What Ella knew for sure about her new life was that she was living in paradise. She was waited on for her every need by gentle and caring hands. A cadre of Egyptian female servants moved silently about her world. She had spent what felt like weeks in a dream. She often knew when she was walking—or being helped to walk—but she felt no urgency to go from one place to another. She remembered the boat and the hours and days of sunlight and the feeling of being rocked by the waves beneath the dahabiya. She couldn’t remember when she had arrived at the palace. She couldn’t remember entering it or what the grounds looked like. Halima told her that the palace belonged to Dr. Zimmerman and that its gardens were very beautiful, a true oasis of greenery in the hostile desert.
The other thing Ella knew for sure about her new life was that she was a prisoner, watched and guarded every moment of every day.
The doctor visited frequently. Ella often took tea with him although the visits were hazy in her memory. Halima served them both, handing Ella her teacup, delicately spreading a thin linen napkin across her lap, and then recounting the visits to Ella afterward. What would she do without Halima? The woman was mother, friend, guide and guard all in one. She was a beautiful woman, older than Ella, with dark, almond shaped eyes and a wide, generous mouth.
When Dr. Zimmerman asked after her health, it was Halima who answered for Ella. Halima said he was an important physician from Europe. She said he was going to help Ella have a big, healthy baby and that Ella should be grateful. Not all mothers in Egypt had happy outcomes.
The baby was growing bigger inside her with each passing week.
One day, as Halima was helping her into her bath, Ella reached out and grabbed the woman’s arm. Halima looked at her with surprise. “Effendem?” Halima said, clearly puzzled. “You are safe. I will not let you fall.”
“Halima?” Ella said, releasing her and easing herself into the warm tub. “Do you have children, yourself?”
The Egyptian woman sucked in a quick breath. She reached for the bath sponge and soaked Ella’s back with lilac-scented soapy water. “I am not a mother in that sense,” she said.
Ella had skipped her breakfast that morning. Now she found herself more lucid, and more clear headed than she had felt in weeks. In fact, for the first time since coming to the palace, Ella noticed her surroundings. The room she sat in now was constructed of rose marble, it held a wide western-facing window where the desert sun heated the room and cast a warm glow on the walls. Stacks of thick towels sat on pristine wooden counters, sanded to a polished sheen. Ewers of oil and soap and precious water sat on the floor by the tub—a marble basin that had been painstakingly hand-filled for Ella’s bath.
It was clear to Ella that she had been drugged. A rising panic accompanied the knowledge and she fought to camouflage it from her servants. From Halima. As she sat in the tub, Ella looked around the bathing room and felt a chill emanate through to her very bones. “How long have I been here?” she asked.
Halima held the wet sponge to the front of her tunic and stared at Ella in mounting horror. She turned to glance at the entrance of the bath and then at Ella. “A month,” she said quietly.
Ella put her hand to her abdomen, astonished at how much bigger she was. She looked back at Halima who was still staring at her. “Why am I here?” she asked.
Halima plunged the sponge into the bath and gripped Ella by the arm. She drew her face close to Ella’s and whispered fiercely, “Horus is coming. You must not cover up. You understand?” She shook Ella’s arm, her nails biting into Ella’s flesh.
Within a moment a tall, large black man wearing only a loincloth entered the bath. Ella’s first inclination was to throw her arms across her exposed breasts but then Halima’s words leapt into her head: You must not cover up. She forced her hands to stay in her lap as the man strode to the bath and stood next to Halima. His ebony skin was greased to a high sheen. Ella vaguely remembered him. He was Horus, the eunuch. Her eyes flickered to his face and she saw how he ogled her, how he took in every inch of her. Eunuch, my ass, she found herself thinking.
Horus spoke abruptly to Halima and then backed away from the tub. Before he left the room, Ella realized she was shaking. She grabbed the side of the marble tub to prevent herself from slipping, and Halima held her gently by the arm.
“Come, effendem,” Halima said quietly. “He is gone.”
Ella allowed the woman to help her out of the tub and wrap her in long soft toweling. Halima led her to a couch by the window where Ella sat, feeling the strong rays of the sun penetrate the towel and warm her.
“You did not eat your breakfast,” Halima said.
