Of all the sounds Ginger had grown up with, the tinkling of a bell now felt the most foreign, the most disruptive. A bell had woken her, an instant reminder of where she was and the role she was to take: lady, heiress, mute. She dug her toes into the soft Oriental rug in her bedroom as she stood from the bed. No scorpions here. Or, at least, unlikely.
She rubbed her arms, blinking in the darkened bedroom. It was before dawn, around the time she was accustomed to waking in the desert, which meant it was probably one of her parents who had rung the bell for a servant. Only her father rose this early. Outside, the call of the muezzin echoed through the streets, beckoning the faithful to prayer.
She grabbed onto the bedpost as she moved forward, her legs sore. A lump rose in her throat. Her body still felt the effects of lovemaking the day before. Noah’s image hovered in her mind. The memory was too fresh. His hands caressing her, their bodies intertwined. She placed a hand over her heart. “Noah …” Her chest tightened.
Could she have been so wrong about him?
Stupid fool. He was a liar, dishonorable.
And she was in love with him.
She rubbed her eyes, the pain bearable once she kept moving. A strange secret, an odd mark of womanhood.
She smoothed her nightgown, running a hand over her bruised hip. Why go to all the trouble with her? Once Noah learned of her connection with Ahmed, he could have been forceful and demanding. If all he wanted were the documents to destroy them, if he cared nothing about her, he wouldn’t have gone to the lengths he had to win her trust or make her feel desired.
Then again, she’d practically thrown herself at him. Even when he’d tried to walk away in the hotel room, she asked him to stay, disrobed herself. She cringed, embarrassed.
She hated his fiancée. Had he returned to her by now? Was he in her arms?
Liar. Liar. She dug her nails into her palms.
All the whispers between them, the sensual caresses. “It was an act,” she murmured, and the pain in her chest nearly overtook her. She rushed toward the window, hoping the morning light would help clear him from her mind. She wouldn’t ring for a servant. No matter what higher standard her family expected, she didn’t need a servant fussing around or dressing her.
As she opened the curtains, soft sunbeams streamed in, swirls of dust dancing in the light. She pushed open the door to the balcony, facing the lush garden of the Whitmans’ Cairo home. Her mother’s roses had bloomed, their fragrance intermingling with the dust and sunbaked clay of the ancient city.
Much as she hadn’t wanted to return, something about Cairo still thrilled her—a pulse of civilization that beat slowly, uninterrupted by the comings and goings of thousands of years. The European quarter offered unique sights and sounds compared to that inhabited by the Egyptian citizens: well-manicured homes with careful landscaping, cleaner streets, less foot traffic. Horses’ hooves clopped as they pulled carriages as opposed to wagons loaded with goods. At this hour, the sweet scent of baking bread drifted from the kitchens. The servants had been awake for a while.
She chose a white silk blouse and a high-waisted blue skirt from her wardrobe, then dressed and sat at her vanity.
The green eyes staring back at her were haunted. She’d gone off to war hoping a new life waited around the corner. And it had. Yet she could never return to who she’d been.
She must be resolute.
Whatever her father’s alliance with Stephen was, he needed to know what sort of man he had in his employ. All of it grew in complexity with Henry’s undefined role. She would give him a piece of her mind. She gripped the silver handle of the hairbrush and tied her hair swiftly with a ribbon, then sat bolt upright.
Why should Henry be sleeping peacefully when he’d abandoned her so recklessly in the desert?
She slipped on a pair of shoes and left the room, doing her best to keep her simmering anger from bubbling over and turning into loud movements.
She hurried down the hallway and stopped in front of Henry’s room. The cool metal of the doorknob helped ground her, and she turned it and tiptoed into the darkness beyond.
A soft snore cut through the silence. Her anger grew as she narrowed her eyes at the bed. How dare he?
She strode to the washbasin and lifted the pitcher of water from beside it. She’d almost been drowned. Coward.
