The Other Guy's Bride (3 page)

Miss Whimpelhall flushed at the implied criticism. “Colonel Lord Pomfrey would never—That is, Colonel Lord Pomfrey has explained—Far be it from me to question—Here. Please, read for yourself. Colonel Lord Pomfrey is so much more eloquent than I.” She reached behind her pillow and drew forth an obviously much-read letter, peeling off the final page and offering it to Ginesse.

“Oh…I could never…This is private correspondence…” But of course, she could. Even as she was demurring, she twitched the letter from Miss Whimpelhall’s fingers and read:

A
cowboy! A
ruffian
cowboy! Fueled by dozens of dime novels, Ginesse’s imagination immediately conjured up a hard-eyed, weather-beaten hombre in a black ten-gallon hat, a lariat draped around one of his shoulders and a saddle by his feet. Breathlessly, she read on:

He
was
a scoundrel! How thrilling! But how
dreadful
for Miss Whimpelhall.

It seemed a rather flat ending for a man to have written a woman he had not seen in two years. There ought to have been a bit more…
oomph
. But then, she was hardly in a position to judge, having never had a suitor, only some educational encounters with the library’s would-be Lothario. She was simply not the sort that inspired
oomph
.

She was tall and frankly athletic. Being olive-complexioned, she tanned too easily, and though tow-headed as a child, her hair had turned an unremarkable brown. Though her mother staunchly declared her nose “Florentine” in size and shape, she knew it was simply large, just as she knew her mouth was too full-lipped and too wide. Her only attractive feature was the color of her eyes, an interesting shade of not-quite-blue, nor-yet-green.

Not that she regretted her looks. Her height and strong features made her look formidable, a fact she sometimes used to advantage when dealing with difficult people.

No one, she thought looking at her patient, would call Miss Whimpelhall formidable. Despite the red hair. She had soft, small features with pale skin and light blue eyes, now welling up with tears as the seas grew rougher again. A jar rolled out from under the bunk. Idly, Ginesse picked it up and read the label…

Oh, my
. Apparently even the small glory of red hair wasn’t Miss Whimpelhall’s. Hurriedly, Ginesse tucked the jar of powdered henna into her pocket. The dear lady would be mortified to be caught employing cosmetics.

“So you see, I am to be quite adequately safeguarded,” Miss Whimpelhall said. She added fretfully, “Though I do wish Mr. Owens sounded more prepossessing. I am a terrible coward. Not at all like you, Miss Braxton. You would deal much better with a man like Owens than I.”

This was undoubtedly true.

“Just look at how you convinced the captain to make that unscheduled stop at Gibraltar. I wish I’d gotten off then.”

“Have heart, Miss Whimpelhall. It won’t be too much longer before we arrive in Italy. A few hours at most.”

“Hours? I don’t think I can last hours.”

“Nonsense,” Ginesse said bracingly. “Why, you haven’t emptied your tummy in an—”

Miss Whimpelhall grabbed the basin. A long moment later she raised tragic eyes to Ginesse. Her lips trembled. “I can’t do this anymore!”

“Of course you can, and I shall be by your side every mile of the way.”

“Mile?
Mile.
Mile upon mile of…heaving…sea…Oh!” She gulped, sweat popping out on her forehead. “I cannot…be…on this ship. Any longer.”

“Now, now—”

“I
cannot
. I
will
not,” she said, sounding more determined than Ginesse had ever heard her. “I would rather die.”

“But what can you do?”

“I will get off in Italy and proceed to Egypt by rail and whatever other means necessary. Will you help me?”

“Of course,” Ginesse said. “But I don’t really see how much help I can provide. You simply have a porter take your luggage from your room and walk off.”

“Oh, Miss Braxton, you make everything seem so easy.”

“That’s because things generally are,” she said with only a passing thought to the problem of Zerzura.

“But what if the captain should protest my decision to leave? I am not like you, Miss Braxton. I find it very difficult to ask men, even porters, to do things.”

