Page 5

Breakfast on a Boat

M eanwhile

Holding his cousin’s binoculars to his face, Thomas Forster studied the shore—and the young woman and babe he caught running away from the water. He let out a low whistle.

“What is it?” his cousin, David Slater, asked. He moved to take the pair of telescopes from Tom, surprised when his cousin gave them up so easily.

“ Who , is more the question,” Tom murmured, making his way to the back of the sailing vessel.

Given the number of cabins and the fact that it had space for a kitchen and a dining table and chairs up top, the dhahab?yeh , named The Cleopatra , was practically a houseboat.

The large sail, located at the front on a mast that leaned in the direction of travel, was completely unfurled and filled with the morning’s wind as was the small one that extended well past the back of the ship.

When they had boarded the day before, Will Slater, Earl of Bellingham and former commander of HMS Greenwich , had studied the design for a long time, curious how the equivalent of a main mast would work at such an angle.

Once they were on their way, he marveled at how easy it was for one man—their captain, George—and a young boy to crew such a craft.

When George learned Will had captained a naval vessel, he invited him to take the wheel once they were well into the Nile.

“We must be careful of the sand bars,” George had explained. “And other hazards on the river bottom.”

Happy to wait his turn at the wheel, Will enjoyed watching the shoreline along with the rest of the family as they departed the port at Alexandria and made their way to a tributary in the Delta that provided direct access to the Nile.

Now that they were on a waterway that was much wider and proved to have a slower current, Tom expected his uncle would be at the wheel for most of the day—once he finally emerged from his cabin.

Tom climbed the ladder leading to the top deck—the roof of the cabins—careful to maintain his balance as he stared at the distant shore.

David aimed the binoculars in the direction of where he had seen his cousin looking and scanned for signs of life. He spotted a man near the bank of the river, holding what he was sure was a gun, and behind him, a young woman hurrying away with a babe in tow.

No. Make that two women, although one was considerably older than the other. The babe appeared as if its arms were strung between them, and he rolled a shoulder in sympathy.

He lost sight of the two women when the man headed in their direction, blocking them from David’s view. From seeing only his back, David was sure he was garbed in a white shirt, waistcoat, pantaloons, and boots.

Familiar clothes.

They appeared much like those he and his cousins had been wearing every day of late. Their group of six had made their way from Athens, Greece aboard a steamship to Crete, and after a fortnight on the largest of the Cyclades Islands, they had departed for Egypt on a sailing vessel.

Upon reaching the port in Alexandria, David’s father, William Slater, Earl of Bellingham, had contracted with a ship’s owner to take them to Cairo.

Although he had hoped to extend the trip as far south as Luxor—the site of ancient Thebes—Will was told he would need to find a different vessel in which to continue the trip up the Nile.

Despite his generous offer, the owner had reluctantly declined but assured Will there would be sailing vessels available for hire for such a trek.

“Did you recognize anyone on shore?” Tom called down to his cousin.

Torn from his brief reverie, David once again lifted the binoculars to his face.

This time, he briefly caught the profile of the man, scoffing when he realized the gentleman seemed familiar.

He attempted to refocus the lenses, but by the time he redirected them, the ship had moved too far up river for him to make out any details.

“I take it you did?” he countered as he glanced up at his cousin, shading his eyes from the morning sun with a hand held to his forehead.

Tom walked the length of the top deck before he turned around and retraced his steps. From this distance, he couldn’t be positive as to the identity of the young woman with the babe, but she certainly looked familiar.

Too familiar.

The memory of a kiss he had shared with her came to mind—as it frequently had done during their Grand Tour—and he had to tamp down the excitement he felt.

Tamp down his ardor, too, for his manhood had begun twitching at the same time he remembered the kiss he had shared with Lady Helen next to the roses in Lady Morganfield’s garden.

He would have thought that after nearly a year-and-a-half, he could have forgotten about those stolen kisses, but they only seemed more vivid in his brain.

She seemed more vivid.

Although he had kept her from being discovered in his company by returning to the ballroom without her, her entire identity had been difficult to learn.

