“A ball,” the woman repeated, the word an accusation. “An event of critical social importance in this city, where introductions are made and alliances secured, and you went—unaccompanied by your chaperone—with a man whose reputation is, at best, a matter of wild speculation.” She leaned forward, the burgundy wrapper rustling. “I was hired to ensure your reputation remains unimpeachable. If I am not permitted to chaperone you, if I am not permitted to advise you, if I am forced to sit alone in this expensive, empty suite while you publicly court disaster, then I must ask you: What, precisely, am I doing here?”
The question was desperate, laced with the wounded pride of a woman grasping for a role. Eden paused in the act of unpinning her elaborate coiffure. She looked at Mrs. Carlisle—not the duchess-approved accessory, but the tired, anxious woman beneath the wrapper. Perhaps it was time to finally have an honest conversation with the woman she’d taken for granted this entire trip.
“You’re doing exactly what you’re here to do, Felicity,” Eden said, using her first name for the first time. “You’re allowing Genevieve to feel as though she has some measure of control over my safety, and your sister to feel like she has some control over your future.”
Felicity blinked, startled by the familiarity. “This is all just to appease my sister and the duchess? But I was meant to be a companion! A figure of propriety!”
“A figurehead,” Eden corrected gently, crossing the room to pour a glass of water, offering one to her companion. “Do you honestly think I, a widow with enough inherited wealth to ignoreevery rule of society, would hire a chaperone for an expedition that is, by its very nature, utterly improper?”
Felicity took the glass, her hand trembling slightly. “Then why, Eden? Why did you bring me all this way?”
Eden sat on the edge of the ottoman, the moonlight catching the satin of her gown. “Because Genevieve and your sister were incredibly worried about you, Felicity. They saw you withdrawing after your husband’s death, and they knew you needed a focus, a grand project to restart your life. The job of ‘chaperone’ was merely an excuse to give you this trip. They did not want you to feel pitied but loved.”
Felicity went rigid. Her face, usually pale, flushed a deep, mortified red. “So they gave me an elaborate, costly gesture of charity.” Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. “I came here to perform a task, and if I’m not performing my duty, what am I to do? I don’t know how to simply...beright now.”
Eden watched Felicity’s distress, her feelings toward the woman softening. Her husband’s death had obviously taken her identity, and she was desperately trying to cling to a new one.
“Stop thinking of it as charity,” Eden commanded, her voice firm. “Look at it for what it is. A gift.”
Felicity shook her head miserably. “Gifts require gratitude, and I feel nothing but resentment. My sister should have consulted me. It’s incredibly insulting of her to decide that she knows what I need better than I do.”
Eden walked over, knelt by the armchair, and took Felicity’s trembling hands in hers. “Look around you. This is the Shepheard, the finest hotel between London and Bombay. Outside that window is Cairo, the Pyramids, the Nile. Genevieve and your sister used my wild expedition to give you a chance to breathe, to escape the crushing weight of London society and your mourning. You have been given months to find yourself again.”
She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “You are finally free to do whatever you damn well please.”
Felicity stared at Eden, the hurt slowly giving way to astonishment, and then a flicker of genuine curiosity. “You... you’re telling me to go and tour the city? To see the Pyramids and the Sphinx?”
“I’m telling you to stop trying to be the companion the duchess expected and start deciding how to be Felicity Carlisle again,” Eden said, thinking back to how lost she’d felt when she was in Felicity’s shoes.
Felicity slowly, carefully, removed her spectacles, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I don’t even know how to begin to do that. For so many years, I was nothing but Jonathan’s wife.”
“You can start by thinking about what you want to do with the rest of your life. What makes you happy? What do you love to do? Start there, and perhaps you’ll find your answer.”
Felicity rose and walked to her own room. She paused at the door and looked back at Eden. “That’s a beautiful gown, Eden. Moonlight becomes you.” And with that simple, genuine compliment, the thick layer of employer-companion formality dissolved, leaving two women on an adventure together.
Chapter Fourteen
The British Antiquities Service squatted at the end of Qasr al-Nil with its brass-plated signage and windows stained with a century of Cairo dust. Eden and Max arrived just past eight, boots muddy from the alleyway shortcut Max insisted would save them time. Thanks to a team of donkeys creating a bottleneck, it had not.
“Let’s hope this goes well,” Eden said, allowing herself one deep breath to steel herself before stepping inside.
“Just stick to the plan,” Max replied quietly. He’d coached her on all the things to say, and not say, on the way over.
The antechamber was paneled in dark wood and cooled by a ceiling fan that clicked as if counting the seconds until everyone in the room died of boredom or heatstroke. Gilt-framed maps of the Nile looped the walls, the river’s blue curve repeated in obsessive detail from the Delta to Nubia; someone had stabbed pins at every major archaeological site.
