Journey to the Lost Tomb (Rowan and Ella Book 2) (42 page)

           
Rowan
glanced at her and reached out to squeeze her hand but he spoke to Olna.

           
“We’re
not going to be able to go back, are we?” he asked. He saw Ella’s startled look
but she waited for Olna to speak.

           
“I’m
afraid not,” Olna said, tweaking little Tater’s chubby cheek and smiling at the
baby. “This little one cannot stay here without you.” She looked up at Ella and
then Rowan. “And he cannot go back with you.”

           
“
Ever
?” Ella said, her eyes wide with
shock.

           
Olna
handed the baby to Rowan. “This, I do not know,” she said. “Perhaps when he is
older.”

           
Ella
looked at Rowan who was rearranging Tater’s blanket as if he hadn’t heard
Olna’s words.

           
“Rowan,”
she said. “We can’t go back.”

           
“I
heard. Did you see that?” He looked at Ella and then back at the baby. “That
was definitely a smile. Did you see it?”

           
“You
don’t care,” Ella said. “You don’t care that we can’t go back.”

           
“Not
too much,” Rowan said, still focused on the baby.

           
Ella
watched him as he cradled their son, his fascination with the baby clearly
evident. She looked at Olna who was watching her. “I guess I really don’t
either,” she said softly.

           
Olna
smiled at her.

           
On
the way back to the hotel, Ella tried to process the fact that they wouldn’t be
returning to their own time.

           
“What
will our parents say? They’ll think we’re dead. Oh, Rowan. They’ll be
devastated to lose us. I know we’ve only been parents for about five minutes
but I already know I’d kill myself if something happened to Tater.”

           
“I
know, love. But on that score, Yeena was one step ahead of us.”

           
“
Yeena
? The seer in 2013?”

           
Rowan
nodded. “I thought she was nuts but she asked me to write a letter, addressed
to both sets of our parents saying we had decided to stay in Egypt and would be
gone a few years.”

           
“Are
you serious?”

           
“I
thought it was crazy too but I’m thanking God now that she insisted I do it.”

           
“Did
you say
why
they won’t hear from us?”

           
“I
said that we were doing missionary work in a remote section of the country with
very bad communication channels.”

           
“
Missionary
work?”

           
“They’ll
believe because they want to,” he said. “Yeena said she wouldn’t send the
letters unless we were gone a few months so I’m sure she’s sent them by now.
Our parents may be missing us but they’re not broken-hearted, Ella. And if
we’re lucky, someday, we’ll see them again.”

Epilogue

On a miraculously
clear spring day three months after the discovery of the tomb of King
Tutankhamun, Ella and Rowan stood on the steps of the American Embassy in
Cairo. Little Tater was happily in the care of his nurse back at the large
five-bedroom house they were renting in Giza. Ella still wasn’t use to 1920s
fashion but today she was satisfied with her outfit. She wore a pale lavender
dress fringed with hand-tatted lace at the hem which hung just past her knees.
She had quickly lost her pregnancy weight and Rowan thought as he watched her
standing on the steps holding a bouquet of roses and daisies that she had never
looked more beautiful.

Rowan, himself,
had a recognizably definite bounce in his step. With the assistance of Howard
Carter—at the height of his fame on the heels of the Tut
discovery—and with the help of faked credentials, Rowan had taken a
teaching post at the American University in Cairo. For someone who seemed to
enjoy danger and adventure as much as he did, it nonetheless came as no
surprise to Ella that he had found his life’s work in an academic environment.
He loved the students and the research. He loved Egypt. What he knew about the
future helped to fill in the gaps of what he didn’t know academically to
maintain the masquerade. And Ella could see that every day, it became less and
less masquerade and more and more true.

Now he
straightened his tie and gave Ella a quick smile. “There’s Marvel and Josh,” he
said, looking over her shoulder. Ella turned to see the pair hurrying up the
long stone steps of the embassy. She was glad they could come. She knew it
meant a lot to Rowan and she had resolved her qualms about Marvel months ago. The
fact that Marvel was now engaged and obviously crazy about Josh Spenser didn’t
hurt either.

The two men shook
hands and Ella and Marvel smiled at each other in greeting.

“Guess you heard
the news?” Spenser said to Rowan in a low voice.

Marvel lightly
tapped him on the arm with her closed fan. “Not on their wedding day, Josh!
Really!”

Just before they had
left for the embassy, Rowan received word that human remains were found of an
Egyptian fitting the description of Ra, down to his semi-Western dress and
broken right ulna. He was found with his skull cracked and his spine twisted
and snapped at the bottom of a nearby ravine where he’d obviously stumbled in
the dark.
 