He hadn’t wished to raise suspicions with his grandmother by asking about Lady Helen, though.

He had instead waited until their party had departed London before asking his Aunt Barbara if she was familiar with Lady Helen.

She was not.

His uncle, however, knew exactly who he meant. “She’s Everly’s daughter,” he had said during one of their dinners with the ship’s captain.

For any more information, Tom didn’t dare ask anyone, preferring instead to help himself to the captain’s copy of Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage .

Although it had been a decade out of date, Lady Helen was listed along with her older brother, Alexander, as the only offspring of Harold Tennison, Earl of Everly, and his countess, Estelle Jones, daughter of the Duke of Westhaven and a woman named Astria Zabat from an island called Mykonos.

So what Helen had told him about her mother that night at the ball was true. She was half-Greek, but she was also a duke’s daughter. He couldn’t remember her mentioning anything about that when any other young lady might have led with such information.

Lady Helen was a duke’s granddaughter!

Given the British had helped the Greeks with their war for independence, it shouldn’t matter if a young lady was of Greek descent.

He found the thought rather enticing, especially now that they had visited Athens and spent time in several archaeological sites, including the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion and the ruins at Delphi.

Should he ever see Lady Helen again, he would be able to regale her with stories of his time in Greece.

Tom scrambled down the ladder to discover his cousin waiting for an answer to his query about what—or rather who—he had seen onshore. “I was probably only seeing things,” he said dismissively.

David frowned. “Who did you think you saw?”

His hands moving to his hips, Tom shook his head. “Someone we met in London. At that ball we attended before we left for Sicily,” he replied. “It’s nothing, really,” he added dismissively.

Chuckling, David considered the possibility. “Well, I suppose there are others who have ventured this way from England for their Grand Tours,” he said. “But... that man seemed a bit long in the tooth to be on his.”

“Watch who you’re calling too old to be on his grand Tour,” his father, Will, said as he joined the young men from inside one of the ship’s four cabins.

At eight-and-forty, most might have thought the heir to the Devonville marquessate too old to be traipsing about the Mediterranean on a Grand Tour.

His years in the British Navy acting as a commander followed by over two decades as foreman for his brother-in-law’s farms had served him well when it came to his physique, and it didn’t hurt that his male ancestors had all seemed to live well past seventy.

“Apologies, Father, but that man back there...” David paused to wave in the direction of the shore.

“What man?”

“It was more than just a man,” Tom said, when he joined his uncle and cousin. “Looked more like... like a family,” he added. “An older man and woman, then a younger woman and her babe. I think she was rescuing him from something. Something on the ground that was large and dark.”

“Whatever the man was going to shoot,” David said, his eyes rounding.

“That would have been a crocodile,” George announced. Three pairs of eyes turned to regard the captain of the ship and their dragoman for the trip to Cairo with curiosity. “Very dangerous, especially the large ones.”

Will’s eyes rounded. “I had quite forgotten about them,” he said under his breath.

“You’ve seen them before?” Tom asked in alarm.

“You all have. There were a couple of them at that menagerie we attended whilst we were in London,” Will replied. “The dark green reptiles with the long jaws and sharp teeth.” He pantomimed the shape of a crocodile’s head, extending his hands out in front his face.

“Oh, I remember now,” Tom murmured, his gaze going to the south. The family on the shore had long ago disappeared and been replaced with marshlands featuring water buffalo.

“Sir, will we be having breakfast anytime soon?” David asked George.

Their dark-skinned guide chuckled. “I have been cooking all night just for you,” he teased. “Please, help yourself at my table.”

David glanced at his father, as if seeking permission.

“Go on,” Will said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“As will I,” Barbara, his wife and mother to David said as she emerged from their cabin.

Dressed in a light yellow day gown made from sprigged cotton, she appeared well-rested.

Despite her attempts to remain under cover from the sun, her complexion wasn’t nearly as pale as it had been when they left Oxfordshire the year-and-a-half before.

“I don’t know why, but I’m famished ,” she claimed.