She stopped at the foot of the enormous canopy bed. The future Earl of Braddock. How fortunate for him that his father could arrange for him to sleep comfortably in his four-poster bed while other, better men died on the battlefield. The war had hit the aristocracy with particular ferocity, with the odds of dying in battle being so much higher for the genteel officers. Yet her brother had never set foot in the field. He’d been shielded from it all.
Holding the pitcher with both hands, she tossed water on him. He gasped, scrambling from his covers. His foot caught in the sheets, and he sprawled face-first on the wood floor with a thud.
Ginger set her hands on her hips, fixing a glare on him. Henry looked around wildly in confusion before his eyes settled on hers. He grunted and peeled his cheek off the floor. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”
“A joke?” Ginger took slow, deliberate steps toward him. “I don’t know.” She squatted beside him. “Do you think it’s funny? Maybe I should have held your head under a water basin.” She grabbed him by his hair above the nape of his neck and leaned down toward his ear. “That’s what the Turks did to me, Brother. They caught me as I chased after you. Shot and killed my horse out from under me. Interrogated me. Would have killed me if Major Benson hadn’t followed and rescued me.”
Her fingers gradually tightened on his hair, and he winced. “Ginny, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he managed. “Please let go of my hair.”
She released him and sank onto the cold floor. “You left me, Henry.” She struggled to keep her voice from shaking. “I sent for you because I was desperate and frightened. And when everything got so much worse, you ran away without explanation.”
“It’s unforgivable, I know. I know.” Henry wiped his face with the sheet.
“Why did you do it?” She couldn’t imagine any satisfying explanation.
“I—” Henry sat up and rubbed his eyelids. “I never imagined you’d chase after me.” He squinted at her. “Noah rescued you?”
“Yes.”
“Did the Turks …” Henry searched her face. “Did they touch you?”
Her stomach tightened. That’s what he cared about? She was tempted to break the pitcher over his head. “No, they didn’t defile me. I’m perfectly …” Well, not undefiled. “It doesn’t matter. That’s insignificant. I want to know why. Now. You owe me.”
Henry held her hand. “I owe you that much. And more.” His gaze fixed on the floor. “But I can’t tell you. I’m sorry. Father forbade it. Has he debriefed you?”
She pulled her hand away. “No. There wasn’t time.” She couldn’t mention to him the circumstances under which their father had found her the night before. “And Stephen came back on the train with us last night, so we weren’t at liberty to speak freely.” She stood. “But I don’t accept your apology. I deserve to know exactly why my father and brother appear to be cooperating with a traitor that supports the Maslukha. Because that’s who Stephen is.”
“For God’s sake, Ginny.” Henry sat bolt upright, gripping her forearm. “You must forget everything that Zionist told you. He was the enemy. I don’t know how you had the misfortune of happening upon him, but you must be silent. You don’t understand what could happen if you don’t.”
“Help me understand,” she said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you think I’ve earned the privilege of knowing why my life has been destroyed?”
“Your life? If you persist on the path you’ve started, you’re going to destroy much more than that. Did you even once stop to think about what Angelica’s parents might think if they hear stories about you? You’re threatening my engagement. To the woman I love. I could lose everything.”
Before she could answer, a floorboard creaked in the hall and the door opened. Their father traipsed in, still in his dressing robe. “You two will wake the whole household. What was that crash?”
“I fell out of bed.” Henry glanced at the soaked sheets.
“Really, Henry, if you don’t get ahold of that liquor intake, your mother will join a temperance society.” Her father looked at Ginger. “And what’s your excuse for being here?”
“Oh, now you’re interested in my answers? It didn’t seem so important to you twelve hours ago.” She crossed her arms. “Let the whole household wake. Maybe you’ll both be forced to answer me.”
“Yes, but you wouldn’t want everyone to know every detail, would you? Drawing your mother and sister into this madness is unnecessary.” Her father jutted his chin toward Henry. “Get dressed and meet us in my office downstairs. Virginia, come with me.”
