Free Midsummer Night by Deanna Raybourn Page B

honeymoon. I was eager to climb a pyramid and sail the Nile, and the sights and sounds of that first moment on African soil remain with me still. The pedlars, shouting their wares of silks and fruit and donkey rides; the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer, the children laughing and the occasional sharp chatter of a monkey. Alexandria was teeming, tiny sailboats darting dangerously near the great steamships laden with cargo and passengers bound for strange lands.
    While Brisbane was busy making arrangements with a porter, I stood upon the deck watching one of the little sailboats as it tacked between the ships, carrying a tardy passenger to the mouth of the harbour where a ship stood waiting. The sailboat slowed, one of the sails snarled about the mast, and one of the young sailors scampered up to work it free. The woman passenger tipped her head back to watch him. Just then, a breeze caught her hat, lifting it from her head. She made a grab for it, laughing, and as she caught it, her eyes locked with mine. Even at a distance, I saw them widen, and then she rose, carefully, as the small craft rocked in the wake of the bigger ships. She dropped a neat curtsey and I inclined my head. She replaced her hat just as the sailor freed the tangled sail. The wind caught it and the little boat seemed to rise up then roll forward, borne aloft on the wind. The tiny figure in the boat turned once, and only once, waving her hand to me in farewell.
    “Godspeed, Charlotte King,” I thought.
    Brisbane, his business with the porter concluded, turned to me with a sigh. “A fine enquiry agent I shall be if my wife keeps letting all of my best catches slip through her fingers.”
    I blinked. “You knew I let Charlotte go?”
    He gave me a pained look. “I realise circumstances have not always shown me at my best, but I am a rather good enquiry agent, Julia. It is only in cases where you are involved that I seem to founder.”
    “You mean where I interfere.”
    “It is our honeymoon,” he said smoothly. “I didn’t like to be rude.”
    His tone was just a trifle too casual.
    “I should not have let her go without telling you. When did you know?”
    “When you allowed her to abduct you.”
    I gaped at him. “You knew I allowed it?”
    He rolled his eyes. “Julia, you have shown the tenacity of a bulldog upon more than one occasion as well as an appalling ability to elude serious harm. If Charlotte King abducted you, it was only because you permitted it.”
    I considered this. “That might be the nicest thing you have ever said to me.”
    “Do not accustom yourself to such gallantries,” he warned me. “I still have the darkest doubts about involving you in my work.”
    I smiled blandly. That was an issue for another time. “Why didn’t you tell me you knew? You could have stopped her escape.”
    “And answer to you for it on our wedding day? Thank you, but I think not. I thought it best to go along with whatever plan you had hatched for her escape and be done with it. And it seems entirely mad, but I suddenly wanted her to have it. I actually found myself cheering for Charlotte King. Not many people best me, you know. I wanted her to have a sporting chance.”
    I went onto my tiptoes and kissed him. Behind us a few of the other passengers clucked their disapproval, but I ignored them.
    He drew back with an approving smile, his gaze lingering on my mouth. “Not that I object in the slightest, but what occasioned that very public display of marital affection?”
    “For being the man I always knew you were.”
    I slipped my arm through his and we made our way down the gangplank and into the warm golden sunshine of Egypt. We had planned a leisurely tour and our first Christmas would be spent just the two of us, with no one to think of but ourselves, least of all my family.
    At least, that was the plan until Portia and Plum showed up and demanded we accompany them to India. 4 But that is a tale for another time.
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