Jenny frowned.
“I’ve made my mind up, sure as anything, Uncle Neville. What’s wrong with this man?”
“Mr. Holmboe is . . .” Neville hesitated, searching for the right word. “Very clever and very talented. He is also a bit odd—annoying some find him, though I do not.”
“He is abrasive and argumentative? Or is he one of those learned fellows who has to let you know just how much smarter than you he is?”
“I would prefer for you to make your own decision regarding Mr. Holmboe. However, I thought it only fair to warn you that he is not terribly popular in some circles.”
Jenny toyed with the lace edging on one sleeve, clearly fascinated.
Neville continued, “I had reasons other than Mr. Holmboe’s talents for hiring him. One is that I do not wish news of our planned venture to spread. He is outside the usual circles, and therefore not likely to gossip.”
“You’re not doing something illegal?” Jenny asked sharply.
“Perhaps on the fringes of legality,” Neville admitted. “I will explain everything at tea. Then you will have time to consider whether you wish to continue associating yourself with this venture by traveling in my company. Lady Lindenmeade would be happy to have you.”
Jenny frowned, but no matter how much she wheedled, Neville would say no more. There were things he would prefer to talk about as little as possible.
The hours between Uncle Neville’s arrival home and when high tea was served late that afternoon dragged interminably for Jenny. Belzoni’s book, once so fascinating, could no longer hold her interest. After she’d read the same half-page three or four times, she marked her place and set the book aside.
Then she went up to her room. She hadn’t had much need for her guns on the steamer across from Boston, but even with them locked up in their case, the salt air wouldn’t have done them much good. Taking out oil and cloth, she methodically cleaned both six-shooters and the derringer. Emily hadn’t found the Winchester in its fitted box that was flush with the bottom of her longest trunk—or, if she had, her curiosity had been amply satisfied that morning. In any case, the rifle remained in its padding, nearly as pristine as it had been on the day its custom-made beauty had arrived at the finishing school, along with a note from Papa promising that they would go hunting soon after the term ended.
Jenny had taken the rifle out and practiced assiduously when visiting tolerant friends in the Massachusetts countryside, but she had lost heart for the sport the day the telegram had arrived announcing the burning of her parents’ new ranch and their deaths in the fire. Now she stared down at the polished metal gun barrel, the shining oak stock, the fanciful curlicues etched along its length and shaping her initials.
She briefly wondered if Mama and Papa had argued over this peculiar gift, then felt certain that they had not. Mama might have been startled by Papa’s selection, but she wouldn’t have argued about its aptness. Both Jenny’s parents knew that their daughter’s goal was to become a frontier doctor like her father, though the question of whether Jenny would go to medical school or acquire her training more informally from her father had not yet been settled.
Indeed, though Madame’s institute was commonly called a finishing school, subjects other than deportment, music, and art were available to those young women who chose to indulge—and Jenny had indulged with enthusiasm in case the medical school option seemed wisest. This coming summer she was to have been her father’s full-time assistant, expected to rise for every call, depart every social engagement as he did, and otherwise learn whether she was prepared for those grueling professional rounds.
A tear splashed from her eye, staining the velvet lining, and bringing Jenny back to the present. Somehow she must acquire ammunition. It shouldn’t be too difficult, though. Papa had made certain the rifle’s caliber was one commonly used by both the military and civilians. If Uncle Neville would not approve the purchase, Jenny would take care of it herself some day when she was supposed to be buying ribbons and handkerchiefs.
This practical line of thought was more attractive than her grief, and Jenny sat down and began making a list of things she would need if she was to be ready to go into the desert with Uncle Neville. That he planned to leave her in Cairo, she had no doubt. That she would do her best to change those plans, she already knew.
Writing out that list forced Jenny to go back and forth between her newly unpacked belongings and the writing table. She wondered what Emily had thought of her well-worn calf-high riding boots, stack of folded bandanna handkerchiefs, and the soft-brimmed slouch hat, stained by sun and weather, but that was as neat a fit on Jenny’s head as her own hair. Probably none of these items of clothing had puzzled the maid as much as the selection of denim trousers, tailored to Jenny’s measurements, with belt loops wide enough to accept her gun belt with its ornamental hammered silver coins.
The trousers had been Mama’s idea. She herself rode sidesaddle, managing the awkward seat so well that one time she’d gone straight up the side of a mountain after a strayed cow and calf. Jenny, however, had favored riding astride, long after she should have given up such childish practices.
Mama was no fool. In return for Jenny’s agreeing to learn to ride sidesaddle well enough to pass on social occasions, she had agreed to let her daughter wear trousers when no one was around who could be shocked. Like most compromises, it made no one perfectly happy, but as none of those whom it made unhappy were within the Benet family, it worked just fine.
I wonder what riding a camel is like,
Jenny thought.
Or will Uncle Neville get some of those magnificent Arab horses I’ve read about? That would be splendid. I suppose it will depend on where he plans to go, and how deeply into the desert.
One way and another, Jenny filled the hours until tea. Even so, she’d been dressed in her new tea gown—simple and black, as appropriate for a young woman still in deep mourning—for quite a while before she heard the clock chime the hour and knew she could descend without seeming too eager. Not seeming too eager was part of her plan for convincing Uncle Neville, for if he was anything like Mama, pushing was just the way to get him to dig in his heels like a bronc determined not to ford a flood-swollen river.
Tea was being served in the parlor, and Jenny didn’t miss the appreciative look in Uncle Neville’s eyes as she glided in.
He really does think I’m pretty,
she thought, and felt a trace surprised.
