The Adventuress by TASHA ALEXANDER Page A

perfect in every conceivable way.”
    â€œJack will come to us eventually, and if he is able to persuade his brother to join him in Cairo, we will be the first to meet him. Until then, would you not prefer to distract yourself with the magnificent sights that surround us?”
    Amity crossed her arms across her chest. “You are unlikely to relent until I agree to climb this wretched pyramid.”
    â€œPrecisely. Come, your father has already hired guides to assist us.”
    Amity did not enjoy a single moment of the excursion. She objected to the rough manner in which the guides—three of them per lady—all but dragged her up the enormous stone blocks of the pyramid. It was a singularly unpleasant experience. The view from the top, as she suspected, was pedestrian. To suggest the lights of Cairo were of any interest was ludicrous, and as for the stars … Amity had never understood why people found them so noteworthy. The full moon, she allowed, was spectacular enough, but she could have seen that from her bedroom window in New York.
    While the rest of the party exclaimed over the panoramas, Amity sat on a stone and tapped her foot, glaring at her parents.
    â€œThere is no need to pout, child,” her mother said, poking her with a walking stick. “It is unbecoming.”
    â€œIs there someone here I ought to be trying to impress?” Amity asked, a scowl across her pretty face.
    â€œThere is plenty of society to be found here, and you know well why we couldn’t have started in London. Your reputation may have preceded you there, so we were forced to make acquaintances in far-flung outposts of the empire before descending upon the capital. Get up and either enjoy yourself or pretend to. I don’t care which.” Mrs. Wells tugged on her sullen daughter’s arm and brought her to her feet.
    â€œWhy do you bring up my reputation, Mother?” Amity asked. “No one aside from yourself and Daddy have the slightest inkling as to what happened in New York. I haven’t ruined your chances of joining the aristocracy, although you ought to bear in mind that I will be the one with the title, not you.”
    Mrs. Wells raised her hand and slapped Amity soundly. The ensuing red splotch blossoming on her daughter’s fair cheek was plainly visible in the moonlight. “That is quite enough from you.”

 
    6
    The unsettling feeling that consumed me during my conversation with Augustus on the wall near the castle stayed with me for the remainder of the day. Everyone else enjoyed our outing, and when we arrived back at the hotel, Mr. and Mrs. Wells, along with Cécile, were waiting for us on the terrace, where they had caused three round tables to be pushed close together so that we might all converse with ease as the sunset painted the sky with colors of which our friend Renoir would have approved. Augustus did not acknowledge me when he appeared, taking a seat next to his mother and making no further attempt to speak to me that evening. If anything, he avoided me.
    â€œI have had such a strange afternoon,” I said to Cécile, pulling her aside so that I could speak to her quietly. I wanted a word with her away from the group.
    â€œI heard all about Bainbridge’s fall,” she said. “It sounds like much ado about very little.”
    â€œI am not sure that I agree,” I said.
    â€œWhat are you suggesting?” she asked, and I recounted for her Augustus’s treatment of the butterfly. “Do you think Augustus pushed him deliberately? Why would he do such a thing? He does not seem particularly attached to his sister.”
    I frowned. “I have observed the same. He does not seem particularly attached to anyone, yet he is the only of her brothers who is here, and that may in and of itself signify.”
    â€œJeremy’s mother is not here,” Cécile said. “Does that signify something as well?”
    â€œShe