Chapter 4 #2
He and Alexander exchanged a look, and Saffron nudged Alexander with her elbow for an explanation.
“This place was likely seized when the family who lived in it was sent away,” he whispered.
“The government made it into a hotel for foreigners like ourselves. It’s far from the quarters destroyed in the fires, and, being up in the hills, has a much more pleasant view than we would have gotten closer to the agora. ”
“Anything you need, I ask that you make it known to me or any of the staff,” Mr. Koray continued. “And now, if you will allow, Yasin Hayrettin efendi of the Foreign Affairs Ministry.”
The proprietor shuffled backward somewhat awkwardly as a tall, thin man stepped into his place.
His skin was bronzed and heavily lined, though his hair, cut severely, was perfectly black.
With a long nose and slumberous eyes that looked steadily around the group, he gave the impression of utter competence.
Something in Saffron relaxed at that; this fellow looked like a man who’d brook no mischief from two dozen foreigners.
He welcomed the group with a slow, intentional speech that suggested to Saffron that he was not as comfortable speaking in English as the hotel’s proprietor. After speaking for a few minutes about cooperation between Turkey and England, he introduced another official.
Mr. Assam spoke through an interpreter, and the young man could barely keep up with Mr. Assam’s enthusiastic commentary on the wonderful ancient history of Smyrna.
Delight shone through his large, dark eyes, deepening the creases of his weathered face.
By the end, so wrapped in his visions of unearthing treasures the world would laud as extraordinary, Saffron was ready to pull on her boots and set off for the dig site right then and there.
Mr. Hayrettin smiled tightly at his colleague’s speech, and gently concluded it on his behalf by placing a hand on Mr. Assam’s shoulder. “And now we would like to speak to the leaders of this expedition. Dr. Henry, if you please?”
Dr. Henry got to his feet from where he sat next to his wife and the Demirels. Mr. Demirel stood also, and the two Turkish officials drifted toward them, hands outstretched in greeting to their former countryman.
“Ashton! Templeton! Hazelwood! Balthazar!” Dr. Henry barked over the heads of the Turks, who stood at least a head shorter than him, even Mr. Hayrettin. They flinched as one. “Meeting, now!”
Alexander set his empty tea glass on the coffee table and stood, giving Saffron a beleaguered smile before joining the gentlemen on the other side of the room.
Disappointment and envy coiled in Saffron’s belly. She was glad to be distracted from such unworthy feelings when Mr. Koray called to the rest of the crew that keys for their rooms awaited them at the desk.
Saffron was the last to leave, not wanting to run into Clark or his friends in the lobby. This had been a good day so far, an auspicious beginning to the true expedition. She wanted nothing to ruin it.
Saffron’s vague irritation at not being invited to meet the Turkish guides returned when she stepped into the parlor before dinner to find Alexander standing in the center of a group of guides and expedition leaders, looking quite at ease.
All around, talk revolved around the coming days.
Dr. Henry had declared that they would waste no time in getting their feet wet—dusty, rather—at the excavation site on their first full day, tomorrow.
It seemed the old hands, people like Clark and Wakefield and a number of fellows Saffron knew to have traveled with Dr. Henry before, disparaged the decision not to give the men a day or two to get adjusted to their new setting.
The number of times she caught mutters about “tiresome wives” was disheartening, as if Mrs. Henry was to blame for Dr. Henry’s determination not to waste time.
The younger members of the crew were eager to get to the ruins.
It was with these younger men she was drawn into conversation.
“Is it true that Mr. Ashton is going to be hiring a research assistant next semester?” one assistant asked, a slender man whose spotty face made him look too young to have been accepted to university, let alone graduated.
“Yes, he is,” Saffron replied. A few of the other young men shot each other excited looks. To the one who’d asked, she added, “Are you interested in the position?”
He cleared his throat, suddenly chagrined. “Oh, well, yes,” he said in a conspicuously casual way. “Mr. Ashton’s got quite the reputation. Published a dozen times, multiple disciplines.”
Martin Neill jumped in, saying, “He revised Cunningham’s latest study”—his voice dropped—“and found errors in the data. And Cunningham wasn’t even angry with him!”
Saffron bit her lip on a laugh at their worshipful air. She admired her fiancé’s scientific prowess, but these young men apparently saw him as rather godlike.
“I heard,” said one dark-haired man with the air of disclosing a great secret, “he’s in talks to jump ship to Dr. Henry’s new anthropology department.”
