A Botanist’s Guide to Tradition and Treachery (Saffron Everleigh Mystery #5)

Chapter 1

The glowing orb of a sinking sun lit the horizon.

Dark waves gently rolled beneath a sky smudged orange, red, and indigo.

Saffron Everleigh took in the vista with great satisfaction.

If someone would have told her a year ago that instead of digging through piles of botany textbooks she would be on her way to dig through ancient ruins, she’d have firmly grasped their arm and insist they sit down, as surely they would be out of their senses.

The darkening horizon meant it was nearly time for dinner, however. It was the worst part of the day, when she was forced to leave her secluded excitement and face the sneers of the expedition crew.

“Lost in thought?”

Saffron turned to the approaching figure with a smile.

Black hair, heavy black brows, and eyes so dark they often appeared black, together with his height and a firm line of a mouth, conspired to make Alexander Ashton an intimidating man.

Saffron had once seen him as such, but now those features were dear to her, from the curl of his sable hair to the way his mouth softened with smiles and plied her with kisses.

Her fiancé came to a stop before her. He was already dressed in a close-fitting dinner jacket that made him look rather dangerously handsome. “Are you ready to go to dinner?” he asked.

The sunset had dwindled to a bruise of dull purple. She turned away from it. “If we must.”

Although Saffron was more than capable, in her opinion, of handling a few treks across rocky hills and taking samples from ancient storehouses, the rest of the expedition crew was not convinced.

Her application to join the expedition team had caused a stir.

Her selection had raised eyebrows and elicited whispered comments, and her official acceptance had brought the kind of outright prejudice she hadn’t experienced in years.

Her colleagues in the botany department at University College London had more or less accepted her presence, or ignored it, but apparently this had lured her into a false sense of security.

Many of the men who formed the expedition crew had balked at her inclusion, and even now, a week into their voyage to Turkey, continued to make their disapproval known.

Alexander leaned on the metal rail. “At least in Smyrna you’ll work mostly with our team and not the whole group.”

Saffron huffed. “I doubt the team will be any better. Clark is absolutely determined.”

“It would seem so.” He drew closer, draping his arm along the rail behind her. “You’re cold.”

“Perhaps you can accompany me to my room to retrieve a wrap?” Saffron asked with what she hoped was an innocent look.

“I’m sensing a change in temperature,” Alexander said dryly. “Besides, I thought we agreed we should stay out of each other’s rooms.”

It was astonishing, really—almost worthy of scientific study—how quickly one might go from caring deeply how one is perceived by others to not giving a fig.

But when on a stressful journey far from home, with privacy only a short hall and a locked door away, Saffron found it was very tempting to corner her fiancé.

Not to mention it was good fun to see him squirm—or Alexander’s restrained version of squirming—at the suggestion of going behind closed doors together.

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll see you in the dining room.”

The interior of the boat was close but tastefully done up in shades of blue and well-lit with sconces in the shape of seashells, easing the foreboding Saffron felt each time she went below deck.

She’d long disliked going below ground, but the prospect of cave-like spaces now outright alarmed her after rescuing her mother from an underground room.

Months later, her skin crawled and her heart pounded when she contemplated the stairs she’d descended that day.

Getting to her cabin through the narrow hall wasn’t quite the same, but it was uncomfortable.

“Something wrong, Miss Everleigh?”

Resisting the temptation to keep walking and ignore Mr. Clark, she forced a pleasant expression on her face.

Joseph Clark leaned against his open cabin door behind her, dinner jacket slung over an arm.

He was a tall man of early middle age with dishwater-blond hair, light blue eyes, and a large wedge of a nose.

He had ruddy, tanned skin of one who spent a great deal of time outdoors. He smiled unpleasantly at her.

“Nothing is wrong, Mr. Clark,” Saffron said. “I just forgot something in my room.”

“Hardly surprising,” he said with a smirk. “Shall I wait for you, lest you get lost?”

