Cynthia Bailey Pratt Read online

  “Yes, I am. But the exhibition of my findings doesn’t open until tomorrow.”

  “I know.” She put out a gloved hand as if to stop him when he would have walked away. He hoped she would not turn out to be a tuft hunter, eager for a few words with the celebrity of the hour, but he was afraid she was. Why else would she so boldly accost a total stranger, merely because she’d overheard his name?

  He said nothing and once again the brightness of her eyes seemed to dim a trifle as though whatever she expected had not occurred. What did she want from him? He did not have two heads, nor did he have a fund of witticisms that she could quote to her friends when she boasted of having met him. “If you’ll excuse me, I must look for someone I’m meeting....”

  “Yes, I know. Miss Hanson.” Her hand, rather large for a young lady’s, fluttered toward herself.

  “You know Miss Hanson?”

  She nodded, eagerly.

  “Where is she?” Simon asked, looking past the young lady, expecting to see his “good genius” standing behind her. “Is she your sister? No, you are too young. Your aunt, perhaps?”

  “My aunt, sir, is at home in Yorkshire keeping house, or so I trust, for my father. Besides, her name is Miss Norris. I am Miss Hanson.”

  Chapter Two

  His first reaction was as rude as it was vehement. “Impossible! You cannot be!”

  Julia stepped, or rather staggered, back. “But... I am,” she said.

  Half a dozen people were staring, more or less openly. Veronica and her mother turned completely around to obtain a better look. Simon knew they were whispering about how he’d brutally interrupted them. One of the young men strolling through the museum with the young ladies turned and came back.

  He looked Simon up and down as though weighing him. “Is something wrong, miss?” he said, turning to Julia. “Is this ... person annoying you?”

  “Not at all. It’s a trifling misunderstanding. Thank you for your trouble.”

  “A pleasure.” The young Galahad’s eyes narrowed again as he stared at Simon. Though shorter by half a head than the other man, who was tall enough to be in the Guards, the archaeologist challenged his eyes. He wasn’t about to be intimidated by some dim-witted tourist!

  After a moment, the interloper turned away, though not without saying to the girl, “Pray call on me if you require assistance, miss.”

  When the fellow had stalked away, Simon said firmly, “You cannot be Miss Hanson! It’s impossible.”

  “I promise you, Mr. Archer, I am who I say. I am Miss Julia Hanson of Netherfield Place in Yorkshire.”

  “Then you are a liar, Miss Hanson.”

  “You go too far, sir! I can prove what I say is true. Then, I trust, you will make your apology.”

  Simon turned his head to be certain that a certain overgrown, interfering buffoon did not return as this conversation grew more heated. “If I am wrong, I will certainly tender an apology. But I am not wrong. Every word you have written to me must be a lie.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  He looked at her smooth skin, her bright eyes, and that astonishing mass of hair. “You’re a child, that’s why. Your letters talked of your long correspondence with the great Champollion. But that’s impossible! He died, my dear young lady, in eighteen thirty-two! How old were you then? Eight? Six?”

  “If you must know, I was eleven when Monsieur Champollion died—

  “Aha!” Simon’s cry of triumph was perhaps louder than he had intended, or the marble surrounding them may well have amplified it. He’d no sooner uttered it than he saw that masterpiece of elephantine gallantry returning.

  Simon look Julia by the arm and hurried her away from the main entrance. It gave him great pleasure to take her through a door marked Private, as he closed it in the tree-tall fellow’s face. To the girl’s protest, he only said, “Hush!”

  “I will not. If you have some points to raise, by all means, let us discuss them rationally.” She looked back as Simon hurried her onward. “Goodness, what is that in that case?”

  “It’s the skeleton of a goat....”

  “Fancy! I would not have thought it looked like that. Most interesting. You know, Mr. Archer, I was thinking in the coach on the way to town ...” She dug her heels in as they approached his office. It availed her nothing, and left long, black streaks on the polished wood floor.

