by Splendid You
Julia sat up and said, in her old tone, “Simon, you mustn’t tell your mother what happened.”
“I won’t lie to her.”
Lucy said, “You needn’t tell her everything. She’d be horrified to learn I set foot in a police station. She thinks the police are low spies.”
He reiterated, “I won’t tell lies. If she doesn’t ask, I won’t say anything. That’s as far as I’m willing to go.”
The two girls exchanged a glance that soon turned into an eye-rolling session. As they left the carriage, Lucy looked toward the Winslow house. In An-ket’s voice, she muttered, “I have told her that in the morning after a man drinks strong beer, he has no heart but too much head. She longs to run to him, but my counsel is to wait.”
“That’s very wise. Maybe that’s why Simon is so out of sorts.”
She’d almost grown used to seeing Lucy’s pretty blue eyes blink slowly and deliberately while An-ket made use of her body. She did it now. “This Simon of yours is strong from digging in the earth of Egypt. He can bear the pain with fortitude. I will go to that hole you call a kitchen and prepare him a remedy of my house. We gave it to Pharaoh’s son when he’d lowered the level in the wine jar too far.”
She paused and looked hard at Simon, who was paying off the driver. “It was destiny that called him there....”
“Where? What destiny?” Julia said. But she’d already gone into the house.
Julia started to follow, but Simon called to her as she put out her hand to open the door. Her fingers fell away from the knob. She should have known he’d not let the matter rest.
“Simon,” she began. “I’m not going to tell the police it was—”
“Did he hurt you?”
Her heart melted. “No, and I don’t believe he wants to. He keeps saying he wants to talk with me. Perhaps I should have gone with him. A five-minute conversation to clear the air would probably explain everything.”
“Why didn’t you go? Not that I want you to. I want you to stay as far away from Dr. Mystery as possible. But—if you’ll forgive me—it’s never been your way to take the prudent path.”
“What do you mean? I’m very prudent. I’m the most prudent person I know.”
“You must have an extremely limited circle of friends.” He held up a hand for a truce. “Yes, I know. I started it.”
“Are you going to perform both sides of an argument now?”
He looked at her as though he wanted to kiss her. That expression in his eyes made her feel like soft-centered chocolate. “I’m a better advocate for you than you know, Julia. I find it unexpectedly difficult to remain angry with you.”
After such a handsome admission, Julia could no longer spar with him. She said, “I didn’t accompany Dr. Mystery because I was frightened, just as Lucy said.”
Simon’s jaw jutted out like a ship-killing rock. “Were you, indeed? Well, now it’s his turn to be frightened.”
Julia ran down the steps to scurry around in front of him, blocking his path. “No, Simon. If I can’t go, you can’t.”
“I’m not afraid of any pip-squeak medium.”
“I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid of Dr. Mystery. I try to convince myself there’s no reason to be, that he’s just a trickster, but against all my logic is a great mass of fear that I cannot seem to throw off.”
“Julia! You’ve gone white.”
“I won’t faint. I never faint.” Nonetheless, she clutched his arm, glad of the strength beneath his sleeve. She’d back Simon in a standup brawl against anyone up to the heavyweight champion of England, but Dr. Mystery attacked souls, not bodies. She said, “He seemed so desperately anxious to talk me. But I wouldn’t tell him anything even if I knew the answer.”
“I know there are things you are not telling me.”
“In response, I can only say what you have said yourself. I won’t volunteer any information, but I won’t lie to you.” She released her clutch of his sleeve, brushing it off apologetically.
She added, “I’m leaving Saturday morning.”
“Saturday?”
“Yes. My first stop today was to book my passage on the mail coach returning north. I would have left already if it hadn’t been for your celebration. Your mother has pressed me to stay for it. I intend to have a very good time.”
“Even though you are doing all the work.”
“I don’t mind. I want it all to be perfect for you. I’m so proud of you.” She started up the front steps again. “You should be grateful to me, you know.”