“You don’t ask a man to do something; you tell him,” Ginesse said. “Males do not do well with choices. They want direction.”

“How ever do you come to know so much about gentlemen at so tender an age?” Miss Whimpelhall asked.

“Having six younger brothers has doubtless afforded me some insight into the workings of the male mind. Though honesty compels me to admit I don’t find it a very deep or mysterious realm. What do you wish me to do?”

“After I leave the ship, deliver a letter to the captain. In it, I will explain all. And when you arrive in Cairo, if you would deliver a similar letter to Mr. Owens, I would be eternally in your debt.”

“But what of Colonel Lord Pomfrey? How will you get word to him in…Where is he stationed?”

“Fort Gordon,” Miss Whimpelhall said. “I shall send him a telegram—Miss Braxton, are you quite all right? You look most odd.”

Fort Gordon was located far away in Egypt’s western desert at a small oasis. A small oasis not thirty miles away from where she expected to find Zerzura.

It was meant to be. She had known it.

“Miss Braxton?” Miss Whimpelhall asked.

“Yes, yes. I’m fine,” she replied. “Just a sudden bit of vertigo.” Her thoughts raced wildly, arranging and discarding at lightning speed a dozen plots by which she could take advantage of this unique set of circumstances before quickly settling on one.

“Miss Whimpelhall,” she said decisively, “you must let me arrange everything for you. I’ll have your luggage removed, deliver your letters to both the captain and Mr. Owens, book your rail ticket to Egypt, and arrange for your transport to the train station. And please, you must not even think of venturing into an Italian telegraph station. Nasty places. Italian men have such…busy hands.”

At this, Miss Whimpelhall gave a little whimper. Ginesse offered a silent apology to all Italian men.

“Besides, you don’t speak Italian, do you? No? I thought not. I do. You must allow me to send a message ahead to Fort Gordon on your behalf.”

“Oh, would you?” Miss Whimpelhall cried, clasping both of Ginesse’s hands in hers. “I shall never be able to repay you. Never!”

“My dear Miss Whimpelhall,” said Ginesse, smiling fondly. “You already have.”

Ginesse pressed her face to the train’s window, her lips parting in a slight smile. Even though they’d entered the city through an unprepossessing and newer part of the city, it was still Cairo. It was home.

Minarets pointed heavenward like slender fingers, while beneath them the round domes of the mosques glowed as smooth and white as a concubine’s breasts. To the south, the old city jumbled in fanciful confusion along twisting alleys and narrow, rutted lanes in direct contrast to the ponderous purposefulness of the European district with its orderly houses and wide, lebbeck-canopied avenues. The afternoon wind had begun churning dust from the streets and shaking it over Cairo’s head like a manic cleaner woman beating a rug, enveloping the city in a shimmering shroud.

Ginesse threw up the window and craned her head out as the train slowed to enter the cavernous Misr Station. On the platform below crowded a mass of people: travelers waiting to board, porters vying for trade, guides shouting their credentials (mostly invented) and fees (mostly exorbitant), beggars pleading for
baksheesh
, and peddlers selling everything from iced lemonade to sticky buns.

James Owens was somewhere among them.

Her heart began to race. She had no cause to feel guilty about her impersonation, she told herself. She wasn’t only helping herself, she was also saving Mildred Whimpelhall from a miserable two weeks in the company of an uncouth American cowboy.

It had been easy to assume Miss Whimpelhall’s identity. After the gentle lady had disembarked in Italy, Ginesse had sent a message to the captain saying that Miss Ginesse Braxton would not be returning to the
Lydonia
but would instead continue her journey by rail. She’d then taken all of Miss Whimpelhall’s luggage to her former cabin to switch them up, but before she could remove her own belongings, the porters had arrived to take all the luggage in the cabin to the dock. She’d only managed to snatch one of her valises. But aside from that small matter, things had gone perfectly.

