Lady of Heaven Read Free Page A

she said, her voice soft.
“I wasn’t trying to lie when I set up this meeting but I thought if I came out
with everything right off the bat that you would never meet with me. And I
really need help with this, if not from you than from someone else who knows
about Egyptology.  I’ve got a situation on my hands that I just can’t figure
out.  I really need answers.”
    He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Answers
to what?”
    She lifted the album, gesturing at
it. “This.”
    She stood up and walked around his
desk. Fox watched her as she came to stand next to him, sweet wafts of her
perfume assaulting his senses. She smelled as good as she looked and he was
thinking of telling her that but he bit his tongue; he didn’t think she would
take it well if he was complimenting her in one breath and rejecting her in the
next. He decided it was best to lay off the charm. His observations were
interrupted as she set the album carefully on the desk and opened it.
    “This is my great-grandmother’s
journal,” she said softly. “She began keeping one when she and my
great-grandfather traveled to Egypt for the first time.  She was so young, only
eighteen, and this journal starts just after she and my great-grandfather were
married.  If nothing else, this journal is a remarkable account of early Egypt
and how the wealthy British viewed it.   She met so many amazing people like
Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter. All of the adventure, her hopes and dreams
and feelings, are on these pages.”
    Fox tore his gaze away from her
long enough to glance at the time-worn pages of the journal.  There was careful
script accompanied by trinkets; luggage stickers, a boat ticket to Cairo, a
receipt for a room reservation at the Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor, and other
remnants of a bygone era of exploration and travel. In just those first few
moments, he was hooked; he hated to admit it, but he was. Mementoes like this
were rare and, as a historian, he valued them. Without even asking, he
carefully turned the pages.
    Sketches jumped out at him of the
Valley of the Kings before it became commercial. Lady Frances had even sketched
the great statues of Memnon, as they were known back then, and there was a
sketch of the sphinx decades before the sand would be cleared away from its
base.  As Fox skimmed the first few pages, he could see that every day was
carefully documented, if even only in a few words, but Lady Frances Sherburn
had been meticulous in her record keeping.  When he flipped a page and a few
grains of sand fell into his lap, the significance of the journal weighed more
heavily upon him.
    Morgan stood back and watched him
inspect the book, reading the passages and carefully touching the mementos. 
The journal had worked the magic she had hoped; she had his interest. But what
she still needed was his help.
    From what she had read about Dr.
Fox Henredon, he was something of a whiz kid. True, she’d brought the papyrus
to the Bolton because it was close to Heaven’s Gate, but she had also done her
research on the person she needed to speak with.  The go-to guy had been
Henredon and it had been her intention since walking in the door earlier to
hook him. The journal had been the key; come into my web said the spider to
the fly , she thought.
    Her gaze moved over the man as he
put his reading glasses on to scrutinize a particular passage that was faded
from time; as she’d noted before, he was very big and very beautiful, certainly
not the bookworm she had expected.  Quietly, she moved back to the guest chair
and reclaimed it, sitting silent and still as Fox perused the journal,
lingering over the faded pages that had seen dust and sandstorms in the days
when Egypt was still mysterious and ancient. Morgan’s eyes never left his
face.  When Fox finally looked up at her, it was with wonder.
    “Your great-grandmother knew Howard
Carter on a first-name basis,” he said, stunned. “She was on-hand when he was
clearing out Tut’s tomb.