The Alexandria Affair Read online

  Donata, as usual, was right. Grenville had planned a long time for this journey, and I’d be damned if I’d let imposters, books that might no longer exist, and a Turkish soldier who’d likely gotten himself killed in a brawl with one of his fellows spoil our travels.

  I ran a hand through my perspiration-dampened hair. “What is wrong with me, Donata,” I muttered, “that I cannot leave a puzzle unsolved?”

  In my half dream, Donata smiled. You would not be yourself, Gabriel. She leaned forward and touched my lips.

  I needed her, even if this was only a dream. I started to reach for her, when one of my shutters gave a loud crack.

  I jumped awake. I was disoriented, expecting to be in the South Audley Street house in Donata’s very feminine bedroom. For a moment, I looked about the barren room and chipped tile on the stone walls in confusion.

  My thoughts caught up to me, and I remembered what I’d heard. I slid out of bed, untangling my nightshirt from around my bare legs, and padded to the window.

  The shutters were tightly fastened—I’d heard Bartholomew closing them as I’d drifted to sleep. Quietly, I unlatched one and opened it a slit.

  I saw nothing below. The courtyard was empty, the fountain trickling. When I ventured to open the shutter a little wider, moonlight gleamed on something metal stuck into the shutter’s frame.

  I drew a sharp breath when I saw that it was a knife. Whoever had thrown it had done so with precision and also force—the blade stuck deep into the wood and didn’t tremble. A piece of paper had been speared on it before it had been thrown, the paper snug against the hilt.

  I snaked out my arm, seized the knife, pulled it into the room, then worked off the paper and unfolded it.

  The note was short and to the point. Meet me alone, at the end of the street, and I will tell you.

  There was no need for the note to be signed. I knew bloody well who’d sent it.

  I closed the shutter, cutting off the moonlight that had allowed me to read the letter. In the dark, I dressed.

  I had no intention of waking Bartholomew or Grenville, or seeing whether Brewster had returned. The imposter would only disappear if he saw anyone but me, and I was determined to hear his answers.

  I was not fool enough to rush outside without taking precautions, however. I struck a spark with flint to light a spill and then touched the spill to a few candles. I pulled out the box with the pistol Grenville had brought for me—he’d said we’d need arms if we went into more remote parts of the country.

  I tapped powder into the pistol and loaded it, then primed the pan. Holding the pistol upright so that the ball would not fall out, I crept out of the room and down the stairs.

  The house was silent. It was that hour when the world was asleep, masters and servants alike, both the late to bed and early to rise.

  I unlocked the door to the courtyard and pushed it open. The cool breeze felt heavenly after the stuffy house, the moonlight shining fully on the fountain, subduing the colors of the bright flowers.

  The gate to the courtyard was unlocked—no surprise, because the imposter had to have entered to throw the knife at my window. The man who had been set to guard the gate was asleep. Very much so—his long snore proclaimed it.

  I stepped out to a deserted lane. The note had not indicated on which end of the street we’d meet, but I guessed. One direction held the old walls and a cluster of houses for Europeans; the other led to an arch that gave onto a main street.

  I turned and headed for the main road, my pistol ready.

  I waited in the deep shadow of the arch at the end until I knew the imposter was there. When I sensed him, I stepped around the corner and leveled the pistol at his head.

  CHAPTER 12

  T he man only looked at me and the pistol, his brown eyes in shadow. His hands were empty, hanging by his sides, but I didn’t trust him not to have a weapon where he could easily reach it.

  “What is your name?” I asked him in a hard voice.

  He returned my gaze without flinching. “I told you. It is Gabriel Lacey.”

  “That is nonsense.” I moved the pistol closer, pressing the cold opening to his temple. “Who are you?”

  The man spoke slowly and clearly. “Gabriel Marcus Roderick Lacey.”

  I hid my start, cold pouring through my blood. “You have one wrong,” I said. “My second name is Augustus.”