Much as she didn’t want to talk to her father yet, perhaps she should get this over with. She’d hoped Henry would offer her the truth, but he seemed under her father’s thumb more than ever. She filed past her father into the hallway.
She passed the tall dark-framed doorways lining the upstairs hall until she reached the main staircase gracing the center of the house. The house was opulent and outfitted with the most gorgeous exotic woods and marble Egyptian craftsmen could offer. She slid her hand down the smoothly curved banister. Her eyes fell on an empty space on the wall that had once featured an ancient stone slab inscribed with hieroglyphics—a palette, as her father had called it proudly, when he’d paid thousands of pounds for it.
“Where did the palette go?” she asked.
“I sold it. Made the house feel like a funeral parlor with so much death in the papers.” Her father caught up to her and went down the opposite side of the staircase. “You look well for having slept so little.”
“Don’t you think we’re beyond pleasantries? All things considered, I highly suspect neither of us is too fond of the other at the moment.”
“You’re still my daughter,” he said gruffly. He held the door open to his office.
She guffawed. “Which is why you ignored my tears yesterday on the train? You had more to say to that traitor Stephen Fisher than to me.”
Her father strode toward the mahogany desk positioned in front of a wall of leather books. He gestured to a wing-backed chair in front of it. “Have a seat.”
She did as he asked, tucking her feet to the side.
Her father sat behind the desk. “I’ll have you know, whatever you might think of him, Stephen has always cared for you. By the time I found my way down to the hotel lobby after that fiasco last night, he’d already paid the manager handsomely for his silence. He protects you fiercely, my dear.”
Her jaw dropped. What was Stephen playing at? “Protects me?” She gave him an incredulous look. “You understand in order to arrange my disgraceful discharge from the nursing service, he told the brass I had run away for an adulterous affair with Major Benson. Or didn’t he tell you?”
Her father’s eyes narrowed. “Was he wrong?”
She gathered a fistful of her skirt in her hand. “Yes, yes, he was wrong. I didn’t run away to have an affair with Noah! I followed Henry on horseback after he abandoned me in a hut with a dead spy—a man I had killed in defending Henry.”
Her father remained stone-faced, unresponsive. It meant one thing: Henry had already told him this. Her face grew hotter, and she leaned forward. “If it hadn’t been for Major Benson, I wouldn’t be here, Father. That’s the truth. You want to suspend him? You want to be angry at him for whatever deceit he may have committed, fine. But Noah’s the reason I’m alive. He protected me. Stephen is an agent of the Maslukha, a traitor who tried to have Noah killed.”
Silence followed. Her father’s lip twitched under his moustache, and he leaned into his chair. “Who told you that? Benson?”
Telling him about Noah’s wounds wouldn’t help her case. She averted her gaze. “I figured most of it out myself. Stephen has been less careful than he believes.” Her throat tightened, thinking of the Bedouin girl. “It is enraging that you already seem to know this. And yet … you haven’t turned Stephen over to the authorities.”
Her father filled a pipe with tobacco, then held a match to it, puffing his cheeks as it lit. As he clamped it between his teeth, he scanned her face. “Of course I know. That’s not what’s important. Whom have you told? Benson?”
His response confused her. Why didn’t it seem to matter to him? “Does Noah know?” she asked. “About Stephen’s connection to the Maslukha?”
“Yes.” The sweet familiar smell of his pipe tobacco filled the air. “I need to know everything you discussed with Benson. About Stephen. And Ahmed Bayrak.”
“Noah didn’t tell me anything, Father.” A hinge on the office door squeaked as Henry came in, then closed the door behind him. “In fact, he told me so little that I believed for a long time he was the traitor. Ask Henry. It was Henry who first vouched for Benson. Stephen accused him of betrayal and deceit.”
“Of which he’s guilty,” her father said sharply. “It’s the extent of that guilt that I’m trying to establish.”
