Children of the Storm - Elizabeth Peters [51]
David laughed and flexed his hands. “I’ve been looking forward to it for years. What’s this project of Cyrus’s?”
“He’s got several in mind. He wants to produce a series of volumes on the tomb paintings of Deir el Medina. Some of them are quite marvelous, you know, and they’ve never been copied properly. First, though, I expect he’ll want you to paint some of the artifacts from the princesses’ tomb. Black-and-white photographs can’t begin to do them justice. There’s a beaded robe that will make your eyes bulge.”
“I can hardly wait to see the collection.” David sobered. “Is there anything more we can do to trace the missing jewelry?”
“You know what Luxor is like,” Ramses said with a shrug. “News of unusual objects spreads, and Selim knows everyone in Luxor. He hasn’t heard a thing. We have to take Sethos’s word for it that he learned nothing in Cairo. If he failed, we can’t hope to succeed. We’ve done all we can.”
“Perhaps if I talked to some of the dealers here—”
“We’ve done all we can,” Ramses repeated vehemently. “Damn it, David, I hate to sound selfish, but I wish we could forget distractions and concentrate on our work.”
“What about the veiled lady?”
“I thought we had agreed to forget that business.”
“I’ve had a new idea,” David said. “I can’t think how to put this . . .”
“I believe I can.” Ramses had known this was coming, but that didn’t mean he liked it. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Is there a woman in my past, seduced and callously abandoned, who wants revenge? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“You had better lower your voice,” David said coolly. “Nefret is looking at us. I did not and do not think that.”
“She does.”
“Has she said so?”
“No.” Ramses got his temper under control. “In a way, I wish she would. There’s a quality in Nefret’s silences that is worse than a direct accusation.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” David said feelingly. “It’s a woman’s most effective weapon. If you deny guilt before you’ve been accused, they regard it as tantamount to a confession. Look here, Ramses, I know you never behaved dishonorably with any woman, but not all women are as reasonable as we men. Are you sure you can’t think of someone who might harbor unreasonable resentment?”
“No. And don’t ask me to go through the list name by name.”
“All right, I won’t.” David’s eyes were bright with amusement. “Just give the theory some thought.”
His daughter, denied another biscuit (she had already eaten six) let out an ear-splitting roar. David winced. “We’ll talk about it another time. I’d better help Lia cage the lion for the night.”
The children were carried off, in various stages of protest, and the rest of them dispersed to change.
“What were you and David talking about?” Nefret asked casually.
If there was one thing marriage had taught him, it was that he had better have a quick, sensible answer to a loaded question. “He was concerned about the missing jewelry. Wondered if there were anything he could do.”
“Is there?” Nefret sat down and removed her shoes and stockings.
“I can’t think what. Selim has already covered the rumor mills.”
“Was that all?”
Ramses finished undressing, with more haste than neatness. “We discussed future plans. I’ll bathe first, if that’s all right with you.”
“Go ahead.”
Once in the bath, he cursed himself for turning tail when he might have brought the subject into the open and fought it out. David’s theory had occurred to him, but he had been reluctant to consider it seriously. The confounded woman hadn’t injured him or indicated any intention of doing so. What she had done was embarrass him and get him in trouble with his wife. That was the sort of thing—wasn’t it?—that some women might consider an appropriate revenge for a fancied injury.
Dolly Bellingham, for example? He had only been sixteen and perhaps he hadn’t been awfully tactful in his efforts to elude her determined pursuit. She was selfish and vain, and she might blame him for her father’s death. With good reason, he thought wryly. But was she clever enough to plan such a complex,