“No, he took my papers, my money and just left me here.”
“What in the world did you do to provoke such behavior?”
Okay, that was so not where she had seen this going.
“Nothing. We fought and he left me.”
“That’s not believable,” Lady Julia said. She tossed her fan on the bed. “No gentleman would leave a lady in a foreign country. It’s unimaginable.”
“He caught me with his valet.”
The girl turned and stared at Ella as if she had sprouted a scarlet A across her chest. “No!” she said, covering her mouth with her hand.
“I…I was in love,” Ella said, defensively.
“With the valet?”
“It’s different in America.”
“Not that different.” Lady Julia sat on the bed. “Well, at least it explains why your fiancé left you. That’s despicable.”
Ella was pretty sure she wasn’t referring to the fact that her fiancé had left her high and dry.
“Thank you for helping me,” Ella said. She hoped Lady Julia still intended to help her after hearing her sad tale. Clearly there was a reason she plucked Ella out of the contretemps with the doorman “If there is anything I can do in the way of thanks…”
Lady Julia jumped up from the bed where she was sitting and stepped across the room to Ella. She grabbed Ella’s arms and looked into her eyes. “There is,” she said earnestly. “Particularly now that I see that my initial observation is correct.”
Ella frowned at her.
“It is obvious,” continued Lady Julia, “that you are a ruined woman with nothing more to lose.”
“Right,” Ella said. She pulled the front of her wet blouse away from her skin. Surely a couple of dry towels would soon be in the offing? “So what can I help you with…Lady Julia?”
Julia Digby took a step back from Ella and placed her hands on her hips.
“I need you to help me get rid of my husband,” she said grimly.
Dothan, Alabama 2013
No phone call had come.
While Rowan thought it highly unlikely that Ella’s dad would have heard from the authorities before Rowan did, he called him just to be sure. Sure enough, her old man was as batty as ever.
“What do you mean she didn’t come back from Egypt? Where is she?”
“Presumably still in Egypt.”
“But you’re not sure?”
“Her phone ran out of juice and she wasn’t able to call.”
“So are you expecting a letter?”
Yeah, Rowan was pretty sure he was never going to like this guy.
“Well, sir,” he said, “I will call you as soon as I hear from her.”
“Unless I hear from her first,” her father said. “In which case, I’ll have her call you.”
Awesome.
The next phone call was going to be if possible even more uncomfortable, which is why Rowan decided to wait a day before calling his mother. As he went about the next day turning off the mail, clearing out the refrigerator, and setting up his emergency leave from his department, he realized he was doing his best to act and plan without conscious thought. Thinking about what might have happened or what could still be happening didn’t seem to help right now.
In his experience, there were times when anticipating the result of an enterprise was actually counterproductive to achieving the desired result. That’s one thing he had learned in eight years of guarding and transporting Federal witnesses and suspects. You needed to plan but not go so far ahead that you were adversely affected by twists not originally in the game plan.
He looked around their apartment and thought how quiet it always was, even when the two of them lived there. Ella spent most of her time on the computer and he mostly watched television with the volume on low.
He picked up the kitchen phone. His mother answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Mom,” he said.
“Darling, I’ve been sitting here thinking of you,” she said. “How are you? Have you heard from her yet?”
“No. It looks like I’m going to have to go on over there and see what happened.”
“What? You’re going to Egypt? Don’t be ridiculous, Rowan. That’s crazy! Did you talk to her father?”
“He hasn’t heard from her, Mom.”
“Well, that’s just another blatant example of her thoughtlessness. Not to even tell her poor father!”
“Unless, of course, she’s lying hurt and unidentified in some foreign hospital.”
“You said she had her identification on her…”
“If she was assaulted, her identification would have been stolen along with her purse.”
“You’ve created a fantastic scenario, Rowan! It’s like you’ve been watching too many NCIS episodes or something.”
“You’re right, Mom. I don’t have any idea why she didn’t come back.”
