had not the inner courage to deny those around him. Leaders must be prepared to walk alone, if need be, and he was not."
He drew in a deep breath, turned his glass in his hand as if to sip it again, then ignored it after all. There was a tightness in his face, of old pain still unhealed. "Ayesha loved him, and he betrayed her, and his people. I don't know if she ever cared wholly for any man after that, unless she does for this Ryerson?" Now he raised his eyes to meet Pitt's. "Will he betray her also?"
Pitt wondered if that was why she had said nothing to the police. Was she numb inside, waiting for history to repeat itself?
"By betraying her, or betraying his own people?" he asked.
There was a flash of understanding in Yacoub's eyes. "You are thinking of the cotton? That she went to London to try to persuade him to leave us our raw cotton to weave, instead of shipping it to Manchester, for British workers to create the greater profit from it-to grow rich, instead of us? Perhaps she did. It would be like her."
"Then she was asking him to choose between Egypt and England," Pitt pointed out. "If he made a decision at all, then it had to be a betrayal of someone."
"Yes... of course it was." Yacoub's lips tightened. "Whether she could forgive him for that I do not know." He picked up his glass at last. "There is nothing more I can tell you. Look all you wish, you will find that what I have said is true."
"What about Lieutenant Lovat?"
Yacoub waved his hand dismissively. "Nothing of importance. He fell in love with her, and perhaps she was bruised enough to find his attention healing. It lasted a while, a few months. He was posted back to England. I think she was quite relieved by then. Perhaps he was also. He had no intention of marrying outside his own class and station."
"Do you know anything about Lovat?"
"No. But you might find someone among the British soldiers who does. There are enough of them here."
Pitt said nothing. He was acutely aware of the British presence in all sorts of ways, not just the enormous number of soldiers, but the civilians in administration everywhere. Egypt was not a colony, and yet in many practical ways it might as well have been. If Ayesha Zakhari had wished to rid her country of foreign domination, he could understand it very easily.
Was that why she had gone to London, not out of any desire to make her own future, but to help her people? If that was so, then presumably she had sought out Ryerson specifically, as a man with the power to help her, if she could persuade him to do so.
How had she intended to do that? No matter how deeply he was in love with her, he would hardly alter government policy to please her, would he? And according to Yacoub's estimate of her character, she would have despised him if he had.
But then unless she cared for him, that would hardly matter to her. Did she? Had she unexpectedly fallen in love with him, and it was suddenly no longer simply a matter of patriotic duty?
Or had she planned to blackmail him, and Lovat's murder was part of that plan, somehow hideously gone wrong, and she herself had ended up arrested, and by now probably charged as well? What had she meant to have happen? Offer him escape from blame, and increase the pressure upon Ryerson to yield more autonomy to Egypt?
Or was her goal Ryerson's ruin, and the placement of another, more pliable minister in his place-one who would pay the Egyptian price?
But that made little sense. No minister of trade was going to yield the cotton back to Egypt unless he was forced to by circumstances far more powerful than love, or even ruin. He would simply be replaced in time by another stronger and less vulnerable man.
Pitt finished his wine and thanked Yacoub. The voices and laughter bubbled around them, but he could think of nothing further to ask, and instead they spoke again of the rich, intricate history of Alexandria.
When Pitt was at the breakfast table the following morning, a messenger brought him a note from Trenchard, asking him if all was well and if he would care for any further assistance. It also said that if Pitt cared to join him for luncheon, Trenchard would be