Out west any white woman was still awfully rare. Even a plain as dirt spinster of forty might find herself getting loaded down with marriage proposals, so Jenny hadn’t taken too seriously the calf-eyes that followed her around at just about every box social or church dance. Back east, the recent war had done its part to whittle down the number of eligible bachelors. She hadn’t had suitors lining up to visit on Sunday afternoons like some of the girls.
There had been a few, of course, the nicest of them Tommy Mullens, the middle brother of one of the girls in Jenny’s year, but nothing had come of that other than a few good conversations. Uncle Neville’s obvious admiration felt just like Papa’s had—warming and completely nonthreatening.
They hadn’t gotten much beyond Jenny’s thanking her uncle for his compliments on her dress when a solid rap on the front door announced their caller.
As soon as Stephen Holmboe crossed the threshold into the parlor, Jenny knew that she was encountering a genuine English eccentric. Later she would learn that Stephen was in his mid-twenties, but at that moment he appeared both older and younger. Part of this was due to his attire which was, even to Jenny’s American eye, at least fifteen years out of date. Men’s fashions hadn’t changed as dramatically as had women’s, which had gone from hoops to bustles, and from bonnets to dainty hats. However, it had not remained stagnant.
Stephen Holmboe wore checked trousers with a matching loose-fitting jacket designed in the high-buttoned style. His cravat was wide and flowing, matching the solid off-white of his shirt. In short, he was quite the swell—but a swell who would have been out of style even a decade before. Mr. Holmboe’s manner of dressing his brilliant golden blond hair continued this motif. It was longer than was currently fashionable, as were his bushy side-whiskers and mustache. Curtseying to Mr. Holmboe’s bow, Jenny felt rather as if she were being introduced to an enormous ambulatory dandelion.
She might have been put off by this eccentric vision, but the blue gaze that met hers and darted quickly away was both shy and sweet. Stephen’s smile was kind, and his mannerisms closer to those of a boy of fifteen than a young man of twenty-five. Within moments of their being introduced, it was evident to Jenny that Stephen Holmboe possessed both energy and enthusiasm in abundance.
“Hullo, Sir Neville,” he said. “Yes, I’ll have a cup of tea. These ginger biscuits look smashing.”
Stephen loaded one broad-palmed hand with sweets, took his cup in the other, and only afterwards seemed to realize that seating himself without spilling something all over the carpet was going to prove difficult. Jenny inclined her head toward a chair with an end table conveniently near.
“Perhaps there?” she suggested.
Stephen grinned, managed to drop his cookies onto the table, and then set the tea cup down after.
“I certainly won’t starve you, Stephen,” Uncle Neville said tolerantly. “Cook has even supplied more than sweets.”
“Smashing!” Stephen repeated. “Viands suitable for a king. I shall probably devour everything in sight and then start on the upholstery. I think I forgot to eat today. Got absorbed in reading up for our expedition. Lost track of time. Would have forgotten this except that you’d dropped such ominous hints—and my sister dragged me out of my book.”
Jenny helped herself to a small iced cake, more to cover her amusement than because she was very hungry. Having expected another stiff and formal Englishman—quite possibly one with a chip on his shoulder, who would certainly disapprove of her—she found this ebullient young man a relief. However, she could understand why the conventional and conforming English might find Stephen annoying.
Neville dismissed the maid, settled a plate of dainties that he promptly ignored on the table near his elbow, and became quite solemn.
“I do have some rather serious matters to confide in you both,” he began. “Before I begin, I must impress upon you how very important it is that none of this go any further than ourselves. I believe you will understand why once I have finished, but I must have your word.”
Stephen nodded crisply, boyishness vanished.
“You have my word,” he said. “Not a peep to anyone.”
“Mine, too, Uncle Neville. I’ll swear on anything you’d like.”
“Your word is enough, Jenny,” Neville replied, “as is Stephen’s. If I didn’t think you were trustworthy, I wouldn’t be confiding in you. However, I must warn you that this could be a dangerous secret to hold.”
Neither of his listeners expressed any reluctance to hear, but still Neville paused for a long moment more before going on.
“My story begins when I was still in active service in Egypt. My commanding officer called me to him and told me I was being delegated to escort a visiting German archeologist, one Alphonse Liebermann, during his travels into Upper Egypt.”
Speaking tersely, yet sparing no detail, Sir Neville related how Alphonse Liebermann had been seeking the lost burial complex of a pharaoh known to him only as Neferankhotep. He told about their journey up the Nile, and about their arrival at the Hawk Rock. In less dispassionate tones, he related how on the brink of their great discovery they had been assaulted by Bedouin tribesmen.
“We were forced to flee for our lives,” Sir Neville concluded, “and without a great deal of luck and some elaborate trickery we would not have escaped. The event soured Liebermann on searching for buried tombs. We returned to Luxor and toured extensively before he returned home.”
Sir Neville drank deeply from tea that Jenny knew must be stone cold, but he didn’t appear to notice. “Events might have soured Alphonse on archeological exploration, but I fear that for me the attraction became only more acute. My duties did not permit me to pursue this interest full-time, nor even to always remain in Egypt, but when I could, I continued learning everything possible. My interest meant that I was frequently assigned as liaison to archeological expeditions—a courtesy the army was happy to extend for diplomatic reasons. However, though I came to know various archeologists very well, I never confided in them what I had learned from Alphonse Liebermann. That was to be my discovery, and mine alone.
“I continued planning on mounting an expedition to find the Valley of Dust. The winter two years after the first venture, everything fell into place. I had been detailed to escort a group as far as Luxor. However, once in Luxor, my time was to be my own. I had leave coming to me, and I arranged to take it. I made other arrangements as well, and one night, a few days before I was to depart, I was returning rather late to my quarters when my plans were scotched for good.