“Exactly.”
“So I gotta go find her.”
“This is just manipulation, Rowan, can’t you see that?” His mother’s voice was becoming shrill. “She’s moving herself to the center of attention, that’s all this is.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so, Mom,” Rowan said tiredly. “I just wanted you to know what I was doing. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“And there’s nothing I can do to change your mind? I heard on the news that there are more protests going on in Cairo.”
“I’ll be careful. Love you, Mom. Hug Dad for me.”
Rowan hung up feeling like there was a hundred pound weight hung around his neck. He picked up his overnight bag and walked to the front door. The phone started to ring and he glanced at the screen before letting it go to voice mail.
He took one last look around before leaving and found himself thinking: If I come back alone, I’ll have lost her for good. He turned out the lights, locked the dead bolt and headed for the car. His flight was out of Birmingham in three hours time.
As he drove away he couldn’t help but think what a good thing it was they never got a dog.
Chapter Eight
Cairo 1922
Lady Julia Digby shook out a long silk dress with a drop-waist that came to just above Ella’s knees. Julia frowned and picked up the telephone to call the hotel concierge and have a seamstress sent up.
Damn, Ella thought. The hotel has seamstresses on call? She was sitting on the room’s huge double bed in one of Julia’s silk dressing gowns and watched her new friend create a new identity for Ella. Until she could figure out how to find either the crack behind the bakery or some other way to get back to 2013, Ella was grateful for clothes, shelter and food. It seemed little enough if she had to pretend to be someone Lady Digby needed her to be.
Ella did, of course, draw the line at contract killing.
“I don’t mean murder him, of course,” Julia had said. “But I’ve made a frightful mistake marrying him. Papa said I had but you know how it is to be the youngest child. Once you’ve had your way for twenty years, it’s hard to quit having it.”
“Why did you marry him?” Ella asked. Her stomach had been steadily growling for an hour and she hoped Julia was about to order room service or say it was time to go down to the dining room.
“I married him,” Julia said, as if speaking to a simpleton, “because he was Lord Carnarvon’s best friend—or so he said—and because he was part of Howard Carter’s party. Oh, please, Miss Stevens, you can’t be so ignorant as to not know about the dig at the Valley of the Kings?”
Ella shrugged. “Sorry,” she said. “Guess I was busy doing other things.”
“He made it sound so romantic. Egypt! Buried treasure! Pyramids! And I was so dying for some adventure.”
“Do you love him?” Ella couldn’t imagine Julia could possibly love him if she was scheming to find a way to get rid of him.
“I thought I did. But he changed after the wedding. Or, more precisely, after we arrived in Egypt.”
Ella looked around the room. “When is he
due back?”
Julia looked at her with confusion and then shook her head. “We don’t share a room, if that’s what you’re implying,” she said.
“Do married people not do that in your…er, your world?” Ella was open to believing just about anything at this point.
“Common folk may do. My kind of people are civilized enough to have their own rooms. Heavens, I can’t imagine!”
“So do you, er, I mean, have you at least, you know, consummated it?”
“Miss Stevens, really. To even ask such a thing! That is so coarse and lowbrow. And none of your business.”
“Sorry. I apologize.” There was an awkward pause.
“We have not yet had…relations,” Julia said. “There hasn’t really been an opportunity. Thank God.”
“But eventually,” Ella said. “That’s probably somewhere in his plans, don’t you imagine?”
Julia looked at her with such alarm and fear that Ella couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t something else going on beyond a virgin’s jitters.
“Anyway,” Julia said, as she picked up a square of netting from the bed where she had tossed it a few minutes ago in search of a pair of gloves for Ella. “You’ll meet him and see for yourself tonight. Perhaps you will like him for yourself.”
“I’m taken,” Ella said.
Julia made a face. “Your fiancé back in America?” she said sarcastically.