“I guess I wasn’t hungry. Why are you drugging me?”
Halima sat down next to Ella and looked out the window over the desert. “Dr. Zimmerman thought it would be easier this way.”
“Easier for whom? Easier to do what? Why am I being held here?”
“You will not be harmed, effendem.”
“And my baby?”
Halima paused for just a split second. “Your baby will not be harmed.”
“Am I here because someone wants to take my baby?” Ella asked, her body suddenly flooded with anxiety.
Halima glanced at the door of the bathroom where Horus had disappeared. She did not reply.
* * * *
Marvel Newton stood at the top of the stairs at Shepheards and surveyed the group of hotel guests in the lobby. In the crowd of dark and white faces, she was looking for only one. When she spotted Rowan—tall and handsome—standing out in the crowd like a movie star among peasants—a warm feeling started in the pit of her stomach and spread to her loins. His hair was tousled, worn longer than the fashion but it suited him. She waited for the moment when he would look up and see her, his eyes lighting up with pleasure. She knew he cared for her. She even knew he wanted her. As she watched, he rose from his chair and began to move in her direction. She loved his confidence and swagger and the way the crowd parted for him as he moved through. She felt a throbbing between her legs and her face flushed pink as he bounded up the stairs to her.
All she had to do was wait.
“Hey, Marvel,” he said when he reached her. “You really gonna wear that get-up in public? Because we’re talking serious riot material here.”
“You like it?”
“I do. Being a red-blooded American male, I absolutely do.”
Her dress was a bit showy for daywear, she knew that. Her mother would be appalled to see Marvel showing so much bosom before eight o’clock. But even Mama would recognize that special bait was needed to catch a big fish. And, oh, Mama, this one was definitely big.
“You ready?” Rowan held out his arm and Marvel latched on and leaned into him, pressing her breast against his arm.
“I am. I’m absolutely famished. Where are we going today?”
“Your dollar, your call,” Rowan said, leading her down the stairs.
Marvel felt a tinge of annoyance at his response. She didn’t enjoy being reminded that she paid Rowan for the pleasure of his company.
Dear Lord, she thought. What was it going take to get this man into her bed?
“Surprise me, my dear,” she said, batting her eyes.
“Well, if you’re sure, we have had an invitation that might be interesting.”
Marvel practically glowed at the thought that people regarded her and Rowan as a couple. They had lived in the hotel for over a month now, separated only by one thin wooden door. They ate nearly every meal together and except for those few times when he inexplicably disappeared after dinner only to return in the wee hours, they lived a comfortable, cozy and intimate life of an established couple.
“Sounds fun,” she said as they entered the hotel’s grand dining room.
Rowan knew he was hurrying her and he hated to do that but after a month of sitting on his hands and making no progress as far as finding Ella, Marvel was lucky he didn’t drag her into the dining room and fling her into the first available chair. He decided that investigative work in 1922 was a whole lot harder and more time consuming than in 2013. Here, you had to build relationships, observe the proprietary norms, wait for cues and then your moment and then wait again. He had heard a promising piece of information the night before but winkling it out of his source had proved frustrating and, in the end, impossible.
While cruising the dark alleys of nighttime Cairo had proved endlessly interesting (if not downright dangerous), the Intel he gathered there was not usually trustworthy. Still, even the wildest rumor might have a shred of truth to it. When Ra told him a confederate was bragging about being robbed and ravished by a white woman in the desert, Rowan asked to meet the man. Foul and nearly incoherent from the opium pipe, the fellow had recently lost an ear and there was something about his outlandish story that rang true. He had been the dragoman for a group of English tourists when they were attacked by a squad of desert bandits. In the melee, (whereupon the dragoman bragged that he had saved his English charges—and the white women from certain ravishment) he was viciously attacked by a saber-wielding white woman “with hair the color of the sun high in the sky!” who insisted on straddling him, her naked breasts bouncing higher and higher as she climbed his pole to her ecstasy. He showed Rowan the gold coin his English masters had given him to keep his mouth shut about the effendim’s dress being torn from her shoulders. Even disregarding the rape-by-a-white-woman element in the story, the man’s tale was hard to credit.