  When the door was closed behind them, he guided her with perhaps unnecessary strength into a chair. He sat down behind his desk, wishing it were neater. Putting his elbows on the papers, Simon felt more master of the situation. He gazed over the tops of his interlinked fingers at her in silence. It was one of his cardinal rules that a woman abhorred silence and would often convict herself out of her own mouth rather than sit without sneaking for ten minutes together. At least, this theory worked well when it was his sisters or mother he had to deal with.

  This one had crossed her arms over her not-insignificant bosom and stared at him with narrowed eyes. He noticed that her chin had a determined lift while her nose had a most pugnacious attitude. A more modest young woman would have insisted on his leaving the door ajar, rather than being shut up in a small room with a man she’d yet to meet formally. His sisters, even the silliest, would have shown that much good sense.

  Simon decided that she was not only a liar, she was unfeminine. His heart, like Pharaoh’s, hardened. “Well?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “What do you mean, ‘yes’?”

  “What do you mean by ‘well’?” she asked, imitating his tone even to the rising inflection of his single syllable.

  “I mean, what have you to say for yourself?”

  A faint, disbelieving smile appeared on her pink lips. “I don’t believe that this is a school, nor do you look remotely like a headmistress. I do not believe I need account to you for anything, Mr. Archer.”

  “You don’t deny that you have carried on a correspondence with me in which every word was a lie?”

  “I have corresponded with someone calling himself Simon Archer, but I don’t think it could have been you. The Simon Archer I know is a scientist, who would never accuse someone of lying without first listening to the facts.”

  Feeling his conscience prick, Simon leaned back in his chair. “I’m listening.”

  Her arrogant smile softened as she reached into the small chatelaine bag that hung from her belt. “I am indeed Julia Hanson. T have here your last letter to me, inviting me to come to see your finds.”

  She handed it across to him. Simon did not need to give it more than a brief glance. “Very well, I accept that you are the woman with whom I have been corresponding. Yet I still feel that our acquaintance is based upon a falsity of your manufacture.”

  “You are referring to my claim of having exchanged letters with Monsieur Champollion?”

  “Yes! Considering that you were eleven years old when he died, I hardly think—

  “I wrote my first letter to him when I was eight years of age. He was kind enough to reply. I believe he must have been the kindest man in the world. When he died, I wrote a letter expressing my condolences to his brother, Champollion the elder. He too responded, saying that his brother had written of me. I continue to discuss archaeological matters with Monsieur Champollion and hope to have that pleasure for many years to come.”

  Simon was impressed despite himself. “Why did you write to him when you were eight years old?”

  “I had read about the Rosetta Stone and wanted to know how he, of all the men in the world, managed to unlock its secrets. He told me. At that time, I had not learned to read the language of the ancient Egyptians and so I immediately set out to learn Greek.”

  “You were eight and you learned Greek?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I already knew French, Spanish, and Latin. Arabic has been quite a struggle as I have had little access to texts. I think once I am physically in Egypt, I shall do better. I didn’t become comfortable with it at all until last year.”r />
  “So late?” he asked politely, not believing a word.

  In elegant language, though with a poor accent, she replied in Arabic, “Each must do as God wills.” She paused. When he didn’t answer, as he felt rather stunned, she said, “You are right; I have left it until late. Champollion himself had mastered the chief Oriental languages by the time he was thirteen and could think in Coptic before he turned eighteen. I do not pretend to be in his class.”

  “No, few of us can claim that. And the hieroglyphs?”

  “I am certain I have written to you about that, Mr. Archer.”

  “Remind me.”

  She sighed and shifted in her chair. Simon saw no reason to tell her that every letter they had exchanged was safe in a cabinet not two yards from where she sat. Even blindfolded, he could have pulled out the one in which she described her first fascination with Egypt. But he wanted to hear the tale from her own lips. He still had great difficulty believing that this admittedly vibrant, if irritating, young lady was his “good genius.” Sir Walter and Mr. Keene would enjoy a hearty laugh at his expense if the truth came out.

