivia heard her say, ‘I don’t understand this at all,’ her lilting vowels weighted with a gravitas worthy of Queen Victoria.

  Olivia was about to go and ask what was wrong, when Imogen crossed back over to her.

  ‘Apparently Wilkins has gone out of town to investigate a lead,’ she said.

  Olivia’s spine lengthened. ‘Has someone seen something?’

  ‘I don’t know, they didn’t seem to. And since Tom hasn’t mentioned it, I don’t think he knows about it either. You said Alistair’s left too. He wouldn’t have gone with Wilkins, would he?’

  ‘He told me he was going to a mill.’ Olivia thought back to the warning look he’d fired at his manservant. ‘I’m not sure if he has though…’

  ‘We’ll ask Tom. It all feels very odd.’

  Tom and Edward came onto the pitch together from the changing rooms, both in uniform, their tunics slung over their shoulders. Olivia followed Imogen out to meet them. As she jogged to keep up, her heels sank in the horse-softened grass.

  ‘I don’t know about any lead from Wilkins,’ said Tom, once Imogen had finished filling them both in. He frowned. ‘It could be the same one we’ve had.’

  ‘What one’s that?’ asked Olivia and Imogen at the same time.

  Tom didn’t answer. He turned to Edward, expression preoccupied. ‘I take it Gray mentioned nothing when you dropped the children home earlier?’

  ‘I didn’t speak to him,’ Edward said, ‘he was out.’

  Tom breathed deep, trimmed moustache moving up and down. ‘Let’s go and find him after we’ve been to the ground. He’ll be home by now. He should know whether Sheldon’s really gone to that mill, if he’ll be honest about it.’

  ‘I think it’s time we made him be,’ said Edward.

  ‘Indeed.’ Tom turned to Imogen. ‘We won’t be too long, Immy. Can you get the house ready whilst we’re gone? We’re having some victory drinks.’

  ‘No we’re not,’ said Imogen. ‘How appalling. How can you even suggest it with Clara gone?’

  ‘We can’t search for her after nightfall, much as I’d like to.’ Tom gave her a pained look. ‘I’m the colonel, I owe my men a break, darling. We could all do with some light relief. You too.’

  Imogen sighed in irritation, and turned for the pavilion.

  Tom grimaced at Edward and Olivia and followed her.

  Edward offered Olivia his arm. She took it, fingers resting on his tensed muscles. As they walked, Edward asked her if she was all right, she’d seemed very unsettled when he left her with Alistair earlier.

  Olivia told him she was fine, whatever fine meant these days.

  Edward frowned.

  She swallowed. She said she was glad Alistair was gone. Very glad.

  ‘Good.’ Still he frowned. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘What did Fadil want at the beach earlier?’ she asked. ‘What’s this lead you’ve got?’


  He hesitated, as though deciding whether to give in to her change of subject, then sighed and said, ‘Someone’s seen something they think might be useful, someone else has lied to us and we don’t know why.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you if it comes to anything, I promise.’

  She was about to press him to tell her now when he said, ‘Can I ask you to do something for me tonight, a favour?’ He stopped walking, and looked down at her. He was so close she could see her reflection in his hazel eyes. ‘After I’ve been to Jeremy’s, I’ll have to go to the Carters’ drinks.’ He paused, took a breath. ‘Can you come, Olly? And when we’re there can we try and forget everything? Put all of it aside. Just be?’

  She didn’t answer straight away. She studied his tanned, handsome face, the tension in his muscles as he waited for her reply. She knew they were both remembering how she’d run from him the other night in the garden. In the silence that followed, she couldn’t help but think too of his secret words with Clara, on the terrace just in front of them, and of the doubts which had haunted her all week, gone now, but with bruises in their wake.

  He said nothing. He didn’t rush her for an answer. He’d understand if she said no. He wouldn’t resist. He couldn’t hurt her. Not him.

