Must Have Been The Moonlight Page 7

  Chapter 5

  As was her habit since her return to Cairo, Brianna rode out of the stables before the sun crested the lake. She wore her usual tanned boots and split skirt, her shirt opened at the throat. The air cooled her skin.

  Her brother’s home overlooked the most beautiful garden this side of the Nile. Beyond the stone walls of his residency, morning mist rose above the lake, one of many throughout the city. All around her, in the tall mimosa trees and sycamores, the world had come to life, and as Brianna left the grounds, birdsong greeted her. Here there was no sense of being shut in, and Brianna loved her freedom.

  Western women seldom rode where she went. Though her eyes didn’t miss the squalor beneath the ancient magnificence, she loved the city with its eastern flavor and strange language. Cairo appealed to her in a way her own culture with its mode of sterility did not. Maybe that’s why she enjoyed photography as much as she did. She had the ability to capture life in its rawest form.

  Brianna’s Arab mare clip-clopped along the narrow stone streets as she rode this morning to the hot baths. By the time she and her groom returned to the house, the sun had already climbed past the horizon. She doffed the last of her dingy clothes and, slipping her arms into her wrapper, walked outside her bedroom to stand against the granite balustrade that overlooked the lake.

  The entire house smelled overwhelmingly of roses and heliotrope since her return, as she’d been deluged with flowers, her room awash in floral tributes from civil servants and military personnel she’d met at the consulate before leaving Cairo with Alex. Cairo’s colorful social world was a young woman’s dream. But she’d found herself restless and bored by what she’d once found fascinating among the men she met at the consulate.

  She had thought of little else but Major Fallon since she’d awakened after the simoon and found him gone. She had discovered through some digging that he worked at the ministry.

  Behind her, she heard her bedroom door open and listened to the soft pad of footsteps approach. She turned to see her maid. “Mum, will ye be wantin’ breakfast up here or in the dining room?” Except for her warm brown eyes, everything about Gracie was as old as the earth. She wore a net over ash curls, a pale apron over a gray dress. She’d looked old when Brianna was three, and hadn’t seemed to age a year since.

  “I’ll dine downstairs, Gracie.”

  “Ye should not be getting out of bed at such early hours, mum. It’s been barely two weeks since your return. You’ve not gained back the weight you lost.”

  Brianna leaned her head against the mass of a flowering creeper that clothed one of the marble pillars in scented lilac. “And you worry overmuch.” She walked back into her room. “I have work to do today.”

  “Will ye be going to the consulate with your brother?” Gracie set out her gown.

  “Christopher told me to stay home.” Brianna slipped out of her wrapper and stood in her chemise and corset. “He said Major Fallon was facing a disciplinary hearing today.”

  According to the charges launched against him, he’d put a gun to the head of a royal family member and tried to kill him. Brianna wasn’t surprised that Major Fallon was capable of inciting an international incident, but she’d also gathered from Christopher’s comments that Sheikh Omar was a brutal man.

  “Lift your arms, mum.” Gracie slid a petticoat over Brianna’s head, followed by her gown. “The major has taken over Captain Pritchards’s duties at the ministry, which means he’ll be staying in Cairo.”

  Brianna dropped quietly onto the pillowed bench in front of her looking glass. “Do you know that he will be staying for a fact?”

  Her maid picked up a brush. “It helps that I share tea every morning with Miss Amelia. She is Lady Bess’s parlor maid, and her bein’ married to the consul general himself. Lady Bess is hoping to pair one of her daughters with Major Fallon for the upcoming picnic.”

  Rolling her eyes, Brianna adjusted the décolletage on her bodice. Servants had an intelligen network that rivaled the British government. “Lady Bess’s daughter isn’t even twenty. He won’t do it.”

  Gracie brushed out Brianna’s thick hair. “Most of us think he won’t do it for other reasons. It’s all very hush-hush in the servants’ ranks at the consulate. But he spends much of his time in the old quarter.”

  Gracie twisted Brianna’s thick hair into a French roll.

