Page 23 of Tomb of the Sun King

She had woken awkwardly that morning to Constance pounding at her bedroom door, exhorting her to hurry. The high angle of the sunlight streaming through the slender openings in the meshrabiyeh screen over her window had indicated how late she had slept—probably because she had not slept particularly well at all, her mind still racing over the bewildering conversation she’d had with Adam the night before.

I don’t want you to change your mind about marriage.

You’re not my obligation!

She still hadn’t the foggiest idea what he’d meant by it all—or by his fervent and obviously deeply felt apology after he had kissed her utterly senseless against the wall of the alcove.

They clearly needed to talk—again—but she was hardly going to manage that while sharing a train compartment with both Constance and Mr. Mahjoud, who had been given the duty of accompanying them to Neil’s dig site.

Adam sat across from her, his tan worsted trousers tucked into his work boots. He’d deigned to put on a jacket again but had skipped donning a waistcoat. His battered fedora rested on the seat beside him.

He was unusually quiet, his brow furrowed and stormy as he frowned down at the notebook he held in his big capable hands.

Hands that had slid up the fabric of her drawers last night as he had pressed her against the wall.

Ellie awkwardly smoothed folds of her gray poplin skirt over her knees as the carriage seemed to grow a little hotter. “Have we any lemonade, by any chance?” she asked a little desperately.

Mr. Mahjoud—dressed in a perfectly tailored suit with a natty red waistcoat and bow tie—plucked a flask from the hamper at his feet and poured some into a tin cup.

Ellie took a grateful gulp—and then nearly dropped the cup as the houses outside the window gave way to an open stretch of desert punctuated by a trio of enormous sun-gilded peaks.

“Pyramids!” she squeaked.

Constance glanced up from her magazine. “Oh! There they are,” she noted mildly before going back to reading.

With a sigh, Mr. Mahjoud reached out and plucked the cup from Ellie’s nerveless fingers. She hardly noticed. Instead, she pressed herself to the frame of the open window as though it could bring her closer to those noble four-thousand-year-old monuments to power and kingly divinity.

“Khufu,” she recited. Her gaze locked on the largest and nearest of the gilded peaks before sliding to the others. “Khafre. Menkaure.”

She looked back to her traveling companions, burning with the need to share her wonder and excitement at actuallyseeingthe immortal Pyramids of Giza in the flesh.

Constance was lifting the lid of the hamper for a peek. Mr. Mahjoud cleared his throat, flashing her a quelling look, and she sat back with a dissatisfied huff.

Adam’s eyes were on Ellie.

His look flared with emotion—admiration, frustration, and a thundering heat that set Ellie’s pulse racing before he quickly glanced away again.

“Couldn’t I just—” Constance reached for the hamper again.

“Not until lunch,” Mr. Mahjoud cut in, turning the page of his newspaper.

?

Shortly afterward, as the last clustered outbuildings of Cairo’s sprawl fully gave way to farmland and desert, the train came to a sudden and unexpected halt. Ellie heard the screech of brakes and jolted against her seat.

“Wonderful,” Mr. Mahjoud commented dourly.

“I’m guessing this isn’t a regular stop,” Adam commented.

“It isn’t,” Constance confirmed. “There’s nothing here.”

Ellie pressed herself back as Constance lurched into her lap to stick her neatly coiffed head through the window. Her derriere shifted as she craned her neck for a better angle.

“It looks like the engineers are out, but I can’t see what they’re looking at,” she announced.

“Would you please refrain from throwing yourself out the window?” Mr. Mahjoud requested tiredly.

Ellie grasped Constance’s skirts and tugged her back into the carriage.

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