FORTY-TWO

Strips of wicker had uncurled from the bentwood frame: the chair back was scratchy against Harriet’s palm. Shards of light fell through a roof made of dried grasses, striping her shoulders, the tops of her bare feet. She was dressed in a loose blue robe, the Egyptian djellaba that Suraya had made for her; newly released from its nighttime plaits, her hair fell in crimped waves to her waist and her feet were bare on the dried mud floor. Every muscle in her body was begging to be allowed to move.

At the other end of the gazebo, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, Eyre Soane mixed pigments on his palette. The paint, or the oil he used to thin it, was irritating her lungs. For the first time in weeks, Harriet could hear her own breathing.

He glanced up.

“You are beautiful, Miss Heron.”

Harriet felt embarrassed. She looked at him, her eyes shifting down from the point where he had instructed her to fasten her gaze.

“I’m not beautiful, and I have always known it. You need not flatter me.”

“But you are,” he said. “The shape of your head. The delicacy of your gestures. I knew from the very first time I set eyes on you that I had to paint you.”

“That morning on the weather deck? You barely noticed me, Mr. Soane.”

Harriet thought she saw annoyance in his face. She pictured him as he had been on that day, remembered how handsome and unreachable he had appeared. Harriet felt she knew him barely any better now. It was the fourth day of the sitting and Eyre Soane had once again taken a long time to arrange her in the pose, moving her head right and left, her chin up and down until it was just so, adjusting her arm. Harriet’s face had colored at the touch of his hand through the thin fabric of her sleeve.

His treatment of her was making her uneasy. He approached too close, looked too long, rested his hand on her waist in a manner that Harriet sensed was improper. Even worse were the compliments he paid her. She wanted to believe them but something inside, some insistent voice, told her that they were insincere.

“I meant at the villa,” he said, “in Alexandria. I didn’t have a chance to see you on the steamer, amid all those frightful tourists.”

She felt the blush begin again. It would not be deterred. Had he forgotten the way their eyes had met across the ship’s dining saloon, after he had joined them at dinner?

The shelter was open on two sides to the breeze, and from where she stood, out of the corner of her eye, she got a glimpse of the aviary. Inside it, the trapped birds swooped and perched, clung to the netting, dipped their heads to the shallow bowl of water.

Outside, the free birds came as if to visit them, landing on the ground, heads cocked to one side, letting out streams of sound.

As she looked, Harriet thought she saw a flash of green, glimpsed the train of Louisa’s skirts passing behind a clump of palm trees outside. She waited for Louisa to enter the gazebo and comment on the canvas or announce that she had changed her mind about allowing, or at any rate not disallowing, the portrait. But the minutes ticked on and Louisa did not come. Harriet decided she must have been mistaken.

Louisa had taken it into her head that they must return to London. Harriet had no wish to leave Luxor. She’d agreed to begin the sitting immediately, from a sense of obligation to Mr. Soane and to gain time in which to try to change Louisa’s mind.

Standing in the pose, her gaze unfocused, as Eyre Soane had instructed, her mind turned to the west bank. She saw the white valley, the dark entrance to the tomb, and imagined herself walking into it, sitting in front of the panel and puzzling over the signs to the music of Dr. Woolfe’s trowel. She’d wanted every day to see him, if only to explain her absence, but Mr. Soane had made it impossible. He arrived at the hotel each morning even before it was properly light and was waiting for her in the lobby by the time she and Louisa came down for breakfast. He worked on the portrait for hours, releasing Harriet at mid-afternoon, too late to cross the river.

Harriet pictured the cartouche, the circle enclosing the hieroglyphs, by the queen in her white dress. She could see each of the symbols individually—the image of the goddess, seated, with her wig long on her back. Aast. Isis. The sign of a windpipe and lungs, which meant beautiful, the face, which was in her own name, that made the sound hr—but she couldn’t read anything coherent from them.

Lifting one foot in the air, she moved her toes, trying to rid herself of pins and needles.

“I must go back to the dig tomorrow. I’ve been away for days.”

“Don’t tease me.”

“I am not teasing you, Mr. Soane. It matters to me, the work I do there. And Dr. Woolfe expects me. I cannot pose for you tomorrow.”

“You will not escape me that easily, Miss Heron,” he said, standing back from the canvas, his right arm outstretched, making marks on the rectangle that was clamped on the easel.

Harriet said no more until Eyre Soane walked over to where she stood and took hold of her hand, turned it upward and kissed the palm, pressing his mouth to her hand. She could feel the moistness of his lips. She pulled away her hand. Harriet had a guilty feeling that far from being in love with Mr. Soane, she was beginning to dislike him. Perhaps that was normal. She knew nothing of love, she reminded herself.

•  •  •

The sitting over for the day, Eyre Soane insisted on accompanying Harriet to the dining room of the hotel, where she was meeting Louisa for luncheon. As they walked into the room, Louisa rose to her feet from her place at the table. She looked like a ghost, her eyes huge and haunted, one hand patting her chignon.

“Mrs. Heron,” Eyre Soane said. “Please don’t disturb yourself.”

“What do you want?” Louisa said.

He raised his eyebrows, pulling out a chair for Harriet. “I want to invite you and your charming daughter to dinner. I’m organizing a soirée here on Friday evening, for the Europeans. It is to be a celebration of art.”

“When will your portrait be finished, Mr. Soane?” said Louisa.

“Soon, Mrs. Heron. Soon.”

He smiled at her and Louisa stared back at him without the smallest pretense of politeness. Harriet felt puzzled. In all her life, she had never known her mother to behave badly.