  Brianna lifted her gaze to the mirror. The peacock blue bodice accentuated her eyes. She lacked no illusions about her beauty. Only that she had not been as worldly as she thought she was.

  A hairpin tumbled to the floor. Brianna twisted around on the bench and, taking the brush from Gracie, turned her hands over in hers. Gracie’s once beautiful hands had gone arthritic years ago and looked swollen.

  “Gracie, what are you doing? I don’t expect you to be up at dawn to tend to me every day. I can brush out my own hair.”

  Gracie snatched away her hands and retrieved the brush. “You don’t be worryin’ none about me. I’ve been tendin’ to ye since you were a wee brat in swaddlin’. I’ll be tendin’ to your own babes one day.”

  “Very well, Gracie.” Brianna turned to face the looking glass. “But may we please change the subject?”

  “I’m sorry, dear. But it’s truly hard not to partake in the talk, when Major Fallon is all that is the topic these days since he brought you and her ladyship out of the desert alive.”

  Indeed, the gossip mill had run on all cogs until Brianna was sick to death of the subject.

  After Gracie finished with her toilette, Brianna gathered her collection of photographs from her darkroom. She went downstairs to the dining room, where the light was best this time of the day. She laid each photograph on the dining room table. Yesterday, she’d started cataloging and labeling her work for the book she and Alex were working on—especially since her sister-in-law had been so ill since their return. To Brianna’s dismay, she’d discovered that half of her older photographs were ruined beyond repair.

  She’d not anticipated what heat did to fragile items that were not properly stored. Added to the photographs she’d lost in the attack, she was acutely aware that she did not have enough for Alex’s documentation.

  Brianna had not told Alex the news yet.

  And had decided that she wouldn’t. She’d just fix the problem.

  Alex deserved better than her failure. In a profession wrought with peer jealousy, no one labored harder for so little recognition than her sister-in-law did. She deserved to win a professional accolade every now and then, and this book had been a professional coup. For her as well.

  Working on the book had given her legitimacy in a career that had caused her nothing but social castigation since the moment she’d discovered soup kitchens and suffrage. But life had a way of veering left when least expected, then crashing into a wall.

  Since her return to Cairo, Brianna sought only to regain her place in her life. She visited the suks and resumed teaching twice a week at the American mission. She’d begun to take photographs again. Nothing had changed, yet everything looked different. Not even Stephan had trespassed in the places that Major Fallon had gone in her thoughts.

  It wasn’t enough that in a moment of vulnerability she’d kissed him in open-mouthed abandon. No, his presence had been indelibly printed into her head like some photographic masterpiece. She fantasized about him almost every night, imagining what it would be like to have his hands all over her the way he’d touched her that day beneath the blanket. The implied promise of his action rooted deep in her imagination until it began to spill over into her sleep, and she knew that neither hard work nor a busy schedule would cure her deep down restlessness.

  The closest she’d ever come to wanting an affair with any man had been with her former betrothed. She’d been in love with him, after all. But Stephan was a true gentleman to the core of his principled being. He’d been scandalized at the idea of “ruining” her.

  On the other hand, Major Fallon had no moral reti
cence against ruining her. He probably figured she deserved it for throwing herself at him. But then, she wasn’t attracted to him because he was a gentleman, and she didn’t care if he considered her less than a lady.

  What she had in her mind certainly didn’t make her one.

  “Coffee, Sitt Donally?”

  Startling her out of her revelry, Abdul bowed beside her. “Your favorite, Sitt.”

  Steam rose from the warm liquid, a contrast to the chill in the air. “Please.” Smiling up at him, she accepted her cup.

  The special ground drink was her favorite beverage this time of year. Water never touched a grain of this special blend; instead, milk was served boiling over the beans. Brianna called it her white-coffee drink; a beverage she could only appreciate before the weather grew hot again.

  “We have not seen much of you,” he said. “You have been out of the house before dawn every morning. I think no one can keep up with you.”

  Another white-clad servant entered, bearing a breakfast tray set for one. “Is my brother not attending his meal? I didn’t think he had to be at the consulate until later.”