As Rowan seated himself at the dining table and flapped out his napkin, it occurred to him that there was just enough truth to the story to be believed. And while Ella wasn’t blonde, Julia, was.
“Who is it we’re supposed to be dining with?” Marvel asked, frowning and looking around the large dining room.
“Oh, you’ve seen her. You know, the one who lost her husband in the hunting accident.”
“Lady Bowerman?” Marvel looked at Rowan in astonishment. “Lady Bowerman asked us to lunch?”
“Well, it might have been more my idea,” Rowan said. “But she said yes. Oh, there she is.” He hopped up, and waited for their guests to arrive at the table.
Lady Bowerman was a class-A knock out, Rowan decided as he watched her approach. She was voluptuous and full in all the right places. Her lips were dainty and pink, pressed into a half-smile. But her eyes were a cold blue that would miss nothing, of that he was sure.
“Mr. Pierce,” she said as she approached the table. She held out her hand.
“Lady Bowerman.” He turned to Marvel and introduced them. Lady Bowerman’s traveling companion was a sour-faced older woman named Benson who did an effective job of making her mistress look even more beautiful by comparison. Rowan nodded at her.
He had heard from a very reliable source that Lady Bowerman knew something about the English party that had been attacked. If there really had been an attack, it hadn’t been reported in the news. And no one was talking.
“So, Miss Newton,” Lady Bowerman said, “have you been enjoying your visit to Cairo?” The woman spoke to Marvel but her gaze shifted to Rowan so that Marvel would have no confusion as to what her words really meant.
Rowan watched Marvel blush and stumble over her words and he felt a wave of irritation with their luncheon guest.
Damn Brits, he thought. Every last one of them plays these stupid games. He gallantly leaned toward Marvel and put his hand over hers on the table. “We have had a very enjoyable visit,” he said to Lady Bowerman. “And we were thinking of extending that enjoyment to the surrounding area. Weren’t we, dearest?” He saw that Marvel was staring at him with her mouth open. He knew he wasn’t playing fair and he regretted the hope he saw in Marvel’s eyes. But dammit, Ella’s life was at stake. He’d make it up to her later a hundredfold when he had his wife back.
“Uh…yes, we were,” Marvel said, still focused on Rowan’s face and the startling transformation she saw in him.
“We were planning an excursion to Thebes, actually,” Rowan said. He waved away the waiter who was attempting to pour water into his glass.
“Thebes?” Lady Bowerman said. “Really? That’s certainly adventuresome.”
“And worth your life,” Benson said through pinched lips.
“Forgive my traveling companion,” Lady Bowerman said to Marvel and Rowan. “She listens to gossip when she knows she shouldn’t.” She shot Benson a sharp look.
“Gossip?” Marvel said, clearly taking her hint from Rowan for which he was grateful. He knew that if he did all the talking, it would spook them and they’d clam up.
“Oh, you know,” Lady Bowerman said, smoothing her napkin across her lap. “People talk.”
“I heard a couple from the hotel was attacked last week,” Rowan said.
Benson looked up from her empty plate. “You are referring to the Donaldson’s?” she said.
“Benson! Really!” Lady Bowerman said. “I must ask you to retire to our rooms immediately if you cannot prevent yourself from spreading unfounded rumors!”
Benson looked at her with her mouth open and then clamped it shut. She narrowed her eyes at Rowan as if he were to blame.
“Well, I’m not sure they are unfounded, Lady Bowerman,” Rowan said. “Are the Donaldson’s still at the hotel?”
“They have returned to England. It was a horrifying experience, as you can imagine.”
“Of course,” Rowan said, fighting his disappointment.
“Just terrible,” murmured Marvel.
“And Effie Donaldson,” Lady Bowerman leaned in to the table and dropped her voice to a whisper, “was the last person you could imagine such a thing happening to. The last person, if you know what I mean?”
Rowan nodded knowingly. I have absolutely no idea what you mean, he thought.
“The poor dear!” Marvel said.
“And then, of course, the MacDavies.”
Rowan continued to nod. “The MacDavies,” he said encouragingly.
“Well, surely you’ve heard?”
“I don’t think so. Darling?” he turned to Marvel. “Have you heard anything about the MacDavies?”