  ‘Just being,’ she said. ‘I’d like that, I think.’

  He tilted his head to one side, and smiled: a lingering tilt of his lips akin to a caress.

  She felt her heart; a trip, a jump beneath the battered casing of her ribs. The night opened up before her and for once the darkness didn’t fill her with dread. For the first time in a very long time she wasn’t scared of it.

  Quite the opposite, in fact.

  Chapter Twenty

  Edward saw the light come into her face. She didn’t realise, but her fingers tightened on his arm. He felt the weight of her lean deeper onto him, and he wanted to say, Keep doing that. Do that for ever. With those five simple words, she’d made him happier than he could ever remember being.

  ‘I’d like that, I think.’

  He felt charged with possibility, his blood pumped with it. She did that to him. No one had before. No coquettish smile at a Cairo soirée, no touch to his shoulder, nor artfully arched brow, had even come close. Flawed, meaningless flirtations, they had been nothing but a waiting game.

  He looked down at the cautious happiness in her features; it made her at once more beautiful and more vulnerable than she could know. He wanted to stay by her side, never let her go. Every instinct compelled him to do it, tell Tom to go on alone to the parade ground, the Grays’, keep Olly close whilst he had her there to keep safe. He wasn’t sure how far the night would take them, he only knew that after the past week’s strange silence, she had come back to him. He had seen it in her smile that morning, the way she had rested her head against him when he carried her from the sea.

  God, but the way she had turned so rigid when she saw Alistair staring from the shore.

  The foreboding in her shoulders as she followed the bastard into the house.

  It had disturbed him, how afraid she’d looked. It had turned him sick to the stomach. If it hadn’t been for all Fadil had discovered, the children waiting under the care of Hassan and El Masri in the carriage, he’d have gone after her. For the first time it had occurred to him that Alistair might be guilty of more than just coldness. He could barely acknowledge the thought. Surely Olly would have said if he was actually… No, Alistair couldn’t be. Olly would have told him. She would have.

  Wouldn’t she?

  The question, the day, the way she was looking at him now… Edward’s doubts over whether he should ask her to leave, go with him when he left for India, disappeared. This night was his chance, a God-given unexpected gift, to set things between them to rights. He told himself, Don’t waste it. Do not mess this up.

  ‘You’re thinking,’ Olly said, ‘it makes you forget to talk.’

  He smiled. ‘Said the Duchess to Alice?’

  ‘You’ve read it?’

  ‘Hundreds of times, when I was home on leave last year. It’s one of my niece’s favourites.’

  ‘I’d like to meet her.’

  ‘I’d like you to, too.’

  She smiled. She flicked a look at the pavilion. Tom was standing there, waiting. ‘You’d better go,’ she said.

  Edward sighed, acknowledging it. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  Her smile dropped. ‘Make Jeremy talk,’ she said. ‘He’s hiding something, I’m certain.’

  Fadil had Edward and Tom’s horses ready in the stables. He had told Edward on the way back from the beach what their informant, Garai, had said in the Turkish Quarter: that it was an Egyptian man who’d abducted Clara. It was why Edward had taken Hassan and El Masri to the ground for questioning, as soon as they’d dropped Ralph and Gus home. He didn’t care that both men had alibis – Hassan because he’d never left the square, El Masri because he had a docket for the shopping he’d done in the short time he was absent – he had a hunch one of them was hiding something. Wilkins had interviewed them before; that arsehole couldn’t interrogate a gnat.

  He’d left one of his lieutenants, Stevens, an ambitious young subaltern with a strong nerve and a bad polo swing, in charge of the questioning all afternoon. Now Edward was on his way back to him, he was impatient to discover what Stevens had found out. He climbed into his saddle, told Fadil he’d see him later. He didn’t need to ask him to watch over Olly, Fadil already knew to do that. Instead, he thanked him for all his work that day.

