and you’d lose him for the rest of the day. He had a habit of saving Sam when she tumbled into trouble, which was often, and thereby thoroughly putting up her back. In short, that picture is a lovely lie.’
‘But you love it. Egypt.’
‘Yes, but not for its relaxing qualities. Some of my best memories are from the years we spent in Egypt. Huxley was my mother’s cousin and it was through him that she met my father. When my father...died...we stayed with my grandmother in Venice, but one day Huxley appeared and swept us all off to Egypt. My mother’s family tried to object because she had been quite ill, but, since he was our guardian along with my paternal uncle, he carried the day. Until I joined the army, I spent my time between Venice and Egypt which were both a definite improvement on Sinclair Hall. But hardly relaxing.’
He cringed a little—his answer was more revealing than intended and her clever honey-brown eyes focused on him with curiosity. They were more honey than brown, a tawny swirl that made him think of the sweet-honey-and-nut baklava cakes Mrs Carmichael used to bribe them back to the house come evening.
He could see the questions bubbling inside her, but then her mouth turned prim again, curiosity reined in.
‘Well, perhaps that is what I want, too. Exciting can still be relaxing if it is different from what one knows.’
‘That is true. Perhaps you shall go to Egypt one day after all.’
She laughed, but there was such resignation in the sound he felt an instinctive surge of pity.
‘Don’t dismiss the possibility. Who knows? Perhaps a distant relative will demand you accompany her and her seventeen pugs on a voyage to the orient.’
‘Seventeen? Must it be seventeen?’
‘It must. In fact, you will set out with seventeen, but there might well be a few more by the time you arrive.’
She burst into laughter.
‘A pug harem. It sounds even more tiring than managing Whitworth.’
‘Adventure is often tiring. But if it is calm you seek, I could find you a post acting as governess to the heir to Shaykh Abd al-Walid, Prince of the White Desert.’
‘Being a governess isn’t at all calm. Before my... We once had a governess and, believe me, the poor woman was run ragged between us.’
‘This is not a household of sardonic and argumentative Walshes hiding under prim veneers, but a single, indolent and very plump little boy who can be appeased with sweetmeats and who naps most of the day.’
‘He sounds rather like a cat.’
‘Not like my sister-in-law’s cat. Inky is the size of a bear cub and, though she has a sweet tooth, she is definitely not indolent.’
‘Then I shall stick to my plump charge, though I doubt even someone as silver-tongued as you could convince a prince to employ someone as unqualified as I.’
‘You underestimate me, Miss Walsh. I have more skills than my silver tongue and as a servant of the Crown I can be...convincing.’
The laughter in her eyes was suddenly tinged with speculation.
‘Are you a servant of the Crown?’
‘Aren’t we all?’ he riposted.
As if she sensed his evasion, her eyes fell from his and she went back to her seat, sinking into it with an abruptness that made her skirts billow for a moment.
‘This is all amusing, but rather silly. I am unlikely to leave Whitworth so there is no point in dreaming of Egypt.’
‘You mean Huxley.’
‘What?’
‘You said you are unlikely to leave Whitworth.’
Her cheeks turned as pink as the sunset in Sam’s painting.
‘Of course. I meant...it was a figure of speech. I am still not accustomed... You know what I meant. In any case, they are both a long way from Egypt...’
The squeak of the gallery door interrupted her and Chase pushed to his feet in annoyance as a footman entered with a generously stacked tea tray.
No doubt the servants were told to keep them supplied with refreshments so they did not leave Huxley’s wing unless absolutely necessary, he thought.
Ermy’s campaign to separate Miss Walsh from Henry was clearly underway.
Stop staring, Ellie. Yes, Chase Sinclair is a well-favoured man, but that is no reason to discard one’s dignity. Keep your eyes on your task. Well favoured, hah! He’s beautiful. Just look at him.
For the hundredth time in the last several days Ellie did just that.
And for the hundredth time she forced her gaze back to her task, thoroughly disgusted with herself.
He was leaning over some papers, his hand deep in his dark hair, his forehead resting on his palm. The sharp lines of his profile were already etched in her mind: the groove at the side of his mouth that curved when he smiled, the fan of his lashes, long and dark and curving just a little at the end. How ridiculous was it that she knew precisely how a man’s eyelashes curved?
Even Susan, who leapt from infatuation to infatuation as if they were stepping stones across a stream, could not be so silly.
Though to be fair, after what she’d dealt with these past five years, Ellie considered she was long overdue some foolishness. It was only unfortunate that her first infatuation, if that was what it was, had to alight on someone like Mr Sinclair. But that, too, wasn’t surprising. She had never spent so much time alone with any man other than family or Henry and his father, and she had certainly never met anyone as impressive as Chase Sinclair. She disliked the thought that she was joining the ranks of probably all-too-numerous females infatuated with this admittedly impressive specimen of manhood.
She couldn’t’ even blame him for it. He wasn’t even doing anything to merit his dubious reputation. For a rake he was sadly un-rakish and she could see now why Dru and Fen treated him with such ease.
The worst was that she felt comfortable with him. Aside from her stupid propensity to stare at him, she did not feel in least awkward in his presence.
It felt as natural and as right as being alone and that was...peculiar.
He made her laugh with his nonsense, inventing ever more creative scenarios to account for her sudden travel to Egypt—moving on from pugs and plump princes to becoming a famous artist commissioned to paint a portrait of Muhammad Ali’s favourite horse. On another occasion she’d been beguiled into an ascension of a hot air balloon and was swept all the way eastwards, only to become stuck on the tip of the pyramid.
She’d even managed to concoct a few plots of her own, but they were never as exotic as his, running aground on objections before they even made it out of
