Daughter of Egypt

Chapter One

HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND

The Saloon glows in the flicker of the candelabras and the low light of ornate wall sconces.

Colorful heraldic shields dotting the base of the peaked gallery above enliven the honey-colored limestone walls and columns.

The crimson, sapphire, and emerald of the shields are echoed in the ladies’ gowns and the jewels on their necks, ears, and wrists.

If I allow it to work its magic, the Highclere Castle ball casts a glorious spell on me, banishing the pall of the Great War that lingers in this otherwise jubilant space, and that is precisely what has happened to the other revelers.

But I would never allow that alchemy to blind me to the all-important past. History has always been my chosen companion.

The orchestra strikes up a Chopin waltz, and I permit the next gentleman on my dance card to sweep me up in its three-quarter-time rhythm.

The hem of the fussy tulle ultramarine gown Mama insisted upon because, she claimed, it brought out the blue in my eyes, twirls as I spin around the dance floor under the expert hands of Lord Stockton.

Surrendering to his lead, I swoop across the floor like the high-flying stone-curlew birds that nest on the estate.

Lord Stockton may be in his fifties, but he’s still nimble and energetic, and there aren’t many young men here tonight in any event.

Most of the boys I’d dreamed about as a girl didn’t come home from the war, and I won’t forget about those men and their sacrifice tonight—even if everyone else seems determined to do so.

Did my companion say something? It might be the first or the hundredth time he’s spoken for all I’ve paid attention to him. But for my momentary surrender to the orchestra and the rhythm of the waltz, my thoughts have been elsewhere.

“Lady Evelyn?”

This time I know I can’t ignore conversation in the face of such a plaintive query.

Not to mention the politesse of the ball requires these small exchanges.

The world may have been upended by the war and the ink has barely dried on the Treaty of Versailles, but the society doyennes are doing their darnedest to return to the rituals and rites that used to govern our days.

It seems a pointless, even disrespectful, folly to me.

“Pardon me, Lord Stockton,” I reply. “My head seems to be in the clouds.”

“No surprise—this is a heady affair.” He smiles at his little quip, but when I don’t return the grin, he clears his throat and repeats himself: “I said only that Highclere is in fine fettle.”

“The staff has outdone themselves putting Highclere back in order,” I answer politely.

“No Humpty-Dumptys there; Highclere is together again. One would never know it had served as a hospital until just recently,” he says, his untrained eye unable to see the residual traces of the hospital beds and screen stands and nursing stations that are obvious to me.

Time can only be turned back so far, even here, where history abounds.

He leads me counterclockwise back across the Saloon dance floor, and when I don’t banter back, he adds, “It does lift one’s spirits to see a great house restored and wiped clean of the suffering that took place here. Especially when so many estates will not outlast the war.”

I almost stop dancing. Why should we erase the past?

The collective forgetting of the war is being foisted upon us all, and I, for one, do not wish to participate in the forced joyful abandon I see around me.

Too many boys are gone for that. History should not be relegated to a dusty corner.

We should pick it up, examine it, and allow it to inform our current days.

Glancing up, I see my mother staring down from the gallery on the Saloon’s second floor, where she has a bird’s-eye view of the dancing and me.

She is small in stature but fierce in temperament, and the intensity of her dark-eyed gaze gives me a start.

I can almost hear her think, Concentrate, Eve, this ball is for you, the capstone of your successful debutante year.

Lady Almina Herbert, Countess of Carnarvon, is the last person who should want to delete the past few years from our memory; her nursing work and creation of hospitals for wounded soldiers is the stuff of legend, after all.

Yet she was first in line to reinstate the trappings of the Season and the presentation of debutantes to King George, even though the Treaty of Versailles hadn’t been negotiated when she began.

Mama explains it away by saying that I came of age just as the Great War ended, and so needs must.

But must I?

With Mama’s eyes upon me, I return to the waltz. I chat as expected and perform the requisite dance steps. I smile and play the part assigned to me. But no matter how tightly Mama tries to wrap me in duty, my mind drifts, as do my eyes, over Lord Stockton’s shoulders and around the room.

Suddenly, I see Streatfield, our ever-proper house steward, appear on the periphery.

His presence is a silent signal to me, as he needn’t be here otherwise.

The muttonchopped, white-tie-wearing steward is here to deliver a message of which he doesn’t approve.

But as my reluctant champion since childhood, Streatfield will do as I’ve asked and share the news.

The man for whom I’ve been waiting all night has finally arrived.