Jenny laughed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you do have a point. All this talk of jewels has made me forget what Colonel Travers himself admitted: Their value is primarily sentimental. Who would risk everything for the price of a few cameos or a matched set of garnets?”
Stephen maintained his pose of urbane sophistication, but Neville was certain the younger man was pleased with this praise.
“Let us examine the cabin,” Stephen continued, “keeping in mind that most of the disarray we see is most likely the result of the earlier search.”
“I’ll start here,” Jenny said, kneeling next to the bunk and opening a drawer built into its base. This revealed a frothy mass of lace-trimmed white and ivory fabric. “I suppose the idea is to see if the case is buried under some of these rather generous underthings?”
Stephen colored slightly, but nodded.
“Sir Neville, why don’t you and I take the rest of the cabinets? I’ll start with those on the right, you the left. Miss Benet, when you are finished there, would you check the area around the washstand? Mrs. Travers may have absentmindedly tucked the case into one of the cubbies when she was attending to her toilette. I know my sisters are always doing such things.”
They conducted their search steadily until not a cabinet had been left unopened or a drawer unprobed. They confirmed that the Colonel had laid in a considerable supply of his favorite pipe tobacco, that Mrs. Travers had a fondness for candied violets, and that someone—Jenny suspected Mary—had hidden a partially eaten box of chocolates beneath a pile of writing paper. However, they did not find the jewelry case.
“What next, Dupin?” Neville asked, closing the last cabinet drawer, and turning to where Stephen stood with head propped against his fist.
“I’m thinking,” Stephen muttered. “My instincts tell me that the case is still in this room. I must be right! Too many innocents stand to lose if I am not. I will not let that happen.”
“But where can we look?” Jenny asked. “Will you have us prying up the floorboards next?”
She looked quite ready to attempt this, so Neville was relieved when Stephen replied, “No, not the floorboards… The mattresses!”
“I looked under these bunks already,” Neville reported. “No luck.”
Stephen’s grin did not fade.
“We are not inspecting, sir, we are ratiocinating! Put yourself in Mrs. Travers’s place. She is a woman, no longer young and not in the best condition. She has dressed for the day, and needs to put her jewelry case away. However, she has chosen to keep it in a drawer that requires her to kneel beside the bed. She is stout, and tightly corsetted.”
“A discomfort you have to feel to fully appreciate,” Jenny interjected, poking at her own less than fashionably restricted waist.
Stephen began to mime out Mrs. Travers’s presumed actions.
“She sets the jewelry case on the lower bunk, but she needs both hands to open the drawer. See, it sticks a bit. Something halts her—a servant with hot water, a question from her husband, Mary asking her to do something to her hair. What it is does not matter. Mrs. Travers leaves the jewelry case on the lower bunk. Later, something pushes it back—perhaps someone sitting on the edge of the bunk to put on shoes. The case is slid back, and…”
Stephen leaned over the mattress and poked his hand between it and the wall.
“The case falls into the crevice and becomes wedged there.”
He felt around, seized something, and drew it forth.
“Voila, mes amis! The missing jewel case!”
Neville and Jenny burst into spontaneous applause. Mr. Watkins, who had apparently been waiting in the corridor, flung open the door. His face lit with joy when he saw the box in Stephen’s hand.
“Oh, Mr. Holmboe, you are a wonder! That must be the very box. See, there are her initials on the lid.”
Stephen gave the box a slight shake.
“The box is locked, but from the sound I believe you will find the contents intact. Let us hurry to the library and inform the Traverses of our find.”
“I wonder,” Jenny said as she hurriedly led the way, “why Hamlin didn’t find the case when he was making up the bunks.”
“Quite probably because he was not looking for it,” Stephen said. “He may even have heard a faint thump when he was tucking in the bedclothes, but thought nothing of it. Those bunks are deuced hard to make up, as I found when attempting to spare Bert a bit of bother.”