Henry sat in the chair beside her, his dark hair slicked to the side. He barely met her gaze. “I wasn’t aware of Noah’s treachery until I spoke to that Jewish spy.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “No. None of this makes sense. If Ahmed made you aware of Noah’s treachery, why on earth would you leave me with him? Ahmed told me the Maslukha is planning to destroy the British cause in Palestine. The documents he carried were meant to help unmask the Maslukha and expose those plans. If Noah was the British intelligence agent he wanted to contact—”
“It’s not true,” Henry said in a low voice.
“I know what Ahmed said. And if the Maslukha can win the Arab support and lead them against the British, the British will be forced to commit more troops to this area at the same time the Russians are pulling out of the war. The Turkish troops will be free to come at us with full force here while the Germans concentrate their forces on the Western Front in France. We will lose this war if we don’t stop him!”
Henry stared at her, a hint of astonishment in his eyes.
“Ahmed Bayrak lied to you, Virginia,” her father snapped. “The Zionists have seen the tide turning toward the British. Now they want to disrupt the deals we’ve already made with our Arab allies in hopes we’ll support their cause for a homeland after we’ve won the war.” He drew on his pipe and stood. “You’re a gullible woman. You were taken in by a pair of accomplished deceivers working together to destroy a carefully made CID operation.”
“CID operation?” She blinked at her father. “What does that mean? That the CID is aware of the Maslukha’s identity? That Stephen is working undercover? He works for the Maslukha!”
“If she says much more, you may have to convince the CID to let her join the intelligence community, Father.” Henry smiled sarcastically.
He implied her theories about Stephen were true. A sick feeling gripped her.
“Virginia.” Her father came around to the other side of the desk. “I don’t know if Ahmed and Benson targeted you deliberately or if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, either way, you are the victim here. We’re watching Benson closely, trying to determine his next move. He’s cunning, and the evidence of his deceit is thin. But whatever it is you think you know, you must not contact him. He’s dangerous and won’t hesitate to hurt you if it helps him.”
Her desperation grew. “Then why did he rescue me? Why would he save my life from the Turks? What you’re saying makes no sense.”
“You shouldn’t be involved.” Her father pounded his fist on the desk. “And you cannot be. If Benson approaches you again, you must tell me. And you can trust I’ll be keeping a close watch on you.”
“Noah won’t rest until he’s accomplished his goal, Father.” Henry’s face looked gaunt, weary. He stared stonily at his hands and then grimaced with a chuckle. “We could always get rid of him.”
Ginger stiffened. Henry wanted to kill Noah? She stifled her reaction, her pulse throbbing.
Her father drew himself straighter. “Don’t joke like that in front of your sister.” Her father frowned at her. “And what of the items you said Ahmed Bayrak gave you for safekeeping? Do you have them?”
Ginger barely heard him, her thoughts racing. Henry wanted Noah murdered. Was she being an alarmist?
“Virginia?”
She lifted her chin abruptly. “What?”
“The documents Ahmed gave you.” Her father sat on the edge of the desk, in front of her.
Neither her father nor Henry had given her satisfactory answers. And none of their veiled implications justified what Henry had done to her. She needed to remember the dead men in the desert. The Bedouin refugees. Men on the side of good did not cooperate with such atrocities. The devil take her if Stephen was anything other than a traitor. Stephen might have her father fooled. Or, more chillingly, her father may be choosing to look away for some other, more frightening reason.
“I don’t have any documents. I wasn’t able to recover anything before I went on a wild goose chase through the desert.” She stood and set her hands on the arm of the chair. “And I have no desire to see or talk to Noah again. Thanks to Stephen, Noah’s name has ruined my chances to ever work in the profession I love. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll have breakfast.”
She turned away before they could see her chin quivering. Even if her father and Henry kept her in the dark, she was sure of one thing: Noah could be in danger. He may have lied to her, but he’d also saved her life. She would be damned if she didn’t return the favor.