“Not a sausage,” Marvel said sweetly.
It was Benson who spoke now. “They were attacked just this week. And again, the Woman in Gold was a part of the attack.”
“The Woman in Gold?”
“The white woman. Surely, you’ve heard that the band travels with a white woman? She is instrumental to their raids—or so I’m told.”
Rowan could feel Marvel physically stiffen beside him. “No, I hadn’t heard that,” he said.
“It will be in the papers soon,” Lady Bowerman said with a sigh. “You know how the Americans love that sort of thing. Oh, I beg your pardon.”
“No offense taken,” Rowan said. “Where was the last attack, do you know?”
“And how, exactly, do you know all of this?” Marvel asked. “It is rumor, isn’t it?”
“Well,” Lady Bowerman sniffed, “I am personally acquainted with Lydia MacDavies. I feel it becomes substantially less rumor and markedly more factual when it is revealed to you from the source.”
“I absolutely agree with you,” Rowan said, delivering a light nudge under the table to Marvel’s shin. “Where did you say the last attack was, Lady Bowerman?”
“I didn’t say. But I have just remembered a prior engagement that I must keep and I beg your forgiveness for my rudeness. Benson? Are you coming?”
Her companion resignedly gathered her gloves and bag and stood up.
“A pleasure, Miss Newton,” Lady Bowerman said coldly. “Mr. Pierce.” She nodded curtly at Rowan and the two left the dining room.
“You tricked me,” Marvel said as Rowan reseated himself.
“I’m sorry. I heard that she might have information and there was no time to fill you in first.”
“You used me.”
“Marvel, I’m sorry. I hope you know how important you are to me and that I have grown to care about you—”
“But to you I am just a means to an end.”
“So isn’t that the total opposite of what I just said? Why is it if you’re not saying exactly what a woman wants to hear, she can’t hear any of it?”
“Is that what your wife does?”
Rowan sighed. “I’m sorry, Marvel. You’re right. I used you. Doesn’t mean I don’t care for you. Just means I’m a jerk.”
Marvel looked away for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “Guess I just got my hopes up for a minute.”
“And for that I am truly sorry.”
“If we don’t find her. If you don’t find her…”
“Let’s take things one step at a time, okay?”
“The desert is a very big place, Rowan. You have no idea of where to begin to look. And The Gold Woman or whatever she’s called sounds like it’s Lady Digby not Ella.”
“I know.”
“I’m not very hungry any more.”
“I’ll walk you to your room.”
“No, you go on. You probably need to ask a few more people about the attacks.”
Rowan reached out to take her hand but she pulled away from him.
“Don’t worry about me, Rowan. Go do what you have to do.”
“Thanks, Marvel.”
“Only, Rowan?”
“Yeah?”
“If you don’t find her, you know I’m here, right?”
“I do, Marvel.”
The following week, Marvel stood in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom and tugged at the bodice of her new gown. It was one thing to wear nightwear at the hotel, she realized, but it was altogether a brazenly different thing to wear it out in public. Her mother wouldn’t just be rolling in her grave today. If she could see her daughter prancing about in a form-fitting silken sheath cut to just below her knee and her breasts nearly exposed for all the world to see, she would be convulsing in her casket. And Marvel’s plan called not just to wear the provocative outfit out in public but in the most public place she could think of: the Cairo bazaar.
There was no recourse. Strong results demanded strong action. While she could tell by how Rowan looked her up and down this morning when he arrived to take her shopping that he very much appreciated her new outfit, the frock had not been enough to move him off the mark. But Marvel knew how this game was played and it was time she played it.
Since coming to Cairo and setting her cap for Mr. Rowan Pierce, she had lost over twenty pounds. She had gone from chubby matron to voluptuous kitten. Every man at Shepheards had given her an appreciative look and—because she was obviously American—a few inappropriate propositions as well. But Rowan, although making no pretense about the fact that he liked what he saw, had been the perfect gentleman, damn him. Today, she would see how he fared with half the Egyptian male population slathering over her.
“You sure you want to wear that out?” Rowan said as Marvel turned to collect her bag and hat in the hotel room.