  ‘Yes, you’ve done a good job,’ said Tom, who was up to speed with all Fadil had discovered, Nailah eavesdropping in the alleyway included. Tom was as disturbed as Edward by Nailah’s strange fear at being revealed as the sick child, Babu’s, cousin, and not the minder she’d claimed to be when Edward first met her in Montazah, well over a month ago now, on the same May day that Jeremy had received those first threats.

  Edward frowned. Why had Nailah lied? What made her so afraid of being associated with Tabia?

  And what did the Bedouin at Sheldon’s gate have to do with it all? Edward was becoming increasingly sure they were involved on some level, and that they’d left Montazah because of it. His sense that something very bad had happened at that secluded bay was deepening by the hour. He hardly wanted to know what it was, yet he knew he had no choice but to find out.

  ‘Ha,’ he said, and kicked his stallion into a canter.

  Tom thundered by his side.

  Dusk had fallen when they reached the ground. Oil lamps had been lit at the guard posts, within the huts. The horses were blanketed for sleep. Stevens, the man who’d been interrogating Hassan and El Masri all afternoon, jogged out into the dusty forecourt, saluting Edward and Tom as they dismounted. His brow was wet with sweat, his tunic was stained with it. The air was so damned close.

  He told Edward he was sorry, but neither Hassan nor El Masri had given anything away.

  Edward cursed. He’d been banking on something, anything. He’d been sure one of them held a key. It wasn’t often he was wrong.

  ‘You’re certain?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Stevens. ‘El Masri’s a piece of work, but I don’t believe he’s a criminal. I must have asked him the same questions twenty times: what he was doing that day, when he did it, what he thinks of Egypt, Britain, Mr Gray, Mrs Gray. Any financial motives he might have for taking her. But there was nothing to cause any alarm. I’m sure he was being honest. He’s too bloody rude to be trying to pull the wool over.’ Stevens reached up, smacked a mosquito against his ruddy neck. ‘As for Hassan, he seems a good man. You’ll see that if you talk to him.’

  Tom suggested that he and Edward do just that. They went to find Hassan and El Masri in the lantern-lit office they’d been kept in, but discovered nothing different to what Stevens had.

  ‘I’m sorry not to have been more helpful,’ said El Masri, his deadpan face anything but contrite. ‘It seems the search is foundering, if I am what it has come to.’
r />   ‘The search is very much on,’ said Tom.

  El Masri looked him over, Edward too. His eyes moved from their open tunics to their hair, still wet from bathing. ‘I hope you enjoyed your sport today,’ he said.

  In spite of everything, Edward nearly laughed at his gall. Tom lay a calming hand on his shoulder, then said both men could go. He told Edward they better had too, to talk to Jeremy. Time was getting on and they had precious little to waste.

  ‘I have no idea what bloody mill Sheldon thinks he’s going to,’ said Jeremy. ‘I went to the office myself this afternoon. No one’s mentioned it to me.’

  ‘What about this lead of Wilkins’?’ asked Edward. ‘What’s all that about?’

  ‘I don’t know. Wilkins just said that he’s had word from one of his men in the provinces; apparently there’s a peasant farmer in a village, Lixori it’s called, who might have seen something.’

  ‘What?’ asked Edward. ‘What have they seen?’

  ‘I don’t know, but Wilkins has gone to look into it. He was catching the express to Cairo this afternoon, then getting a guide to take him to Lixori in the morning.’

  ‘And he didn’t think to tell us first?’ said Tom.

  ‘I sent him to find you.’ Jeremy pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. He went to stand by the study window. ‘Why the hell would he have gone to Alistair instead?’

  ‘If he has,’ said Tom.

  Jeremy frowned. There appeared to be little doubt in his mind.

  ‘We’ll go to Lixori,’ said Tom, ‘speak to this farmer ourselves and find out what he’s seen. There’s a strange wind tonight, it’s too dangerous to travel in the dark, but we’ll make good time at sun-up. We can cut across the dunes, try and catch them there.’