  His eyes never flickered. “I know. I’ve learned everything about you.”

  “Then why change the second name?” My father had hung Augustus on me, I suppose in hopes that I’d conquer empires and bring him the spoils. Roderick had been his given name.

  “I didn’t,” the man said calmly. “I was christened Gabriel Marcus.”

  “By my father?”

  The man barked a laugh. “Good God, man. Why do you believe my existence and everything about your family is focused on you? Your pride will be the death of you.”

  I dug the pistol deeper, and the imposter at last made a movement of pain. “Your reticence will be the death of you,” I said firmly. “Roderick is my father’s name. Why else would he give it to you?”

  “It is also our grandfather’s name.”

  I stilled. True, Roderick was a family name that cropped up again and again down the years of Laceys.

  I said, “If you are not a by-blow, then why claim we share a grandfather?”

  “Because both instances are true.” The man’s brown eyes stared straight into mine. “First, I am not your father’s by-blow. Second, we share a grandfather.”

  I’d had enough. “Be plain,” I said. “Or I will march you to the soft sands of the desert and end this. It will be a while before you are found—perhaps never. Or I might simply beat you until you are bloody, frighten you as you frightened my stepson. It would be more satisfying.”

  I had learned from Denis that a quiet threat was often more intimidating than bluster. I saw worry enter the man’s eyes.

  “Do you not wish to know whom your father murdered?” he asked quickly.

  “My father was an unpleasant man prone to using his fists when peevish,” I said. “I never heard of him committing murder. Not even a rumor of it. In our tiny corner of Norfolk, a story like that would circulate.”

  “Not if he did the killing far from Norfolk, far from England,” the imposter said, rage filling his voice as he spoke. “Your father murdered his own brother.”

  The words rang with conviction. My hand wavered as I made a slow blink. “My father had no brother.”

  “He had no brother by the time you were born, because he had killed him,” the other Gabriel spat. “Far away in Canada. His older brother, so that your father could inherit the dung heap that is your Norfolk home. What he did not know was that his brother had already sired a child, a son, who was now the rightful Lacey heir. Thank God your father did not know, because he’d have killed that boy too.”

  The cool air turned chill, a breeze whipping through the street and stirring up straw, dust, and the stench of people packed together.

  “You are telling me,” I said when I could form words, “that my father killed his older brother—your father—and that you should be living in our ancestral home instead of me?”

  “It was stolen from me,” the man said heatedly. “My entire life was. I returned to England and found you—that bastard’s son—married to an aristocrat and friends with a wealthy man who will deny you nothing. I suppose you are servicing him too.”

  Now I began to believe that this man was a Lacey, regardless of the resemblance. My father would have said something like that.

  I took a step back, carefully uncocked the pistol, and upended it. “Take it,” I said, and turned to walk away.

  There was a heartbeat of silence behind me, and then I heard his startled voice. “What?”

  I turned back. The other Lacey was staring at me, his brows drawn in angry confusion.

  “I said, take it. My life in Norfolk brought me nothing but misery.
I gladly give it to you.” I gestured with my pistol and then turned away again and left him.

  My chest was tight, and I could barely breathe as I walked along, the pain in my knee blazing through my shock.

  The story was too bizarre, could not possibly be true. If my father’d had a brother, the world would know. Parishes in Britain liked to write things down and file them away. I imagined parishes in Canada did as well, and besides, I’d never heard of my father living in Canada.

  The story had to be a lie.

  But it had such a ring of truth.

  I glanced over my shoulder before I reached my lodgings. The arch was empty, my enemy gone.

  I had just let out my breath, ready to duck back into the courtyard past the snoring guard, when a gunshot exploded into the air, shattering the silence of the street.

  * * *

  The sound woke Alexandria. Shutters banged, dogs barked, and men cried out, startled from sleep.

  I swung toward the noise and slammed straight into Brewster, who was one step behind me.