  “He left an hour ago. Her ladyship is still abed. Would you care to join her this morning?”

  “How is she feeling?”

  Abdul shook his head. “Very poorly, Sitt.”

  “How is my brother faring through all of this?”

  Abdul shook his head again. “I think that he does not entirely understand…the heightened sensitivity that accompanies one’s delicate state. It is a balance of patience and fortitude, Sitt.”

  Brianna laughed at Abdul’s apt description, glad that she was living on the other side of the sprawling marble residence. She would rather chew glass than have a baby. She shivered at the thought. “Let her sleep, Abdul. I have work to do this afternoon. It’s already past ten.”

  With the flick of his wrist, Abdul motioned the servant to lay out her breakfast. “I have ordered the cooks to prepare your favorite meal today. As you call it, Eggs Benedict.”

  “Truly?” Brianna smiled up at him. “I think that you are trying to fatten me up, Abdul.”

  “You are gaining your weight back most nicely,” he said, and returned to take his place at the end of the table.

  Brianna sipped her coffee. The dining room was open to the garden, and she glanced over her cup as a burst of cool fragrant air billowed the sheer draperies. The breeze stirred her photographs.

  “Abdul?” She looked at him over her cup. “Did my brother say what time the hearing at the consulate began?”

  “Perhaps you will have better luck seeing the Fallon effendi at the picnic next week, Sitt.”

  Brianna set down her cup with a clink. “Am I so transparent?”

  “Yes, missy.”

  Abdul continued to stand in the doorway with his hands clasped behind him like a sentinel carved from salt. Brianna fidgeted with her napkin. “You’ve lived here longer than I have,” she said after a moment. “Are hearings of this nature common?”

  “This is not the first hearing for Major Fallon, if that is what you are asking. I believe this will be his fourth in three years.”

  “Fourth? Is he that unpopular?”

  “Among a certain sect, I would say that he is.”

  A servant entered from the opposite doorway. “You have a visitor, Sitt.” He bowed over her with a silver tray. “A gentleman.”

  Turning the card in her hand, she read the inscription. “Charles Cross,” she said.

  He was the short golden Adonis who worked for Alex at the museum. Brianna saw him on a regular basis, but he’d rarely come to the house. Men just didn’t venture into the hallowed halls of her brother’s sanctum, especially since Christopher had a way of intimidating the most stalwart of her suitors. “He must be here to see Lady Alexandra.”

  Mr. Cross stood in the entryway. “Miss Donally.” His face lit up when he saw her. “I ask that you forgive my impertinence at this hour—”

  “I’m not going to send you away.” She approached him. “But I’m afraid her ladyship still isn’t receiving visitors. I’ll take the flowers to her. Is this call about something at the museum?”

  “I came to see you, Miss Donally.” His awkward gaze touched two vases of roses and an arrangement of lilies sitting on a table beside the door. “These flowers are yours.”

  “Oh.” She accepted the flowers, and smiled warmly. “Thank you. They’re beautiful.”

  Charles Cross was one of those colorless English gentlemen that she liked wholeheartedly on principle. He was not part of the insular sect. He wore spectacles and behaved with the bookish intensity of one who’d made neatness and subservience a virtue. She had no idea why, of all the women in Cairo to choose from, he liked her. She failed neatness and was the least subservient person alive.

  Maybe she’d become his friend because he’d reminded her of Stephan. Plus she generally had a soft heart for outcasts. But she’d also seen him feed the stray cats out back of the museum. She liked him for that alone. “Have you eaten?” she inquired.

  The invitation seemed to relax him. “I thought perhaps we could take a ride in the park and talk about the book you’re working on. I’ve found the research documents that you asked me for yesterday. Maybe we could have tea at the consulate and talk…perhaps.”

  “Perfect!” Her work forgotten, Brianna held the spray of flowers to her nose. “I’ll join you.”

