Dragon Soul (Dragon Falls, #3)(40)

“Pardon?” The stewardess gave me an odd look.

“I couldn’t call him,” I told her. “I mean, I could have, but some part of me was suspicious despite the fact that he seems so nice… I just couldn’t call him.”

“I see,” she said, pursing her lips slightly.

“Sorry. I’m mostly talking to myself, trying to untangle my feelings. Just ignore me.”

She handed over two door keys and wished us a happy journey.

“Well, this is pretty darned nice,” I said after she left us. The suite consisted of two bedrooms, each with its own minuscule bathroom, and a shared sitting room that ran the width of the bow of the ship. Windows on the shore side looked out at the hustle and bustle of vendors running to and fro trying to sell wares, while on the other side, the Nile itself glistened and glimmered in the setting sun.

Golden-orange rays smudged across both the darkening sky and the river, the latter giving the impression of a living being the way the light undulated across it.

“Okay,” I said, reveling in the beauty of the scene. “This doesn’t make up for having our stuff trashed, but it’s pretty damned gorgeous nonetheless.”

“What is? Oh, the river.” Mrs. P emerged from the bathroom, a hand towel stuck in her purse.

I removed it and returned it to her bathroom, reminding her that we’d need our towels. “And besides, this is a super nice cabin, and I’m a bit afraid of Captain Kherty. He looks like the sort of man who’d throw a towel thief overboard without a moment’s hesitation.”

“Pfft,” she said, and took a seat in an Egyptian-motif settee done in shades of turquoise and gold. “He is a ferryman, nothing more. Where is your man? Why did he not meet us?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know, but trust me—I have a lot to say to him,” I answered grimly. “Even if I don’t think he did break into our room—and I’m sure he couldn’t have, because he’s just not that sort of man—I don’t like the fact that he knew about it. And is he using me? Man, I hate feeling like this! I know he’s not, but at the same time, I worry.”

Mrs. P frowned at me. “You are speaking too many words.”

“I know,” I said miserably. “I’m babbling. I blame Rowan. He’s turned me all inside out and I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“He’s a man,” she said, considering a painting of an ibis. “That is what they do.”

“Right, well, I’m done with all this angsting. I’ll talk to him later and find out whether my instinct is right or if he’s a rat bastard. But first, let’s see if this ship runs a shop, and if they have something we can wear.”

“This is a very nice pillow,” Mrs. P said, giving it a long look.

I opened the door to find two women in their sixties wearing identical one-piece bathing suits swathed with gauze wraps.

“Oh, goodness!” said the shorter of the two. She had washed-out reddish-blond hair, and was, like myself, on the fluffy side. Her companion had short dark curls shot through with gray, and a long, lean figure that boded of a metabolism of the gods. “What a fright you gave me! Barbs, did you see me jump? I must have cleared at least a foot.”

“Hullo,” the tall one said. She tried to peer past me into the room, but I didn’t need anyone seeing Mrs. P trying to appropriate a throw pillow, so I blocked their view and quickly closed the door. “Going out to see the ship, are you? We’re on the way to the pool.”

“Hello,” I said politely, and shook both women’s hands when they were offered.

“We’re Ken and Barbie,” the shorter woman said with a little apologetic laugh. “I know, right? It’s actually Kendra and Barbara, but all our friends call us Ken and Barbie, and it’s become second nature by now. You’re Sophea, aren’t you? I heard the captain talking about you. You’re American? We’re from Ireland, although you wouldn’t know it the way Barbs speaks. She’s veddy, veddy BBC neutral.”

Barbie was in the process of giving me a good visual once-over. She nodded as her companion spoke, but other than saying, “Pleased to meet you,” didn’t offer much to the conversation.

“Yes, I’m Sophea. I was just on my way to find a steward or ship person to see if there is a shop on board. I wasn’t sure if there was because it’s so small, but I am praying there is because otherwise everyone is going to get tired of seeing my employer and me in the same clothes.”

“Your employer?” Barbie asked at the same time Ken made a face and said, “Dear me, dear me. Lost your luggage, did you?”

“Something like that.”

“You must have a generous employer to take you on this trip,” Barbie said.

With the memory of the scene Mrs. P had made in the tea shop uppermost in mind, I gave them both a bland smile and declined to comment on the eccentric old lady who was probably even now stripping the cabin bare of all she could stuff into her luggage. “Very generous.”

“There is a shop,” Ken said excitedly, waving her hand toward her midsection. “We got our suits and these darling wraps there! I didn’t know there was going to be a pool on board. Honestly, the thought of swimming in a pool sailing on a ship just seems like the height of decadence, doesn’t it? And at night! But it’s so warm out, it’s like swimming during the day.”