He never raised his voice. I did.
Our dog was irretrievable, you see, and we were both still raw from her loss. I’m sure that was some of it.
My feelings were bruised. I wept a little, hot helpless tears of anger, although I didn’t do it in front of him. That evening as I sulked alone in my chair on the sun deck, Margaret brought me baklava in rose syrup and hibiscus tea and told me that I needed to accept what was done, because it was done, and raging against Jack’s choices for me （however highhanded, she added） would only make matters worse. Why not, she said, reflect upon his consideration instead of his sneakiness? And then she said something I’ll never forget: “It’s plain as day Jack adores you. I think he adores you to the point that the thought of being without you terrifies him to the core. And for a man like Jack Astor, that is significant.”
After that, I stopped my complaints.
March 1912
On the Nile
They turned around at Aswan, Madeleine’s newly appointed nurse neatly stowed in an upper deck cabin. Izz al din informed them all that the journey downriver would go more quickly than the one up. They needed to make up for their lost days in order for Margaret and Helen to catch their steamer back to Italy. But there were still days enough for Kom Ombo, for Edfu. For Karnak, with its famed hypostyle halls and temples, its pillars built to graze heaven and eerie avenue of ram-headed sphinxes, muscular and staring.
At the feet of the colossal statue of Ramses II, Madeleine and Helen clambered up to stroke the ankle of the much smaller, female figure tucked against his legs: not a wife, as Madeleine had first assumed, but a royal daughter, her features feline and delicate, her lips not quite smiling.
A girl who had lived and died thousands of years past, still standing at her father’s feet. Like the shepherdess in the painting in William Force’s study halfway around the world, the princess had been captured in a singular moment forever because of a great man. And wasn’t that something?
It was.
*
The Habibti left behind the babble of Luxor to make her way downriver again, floating in near silence along the tranquil waters. The weather was turning more summery, still clement, and sitting calm and quiet on her decks became the easiest thing in the world.
One afternoon, Madeleine reclined in her usual chair on the sun deck beneath the apricot awning, reading a book she’d found in the boat’s little nook of a library. （It was about the customs and traditions of Argentina, left behind, no doubt, by some well-traveled client.） Carrie bustled nearby, preparing a plate of sandwiches for tea; Jack stood at the port railing, gazing out, restless. Margaret and Helen were playing poker near the stairs, but not very seriously. Every now and then, they would stop moving entirely for minutes at a time. Madeleine would catch them both staring dreamily at the passing view, the fans of cards in their hands forgotten.
Occasionally their boat passed other boats, bulky dahabiyas or smaller, lateen-sailed feluccas, and when this happened, usually at least someone from the crew would shout out a greeting, getting one in return, echoing across the wide river.
Madeleine could not help glancing up from her book, over and again, at her husband. Against the turquoise sky, he stood tense and tall, his left leg crooked at the knee as if it pained him. He kept his hat clenched in one hand.
She was looking at him when it happened. He lurched abruptly against the scrolled metal railing, leaning out over it, the brim of his hat crushed.
“There,” Jack bellowed, louder than she’d ever heard him. He used the hat to point at something below them, something Madeleine couldn’t see. “By God, there she is!”
“Marhaba!” came an answering shout. “Al’amirkiu! Hada hu kalabik!”
Madeleine dropped her book. From somewhere out across the river came a familiar, ecstatic bark.
Everyone rushed to the railing.
Another wooden dahabiya surged upriver, its sails stained and puffed, the trio of men on its lower deck cheering at the sight of them, jumping up and down and waving their arms. Kitty stood in their midst, dancing, barking, and had not one of the men at the last moment grabbed her by the collar, there was no doubt she would have launched herself into the water, swimming across the Nile to reach them.
*
It was difficult for Madeleine to frame her sense of relief into words, into thought. She was able to do so in actions, however. She was able to cover Kitty in praise and kisses, to hug her near and close her eyes and breathe in the musky, not-quite-pleasant scent of a dog lost for weeks to the sand and wilds. She ran her hands along Kitty’s ribs and spine and her fingers tangled with Jack’s, also stroking, and together they held eyes and smiled and kept telling their dog what a good girl she was, what a good girl.