  Without a word to the uniformed guard who stood outside the consulate chambers, Michael stopped at the desk to retrieve his pith helmet. Sheikh Omar stood with his assemblage of bodyguards, talking to the undersecretary, his dark eyes triumphant as they slid over Michael.

  His boots making a clip-clip sound on the polished wooden floor didn’t slow as Michael passed the flamboyant retinue.

  He wasn’t surprised that Omar had filed the grievance against him. They’d danced these steps before. The sheikh could rot as far as he was concerned. His job didn’t rest on his popularity with the European consortium that seemed to have descended on Cairo in the last decade, especially since the opening of the Suez Canal last year. The British did not rule Egypt. Not yet, anyway.

  Michael worked for the khedive in a diplomatic exchange, and ultimately the foreign secretary’s office in London. In mutual government cooperation between the two respective countries, and because the khedive was interested in securing British bank money, Michael’s job had come about as Egypt attempted to push out of the dark ages. Banishing slavery and seeking to end the lucrative hashish trade had been the first sign of the khedive’s goodwill. The push, Michael soon realized, was more show than any serious desire to end either practice. He had become disillusioned with the fight. Slavery was too ingrained in the culture. Over the past year, his job had turned into one of eternal policeman as one caravan after another was plundered. His only goal now was to find those responsible for Captain Pritchards’s murder, for in doing that he knew he would also find the men responsible for the murders of countless others.

  His white pith helmet tucked beneath his arm, Michael took the stairs. The consulate was crowded, as usual. He slowed and finally came to a halt. The current Public Works minister was awaiting his descent. Standing with his elbow on the newel post, Sir Christopher Donally wore a tailored white linen suit and a loosely knotted green tie.

  Michael let no man fight his battles. But he recognized what Donally was doing for him by being here today.

  “Sheikh Omar and his bodyguards went upstairs a few moments ago.” Donally’s gaze lifted to the landing. “But then, there were only four of them. So I thought I’d give the situation another five minutes.”

  “You left your military calling too soon.”

  “I heeded my calling,” Donally replied. “I’m finished.”

  “The Crimean, Tangier, India. You were seriously wounded in ’fifty-eight.”

  “You’ve investigated me.” Donally didn’t seem too pleased.

  Michael’s mouth turned up at
one corner. “I’ve done my best.”

  “Would you care for a drink?”

  They walked into a room off the parlor. In the corner, two men in uniform lounged over a game of chess. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovered in the room, and Michael regretted that he had not brought along his tin of peppermints.

  Donally took coffee from the servant. Michael waited for brandy.

  “You’ve investigated me. Why?” Donally asked.

  “Prudence.”

  The servant returned with a snifter of brandy.

  “And what did your prudence unearth?”

  Michael peered at Donally over the lip of his glass. Brianna’s brother had earned himself more than a reputation as a hard-nosed administrator. “You’re an excellent civil engineer. Egypt’s illustrious khedive practically created the Department of Public Works just to give you a place in his ministry.”

  Michael hadn’t been surprised that someone with Donally’s aptitude for disagreeing with public policy had managed to antagonize most of his European neighbors, but he had been surprised to learn how revered he was among the local fellaheen. If Michael didn’t know anything else about the man, that alone gave him cause to respect the Irishman. As well as trust him.

  “Your wife is an honorary professor in archeology and is currently authoring a book documenting the Coptic history in Egypt.”

  Donally raised a brow and listened patiently as Michael detailed other aspects of his life.

  “You came to Egypt to escape the clutches of your powerful father-in-law and the scandal that ensued after you married his daughter.”

  “Aristocracy is overrated.”

  Michael braced an elbow on the mantel. A gilded framed mirror hung above the fireplace. “A sentiment your sister shares.”

  “My sister is a fervent devotee to social reform.”

  “It must run in the family.”

  Donally didn’t reply. After a moment, he drank his coffee. “I hope I’ve been removed from your list of suspects?”

  Michael could see the adjoining parlor reflected in the mirror. From someplace in the low din of noise surrounding him, he registered a familiar voice. “You have been.” He turned toward the parlor.