  “Bloody hell,” I snapped. “Warn me before you do that, Brewster. What the devil is happening?”

  “Someone fired a weapon,” Brewster said, his expression emotionless. “Best you go back inside, Captain.”

  He ought to have known I would not. Bartholomew and Matthias appeared at the gate the next moment, Grenville behind them in his dressing gown, a pistol in his hand.

  Brewster said not a word, only turned and trundled away down the lane. I signaled the others to stay back and followed him.

  We went to the arch at the end of the street to find chaos. Egyptian men were clumped together, shouting questions. A handful of Turks had marched in to investigate, including the lieutenant who’d arrived on the scene of Ibrahim’s murder.

  This time, though, we found no body, no blood. The sound of the gunshot had awakened many, but there seemed to be no victim.

  Brewster, who had already learned his way around Alexandria, ducked into a side alley, and I went after him.

  The streets in this area were a maze of tiny lanes and dead ends, bisecting the once wide avenues. Brewster walked in silence, and I followed as quietly as I could.

  Brewster stopped in an empty lane, blank walls to either side of us, and sniffed the air.

  “It was here.”

  I delicately inhaled and caught the dispersing odor of gunpowder. “In one of these houses?” I whispered.

  Brewster shrugged. It was dark—the moon had set now and the stars, while thick and white, only gave so much light. Brewster bent over a patch in the stones that looked like a black smudge. It might be blood, or dried goat droppings, or simply dirt.

  Brewster looked up and down the street, scanning it with the thoroughness a Bow Street Runner would envy. “If a chap was shot here, the bullet missed. Both men ran away, in different directions, most like. We didn’t hear a second shot.”

  “A man can be killed in other ways,” I pointed out. “The shooter might have given chase and struck with a knife. Or a sword,” I added, thinking of the soldiers and their scimitars. Most of the soldiers fought with rifles these days, but as with British cavalrymen, swords were handy after the carbines were fired and empty.

  “We’d have come across a dead or dying man before now,” Brewster said, shaking his head. “Quarry got away, shooter made himself scarce.” He looked around uneasily. “Best we get back inside.”

  This time, I agreed with him. When we reached the crossroads that led to our lodgings, a Turkish man I hadn’t seen before, flanked by two guards, one with a torch, pointed a broad finger at me.

  “You there,” the Turkish man said in heavily accented English. “Who did you shoot?”

  The man was thickset with a long nose and a full beard. He was dressed in clothes a little finer than the soldiers’, his flowing trousers and embroidered coat reminding me of what Haluk had worn.

  “I shot no one,” I said sternly. “My pistol hasn’t been fired.”

  He held out his hand. “Give it to me.”

  The others on the street were fading back, the Egyptians edging into the shadows. The Turkish lieutenant and his men looked as though they’d like to slide away as well, but they uneasily stood their ground.

  I was not about to hand over Grenville’s costly pistol to a man I did not know. He might simply examine it and determine the weapon clean, the bullet still inside, or he might pocket it and walk away.

  The guards behind the man, who seemed to be separate from the other soldiers, raised rifles and aimed them at me.

  Heaving a sigh, I stepped forward and presented the pistol, being careful not to point it at anyone. Brewster followed right behind me.

  The bearded man signaled for one of the bodyguards to take the weapon. The bodyguard inspected it, pausing to admire the etched brass facings on the handle, then he lifted the pistol over his head and fired it into the sky.

  The shot blasted through the night, a puff of thick smoke and powder rolling upward. I coughed, and the bearded man pressed a gloved hand to his mouth.

  “Good Lord.” Grenville made his appearance again, hastily dressed this time in trousers and coat, his pistol nowhere in sight. When he reached us, he gave the bearded man a startled look then recovered himself and bowed respectfully. “Sir.”

  The bearded man looked Grenville over, seemed amused at his state of dishabille, and jerked his head at the bodyguard to hand the pistol back to me. The bodyguard did so with great reluctance, as though he’d hoped to keep the weapon as a prize.