“My outfit? Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“That’s just it,” he said. “There’s too much right with it. You’re showing a lot of skin for ten in the morning.”
“Honestly, Rowan, I can’t believe you think you are in a position to give me fashion advice.”
“I think you should change.”
“Well, I’m not going to so may we please go? I’d like to finishing shopping before noon. I don’t want the tops of my breasts to freckle.”
He paused just long enough to give her a look. It occurred to her that he might be trying to decide if he could order her to change. She brushed past him in the hall and headed for the stairs. He probably could, but then they would be right back where they always were. She needed to break his logjam of reserve and discipline. And today’s little outing was just the thing.
They rode to the bazaar in silence. She knew he had been more preoccupied than usual after the rumor about the lady desert bandit had evaporated with no evidence to sustain it. Rowan was clearly becoming impatient with the lack of progress in the search for his wife. She didn’t press him for conversation in the car. Her plan would work much better, she decided, if she established a tiny bit of aloofness first. When the driver pulled up to the front of the gate at the bazaar, she could see that Rowan’s boy, Ra, was waiting for them.
“Honestly, Rowan,” she said. “Do you really think you need Ra’s help to escort me on a shopping trip?”
“He’s got nothing else to do,” Rowan said curtly.
It was then that she realized that the lack of conversation had less to do with Rowan’s preoccupation with his wife and more with his displeasure at Marvel’s low-cut dress and the environment they were about to enter. When she realized this, it was all she could do not to clap her hands with delight. He was cross because he was feeling all cave-man protective of her and didn’t like her showing her bosom to the rest of the male world!
When he opened the car door and helped her out, she bent over a little more than she needed to in order to give him a full view of her breasts nearly falling out of her dress. She felt his hand tighten on hers.
“What is so goddamn important that you couldn’t have sent your maid here to get?”
“It’s not the item, Rowan. It’s the experience. I’ve been needing to get out of that hotel for days now. Oh! Let’s go down that street. Aren’t these shops just so quaint and interesting?” She picked up the pace and marched ahead of him, forcing him to catch up. He took her elbow and smoothly pulled her next to him down the center of the narrow street but she wasn’t going to make it that easy on him.
At the first booth she came to, she made a performance of leaning over the bin of rusty metal pins and dusty brooches. She knew the proprietor, a middle-aged man with sharp weasel eyes, was licking his lips at the prominent display of her bosom but she didn’t care. She could feel Rowan’s arm slip around her waist as he gently pulled her back.
“Come on, Marvel,” he growled. “This is just junk and you know it.”
“I wanted to see it,” she said, affecting a pout but allowing him to steer her back down the street.
“Maybe if you wore a shirt next time, instead of coming out virtually topless, we could visit the shops without your causing a riot.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Every man on this street is knocking over his own booth to get a gander at the white woman with her boobs hanging out. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Rowan, I don’t pay you to tell me how to dress. I pay you to protect me, whether I’m dressed in a nun’s habit or stark naked. Am I clear?”
“Crystal,” he said, but his eyes narrowed and Marvel knew he was one minute from taking her by the arm and dragging her back to the car.
She couldn’t let that happen.
She turned and looked behind them. “What is that ridiculous boy of yours up to now?” she said. As soon as Rowan turned to look, she bolted down the street and around the corner. She could hear Rowan cursing and that was just fine. It was the first time she’d gotten any kind of real reaction out of him that involved her.
“Catch me if you can!” she called to him over her shoulder as she ran.
“Dammit, Marvel. Knock it off,” he yelled. She could tell he had picked up his pace. With those long legs, it would just be a few strides before he caught her. She tingled at the thought of his scolding. If she wasn’t directly the focus of his attention before today, she definitely was now.
She paused just around the corner at a produce stand. Her breasts were heaving from the exertion of her run. She knew people were staring at her. It occurred to her that it was one thing to flaunt yourself as a half-dressed white woman. It was quite another to do it alone and unescorted. The thought made her uneasy. Just when she was about to step into the street to intercept Rowan, a strong hand snaked out from behind her and clapped over her mouth. Startled, she dropped her purse and brought both her hands up to pry the fingers from her face. But another pair of hands grabbed her waist and yanked her off her feet and into the open shop door.