Biting her tongue on a rude retort, she maintained her pleasant expression. “No, thank you.” She continued down the hall, determined not to turn to see if he was watching her.

A few moments later, she had retrieved the wrap that matched her blue evening gown and made her way back up to the dining room.

She was glad to see a good number of people were still making their way through the elegant room to their seats.

Saffron wove through the tables to her empty place at one of six tables claimed by the expedition party.

Alexander helped her into her seat and she smiled awkwardly at the men who half-rose from their chairs.

Their interrupted conversation resumed as the meal began.

“I don’t see why we’ve got to dance to their tune,” Dr. Balthazar complained. His gravelly voice matched his humorless, granite face. “It’ll only slow us down.”

Dr. Henry, looking smothered in his dinner jacket, huffed impatiently at the archaeology team leader.

“We’d be daft not to agree to their demands!

We’ve got to get in their good graces and stay there.

The rest of the world is going to realize what a treasure trove the place is soon enough.

With their war at an end and that fire destroying half the bloody city—”

A few pairs of eyes darted to the ladies at the table.

Saffron barely took note of Dr. Henry’s curse—she’d far heard worse from the historian, not to mention her own flatmate—but Mrs. Demirel, across the table, looked scandalized.

Her watery blue eyes went round, and color rose on her care-worn cheeks.

Mrs. Henry appeared unperturbed by her husband’s language, simply continuing to listen politely.

Saffron very much admired the way Cynthia Henry never seemed the least concerned with any attention she received.

Then again, she was used to it. Not only was she beautiful, with stylishly short black hair framing dark eyes and an angular face perfectly made up, but she was frightfully poised.

Mrs. Henry always had some perfect remark or barb waiting on her tongue.

Saffron had first met Mrs. Henry at a dinner party moments before watching her fall to the ground after she’d been poisoned.

It had been Saffron and Alexander who’d proved it was not her philandering husband who’d tried to kill her, but rather her supposed lover.

Mrs. Henry was no stranger to scandal, and accompanying her now-faithful husband to Turkey was the least of her eyebrow-raising feats.

“—other academics will come crawling out of the woodwork looking to get a foot in the door,” Dr. Henry continued.

A burly arm rose, as if he had to the urge to pound on the table to emphasize his point, but a glance in his wife’s direction seemed to dampen the impulse.

“We’ve got one foot in. Agreeing to their plans to escort us about won’t slow us down. ”

Watching Dr. Henry’s impassioned speech, Saffron wondered if he’d repeated these same points to the others on his crew when he and Mrs. Henry had dined with them on the other nights of the voyage.

She couldn’t imagine him getting so worked up every time he explained that the crew was expected to work with the Turkish officials’ men and follow their government’s protocols.

“It would hardly make the right impression if we didn’t accept their assistance,” Alexander put in.

“More like their spies,” Balthazar muttered.

Clark regarded his wineglass without interest. “Even if the local guides are spying, what will they have to report? That we’re doing our work, and nothing else. Not one of our men would make trouble.”

Saffron could tell from Alexander’s narrowed eyes that he, like her, understood this last comment was a jab at her. “It’s more likely they want to ensure we’re not trampling over their ruins,” he said. “It would be unfortunate to revisit the plundering of the Parthenon on the agora.”

Dr. Henry looked affronted. “Elgin was an idiot.”

“Still, it’s reasonable the Turks would be concerned,” Saffron said.

If her homeland was drawing the sort of attention Greece and Egypt had, she certainly would want to monitor visiting scholars, too.

“I believe I read something from Gertrude Bell”—here, several of the gentlemen scowled upon hearing the name of the British explorer—“about her shock at an ancient castle being gifted to the Kaiser. One day it was there, and the next they knew, it had been turned to rubble. And that was under the Ottoman regime, which had strict rules against—”

“We’ve agreed to abstain from the universally accepted tradition of partage,” Balthazar interrupted. “What have they to fear? We do the digging, they get the artifacts, and we—”

“Get to publish,” Alexander said.