Hmmm. She had a point. Ella probably couldn’t use Rowan as an excuse for anything in this timeline. In any case, the brief thought of him made her bottom lip tremble a little.
“Are you all right, Miss Stevens? You look so sad all of a sudden.”
“I’m okay,” Ella said. She forced herself to push thoughts of Rowan away. She would see him again. She reminded herself that she was only two taxi rides and one flight away from being right back there on the couch with him in Dothan, watching the Military Channel or some boring documentary on how the Pharaohs built the stupid pyramids. Right now, that sounded absolutely wonderful. She would find the crack in the wall tomorrow morning after she’d rested and had a decent meal.
And oh what a great story this would all make later.
The Shepheard Hotel’s main staircase fanned out to a wide base in the famous lobby. Thickly carpeted in a royal blue to mirror the celestial ceiling of gold-studded starry heavens, the staircase had ornate gold-plated railings decorated with intricate finials. When Ella stood at the landing before the final dramatic descent, her arm looped in Lady Julia’s, she realized why such effort had gone into creating the commanding staircase. The sheer drama of such an entrance was undeniable. Every face looked up, every eye admired. “Remember,” Julia had told her, “Don’t smile. Americans are always too eager to be pleased with themselves.”
Got it, Ella thought, as she slowly walked down the staircase. No smiling. I am but a thing of beauty to be admired and lusted after from afar. She caught the eye of a handsome young man in a British uniform who was watching her descend. For one mad moment she imagined a knife and fork in each hand and a napkin tied around his neck as he hungrily devoured the vision of her. I think this age has the whole woman-on-a-pedestal thing down, she thought as she stood a little straighter and pushed her chest out a little more. And I like it.
With the help of the hotel’s seamstress and Julia commandeering the process every step of the way, Ella had been outfitted in a gown that hugged her curves and draped off them in what even she could see was suggestive yet demure. This is an art that has, unfortunately, not survived the decades, she thought sadly. Right now, she would give absolutely anything if Rowan could see her in this dress.
When they entered the hotel dining room, Ella gasped at the opulence. Designed to look like the inside of an Arabian temple, the room was lined with two dozen hand-painted pillars. They supported, not the ceiling, but the recessed rim of the ceiling which was the largest skylight Ella had ever seen. Every square inch of the skylight had been etched with swirls and scrolls that flickered and danced with the movement of the light from twin gigantic crystal chandeliers that illuminated the entire room with electric light.
Every head turned as they passed. Julia’s maid had dressed Ella’s hair for the evening. She was thankful that her hair had grown enough from her Heidelberg adventure—where she had found it necessary to crop it short to pass for a boy—to be twisted into the chignon she now wore. Two long glittering needles topped with semi-precious stones held the coif in place. As they approached their table, the two men seated there tossed down their napkins and stood up.
I could totally get used to this, Ella found herself thinking. She glanced at Julia to see if it was okay to smile yet but she found her new friend looking stern and wooden.
“Good evening, my dear,” said one of the men as he took Julia by the elbow. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek but his eyes locked with Ella’s.
So this was Viscount Digby. Ella pretty much disliked him on sight. He was thin with a pale complexion and strawberry blond hair combed in greasy waves. His nose was pronounced and strong with a nearly invisible blond mustache beneath it and his lips were thin and mean. He looked at Ella like he wanted to take a very large, meaty bite out of her.
“Edward, this is Miss Stevens.”
Viscount Digby bowed and held out his hand to Ella. She reached out to shake it and was surprised when he brought her hand to his mustachied lips and kissed it. Feeling the skin under her long gloves crawl, she forced herself not to snatch her hand away.
“Charmed,” he said, his eyes dropped to the bodice of Ella’s gown.
Hey, bub, my eyes are up here, Ella thought, finally pulling her hand back. “Pleased to meet you,” she murmured.
“And Mr. Howard Carter,” Lady Julia said. She turned from her husband and Ella to shake hands with a tall, middle aged man standing patiently at the table.
