pink roses.
Pitt thought it might have looked exactly the same a thousand years earlier.
Trenchard found the cafe of his choice and ordered food for both of them without consulting Pitt, and when it came it made not the slightest pretense at European form. They ate with their fingers, and it was delicious. The color, the smell, the texture-everything pleased.
"I have been making a few enquiries of my own about Ayesha Zakhari," Trenchard said when they were halfway through the meal.
Pitt stopped with a morsel of food in his hand. "Yes?"
"As we had supposed, she is Coptic Christian," Trenchard replied. "Her name tells us as much. It seems she was deeply involved with some of the leading Egyptian nationalists in the Orabi uprising, just before the bombardments of Alexandria ten years ago. I am sorry, Pitt..." He looked rueful. "I have asked discreetly among the friends I have here, and it seems eminently probable that she went to London with the express purpose of ensnaring Ryerson, in some foolish and highly impractical idea that he could be persuaded to alter the British financial arrangements with Egypt... cotton at least, perhaps more. She has always been hotheaded where her idealism is concerned. She fell in love with Alexander Ghali, Ramses's father, and even when he betrayed his cause, she was among the last to accept the truth about him." Trenchard's face was filled with profound emotion, a mixture of pity and contempt so deep even the mention of the facts which provoked it made his whole frame stiffen and his elegant hands suddenly look awkward.
Pitt felt overtaken by a feeling of emptiness also. "Disillusion is very bitter," he said quietly. "Most of us fight to deny it as long as we can."
Trenchard looked up quickly. "I'm sorry, Pitt. I am afraid you are likely to find that she is impulsive, romantic-an idealist who has been betrayed, and now acting from her own pain, and trying to make the old dreams come true, however unrealistic the means."
Pitt looked down at the food in his hand. It no longer held the exotic charm it had only a few minutes ago. That was absurd. He had never even seen Ayesha Zakhari. It should matter nothing to him except professionally that she was irresponsible, a political failure who had allowed personal hurt to spoil her judgment. Yet suddenly he felt tired, as if he too had lost a dream.
"I'll see what else I can find out about Lovat," he said aloud.
Trenchard was watching him, his face full of regret. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I knew it would have been very much pleasanter to think there was some other explanation. But possibly Lovat gained enmities in England?"
"He was shot in Miss Zakhari's garden at three in the morning!" Pitt said with a touch of bitterness. "And with her gun!"
Trenchard gave a slight gesture of resignation, graceful and sad. It had an elegance, as if he had picked up something of the innate dignity of the civilization he so admired.
They finished the meal. Trenchard insisted on paying, after thanking the proprietor in fluent and colloquial Arabic, then he accompanied Pitt to the bazaar and helped him to bargain for a bracelet set with carnelian for Charlotte, a small statue of a hippopotamus for Daniel, some brightly colored silk ribbons for Jemima, and a woven kerchief for Gracie.
Pitt ended the afternoon with information he accepted was inevitably true, however much he would have preferred it not to be, and gifts he was delighted with, and for which he knew he had paid a very small price indeed.
He thanked Trenchard and returned on the tram to San Stefano, determined to find the army barracks where Lovat had served and spend the rest of his time in Alexandria pursuing Lovat's military and personal career and anything he could find out about him. Somewhere his path had crossed Ayesha's, and there had to be more to learn about it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLOTTE FOUND IT very difficult trying to occupy her mind with anything, knowing that Pitt was in Egypt, alone in a land of which he knew nothing. More dangerous than simply its unfamiliarity was the fact that he was there to ask questions about a woman who might well be a heroine in her people's struggle against British domination of Egyptian affairs. She tried to occupy herself with any number of other thoughts, mostly trivial, but they all fled before the enormity of his absence once she turned off the last