“Damn right,” Dr. Henry grunted. “Don’t you worry, Balthazar, your name will be the one in the newspapers. You’ll get the credit, all right.”

“One might have hoped to have one’s name in a museum, beneath the artifact,” Clark said in a light tone Saffron didn’t believe, “in a country where one might expect anyone with the correct level of appreciation to be reasonably able to visit.”

Saffron couldn’t help but frown at him. “The Turks who visit their own museums will certainly appreciate any artifacts we uncover. After all, it is their history.”

“Quite so,” Mrs. Demirel agreed. When eyes around the table turned to her, she looked like she regretted speaking. “That is, anyone might appreciate their own history being uncovered. Don’t you think, my dear?” she asked her husband hopefully.

Mr. Demirel was serving as the group’s cultural liaison, more or less, as he was a Turk himself and had spent many years in the Ottoman Empire as a diplomat before it was dissolved into its individual countries.

Sea travel did not agree with him, it seemed, and he had taken not one bite of his meal.

He looked unwilling to open his mouth to answer his wife.

He merely nodded, then pressed his handkerchief to his lips.

The subject soon turned to the faults of French academia. Saffron could have contributed, as she’d attended a conference in Paris less than a year ago, but held her tongue.

The meal ended with Saffron tallying Clark’s thinly veiled comments and pointed looks at three, one less than the night before. Saffron had specifically spoken less this evening and saw the result.

Alexander offered her his arm and they went to walk about the deck. The breeze was wonderfully refreshing, crisp and salted with sea spray.

“I believe that is the first time I’ve ever spoken more than you during a meal,” Alexander said. “Are you feeling well?”

“I’m conducting an experiment. I’m trying to narrow down the precise number of words I’m required to speak to earn one of Clark’s eye rolls.”

“I don’t think you have to say anything. I suppose I can understand him being uncomfortable being your partner for your study, with you being—”

“A woman,” said Saffron acidly.

“I was going to say inexperienced in the field. Clark likely expected to be paired with someone who’s been out more, or perhaps he expected to choose his partner. But they’ll all see before long that you’re a credit to our team, Clark included.”

Saffron smiled at him as they rounded the corner and found themselves in a particularly poorly lit and lonely stretch of deck.

“Those are nice words,” Saffron said, her eyes falling to his mouth. His lips curved into a smile and soon they were on hers.

But not for long. An embarrassed throat was cleared and Saffron peered around Alexander to see a young man looking somewhat awestruck at them.

“Neill,” Alexander said, turning. His voice was smooth and even, as if they’d been in the midst of discussing some of his bacterial research rather than a heady kiss.

“Excuse me,” Martin Neill stammered, shifting on his feet. His dark hair gleamed in the light from the strings of lights strung over the deck. “I was told to remind you, er, Mr. Ashton, that the game begins at ten thirty in Dr. Johnson’s room.”

Alexander nodded and thanked Neill, who hurried back down the deck and out of sight.

“I don’t know why you need a reminder,” Saffron grumbled. “It’s the same every night. I do hope you’re winning pools of money in all the hours you’ve spent pent up with your mates.”

“ ‘Pools’ would be an exaggeration. As would be referring to them as my mates.”

Saffron raised a skeptical eyebrow. “These lads must be gluttons for punishment if I’m to believe the gossip I overhear.”

Alexander shook his head, the little smile that so often caused her heart to beat a little faster making an appearance on his shadowed face. “You’re not to believe gossip, especially among this lot.”

“Very well, off you go, then,” she said with a sniff, adjusting her wrap.

“I’ll just return to my cabin, alone, and read over my notes again.

Or maybe I’ll examine the book Banks lent me.

I ought to brush up on my Turkish.” She peered at him from beneath her lashes.

“Though I’d much rather improve my Greek. ”

To her utter delight, a hint of color rose in Alexander’s face as he cleared his throat and glanced back the way Neill had gone. Then his arms were around her again, proving she and Alexander together required no improvement at all.