Cairo 1922
Pulling her wet blouse tighter against the chill, Ella forced herself to straighten up and walk. Whether she would be able to get back or not, it didn’t appear the alley was the way. Whether she would ever see Rowan again…She stopped and took a good long breath. She needed to be stronger than that. Those sorts of thoughts were not her friends right now. She would get back. She would see him again. Somehow.
Coming once more to the busy street, Ella watched the swirl of humanity—most of them looking terribly impoverished—rush by and try to engulf her. She stepped back to the alley and watched the dense crowd go by. Even in the evening, the bazaar was in full swing. She touched her bag. She had Egyptian pound notes in her wallet but she had no idea if they were valid currency for this time in Egypt’s history.
When was this? She fought down the panic that those words caused and began to search the street for a car or something that passed as a taxi. A young Egyptian man materialized in front of her pulling a double-seated rickshaw.
“Efendim!” he called. “You ride? Fifty piaster to your hotel!”
Thank you, God. She staggered out into the street to the young man and allowed him to help her into the back of his vehicle.
“Shepheards?” the young man asked brightly. Ella nodded. One hotel was as good as another. Clearly, this man was taking her to where he thought she belonged. That was a start.
As she rode, Ella was relieved to see what looked like many men in Western dress. One wore what looked like a British uniform. She noticed that there were still more horse-drawn carriages on the street than automobiles. She tried to remember if she had watched any Masterpiece Theatre dramas set in this time period. She only knew that the British were in charge of Egypt after the first world war. Had the war happened yet? There was no way to tell. It could be 1915 or as late as 1930. While knowing that the Brits were in charge made her feel a little less lonely—surely they would help see a lost American woman was taken care of?—she knew she would have to come up with a convincing story about how she got here.
By the time her driver deposited her in front of the magnificent forecourt of The Shepheards Hotel, Ella knew her new setting had electricity and cars and so probably telephones, airplanes and basic medical care. When she handed her driver a pound note, he refused the money but kept his hand out. Clearly, whatever the Egyptian pounds look like now is was not what they will look like in 2013. Without thinking, she unbuckled her watch and handed it to him. Nearly crying out with delight, the young driver pulled Ella out of his carriage and drove away through the throng of people milling about in front of the hotel. The three turbaned doormen who then approached her clearly had every intention of removing her forcibly until they saw that she was not Egyptian.
“We may be of service, aanesa?” The head doorman spoke to her but still barred her from walking into the hotel.
“I am here to register, if you please,” Ella said in her most formal voice. It was her experience that behaving like one belonged often allowed one admission in places one didn’t in fact belong.
That obviously didn’t include Shepheards.
“You are visiting a guest, aanesa?” The head guy gave Ella’s a disapproving up-and-down look. She could imagine he had never seen a woman dressed in tight jeans and a wet see-through blouse. She hesitated, not knowing what to say.
“Beryl, darling? Is that you?”
Ella stepped back to see a young woman, no more than twenty, emerge from behind the wall of doormen. Her eyes were a startling blue. Her hair was golden and pulled in a Gibson upsweep. Her dress covered every inch of her from chin to wrists all the way to the ground, where it swept the walkway in front of the luxury hotel.
“Oh, yes, I can see that it is,” the girl said. Reaching out, she took Ella by the elbow and tucked it under her arm. She was easily two inches taller than Ella. “Naughty, Beryl,” she said, patting Ella’s arm with a closed fan and maneuvering her adroitly between the two men and up the hotel steps. “We missed you at dinner but I told them you were probably riding again.”
“Yep, er, yes,” Ella said. “That’s me. Off riding.”
“Well, come on, darling. Let’s get you upstairs and into a bath before they all come back. Wouldn’t do for them to see us out on the street like this, would it? Can you imagine what Edward would say?”
Ella allowed herself to be escorted into the magnificent Shepheards Hotel lobby. A tiered crystal chandelier the size of a small minibus hung from the center of the ceiling. Directly beneath it was a palm tree surrounded by three blood red velvet settees. The entire floor of the lobby was covered by a huge ivory Isfahan with a delicate pattern woven in peach and aqua. On the hundred foot ceiling was a dramatic mural depicting Egyptian pharaohs and the pyramids. Forty-foot windows with velvet drapes were sandwiched between giant mirrors surrounded by ornate gold decorative frames. Ella’s new friend was chattering happily as they climbed the massive staircase. It was all Ella could do not to gasp as she found herself thinking, It’s like the palace of Versailles.
When the young woman had ushered Ella into her hotel room and shut the door, she dropped her silly banter. “Who are you? Are you American?”
Ella nodded, not sure which way to jump with this one in order to keep a comfortable place to sleep for the night. But whatever she wanted Ella to say is what Ella was prepared to say.
“I thought so. I heard your accent. Please excuse my shanghaiing you at the door, but it looked like you were having some trouble.”
“Er, yes. There was a misunderstanding in progress with the doorman. I appreciate your intervention.” Ella could tell by the way this girl—obviously British—spoke and carried herself that a certain amount of staged formality wouldn’t go amiss. Especially considering how Ella was dressed.
“I am Lady Julia Haversham.” She stopped and corrected herself. “I am Julia Digby, wife of Viscount Edward Digby,” she amended. “I am recently wed and I fear unaccustomed to my new title.”
“Pleased to meet you and congratulations.”
“Do you know Viscount Digby?”
Ella always believed that when you had no hint of which way to go, the truth was usually the most sustainable course. She hoped she was doing the right thing. “No,” she said.
The girl looked at her as if trying to read her face. “Are you a guest at the hotel?”
Ella took a deep breath and began the story she had prepared on the rickshaw ride to the hotel.
“My name is Ella Stevens. I traveled here with my fiancé from the States as a sort of pre-honeymoon.”
The girl frowned and Ella decided in future to omit that piece of the story.
“We had a fight and he left me.”
“What do you mean left you? Is he still in the country?”
“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.