Page 16 of Tomb of the Sun King

“I should like to see how long they continued to hold that opinion when faced with the countless women subjected to confinement, neglect, or outright abuse on the part of their spouses, without any viable legal recourse to escape it!” Ellie shot back. “Never mind the others who are forced to submit themselves to a man they hardly know because the sole alternatives available to them—”

“—are impoverishment or prostitution,” Constance recited automatically with a wave of her hand. “Yes, yes. Do give me some credit, Ellie. I am hardly going to ally myself with a fellow who’d try to lock me in a cellar. And besides, even if he did, I’d just pick the lock. I have been continuing to refine my skills in that department.” She popped a date into her mouth, chewing it enthusiastically. “It’s not as though I’m opposed to the very notion of marriage—though of course I have nothing but respect for your own principled objections to it as an institution. I would be glad enough to marry if I could find someone who didn’t bore me to tears. It’s only that so many of these gentlemen are completely lacking in imagination! They might shower me with flattery and admiration for a little while, but then they will wander off to their clubs without sparing a thought as to how I am supposed to retain my sanity when I have only a bit of shopping and charity work to keep me entertained.”

Constance plucked out her hairpins and sat up forcefully, her black curls tumbling around her shoulders. “I want a man with a healthy spark of adventure… but who also isn’t an obvious cad. You wouldn’t think that is such a hard thing to find—but trust me, I have looked.”

“Don’t tell me that Sir Robert and Lady Sabita are considering Mr. Forster-Mowbray as a potential match for you.” Ellie grimaced with distaste.

“Oh, Julian is not so bad as some of them,” Constance replied tiredly. “I might even be tempted to accept him if my circumstances were slightly more desperate.”

“You can’t possibly mean that!” Ellie protested as she recalled their obliviously self-important dinner companion.

“At least his presence here in Egypt shows that he’s amenable to travel,” Constance countered. “But you needn’t worry. I won’t marry Julian, or anyone else for that matter—not until I have first seized a little romantic experience for myself.”

“Tell me we aren’t back to that notion of taking a lover again,” Ellie burst out with a thrill of alarm.

“We never left it!” Constance exclaimed. “That was the point! My parents insist that I must marry—butIinsist that I will not have my amorous horizons so precipitously constrained. Men are outright encouraged to do as much, after all. Who hasn’t heard young gentlemen being exhorted to sow their wild oats before settling down? If they are not held the same standard, why should we women be?”

“Men are not at risk of becoming ruined and socially outcast if they take lovers,” Ellie pointed out. “And what about pregnancy?”

“There are ways to avoid that,” Constance asserted with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Ellie paused. “And… what might those be?” she asked with careful nonchalance.

“I am still gathering information about the best options.” Constance picked up another date. “But I do know that there are a number of physical activities one might engage in that do not entail the risk of conception. Bapa has averyinteresting book on the topic hidden in the bottom of his wardrobe that he does not think I know about. It is in Urdu, of course, but the illustrations are most… illustrative.” She popped the date into her mouth. “I should be happy to lend it to you if you like.”

With effort, Ellie worked to keep her expression bland.

“I might possibly be interested in examining it,” she replied carefully, “for historical and cultural reasons.”

Constance fixed Ellie with a dangerously astute look. “You are now going to tell meexactlywhat you have been getting up to with Mr. Bates.”

“I don’t think you want to knowallthat we’ve been getting up to,” Ellie blurted out in wild protest.

“Yes,” Constance countered flatly. “I most certainly do.”

Ellie’s cheeks burned. “Well, I am not going to tell you all of it. Suffice to say that Mr. Bates and I… That we have… What I mean to say is…” She raised a hand to her temple, where she felt the start of a headache coming on. “It’scomplicated.”

“Has he asked you to marry him?” Constance pressed curiously.

“Of course, heasked,” Ellie admitted, and then quickly caught herself. “But only because he was trying to do the honorable thing.”

Constance’s eyes widened.

“After he learned that I was not in fact a widow!” Ellie continued hurriedly. “Because we had been traveling in the wilderness together.”

“And how firmly is he insisting on it now that you’ve…” Constance let her voice trail off expectantly.

Ellie pointedly refused to take up her bait. “The matter has not come up in recent weeks,” she primly returned.

“Might he have dropped the subject after you lectured him about how marriage is built on the exploitation of women and enforced by their complete exclusion from any other legitimate means of self-support?” Constance offered dryly.

Ellie drew in a breath, striving to keep her response reasonable. “I may have elaborated somewhat on the injustice of matrimony as a legal and social institution. But why should we be talking of marriage at all? We have only known each other for a matter of weeks! To throw ourselves into a permanent legal arrangement after such a short acquaintance would be an act of sheer madness!”

Constance shrugged. “People do it.”

“That is hardly an endorsement.”

Constance fixed Ellie with a canny stare. “Just out of curiosity, what exactly are you planning to do with yourself after you leave Egypt?”

---