“Good evening, Lady Julia,” he said. “Very pleased to meet you Miss Stevens.”
Julia seated herself, which cued Ella to do the same. The men sat down.
“Miss Stevens is an American,” Julia said, “who has responded to my father’s advertisement for a traveling companion for me.”
Ella was in the process of tugging off her gloves when Julia spoke and she was sure her reaction was as dramatic as a vaudevillian double take.
I did what?
“Oh, very good, Miss Stevens,” Digby said. “So you will be accompanying us to the dig site?”
Ella stared at Digby in astonishment.
Julia deftly removed her own gloves in a single movement. “Oh, yes, she’s very excited to be a part of it all,” she said. “She has read all about your work, Mr. Carter, and is an Egyptian aficionado. Isn’t that true, Miss Stevens?’
Ella looked at Julia and tried not to register on her face the solid nudge Julia gave her shin under the table. “Er, yes,” she said. “Very excited.” She gave Julia a return nudge with her foot and hoped it would be interpreted correctly as what the hell?!
“The Americans, especially, seem to love all the excitement happening in archaeological circles in Egypt today,” Digby said. “Especially at KV62.” He gave a nod in Carter’s direction but Carter merely signaled for the waiter to fill the ladies’ wine glasses.
“Miss Stevens has read all about Lord Carnarvon’s interest in the Valley of the Kings,” Julia continued, ignoring Ella’s angry glare. “I’m sure she will be thrilled to meet him. I mentioned to you, did I not, Miss Stevens, that my husband is good friends with his lordship?”
“Yes,” Ella said. She glanced at Digby who was doing a good impersonation of a slathering dog in front of a bone as he stared at her breasts. “Very impressive,” she said.
“Mr. Carter is only briefly in Cairo,” Julia said, “to meet with us and escort us to the dig site across from Luxor. I just love saying dig site. I can’t thank you enough, sir.”
Carter picked up the menu and frowned briefly at Julia.
“Not at all, Lady Digb
y,” Carter said. “It is my honor.”
“Lord Carnarvon gave us entrée, you see,” Julia said to Ella. “As I am sure you know, his lordship, who is presently in London, has the license for the dig and is convinced that we shall find the tomb of King Tutankhamun there. Oh, my, did you hear what I just said? I said ‘we.’ It appears I too am caught up in the archaeological fervor. I am as bad as the Americans.”
With that comment and one final, determined nudge against Ella’s lightly slippered foot, Julia steered the conversation away from Ella’s credentials or background and firmly into the realm of subjects of unfailing interest to the men: themselves.
Later that night, as they prepared for bed, Ella confronted her.
“I can’t go, you know,” she said. “Whatever you’ve got planned for us doing away with your husband—”
“Shhhhh!” Julia said, looking over her shoulder. “My maid is still in attendance.”
“Okay, well I’m sure it’s okay for her to hear this. I am not going with you tomorrow. I have an important engagement.”
“With whom, pray tell? The disgraced valet? You have no such engagement.”
“As it happens, I do, and while I’m grateful forever for your help today, I need to be on my way tomorrow.”
Julia jumped on the bed next to Julia, her dressing gown flowing around her. “It’s only for two weeks. You have nothing else to do and it would be a wonderful adventure. One you will tell your grandchildren about. Think of it, Miss Stevens. To be present when they find the tomb of King Tutankhamun!”
“It sounds swell, really,” Ella said. “And as much as I’d love to, I have to get back—”
“Miss Stevens, you must come. You saw him! Surely, you can’t expect me to spend two weeks with him in a desert tent.”
“Look, you’ve got your maid there—”
“Alice isn’t coming.” Julia made a face as if astounded anyone could be so ignorant. “I am not bringing a lady’s maid to the dig site. Really, Miss Stevens, you are so funny.”
“Okay, well, you aren’t bringing me either, Julia, er, Lady Julia. I’m sorry, I can’t do it.”
Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) Page 7