Nothing of value was
found on him. Rowan remembered he’d recently paid Ra—and assumed Digby
had too for services rendered—so likely his corpse had been robbed. Ella
considered the news of Ra’s death a fairly macabre footnote to the special day
but Rowan seemed to like it just fine.

Ella turned to
Spenser in an effort to change the subject. “Have you heard from Howard?”

Spenser nodded.
“He and Julia are coming,” he said. “But you know Julia.” He made a face to
suggest they might be late at best.

“Well, we won’t
wait for them,” Ella said. “I’m sure they’ll be here in time for a drink afterwards
at Shepheards.”

“Why don’t you
two go on in?” Rowan said. “We’ll be along in a minute.”

Ella frowned at
him as the couple moved up the wide staircase to the embassy entrance. “You’re
not going to make me late for my own second wedding, are you?”

“I thought you
said it really didn’t matter,” Rowan teased. “We’re just doing this for the
paperwork anyway.”

“I still got all
dressed up for it,” she said.

Rowan laughed and
pulled her into his arms. “I just wanted one more minute alone with you,” he
said, “to give you my wedding present.”

           
“Oh,
Rowan, you got me something? And I don’t have anything for you.”

           
He
touched the tattoo on the inside of her arm. “Are you sure you don’t?”

           
That
made her smile. “Now that you mention it, I guess tattooing passages from the Book
of the Dead on my arm to save your life might qualify—
and
be pretty hard to top at that.” She
kissed him and then grinned. “So what did you get me?” She looked at his hands
as if expecting a wrapped present.

           
 
“I got you the one person in this world,
besides Greta, who you’d like at your wedding today,” Rowan said. His eyes
glittered with pleasure and love.

           
Ella
looked at him with confusion and then her face cleared and she turned from
Rowan just in time to see Halima, her face wreathed in smiles, walking down the
stairs from the embassy entrance. The two women ran to each other.

           
Ella
hugged her tightly. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe you’re safe
and you’re here.”

           
“Your
husband’s people found me,” Halima said. “I don’t know how they did.”

           
Rowan
walked up the stairs and put his arm around Ella. He grinned at Halima.

           
“Halima
is going to live with us,” he said. “Turns out she needs a family as much as
Tater needs a grandma.”

           
Halima
rubbed Ella’s arm, her fingers slowing over the tattoo. Her eyes were bright
with emotion as if words could not contain or express her happiness.

           
Ella
put her arms out to draw both Halima and Rowan into an embrace. “I literally
have everything I ever wanted,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “And
everything I never even knew I wanted.”

           
“Me,
too, beautiful,” Rowan said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. “Me, too.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan
Kiernan-Lewis lives in Florida and writes mysteries and romantic suspense. Like
many authors, Susan depends on the reviews and word of mouth referrals of her
readers. If you enjoyed
Journey to the Lost Tomb
, please consider
leaving a review saying so on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com or Goodreads.com.

Check
out Susan’s website at susankiernanlewis.com and feel free to contact her at
[email protected].

Note:
If you discovered
Journey
to the Lost Tomb,
which is Book 2 in the series, and liked it well enough
to find out what happens to Rowan and Ella next in Book 3,
Race to World’s End
. If you want to know how they met, be
sure and check out Book 1,
A
Trespass in Time

Journey to the Lost Tomb

Copyright 2013

San Marco Press

Acknowledgements
 

I would like to
thank my beta readers Sheila Gallagher, June Abner, and Kathy Church for their
invaluable input and for taking the time to read a work-in-progress complete
with typos, inconsistencies and plot holes. Words can’t express how valuable
you ladies are to me.

I would also like
to thank my Jacksonville critique group for their painstaking and always
spot-on analysis of the first draft of the manuscript. Special thanks go to
Cheri Roman, Cynthia Enuton, Mark Vance, Tracy Roberts, Rebecca Davis and Rai Roman.
Thank you. Every line edit and developmental suggestion was gold to me and
allowed me that much more distance from the potential slings and arrows of
disappointed readers.

Finally, as
usual, love and thanks go to my long-suffering copyeditor, (and husband) Del
Kiernan-Lewis. It was a great feeling of security knowing he would catch my mistakes
and clean up my confused prose and I know it wasn’t always pretty when I occasionally
refused to accept his perfectly logical, clear-headed suggestions. For that I’m
sorry. I have to believe that there is a special place in heaven for people
like my husband who work hard to catch the boneheaded errors of their
writer-wives, only to have them ignored or waived in the name of “creative
judgment call.”

So as usual, the
good stuff in the book was the result of the help I received from all the kind
and smart people I turned to for advice. And the boneheaded stuff is mine
alone.