Read Online The Serpent and the Scorpion by Clare Langley-Hawthorne - Free Book Online

merely signaled the mechanic, who pulled a pair of goggles and a headscarf from a leather satchel and tossed them over to her.
    “Put those on, and I’ll take you up for a spin.”
    Ursula picked up the scarf and shook the sand off.
    “I can’t change your mind?”
    “As Whittaker said, some secrets are better left buried.”
    “But surely you trust me?” Ursula exclaimed.
    “Miss Marlow, I would trust you with my life. That’s why we need to leave well enough alone. You are too much like my late wife, Iris, God rest her soul, for me to allow anything to happen to you.”
     
From above, the pyramids of Sakkara were awe-inspiring and forbidding. The Blériot airplane seemed so insubstantial and flimsy that Ursula felt as if she were flying in little more than a kite made of cloth, wood, and wires. Hugh, with his hand on the bell-shaped control stick and his feet steering the plane with the foot pedals, seemed oblivious to the surge of fear and panic that rose within her. Ursula clung to the wooden bracing and tried not to think about the emptiness, that space between the sky and the ground, beneath her feet. The experience of flying was surreal, exciting, and terrifying. The wind pressed against her cheeks, and, as the plane slowly banked to the north, she had to quickly shield her eyes from the glare of the late-afternoon light.
    “That was amazing,” she told Hugh after they landed at the airstrip at Heliopolis, north of Cairo. “I cannot even begin to describe it.” She pulled off the goggles and headscarf and shook her head.
    “Sure beats traveling by donkey,” he answered with a grin, but Ursula knew it was forced. She sensed a conflict within him. The shadows lengthened; the light was dying. Ursula looked out across the airstrip, watching as Hugh removed his goggles, adjusted his collar, and signaled for his driver to take them back to the hotel. Since the accident in Palestine that had claimed the life of his copilot, Hugh always insisted that his driver follow and meet him where he landed. Hugh’s plane was stored in one of the hangers beside the airstrip, and as they made their way to the motor car, Ursula noticed that though his face remained relaxed, his smile never reached his eyes.
     
That evening a reception was being held at the Khedival Sporting Club to celebrate the day’s gymkhana. As she sat in the enclosed landau, Ursula was already dreading the evening. She was tired of the arrogance and insularity of the English in Egypt. She sat back in the leather seat and closed her eyes.
    Last summer she had wanted nothing more than for time to stand still. Now she wished the present would simply disappear. She wanted to be lying on green English grass once more, gazing up at a blue, cloud-edged sky. Last summer at Bromley Hall, seat of the Wrotham family, she had experienced one of the few perfect days of her life. She had been there a month, and Mrs. Pomfrey-Smith (whom Lord Wrotham had insisted come as her chaperone) was ensconced in the dowager’s private parlor playing bridge, leaving Ursula free to spend the afternoon just as she pleased. It had been one of the hottest summers on record, and Ursula decided to walk to one of her favorite places on the entire estate, the ornamental lake that bordered Rockingham Forest, to cool off. Accompanied by Lord Wrotham’s two collies, Charles and Edward, she had set out with nothing more than a knapsack containing her Brownie camera and a copy of Lord Tennyson’s poems.
    She arrived at the lake just as the sun reached its peak, bathing the grass embankment in light. She threw the knapsack to the ground and tore off her shoes and silk stockings. Even in her lightest white dimity dress, her limbs felt heavy and listless. She lay down in the grass, feeling the sun’s warmth on her exposed arms, and gazed up at the sky, the dark fringes of the oak leaves, the wisps of clouds above. She let her eyes wander and her mind drift, and a drowsy sun-filled