  “For my tenth birthday, Monsieur Champollion sent me a beautiful section of illustrated papyrus that he’d purchased in the Cairo bazaar. He did not include a translation of the hieroglyphics. It was a scene of children playing, very sweet.” She smiled at the image in her mind. “I wanted to know what they were saying to each other. So I applied Monsieur’s methods. After that, he encouraged me to study evermore assiduously. Then he died.”

  “Most interesting.”

  It was virtually word for word what she had written.

  Yet Simon felt a strange sense of disappointment. When she’d first come forward, her voice had held a lilting warmth that pleased his ear even while his mind processed her impossible claim. Yet now her tone was flat and dry. He wondered if she was saying something she’d memorized.

  Now she leaned forward, her large eyes—dark like her hair—intent. “Please, Mr. Archer, you must see that I am who I say. I’m sorry that I surprised you but there was never a point in our letters in which I deceived you intentionally. I think that you thought I was something other than what you see. I’m sorry for that, but it is not my doing.”

  “I suppose I am exactly as you pictured me?” Simon wanted to recall the words the moment he’d said them. It didn’t matter what the young woman thought of him.

  Julia blinked. She would not have thought he cared very much what anyone thought of his appearance. His hair had been bleached by the Egyptian sun, making an interesting contrast with his tanned skin. In the north, hardly anyone she knew burned brown, even in the summer. He had straight brows over a slightly humped nose while his lips were as firm as a granite pharaoh’s. His blue eyes were hard, too, as he sat behind his desk disbelieving every word she said.

  Julia’s disappointment was more a nine-tailed sting than a straight stab. If it had been the loss of friendship alone, she might have borne it better. But this was the loss of friendship, possible marriage, and the hope of a life danced to her own piping.

  “You forget... I have the advantage of having seen a sketch of you in Punch.”

  “Oh, that thing.”

  It had shown him dressed like a pantomime prince, slipping onto a three-thousand-year-old stage to awaken a princess who owed more to the artist’s lurid imagination than Egypt. Like an actress in a recent production of Antony and Cleopatra, she wore the belling skirt and sleeves of modern dress and about her neck dripped countless ropes of pearls. But Simon Archer had been drawn with great exactness, if slightly larger than life. Even her friends, who couldn’t be bothered with a book, had studied that sketch with avid interest.

  To tell the truth, so had she. Though she was quite certain that marriage to him was her only way to become part of his research, she had not relished the idea of marrying at all. Somehow the Punch sketch had made her plan of marriage to him much more palatable. Now to proceed with it.

  “Since we have established that I am indeed Julia Hanson,” she said, “I should very much like to see your discoveries.”

  He did not rise to his feet. “The exhibition isn’t quite ready....”

  “I don’t mind. I’m thrilled that you found so much. Until I reach Egypt myself, seeing artifacts remains my delight.”

  “You are planning a voyage to Egypt soon, I take it?”

  “I hope to.” She took her courage in her hands and added, “If you’ll have me.”

  “I?”

  “Yes.” He definitely did not look overjoyed. Quickly, Julia said, “I believe I can be of great help to you there. You know I can read and draw all one hundred and thirty four phonetic signs and most of the determinative signs. As I said, my Arabic will only improve once it is in my ears every day and I have every confidence that I will learn to speak Coptic quickly.”

  “But, my dear young lady, you have no idea what life is like out there!”

  The moment he called her that, in an odiously patronizing tone, Julia knew she’d lost her first opportunity. Their meeting had been disappointing, but she had believed there was hope. Now she could only gather her pride and courage to try again.