  I took the pistol and held it loosely, resisting the urge to examine it for damage.

  “Do you have another?” the bearded man growled at me.

  “No,” I said in surprise. “I assure you, I did not fire that shot.” I opened my coat, showing the street that I had no second weapon strapped to my chest or tucked inside my pocket.

  The man’s gaze switched to Brewster. Brewster, without a word, opened his coat, revealing the neat lining inside. He then spread his arms and turned around, a man used to showing that he was unarmed.

  I knew full well Brewster would have knives tucked into his boots and perhaps down the back of the coat, but the Turks seemed satisfied.

  “Sir, what is this all about?” Grenville asked the bearded man. “Lacey, this is Bey Mahmut, the governor of Alexandria. I mentioned him to you yesterday.”

  Grenville kept his face neutral, but I remembered exactly when he’d told me. My double had ducked into the house of Bey Mahmut when we’d chased him from the fortress. The bey must have given the imposter refuge and had doubtless rescued him tonight, when Brewster had been marching him to the police.

  Why such a high official was roaming the streets at night, fully dressed, I could not say. Grenville, who was expert at taking things in stride, merely introduced us as though we were at a garden party.

  I bowed, copying Grenville’s politeness. “Pleased to meet you,” I said woodenly.

  Bey Mahmut nodded. He looked me over, taking his time, and I realized he was comparing my looks to that of the imposter.

  Imposter, I kept calling him in my mind. The other word, cousin, seemed wrong to me.

  Mahmut finished with me and turned to Grenville. “You must go inside. Stay there until morning.”

  “Of course,” Grenville said. “We were awakened by the commotion. Naturally, we were curious.”

  “My men will see to it. Good night.”

  “Good night, sir,” Grenville bowed again. “Lacey, shall we?”

  His expression remained blank as he turned away, making a small gesture for me to follow him. Brewster kept his belligerent gaze on the bodyguards as I gave the bey a final polite nod and made to follow Grenville.

  The bey and his men didn’t move, and neither did the lieutenant and his soldiers. I noticed no Egyptians at all on the street as we started for our lodgings. The Turks remained motionless, colorful statues lit by the flaring torches, their black boots planted on an avenue wher
e once the most learned men in the Mediterranean had walked.

  I tried not to draw a metaphor of violence winning over knowledge as I followed Grenville into the courtyard. Brewster locked the gate firmly behind us.

  * * *

  I woke again in the morning, having fallen asleep surprisingly quickly after Bartholomew helped me back to bed. Outside, the muezzin was calling, and our servants hurried out to their prayers.

  The Egyptians who worked for this house were calm and easygoing men. I wondered if stopping to pray at regular intervals every day was soothing to their spirits. Praying probably wouldn’t hurt me, I reflected—I’d given up church a long time ago, when my daughter had been taken from me, and I hadn’t had much use for it since.

  God had been looking out for me regardless, it seemed, because I’d survived to find my daughter again. Watching the men below, I joined them in a brief prayer of thanks for the good fortune that had brought Gabriella back to me.

  James Denis had actually delivered her to me, I amended as I washed my face in the hot water Bartholomew provided. Denis had searched for Gabriella, found her, and arranged for her to come to London. The Lord worked in mysterious ways indeed.

  It was because of Denis’s role in reuniting me with my daughter that I resolved to carry on the search for his book. While I knew he’d been motivated to help me in order to bring me under his thumb—he’d found my Achilles heel—the fact remained that he’d done it. Gabriella had been restored to my life, and when she’d been endangered, he’d turned out all his men, including Brewster, to help her.

  I owed Denis more than he understood for that.

  Shaved and dressed, I descended to the lower floor to find Grenville breakfasting. He looked up at me, his dark blue eyes sharp.

  “The next time you race out of the house in the middle of the night to have adventures, please wake me first,” he said. “You will pay for your lapse by telling me everything.”