“I am,” he said with such a tender look in his eyes that Julia could almost fool herself into believing he loved her. Then he asked, with a return to wariness, “Why today in particular?”
“Because I managed to talk Jane and Amanda out of persuading your mother that your celebration should be a masquerade ball with everyone attending dressed as—and I quote-—’your favorite pharaoh or concubine.’ “
He indulged in a trifle of eye-rolling himself and then said, “Remind me to worship at your feet when I next have a spare moment.”
“Later will do. It would be a shame to ruin your creases on this rough walk. The police station floor didn’t do that one any good, either. You look like you’ve been proposing to a girl in a pub.”
Simon inspected the brown spot on the knee of his left trouser leg, and growled. Julia laughed as he dashed up the steps. He paused only to shake his ringer in her face in mock anger. “Just you wait, Miss Hanson, just you wait!”
Following in his wake, Julia sighed and said aloud, “What else can I do?”
From that afternoon on, whenever Julia had an errand to run, Simon went with her. Sometimes he was helpful, but other times he was very much in the way. She couldn’t help but be glad that she’d taken care of the champagne question earlier, for he did not allow her to pay for anything. She was afraid the price of some things shocked him.
“There’s going to be several hundred people there, Simon. You can’t do a party like this for a pound a head.”
“I suppose not. It’s just that I hate to see so much being spent on this, when the museum needs every penny for research and exploration.”
“The museum? I thought you and your mother were ...” She remembered that a lady didn’t discuss personal finance with any man outside her family, unless it was a debt of honor. But since she’d already broken that cardinal rule, she asked, “Aren’t you paying for this personally?”
“No, of course not. All the bills are to go to the museum—-within reason.”
More than ever, Julia thanked goodness that she’d had sense enough to order the champagne billed to her father.
Despite the time they spent together, the constraint between them grew. Knowing how he hated evasion, Julia felt guilty for not telling him of An-ket’s return, but couldn’t see that there was very much point in telling him things he would not believe. By not telling him the truth, she avoided having him think she was telling him lies— a neat moral dilemma.
* * * *
Her guilt sharpened every day. Simon would change from a friend with whom she shared jokes and so much of interest to a brooding figure who stared at her from time to time but hardly spoke. Sometimes he’d shake her hand when she retired for the night, while on other evenings he would escape to his study as soon as she started from the room. No doubt, she reasoned, these abrupt changes in mood came on when he recollected that she told neither him nor the police all she knew.
She expected Mrs. Archer, who also noticed her son’s mercurial mood swings, to be more troubled by them then she was. When Julia tried to explain that his behavior was caused by trouble between them, the older woman only smiled sagely and nodded her head. “Very natural. I remember his dear father when first we met....”
On the whole, Julia’s lifelong gift of being interested in other people to the point of making fast friends of the most unlikely types, her enjoyment of food, and her ready sense of humor all seemed to have deserted her. About the only
pleasure she seemed to have come from doing the sort of hard, physical cleaning that a lady never did. Scrubbing floors, washing down walls, and beating carpets at her father’s town house exhausted her enough so that she could sleep without dreaming of Simon.
Otherwise, every night she found herself kissing him on the carpet in his study, smells of dust and his skin mingling, while his hands traveled to places only the bristles of a bath brush had touched before. Waking from these dreams, she found it difficult to look him in the eyes when they met.
She should have been glad to know that soon she’d be home in Yorkshire, never to be troubled by him again, but the remembrance of her reservation on the coach only gave her a grinding sense of depression.
An-ket and Lucy, strangely enough, seemed to be as happy as a couple of grasshoppers singing on a summer evening. Julia couldn’t imagine what it must be like, sharing a body with another being, but Lucy didn’t seem to mind at all. An-ket seemed to lend her the fortitude she needed. The day after their run-in with the police, Lucy dressed in her finest day gown and crossed the street to the Winslow house. She did not return for several hours.