  “I have read your letters, Mr. Archer, and many books about the conditions in the field. I know that it is a difficult existence, but—

  “You are flayed by the wind which drives tiny particles of dust into your flesh. Every bite you eat crunches because of the sand—if not because of insects. Flies, snakes, scorpions live everywhere. The water, when you can find it, has been used as a bathing pool, if nothing worse, by the fellahin, their camels, and their donkeys. Fever crawls on the ground and flies through the air like a biblical plague.”

  She’d put on her blandest expression, the one she used when her aunts told her she should give up her dreams and marry some nice young man, halfway through his recital. “I told you, I think, that I have read your letters. You made it quite clear in them that life onsite is hard, but that it also has rewards.”

  “I did not write everything, Miss Hanson. I did not want to trouble the sweet, elderly lady I thought I was writing to with all the disgusting details. I find people in England have a false picture of life out there anyway. My mother believes that I retire every night to a pleasure boat on the Nile where I am serenaded by beautiful dancing girls. She thinks I eat like a prince because some general told her once that he lived like a fighting cock in the East on sixpence a day.”

  “You haven’t told your mother the truth?”

  “Of course not. I have no wish to worry her.”

  “So you lie to her in your letters the way you lied to me?”

  “I have not lied to you....”

  “No, you simply softened the truth. Well, I think that’s worse than what you say I did to you! At least I did not lie to you. You may have leapt to a false conclusion, but I didn’t set out to deceive you deliberately!”

  “The two cases are not the same. I should never burden a lady with the full details of a dig! A lady should be indulged, protected, humored if need be, ...”

  “A lady should be treated like a rational person,” Julia said coolly.

  “Why? You are not rational creatures.”

  Julia stared at him openmouthed. She blinked at him, feeling like an owl who’d blundered into daylight. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Miss Hanson, I have a mother and three sisters. None of them is the remotest bit rational. They have whims, fancies, and need constant guidance. My mother has even attended one of these so-called séances at the residence of this Dr. Mystery despite my assurances that he is a fraud.”

  “Dr. Mystery. Yes, I saw something about that. You are going there tonight?”

  “I am. My intention is to prove absolutely that this ‘spirit-guide’ ... this King Rameses-Set he claims visits him ... is nothing more than a fake, created by him out of bits and pieces of quasi-Egyptian lore and a depraved imagination.”

  “I’m afraid I know nothing about this. Wh
o is Dr. Mystery?”

  “No one knows yet. But I intend to find out. He has challenged me to prove he’s a fraud and I will do so tonight. This spiritualism is a pernicious import from the United States of America and is doing great harm among the credulous. My mother is just one of many middle-aged women who have been taken in. She gave him fifty pounds for a message, allegedly from my late father.”

  “I can understand her temptation,” Julia said gently in the face of his evident disgust. “I would give ten times that—a thousand times that—for a genuine word from my mother. She died when I was five. I hardly recall her at all.”

  The color in his cheeks faded. “I’m sorry. My father only died five years ago. How I wish he were here now. Mother wouldn’t be in this scrape if only he were here to watch over her.”

  For a moment, Julia felt a sense of sympathy with Simon Archer, as she had when reading his letters. They were two of a kind, once past the trappings of their sexes and relative positions in the world. Had she been a man, theirs would have been a friendship to rival the most famous in history. But she was not. The differences between them were as impassable as the Himalayan peaks. For the moment, Julia did not know how to circumvent them. There had to be a way.

  She said, “I can only assure you, Mr. Archer, that I am very unlike ordinary girls. I don’t scream, faint, or giggle. I don’t take a great interest in dress or deportment and find tight lacing and dancing to be equal torture. My heart is given to Egypt. You, of all people, must understand that.”

  “Yes, I do understand. But as you are a woman...”

  “As for the difficulties you mention, I admit that they are not on my list of favorite things. However, I am willing to overlook such personal inconveniences and others even less congenial. Every change in circumstances, whether a voyage or, say, a marriage, requires such adjustments. Certainly I would never trouble you with my qualms.”

  In an utterly shocked tone, he demanded, “Are you proposing to travel to Egypt in my company?”