The fuss Mrs. Travers made was tremendous. To Neville’s heartfelt relief, nothing more was said about thieving natives. Jenny might not have been so restrained once the lady was no longer suffering from her loss.
That evening at dinner, Captain Easthill reported the day’s events, obviously to forestall gossip that might cast a less than favorable light on his vessel or its crew.
“I have said little about the methods by which Mr. Holmboe recovered the missing jewel case,” Captain Easthill concluded. “Perhaps Mr. Holmboe would favor us with a more detailed discussion in place of the planned entertainment.”
Stephen waved a hand in a self-deprecating fashion.
“Actually, Captain, if everyone would permit, I would rather offer a reading from Edgar Allan Poe, the very story that set me on the track of the missing jewels. It’s a grand little piece called ‘The Purloined Letter.’ ”
6
Alexandria
By the time Neptune’s Charger arrived at Alexandria, Jenny had memorized a handful of useful phrases in Arabic, but felt she was no closer to getting a grasp of the language than before. She actually felt better about elementary hieroglyphs. Stephen had assured her that there was so much repetition in the texts carved and painted onto the walls of burial complexes that she would be able to recognize common names like Osiris and Isis. She greatly looked forward to doing so.
However, her first glimpse of Egypt came as a complete surprise. Along with most of the other passengers, she was gathered by the rail, watching Alexandria’s square skyline take shape.
“It’s so green!” Jenny exclaimed. “I thought Egypt was all golden brown desert.”
“There is plenty of desert,” Uncle Neville assured her. “This, however, is the Delta region. It is one of the most fertile areas in all the world. With the inundation of the Nile just ended, it is also a very busy farming area. The Turkish rulers have tried to introduce some modernization, but most of the farming is still done by hand, and at the caprice of the floods.”
Stephen added with a pedantry that still seemed jarringly at odds with his love of a pun, the worse, the better, “It is astonishing to realize that the greatest advances in Egyptian farming were brought in by the Hyksos in the late Middle Kingdom. They introduced both the shaduf and the horse and chariot, yet remained reviled by the Egyptians until they were unseated from power.”
Colonel Travers snorted, “Damn natives are all alike. Here we’ve been helping them along since we ousted Napoleon for them in 1801. Does that make a difference? No. Their educated classes are still more likely to go to France than England for their education. They affect French fashions, blending them in with their Turkish ways in the most peculiar manner. Still, England will stick by them.”
Jenny had been reading something about contemporary Egyptian history. Now the grinding annoyance that had been building within her at the British imperial assumption of superiority boiled to the surface.
“Don’t the British rather have to stick by them?” she asked, not bothering to keep her tone respectful. “It seems to me that I have read about how deeply in debt Egypt is becoming to various British banking and commercial interests. Those same interests hound Parliament to make certain Egypt pays those debts.”
“Man’s got to pay his debts,” Colonel Travers huffed. “Don’t see why it should be different for a nation.”
“I’m not saying it should be different,” Jenny protested, “but it seems unfair to criticize a country for being primitive and in debt, when it’s running up tho
se debts in an effort to become less primitive.”
“Wouldn’t expect a slip of a girl to understand international economic policy,” Colonel Travers responded condescendingly.
Jenny was so certain that he understood even less than she did that she lost her temper completely.
“And I don’t suppose the Suez Canal has anything to do with the kindness that England offers to Egypt. I don’t suppose it has crossed anyone’s mind that the canal serves as a straight line for invasion of British interests in India?”
Colonel Travers was shocked out of speech, and to Jenny’s embarrassment, Uncle Neville stepped in to defend her.
“Forgive my niece, Colonel,” he said. “She is not only young, she is American, and they are rather unsophisticated in their view of the world.”
Jenny colored, then paled, and lest she be further humiliated, she left the deck. As she did so, she saw Rashid crouching in a shadowed corner. His eyes remained downcast, but his mouth twisted with sympathetic concern.