No one had questioned whether the woman in Miss Whimpelhall’s room was, in fact, Miss Whimpelhall. The poor woman had been sequestered in her room with seasickness from the very first day of their voyage. Even the attendants who’d brought Miss Whimpelhall’s food and emptied the chamber pot hadn’t had more than a glimpse of a prostrate figure with red hair lying on a bed behind a half-drawn curtain.

The red hair had been a matter of concern, of course. Ginesse hadn’t been sure the powdered henna she’d liberated from Miss Whimpelhall was up to the task of convincingly dying her own hair, but four days and eight applications of henna had indeed turned it an exuberant shade. The first thing she’d done in Alexandria was buy some darkened glasses, just in case Colonel Lord Pomfrey had mentioned Miss Whimpelhall’s eye color to Mr. Owens. There was no possibility of anyone describing her eyes as light blue.

With that thought, she drew the glasses she’d purchased out of her jacket pocket and put them on. At once she felt more confident. Her impersonation was going to succeed, and once she got to Fort Gordon…? Well, something would occur to her. The Fates had led her this far, and she could not believe they would abandon her at the last minute.

The train squealed to a halt, releasing a cloud of hissing vapor. She stood up, hauled her valise from the rack, and peered out the window, searching for a rough-looking American. A handsome young Egyptian man in a European suit sauntered by below her window. She started, checked, and stared.

It couldn’t be.

It was.

Haji Elkamal.

Haji had been the chief tormentor of her childhood. As a teenager, he had occasionally lived with his aunt Magi in Ginesse’s great-grandfather’s house. As Sir Robert’s pet, he’d styled himself as a translator on a few of her great-grandfather’s digs. Arrogant, dismissive, and maddeningly superior, he’d made light of her every effort to win approval. When she tried to speak the patois of the workers, he laughed hysterically; when she’d found a mummified cat, he’d disparaged it as common.

Her eyes narrowed. Haji had also been instrumental in her banishment from Egypt. It had been Haji who’d told everyone she’d set fire to that cache of ancient papyrus (which hadn’t actually been all that old as far as ancient papyri went).

She tapped her fingers on the sill, thinking. This was no coincidence. Her great-grandfather must have sent Haji to collect her. Drat. Though she’d sent a telegram from Italy saying she’d be arriving in Cairo a few weeks late, she still should have foreseen this. Her great-grandfather had doubtless misplaced her message or, even more likely, never read it. Sir Robert Carlisle had no interest in forms of communication more modern than papyri. He decried the invention called “postcards” as the end of civilized interaction.

She would simply have to avoid Haji, she decided, plopping her hat atop her head. And if he did see her, he probably wouldn’t recognize her. They hadn’t met in six years, and she was no longer a little girl. She was at least three inches taller than him now, not to mention the fact that her once blonde hair was now very, very red.

Poor Haji. He would undoubtedly waste the rest of the day meeting every train, waiting for her to appear.

It served him right.

She leaned out of the window, watching with a smile as he wended his way through the crowds fruitlessly looking for her. So far, he didn’t realize just how fruitlessly. She frowned as he stopped wending and hailed a tall, bare-headed, and disreputable-looking man with dark gold hair and three days’ growth of beard.

Oh, no.

She peered more closely. The man certainly looked like a desperado: tall, whipcord lean, with broad shoulders and overlong, sun-streaked hair. His face was hard and still, his light colored eyes narrowed beneath dark brows. He looked stern and uncompromising.

And dirty.

Beneath a rumpled jacket, he wore a sweat-stained cotton shirt, his worn trousers held up by heavy leather suspenders and tucked into scarred, scuffed, knee-high leather boots. A black and white
khafiya
, the traditional desert scarf, was looped around his strong, tanned throat.

Desperately, she scanned the platform, searching for another “ruffian of the highest order.” She didn’t find any. He could only be James Owens.

As she watched, he pushed off the wall and went to meet Haji, moving with the easy, soft-footed grace of a large cat. A large
dangerous
cat.

Drat and blast. Why did all the scoundrels in Egypt have to know one another?