“Don’t worry, dear boy,” Miss Bell called over her shoulder as she and Mr. Darling swanned away in a cloud of tobacco smoke. “We’ll save a seat at the table for you. Lawrence has been drafted to escort a lady in distress to the Continental,” she told the others in ringing public tones, and then laughed gaily before adding, “He’ll rejoin us shortly.”

Colonel Lawrence’s face went very still. I winced. “Next,” I whispered with sympathetic annoyance, “she’ll say something to me about seeing straight.”

Lawrence giggled, but rather grimly this time. “I don’t know why I let that kind of thing get up my nose, but—”

“Maybe she’s self-conscious about being so tall,” I suggested.

Lawrence gestured toward the door, where the dragoman still waited, and changed the subject. “Winston is His Majesty’s secretary of state for air and the colonies,” Lawrence began. “He was navy during the—”

“Oh, and Miss Shanklin?” Halfway across the lobby, Miss Bell had turned around to address me once more in her loud, carrying voice. “Do find something more suitable to wear while you are in the Middle East,” she advised. “That clothing is far too revealing. The doorman took you for a whore.”

After helping Rosie and me back up into the cart, Colonel Lawrence climbed aboard himself and gave the dragoman directions, using Arabic and gestures. “It’s not far,” he told me. “Ten minutes, across the river.” For the whole of that time, the colonel filled the silence with travelogue and chat. The boulevard we rode upon divided Cairo in two, he told me.