When she did, her sisters and Julia were loitering casually in the hall. Mrs. Archer stood at the top of the stairs, ostensibly straightening a picture, but no picture ever took so long to level.
Lucy’s step was light and the three girls smiled at one another. “Whatever are you doing there?” she asked.
Julia, nudged by Jane, asked the question they were all dying to have answered. “Did you see Major Winslow?”
“No, he’d been called away to the Foreign Office.”
Something that sounded like a muffled curse came from the upper hall.
Amanda said, “But you’ve been gone for ever such a long time.”
“I sat with the general. He has adopted a cat.”
Another half-heard sound from upstairs.
“It’s a dear little thing, but I think it will grow very fat. He’s forever feeding it morsels of this and that. He’s had a special cushion made for it beside his desk. He’s writing his memoirs at last. He read me the first chapter—I think it will be very exciting.”
Jane took her sister’s mantle and bonnet as Lucy took them off. “So you didn’t see the major at all?”
“Not today. But the general has asked me to come back tomorrow to listen to chapter two.”
The sound from upstairs was a rhythmic tapping as though of someone dancing a jig. “Don’t hurt yourself, Mother,” Lucy called.
The next day, she had seen him. She answered their questions graciously but shortly. “Yes, he was there. Of course I spoke to him. He didn’t say anything but ‘how do you do?’ and he looked just as he always has. A trifle thinner, perhaps.”
“But that can’t be all!” Amanda said, as if protesting a great unfairness.
“Life isn’t like your silly storybooks,” Lucy said, scoffing. “Did you expect him to propose? Or to fold me in his arms, covering my face with kisses?”
“If you must know,” the bookish girl answered, “yes, I did!”
“So did I!” Lucy wailed and ran up the stairs.
There Julia found her, weeping on her bed. Wordlessly, she sat down and smoothed the tumbled hair. She felt that the Archer girls were like her sisters. She’d never realized quite how lonesome her childhood had been until she came into this house.
“Never mind, dear. It’s only the first day. Things will be better tomorrow.”
“Oh, Julia,” Lucy said, sitting up and blowing her nose. “I’m not a child coming back from her first day at school! Robert just doesn’t love me anymore! I was a fool to think ... to dream ...”
“He gave no sign of even being glad to see you?”
“Oh, he thanked me for visiting his father, but he was so polite, so cold. You must understand that Robert only behaves like that with people he dislikes. To the rest of the world, he’s like a big friendly dog, jumping up with muddy paws on your best dress but not meaning any harm.”
“That’s not the impression I had....”
“I might just know him a little better than you do!” Instantly, Lucy apologized.
“Never mind. You’re overwrought, and it’s perfectly natural. I’d be disappointed, too.”
“It’s my own fault for raising my hopes so high. But I did think he’d at least be glad to see me! But he just bowed. Even when we were alone for a few moments—’
“Oh, you were alone together?”
Lucy said, “An-ket told me what to do if I had the chance, but I don’t think it worked.”
Julia thought of Simon’s varying mood and asked without any extra emphasis, “What was that?”
“Oh, you try to ... to make him aware of your femininity. Subtly, of course, nothing overt or vulgar. But I can only think it must work better in transparent linen than in a tartan walking dress.”
“What about in a ballgown? Is the major coming to the party?”
“Yes, he told me both he and his father would attend. He even bespoke a dance.”
“Come, that’s encouraging at least. A waltz?”
“No, the boulanger. We won’t even be able to talk!”
“Then sit it out with him.”
“And have him go to fetch me a glass of punch and not come back until it’s time for another partner? No, thank you, I’ll dance with him sooner than that!”
Julia thought Lucy was taking an unnecessarily grim view. “What does An-ket think?”
“I don’t know.” Lucy stared at herself in the mirror. “I don’t blame him, you know, I really don’t. I look a perfect hag. Why was I such a foot?”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? You must know what An-ket thinks.”
