Page 13 of A Hint of Scandal

Chapter Seven

Before the call to go into supper came, Max had rather neatly managed to steer his mother towards one of her old beaux, the widowed Duke of Dunbar, a handsome, white-haired, lion of a man he’d heard her mention more than a few times in passing. How handy it had been to have come across him standing all alone, and with a somewhat forlorn expression on his face. This had been vanquished the moment he’d set eyes on Lady Westbury, and Max hadn’t felt in the least bit guilty at abandoning her to the elderly gentleman’s attentions. She even seemed quite flattered by them.

Having returned to check with Maria that Arabella was to be escorted into supper by the polite young man she was at present dancing the cotillion with, and that Maria was to go in with one of her oldest friends and had no need of his chaperonage, he’d beaten a hasty retreat onto the terrace.

With the music of the cotillion sending him on his way, he crossed the terrace and headed down into the garden, content in the knowledge that no one else was likely to resort to the summerhouse even for a romantic tryst, as it was still so chilly. At least there was as yet no fog hanging in the air. The bane of London nights.

He’d just been settling himself for some quiet reflection, when a movement outside on the path had caught his eye, and the door swung open to allow entry to the figure of a woman. By her silhouette, which showed her as tall for her sex but slender and graceful, he concluded that she must be young. She closed the door behind her with decided firmness and sat down on the bench beside it, the sound of her smoothing her gown carrying through the night air. That she couldn’t see him had been obvious.

Whatever was she doing here when she should be inside, on the arm of some beau? Or, heaven forbid, had she arranged a tryst here with her lover? Should he show himself before something that would lead to acute embarrassment on all sides occur?

He’d never for a moment suspected she would turn out to be the same rather plain young woman who’d spilt her lemonade down his waistcoat. The young woman he’d been wondering about ever since that moment, for a reason he couldn’t fathom. And now, here she was, pouring out her dearest wish to him as though they were old friends, perhaps made the more willing to confide in him because they were partly obscured from one another by the darkness. And her dearest wish had turned out to be something he would never have guessed. She wanted, above all things, to travel to Egypt and see the remains of that ancient civilization.

And the strangest thing of all was that this was something he could talk to her about, because he’d been there himself.

“It is infernally hot there,” he said, by way of a starter. “Unlike this summerhouse. Too hot for most young ladies.”

She chuckled. “I imagined it would be. You will find, Captain, that I have done my homework. I have studied many books on the subject and also pored over maps to spot out the places I would like to see. If, one day, I’m lucky enough to go there, which sadly seems unlikely.”

“I was there myself, last year.”

Her eyes widened and sparkled in the feeble light. “You were? How splendid. You are so lucky to have visited. I envy you.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “It was not under the most ideal of circumstances, I can assure you. I couldn’t recommend that you should hope to have the same experience as I had. Although I did manage to return with one or two mementoes for my brother, who is writing a book about Egyptian antiquities.”

“Oh.” Realization must have dawned. “I suppose, now I think about it, that you went there with the army?”

He nodded. “I did. I served until quite recently in the Third Squadron of the 20th Light Dragoons. We were stationed for a short while in Messina, which is in Sicily. The island at the foot of the Italian Peninsula.”

She nodded. “I know where Messina is.” Her tone had turned a little sharp as though offended by his assumption that she lacked geographical knowledge. This was a girl who seemed to pride herself in her learning. Unlike Arabella.

He ignored the rebuke in her tone. “Under Major-General Mackenzie-Fraser, we embarked as part of a six thousand man expedition, plus us, the cavalry, of course. But our cavalry only numbered seventy-four men and four officers, so we were but a small part of the force involved. I was a mere lieutenant back then, serving under Captain Delaney, our commanding officer.”

“Where in Egypt did you land?” Her eyes had lit up. Did he have her enthralled already? The feeling was heady. To have someone, a young lady in particular, even if she was plain, hanging on his words when he spoke of his army service was a new sensation. Not that he’d ever spoken of it much before. It was a past he’d always steered clear of bringing up, so strong was his longing to be able to return to it.

“Alexandria, but with only fourteen of our thirty-three ships at first. I remember it was the sixteenth of March. We had a rough sea, and it was hard to get ashore, but we got a thousand men disembarked, plus us Dragoons, and we set to and assaulted the city, which was being held by three hundred Turks. When the missing ships turned up, and we were up to full numbers, the Turks capitulated and we occupied the city.”

Somehow, with her in the quiet privacy of the dark summerhouse, it felt quite natural to be recounting his lost days in the 20th. He’d put them out of his mind for so long now it felt almost a relief to be able to talk about them. He had a sudden vision of the cloudless blue skies burning down on the flat delta land of the River Nile, and of the endless, green, irrigated fields stretching away towards the far horizon.

Her next question brought him back to the chilly present. “What did you bring back for your brother?”

He shrugged. “Small things only, that were easy to carry with me. I had to buy them from street vendors as I had no opportunity to search for them myself. He was particularly pleased with the blue glazed shabti that would once have been in a tomb, and the scarabs, as well as some old papyrus covered in hieroglyphs. Unreadable, of course, but he was pleased with his gifts. The locals make money from digging up old tombs and the like and selling off the contents to any who ask.”

She nodded. “What was it like? I mean, what was it really like? Being there. Seeing the land. The remains of that civilization.” She was leaning forwards now, as though his words held real interest for her, and the sensation that he liked her interest settled over him like a warm blanket. Hard to imagine any of the other young ladies present tonight as being so enthralled.

“Hot. Hot as I imagine hell to be. The sea was azure blue, and the sky matched it. The city walls shone bright enough to dazzle the eye, as did the walls of the houses. Heat rose up in visible waves from the ground, making the air shimmer, despite the earliness of the season. Summer lasts forever in Egypt.”

She frowned. “I have read it is so. But the natives all wear loose clothes the better to keep themselves cool, do they not?”

He smiled again, and nodded. “They do indeed. It might not have been so bad for us had we imitated them, but we wore our British uniforms as a badge of pride.” How good it would have been to have donned the flowing robes of an Egyptian instead of the stifling wool of his own cavalry uniform.

“And you saw action?”

“I did. But very little at first. As I said, the Turks surrendered Alexandria to us the moment our other ships arrived and they knew themselves outnumbered. We were inside the city for a good while.”

She gave a little sigh. “What was it like? What was Alexandria itself like? I’ve read so much about it. Did you attempt to discover the location of Alexander the Great’s lost tomb? See where the Pharos stood? Visit Ptolemy’s Serapium?”

She seemed remarkably well-informed on the sights of Alexandria. “I saw the remains of the Serapium. There are wonders there, on every street, that I don’t have the words to do justice to. But the Pharos is long gone, tipped over into the sea, I was told. And as for Alexander’s tomb—I believe none alive know its exact whereabouts, although many seek it.”