“Is that true, Miss Everleigh?” the spotty one asked eagerly.
The four assistants swung around to her, eyes alight with curiosity.
Many saw Dr. Henry’s new department as a foregone conclusion, but Saffron knew the anthropology department Dr. Henry had been working to form was not quite yet confirmed.
She gave the assistants a polite smile. “Mr. Ashton is quite committed to Biology, I believe.”
They dissolved into a comparison of Alexander’s credentials versus Geoffrey Kent’s, one of the biologists on their team, and Saffron was soon forgotten.
She stood at the periphery of their conversation, that same out-of-place feeling swelling inside her.
Though she, too, had been a research assistant just eighteen months ago, she couldn’t remember ever being half so enchanted by her position.
But a lack of camaraderie would do that.
Women in the sciences were not so uncommon as her unfortunate experiences in the biology department at University College London might suggest, and she certainly could make friends with some of the men she worked with.
It was just that it never seemed to work.
Scholarly discussions often led to being given more clerical work, and humor was usually seen as an invitation for flirtation.
The taint of rumors would pollute her working relationships before a friendship even had a chance to germinate.
Lee, a medical doctor with whom she’d worked on a study—and several murder investigations—was the only lasting friend she’d managed to make at the U and he hadn’t worked there for nearly a year.
Saffron’s eyes strayed across the room to Mrs. Henry, who stood at her husband’s side.
Dressed to the nines in aubergine silk, she looked formidable and lovely, and Saffron wasn’t likely to be the only one intimidated by her.
The Turkish guides and officials looked to be very deferential toward her in their conversation.
Next to her, Mrs. Demirel looked like a chastened schoolgirl, barely raising her eyes from the ground.
Dinner was a very casual affair for the majority of the crew, a buffet offered in the dining room, while the Henrys, Demirels, officials, and team leaders would dine formally in a private room.
When the doors to the dining room were opened and the crew made a slow shift in that direction, Saffron hung back, anxiety reducing her appetite nearly to nothing.
She’d probably have no one to talk to and would end up a sad wallflower.
Rather than waste her evening being ignored, or worse, teased, she would simply collect some food and take herself up to her room to go to bed early. The motorcars would arrive before dawn the next morning so they might start work before the heat of the day set in. Retiring early would be wise.
Plan settled, she made her way to the tables set along the center of the room, stacked high with platters of roasted mutton, herb-laden salads, and aromatic rice dishes.
She took a bit of everything until her plate was full, and looked regretfully at the foods she didn’t have the opportunity to sample before heading to the door.
She’d made it halfway up the stairs without notice before Alexander’s voice interrupted her.
“There you are,” he said, smiling up the stairs at her. His eyes touched on the plate before returning to hers. “I thought you knew you’re meant to dine with the officials.”
“Am I?” she asked. “But I’m not a team leader.”
A pair of footmen chattering in Turkish strode through the lobby, pausing to bow at the pair of them before they disappeared down a corridor.
“Mr. Hayrettin and Mr. Assam have been telling us about the agora and the progress made thus far on the excavation. And Sir Randolph, the British consul general of the city, just arrived. He’ll be dining with us,” Alexander said.
That did strike her as exciting, but gloom settled over her as she remembered all the Clark-shaped reasons she couldn’t say yes. “But … this will look like preferential treatment. None of the other regular crew have been invited.”
“It isn’t preferential treatment,” Alexander countered easily, almost as if he’d expected her to say it.
“But it will look like it,” she said, “and that’s almost more important. If I wasn’t your fiancée, I wouldn’t be included.” Not that she was actually being included. She was a tagalong, and that was nearly as disappointing as not going at all.
“I understand your concerns,” he said quietly, “but you need to understand we are holding up dinner from being served. If the Turks are anything like the Greeks, meals are important.”
Saffron hesitated, trying to recall what her guidebook had said about the societal expectations surrounding dining. Insulting their hosts—on the first day!—would be a terrible mistake.
“Mrs. Henry pointed out that you ought to be at the table, and she did so loudly and in front of everyone. At this point, it will be uncomfortable for everyone if you decline to join us.”
She was being ridiculous, and she knew it. Unfortunately, the patient look on Alexander’s face told her that he knew it, too. She blew out a breath and summoned a gracious smile. “Very well. Of course I will come to dinner.”