With some dismay, Neville watched Jenny retreat, but he didn’t pursue her. Being guardian to a seventeen-year-old American woman was proving to be more difficult than he had ever imagined. The fact that she looked so much like her ostensibly more tractable mother didn’t make his task any easier. He kept expecting her to act as Alice would have—while his all too practical memory made it impossible to forget that Alice had been tractable only on the surface.
The lightest of feather-touches on his sleeve brought Neville back into awareness of his surroundings. Audrey Cheshire was looking up at him, her impossibly green eyes alive with sympathy and just a touch of humor.
“Would you like me to speak with Miss Benet?” she asked. “Perhaps something is troubling her that she would more easily confide in a woman.”
“You are too kind,” Neville replied. “I think her problem goes beyond mere femininity. I think she is an American—a frontier-reared American—facing the larger realities of civilization for the first time.”
Lady Cheshire slipped into a chair, and somehow Neville found himself seated next to her.
“I thought you said Miss Benet had been to boarding school in Boston,” Lady Cheshire said. “That is a very nice city, or so I have been told.”
“So have I,” Neville replied. He was about to explain further, but Captain Brentworth came striding over, outrage in every line of his muscular shoulders.
“The ship will be docking shortly, Lady Cheshire,” he said, his refusal to acknowledge Neville’s polite greeting, making transparent just who was the object of his anger. “I thought you would wish to make certain Babette has correctly anticipated your desires. She is waiting to speak with you.”
Lady Cheshire rose, offering Neville a confidential smile that acknowledged the other man’s jealousy while dismissing his right to such proprietary emotions. Neville suddenly realized that he would miss her company.
He spoke impulsively after her as she turned away.
“I hope we will meet again, Lady Cheshire.”
“I expect that we will, Sir Neville, if not in Egypt, then certainly back in England.”
Her words were commonplace, even dismissive, but there was something in her manner of speaking that made Neville’s heart rise with hope. Nearly giddy as a schoolboy, he strode briskly below to confer with Bert, whistling a snatch of a romantic air that had been popular over twenty years before.
Ignoring Jenny’s rudeness, a grateful Colonel Travers expressed his gratitude to Stephen for his help in the matter of the jewel case by arranging for the Hawthorne party to have seats on a military train from Alexandria to Cairo that was leaving the next morning. Neville mentioned this to Lady Cheshire as the passengers were debarking.
“Then we will be parting sooner than I had anticipated,” she said, and sounded honestly sorry. “Where are you staying tonight?”
Neville gave the name of a good hotel frequented by European travelers. He was not surprised when Lady Cheshire admitted that her party was staying at the same place.
“I had hoped we would have further opportunity to visit,” she said. “Perhaps you will let us entertain you and your companions to dinner tonight?”
Neville accepted readily, trying not to admit even to himself that he had been hoping for something of the sort. He even managed to not be too disappointed when both Jenny and Stephen agreed to accompany him. He hadn’t thought Stephen cared much for Lady Cheshire’s circle, and Jenny might have been sulking after her earlier embarrassment.
As was customary in these hot climates, most businesses had closed for the afternoon, so the carriages that took them from Neptune’s Charger to the hotel passed through an apparently deserted city. After the omnipresent shipboard breeze, the air seemed stifling, its dampness clinging like a second skin.
In the suite he shared with Stephen, Neville found that time seemed to pass with slowness as stifling as the heat. He snapped irritably at one of Stephen’s rather stupid jokes, apologized, and retired to his bedchamber. There he undressed and lay on the bed, trying to cool off and rest. He found he checked his watch so often that he finally took it off the bedside table and stored it in his travel bag to reduce the temptation.
What was wrong with him? It must be the heat, or maybe finally returning to this search after so long. It certainly couldn’t be that he had fallen for a pair of lovely green eyes. He wondered what Audrey Cheshire’s hair would feel like, released from its cunning coils and let hang loose to curl about her… shoulders.