“Oh, Julia!” Lucy said impatiently. “I haven’t heard from An-ket in two days. Not since we came home from the police station.”
“Is she gone?”
“No. She’s still here. But she doesn’t seem to want to talk. Frankly, neither do I.”
“It is strange that you have found it so easy to accept that you have the spirit of an ancient Egyptian princess living in you.”
“Is it? I don’t see why. I’ve rather enjoyed it. She has such a lofty point of view, though I must say the goddess she served must have been one of the touchier ones. Some of her stories are bloodcurdling.” Lucy pinched her cheeks to bring out the color. “Perhaps I should go sit in the park for a while today. I have no roses left and I won’t go to the ball looking like a ghost!”
“Can you tell what she is thinking about?”
“Of course. She’s thinking about her son.”
“I didn’t know she had one.”
“It’s very sad.” Lucy turned away from the mirror. “Thank you for reminding me of it. It makes my own little troubles look very insignificant.”
“What happened?”
“She married Senusret, one of the king’s sons. The pharaohs had quite the cozy home life, didn’t they? This one had half a dozen wives.” She shrugged. “I’m glad husbands and wives come in sets these days. I shouldn’t like sharing my husband with a crowd.”
“What happened?” Julia asked.
“Well, An-ket and Senusret were very happy when they found out they were going to have a baby, and when it turned out to be a son! Well, some things never do change. His name was Thoser and she knows no one in all of Egypt ever had a more splendid son. All the girls were wild about him, especially one who must have been some sort of cousin because she was the daughter of his grandfather’s sisters. I don’t know; they seemed to marry anyone they took a fancy to, even ...” Lucy blushed.
“I know that pharaohs married their sisters,” Julia said. “Some archaeologists think they might have married their daughters if no other bride of the right lineage was available.”
“That’s dreadful! I’m glad Mother doesn’t know about it. She already thinks Simon’s work has made him too radical.”
“Actually, it’s a very conservative idea. Blood
royal could marry none but blood royal. Go on, about An-ket’s son.”
“This girl was already supposed to marry some powerful man—a magician-priest, or something. But she loved Thoser and they ran away together. The magician caught them. She made the magician promise that if she went with him, he’d leave Thoser alone. He vowed by all the gods, then killed him anyway. An-ket’s husband died soon after of grief. Then she died....”
“Then what happened?”
“I told you. She died. There’s nothing after that.”
Julia realized she’d been hoping to hear the tale of An-ket’s journey through the Underworld. Had she answered all the questions correctly? Had she seen Osiris, the dead-but-living god, face-to-face in some endless cavern? Had Anubis the Jackal taken her by the hand and spoken of her life?
“The undiscovered country,” she whispered, “from whose bourn no traveler returns....” Shaking off her wonder, she said, “But she did come back. Or is this all just some strange dream of my own devising?”
Chapter Twenty
His sisters and his mother worked harder the day of the party than they had yet. Jane and Amanda had been serving as Julia’s aides-de-camp, while his mother fluttered about making suggestions. Hers might not have been the most vital role, but it was the most fatiguing to watch.
Lucy had been busy with her stalking of Robert Winslow, which consisted of standing very still and letting him come to her, like a honeybee seeking the lily. Simon knew of her designs on the major but did nothing either to help or hinder her. Whatever alchemy had created the lightning change in her, he didn’t feel she needed any interference from him. Only if it all ended badly would he act, even if it meant taking her to Egypt with him, to prevent her suffering again as she did when Winslow left the last time.
As for Julia, he could hardly bring himself to think of her. Even though he did his very best to stay out of her orbit, she swam into his thoughts at odd moments. He’d be authenticating one of Safir’s artifacts and find himself smiling at memories, magnifying glass suspended in his hand. Or he’d lose his place in a conversation and answer at random, thinking of something she had said or done. Remembering the mad moments in his study had no cure except hurrying out for an exhausting walk, which sooner or later always brought him home to where she waited.