Chapter Three
HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND
Everyone remarks on the unexpected perfection of the day.
The clear blue skies with nary a threatening cloud on the horizon.
The cooling shade of the cedar tree, grown from a seedling given to the first Earl of Carnarvon, under which the group sits on thick cotton blankets.
We look out at the stunning beauty of the nearby Highclere Park folly, the Temple of Diana, and the vista of Dunsmere Lake itself beyond.
Everyone seems content but me. Because I would very much like to be somewhere else.
“You know, the parklands were designed by the famous eighteenth-century landscape gardener Capability Brown,” Mama announces to the guests, her chest puffing with pride as it does when she bestows a particularly exultant nugget.
She cares for the history of Highclere primarily as it provides excellent fodder for conversation and the occasional comeuppance.
“Was it now?” Lady Milgrove asks, reaching for another lobster tail from the china tray proffered by Matthew, one of the few original servants of Highclere Castle who returned to us after the war.
Her tone suggests that she’s dutifully impressed, the price exacted for my parents’ generosity this weekend.
But I can see plainly that she’s more interested in pouring butter sauce on the lobster.
Mama glances over at my brother, Porchey, a nickname based on his title, Lord Porchester, to see if he’ll pick up the reins of this conversation.
It is the future Lord Carnarvon’s duty, I can almost hear her think.
But my brother is home on leave from his regiment, the 7th Queen’s Own Hussars, awaiting his next assignment to India or Mesopotamia, and is agog at the other young ladies here this weekend.
As one of the few young men, he has his pick.
“Oh yes,” Mama answers with enthusiasm, when Porchey fails to chime in.
Does Lady Milgrove’s lack of real interest not register?
Perhaps it does, but Mama doesn’t care. Because she continues: “As I’m certain is evident, Capability Brown delighted in fostering the natural beauty of the landscape.
And this folly, of course, helps punctuate that. ”
In near comic unison, the three dozen or so guests turn to examine the round structure, encircled by columns, topped with an imposing dome, and perched high on the hill overlooking Dunsmere Lake.
Although it appears ancient, it is an eighteenth-century confection that was reconstructed a hundred years later.
Not that its manufactured quality has ever stopped me from visiting on my own and pretending I was in ancient Greece—anything to tether me to generations gone by.
Is it because I feel so unbound to the present?
As the guests return to their champagne and the circulating trays of capons, ham, fruits, and cakes—an abundance not often seen, as rationing continues apace—they babble about “Highclere’s striking loveliness” and “the fetching view.” Securing this praise is, of course, Mama’s precise purpose.
If pressed, she would maintain that, in celebrating Highclere, she’s celebrating me by drawing attention to my glorious heritage, thereby making me more attractive in the marriage market.
But in these moments, I see a glimpse of Almina Wombwell, the insecure girl she must have been upon her marriage to Papa.
Although Mama’s central place in English society is now firm, she’d been a wealthy heiress without a title or a station—the bastard daughter of the fabulously rich bachelor Alfred de Rothschild and his French mistress.
When Mama walked down the aisle of St. Margaret’s, I am certain whispers trailed in her wake.
“I say, I thought Sir Charles Barry, architect of the Houses of Parliament, was responsible for Highclere?” Lord Stockton, one of my dance partners from the ball, calls out.
I study Mama as she searches for the right response.
Watching her once again become the social creature she’d been before the war has been unsettling—nearly as peculiar as it had been to observe her metamorphosis into a nurse and creator of hospitals for injured soldiers.
How I wish she’d never transformed back, I think.
If she’d remained the diligent nurse and healer, I might be left to my own devices, instead of pressed into the Season and the hunt for a husband.
Her still-lovely features brighten and her petite frame straightens as the right answer comes to her.
“You are not wrong, Lord Stockton. At least not in full.” She bestows on the graying gentleman her famously disarming smile.
It nearly makes it impossible to envision her as the Fury she’d been at the ball when she discovered me with Mr. Carter instead of with my next dance partner in the Saloon.
“How is that, Lady Carnarvon?” Lord Stockton asks, his eyes narrowing unpleasantly and his voice snapping with barely suppressed ire. This is a man who does not like to be wrong, a man who loathes being corrected, especially by a woman.
“Sir Barry designed the castle, not the grounds,” Mama says, her voice quieter than before.
“Ah,” he says, “so I was right in large part.”
My mother flinches, but she maintains her poise.
“Yes, indeed, Lord Stockton,” she says, and I consider this unpleasant exchange a victory.
Even Mama would not send me packing into the marital arms of a man such as this, had that been one of her original designs.
And marrying me off is indeed her primary purpose and, as she never tires of telling me, my duty.
But that “duty” would make it nearly impossible for me to pursue my own passion.
“What sheer delight it must have been to grow up in such magnificent surroundings,” Lady Milgrove exclaims. This remark is intended for me.
While I wouldn’t normally welcome this sort of banal exchange, I’m relieved to turn the conversation away from Lord Stockton.
“A childhood spent exploring acres of parkland trails, follies, and the castle’s history around every corner in the castle was magical,” I say, presenting my youth at Highclere Castle in the most favorable light I know.
I dare not speak the more painful truths.
The lonely months Porchey and I spent rattling around the castle, while my parents were in London or Egypt or the Continent, with only Nanny Moss and the servants for company.
The long, dark afternoons and evenings we languished in the Nursery, listening to the clink of silver and crystal and my parents’ laughter as they entertained in the Dining Room, where we were forbidden to enter.
The endless hours my mother dedicated to nursing anonymous soldiers back to health, leaving me alone to reread Porchey’s letters in a constant state of worry.
Amazing how maternal she became with the soldiers, a quality that eluded her in parenthood.
My mother shoots me a rare grateful look and then directs the discussion toward the latest gossip.
As the guests chuckle at the bountiful contretemps in this first Season after the Great War, I am left to my own thoughts.
They automatically drift to the object in the pocket of my green silk calf-length dress.
I glance around the assortment of aristocrats, wealthy merchants, and society scions—young and old—to make certain their focus is elsewhere.
I slide the scarab out of my pocket and into the light and marvel at its intricate design.
Could this minute object really be the key to unlocking the mystery of Hatshepsut?
I’ve been a student of Hatshepsut since the day Mr. Carter entered my world.
The narrative of her existence is one I’ve been constructing as long as I can remember.
The nature of her life and the manner in which her successors were positively determined to erase her from history is a puzzle I’m determined to solve myself.