Page 156 of A Modest Independence

Tom was important.

She unfastened the clasp of her necklace. It slid from her neck, pooling into her hand in a heap of Venetian gold. Her eyes fixed on it for a moment.

And then, with surprisingly steady fingers, she threaded Tom’s ring onto the chain.

When she’d finished, she once again fastened it round her neck. The ring dropped to fall in the hollow of her bosom, a light but significant weight hidden beneath her bodice.

It was enough for now.

If there was one thing Jenny disliked about Ahmad and Mira’s sartorial creations, it was the unforgiving nature of their silhouettes. A corset cinched within an inch of its life wasn’t at all conducive to riding sidesaddle on a donkey as one trotted across the Egyptian desert.

She’d said as much to Ahmad this morning after Mira had helped her into her new riding habit.

In answer, Ahmad had turned Jenny toward the pier glass in her room. “Look at yourself,” he’d commanded.

She’d looked. And she’d continued looking for a good long while.

Jenny slowed her donkey to a walk, squinting her eyes against the blazing sun. She didn’t think herself a vain woman, but when wearing the riding costume Ahmad designed for her, she wasn’t far from believing herself the most fashionable—and beautiful—woman in existence.

“Nearly two months in Egypt and you haven’t seen the pyramids?” Mrs. Clancy brought her donkey alongside Jenny’s. “I can’t understand it.”

Jenny smiled. Mrs. Clancy was one of her closest friends in Cairo. A half-Egyptian lady married to a retired British soldier, she lived in the house next door and from the first had taken Jenny under her wing. “I’ve seen them, of course,” Jenny said. The pyramids were visible from several places in the city. “But I haven’t visited them.”

“Why ever not?”

“There’s been no time.”

“You spend too many hours at that school.”

Jenny shrugged a shoulder. “I enjoy the company of the children.”

“If you fancy children, you must have some of your own.” Mrs. Clancy’s donkey pranced beneath her. “But first we must find you a husband.”

Jenny’s smile faded. All her married women friends in Cairo were keen to play matchmaker. “No, thank you. I’m quite content on my own.”

“Hmm.” Mrs. Clancy didn’t look convinced.

Ahead, Mr. Clancy waved his arm back and forth to get their attention. The guide they’d hired for the day to take them to Giza rode along at his side. The remaining servants trailed behind Jenny and Mrs. Clancy.

The pyramids were only ten miles from Cairo. To reach them, they and their donkeys had had to cross the Nile by ferryboat—a journey of half an hour. Six miles more, trotting through small villages and across several ploughed fields, brought them to the desert. There, a horde of Bedouins accosted them, offering their services as guides and attendants.

Their own guide hired several of them to accompany them the remaining two miles to the pyramids.

“Shall we gallop?” Mrs. Clancy didn’t wait for Jenny’s answer before urging her donkey forward.

Jenny gave her own donkey its head. The rotund little fellow stretched out his neck, his hooves pounding over the sand.

Their party finally stopped in the shadow of the Sphinx. Jenny saw it up close for the first time, looming ahead, more magnificent than anything she’d ever beheld. A servant appeared at her side to assist her down from her donkey. She stood on the sand, gazing upward in awe at the enormous limestone statue, as the Clancys, their servants, and the hired Bedouins milled about her.

After a long moment, she fumbled for her reticule, withdrawing her battered Bradshaw’s. She flipped through the dog-eared pages. Marseilles, Malta, Alexandria, and Suez. Calcutta, Allahabad, Delhi, and Jhansi. And in the back, the page folded carefully, the section on Darjeeling. Everywhere she’d visited with Tom on her grand adventure. Each city marked with little notes made in smudged ink.

Elephant, she’d written on the Allahabad page. And on the page about Darjeeling: the hill of mist and fog.

Jenny numbly turned to the section on the pyramids of Giza, her eyes drifting over the paragraph on the Sphinx, but her heart was no longer in it.

Perhaps this was why she hadn’t been able to bring herself to visit any monuments since her arrival in Cairo. She’d stayed within the bounds of the city, her activities far more domestic than adventurous.

Because what were adventures without Tom?