Somehow Neville was up again, checking his watch. He was glad he had caught Bert before the other finished consigning their trunks to the military attache who would take them to the train. It wouldn’t have done to show up for dinner incorrectly dressed. He hoped Jenny had remembered to keep out an appropriate gown. Stephen was impossible, but everyone from the ship was accustomed to his outdated attire. Indeed, they were so accustomed that the curious glances Stephen had attracted from the few guests in the hotel lobby when they had arrived had themselves registered as unusual.
Neville wished dinner was not served so late in these climates. He wished the train wasn’t leaving so early. He wondered if Lady Cheshire would be staying in Alexandria long. Surely Cairo was more amusing. It was certainly less humid. She would stay at Shepheard’s Hotel. That was where all the best people stayed. Maybe he should change their reservations to Shepheard’s from Casa Donati. He wondered if Papa Antonio would be hurt. He wondered if Captain Brentworth would be annoyed. He wondered if Lady Cheshire would be pleased.
Somewhere amid these wonderings, Neville fell asleep. He dreamed of lovely women dressed in the revealing fashions favored by the Egyptian court. One of these women had emerald green eyes, startling and lovely within their elaborate lines of kohl.
Bert awoke him with ample time to dress.
“I ordered hot water, sir, in case you wished to shave,” the former footman said, clearly feeling awkward in his role as valet now that they were ashore and he must adapt to new circumstances. “I did not think you would wish a hot bath, but the kitchens inform me that water can be quickly had.”
“You did well, Bert,” Neville assured him. “What I want is something cooling. How is Emily?”
“Fine, once she persuaded Miss Benet to stay settled here at the hotel. The young lady wanted to go and tour Alexandria. She said that with the train leaving so early in the morning, this would be her only opportunity.”
Neville was stunned. In his own preoccupation, it had never occurred to him that Jenny would decide to go wandering.
“But Emily convinced her to stay in?” he asked.
“She did. Secured her promise. When we retired, Miss Benet was in one of the hotel courtyards playing with the monkey that belongs to that boy, Rashid. Mrs. Syms was with her, and assured Emily that she was going nowhere, so Emily felt safe leaving her there.”
“Well done,” Neville said, though he suspected that nothing short of leg irons would have held Jenny.
&nb
sp; Then he amended his thought. One positive result of her sympathy for the lower classes was that Jenny would never do anything that would reflect badly on Emily. If she had promised Emily she would remain, then even had Mrs. Syms been distracted from her chaperonage, Jenny would not have strayed.
“And has Miss Benet come up to dress for dinner?”
“She has, sir. Emily is helping her with her hair.”
Both reassured and vaguely unsettled, Neville proceeded to ready himself for their dinner engagement. Vest, tie, and tail-coat were constrictingly warm, but he donned them with the confident assurance that he would look his best—besides, the dining room was certain to have fans.
He met his companions in the common room of the suite. Stephen wore the same high-buttoned jacket and checked trousers he always wore on more formal occasions. Jenny was still in mourning black, though she had donned jet pendant earrings and a necklace of matching faceted beads.
However, both Stephen and Jenny might have worn the sheer draperies and the leopard-skin mantle of the Egyptian sem priest, for all Neville would have noticed once they entered the private dining room reserved by Lady Cheshire, and Neville saw their hostess turning to meet them.
Neville thought he had seen the full range of her wardrobe aboard Neptune’s Charger , for Lady Cheshire had more frequently varied her gown than any other woman aboard the vessel. Now he realized that these had been her second best. If he correctly recalled what he had overheard of the ladies’ gossip about fashion, Lady Cheshire must have paused to do some shopping in Paris.
The colors of the dressmaker’s confection she now turned to display were a compromise between the stronger shades that had been popular a few years before, and the paler hues that were just now coming into fashion. Her double-ruffled skirt was yellow, and her close-fitting, low-cut bodice was a deep blue, trimmed with double borders of white sheer. The large, lace-bordered apron draped over the flat front of her skirt was cut from a striped fabric that combined the colors of skirt and bodice, and brought the entire ensemble into perfect harmony.
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