Chapter 5: The Egyptian Room
The noise of Bloomsbury traffic faded into a muffled rumble as Selina passed through the museum’s great doors. The grand hall swallowed sound, replacing it with a dense, scholarly quiet. She’d told her maid she was researching a historical detail for a charitable society pamphlet—a thin excuse, but one that allowed her to arrive alone, just another lady in a sober navy walking dress, a notebook clutched in her gloved hand.
Her heart was a trapped bird against her ribs. Every step on the marble floor echoed.
She found the Egyptian Gallery. It was a cavernous space, cool and dim, lit by the high, gaslit chandeliers whose light pooled on the stone fragments of another world. Sphinxes stared with blind eyes. A towering obelisk inscribed with tiny, elegant secrets cast a long shadow. The air smelled of dust, of polish, of time itself.
And there he was.
Not by the sarcophagus as she’d somehow imagined, but leaning casually against a display case containing a collection of scarab amulets. He was studying them, his profile sharp in the muted light. He wore a dark coat, simple but impeccably cut, and looked entirely at ease, as if he spent every Tuesday afternoon amongst the dead kings.
She stopped, forcing herself to breathe. To think. This was a debate. An intellectual retrieval of stolen property. Nothing more.
He turned his head. Not startled. He’d known she was there. “You came,” he said. His voice was low, suited to the quiet of the room.
“You have something that belongs to me.” She walked forward, her heels ticking on the stone. “This is not a social call, Mr. Burke.”
“I never assumed it was.” He pushed off the case and gestured to the rows of artifacts. “What do you think? Does it inspire? All this careful preservation of dust and bones.”
She refused to be sidetracked. “The letter.”
“Ah, yes. The evidence.” He drew the folded page from his inner pocket but didn’t hand it over. He tapped it against his palm. “It’s quite a piece of writing. More visceral than your novel, in some ways. Less… polished.”
“It was never meant for an audience.”
“The best things rarely are.” He took a step closer. The space between them seemed to compress, the cool air warming. “You described the kiss as ‘an act of archaeological recklessness.’ Uncovering something that should have stayed buried.”
“I was being metaphorical.”
“Were you?” His gaze held hers. “It felt reckless. I’ll grant you that.”
A flush crept up her neck. She glanced around; the gallery was nearly empty. An elderly couple murmured by a distant statue. A solitary scholar made notes. They were, for all purposes, alone. “You are trying to unbalance me. It won’t work. I am here to conclude our business. Give me my property, and I will leave. We need not speak again.”
“But we will,” he said, utterly certain. “Because you want to know what I think. You’re a writer. You’re desperate to know the effect your words have. So here it is. Your letter was afraid. Your book is afraid. But the woman who wrote both… she’s the most fearless creature I’ve ever encountered. She just hasn’t admitted it to herself yet.”
“Stop it.” The words came out a whisper.
“Why? Because it’s true?” He closed the final step between them. They were standing before a great stone slab covered in hieroglyphs—a king’s chronicle. He didn’t touch her. He just stood there, an invasion of her space, her senses. She could see the weave of his coat, the faint line of a scar near his temple. “You ended your novel with a safe choice because you believe that’s all that’s available to you. A tidy cage. But you don’t believe in it. Your letter proves you don’t. You believe in the library. In the recklessness.”
Her mouth was dry. “You know nothing of what I believe.”
“I know you kept the annotated book. I know you’re here.” His hand, the one not holding her letter, came up and brushed—so lightly it might have been an accident—against the back of her gloved hand where it gripped her notebook.
A jolt shot through her, bright and electric. She didn’t pull away.
The air thickened, grew heavy as the stone around them. The distant voices faded into a buzz. All she could see was the intense focus in his eyes, blue and unyielding.
“Admit it,” he murmured, his voice rough at the edges. “Admit the kiss wasn’t a mistake. It was a discovery.”
She tried to summon her wit, her defiance. It failed her. Her breath hitched. “It was… ill-advised.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“What do you want from me?” The question was raw, stripped of pretense.
“The truth. One honest sentence. Then you can have your letter back, and you can walk out of here, and we can pretend this never happened.” He leaned in, his words a breath against her cheek. “Or you can tell the truth, and we stop pretending altogether.”
The weight of the choice pressed on her, more terrifying than any scandal. Pretending was safe. It was the world she knew. Truth was a wild, uncharted desert.
She looked at his mouth. Remembered the exact pressure of it against hers. The universe had narrowed to that point, in the dark library. It wanted to narrow again, here in the silent gallery.
“I…” She swallowed. “I think of it. Often. The kiss. And it doesn’t feel like a mistake. It feels like a… a provocation.”
The words hung in the dusty air. A confession etched not in stone, but in the space between them.
A slow, genuine smile touched his lips, one devoid of triumph, full of something like relief. “Thank you.”
He extended his hand and finally placed the folded letter in her numb fingers. Her skin tingled where his brushed hers.
She took it, the paper warm from his pocket. It was over. She had her prize. She could leave.
She didn’t move.
He saw it. The hesitation. The choice, already made. His eyes darkened. He took her notebook from her other hand and placed it on the display case beside the scarabs. Then, his movements deliberate, he guided her back a single step until her shoulders met the cool, solid surface of a stone pillar.
He caged her there, a hand flat against the pillar near her head, his body not touching hers but surrounding her. The chill of the ancient stone seeped through her dress, a stark contrast to the heat radiating from him. The gallery, the museum, London itself, seemed to fall away.
“Now,” he said, his voice low and thick. “The provocation continues. But only if you want it to.”
His face was inches from hers. She could feel the warmth of his breath. She could see the pulse in his throat, quick and demanding. Every nerve in her body was alive, screaming.
This was the precipice. The reckless archaeology. To step into the dig, to brush away the dust and see what lay beneath.
Her gloved hand came up, trembling. She didn’t push him away. She rested her fingers tentatively against the rough wool of his coat, over his heart. It hammered against her palm, a frantic, living rhythm.
That was his answer. Her consent, silent and unmistakable.
He closed his eyes for a second, as if in gratitude. Then he bent his head, his lips hovering a breath from hers, giving her one final moment to refuse.
Selina Carrow let go of the ledge.
“Yes,” she whispered against his mouth.
And he kissed her.