He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [170]
“I’ve seen you lose it a few times.”
“I’ve been practicing,” Ramses said with a wry smile. “Last year I thought that she was beginning to care a little, but then this other business came up and I didn’t dare confide in her. I hoped that one day, when this is over, I could explain and start again; but what I did tonight was the worst mistake I could have made. One doesn’t force oneself on a woman like Nefret.”
“In my opinion it was a distinctly positive step,” I said. “Faint heart never won fair lady, my dear, and, without wishing in any way to condone the employment of physical force, there are times when a woman may secretly wish . . . Hmmm. Let me think how to put this. She may hope that the strength of a gentleman’s affection for her will cause him to forget his manners.”
Ramses opened his mouth and closed it again. I was pleased to see that my sympathetic conversation had comforted him; he sounded quite his normal self when he finally found his voice. “Mother, you never cease to amaze me. Are you seriously suggesting I should—”
“Why, Ramses, you know I would never venture to urge a course of action on another individual, particularly in affairs of the heart.” Ramses had lit another cigarette. He must have inhaled the wrong way, for he began to cough. I patted him on the back. “However, a demonstration of an attachment so powerful it cannot be controlled, particularly by a gentleman who has controlled it only too well, would, I believe, affect most women favorably. I trust you follow me?”
“I think I do,” Ramses said in a choked voice.
Rising, he offered me his hand. “Will you come back to the ball now? They will be serving supper soon, and—”
“I know. You can depend on me. But I believe I will sit here a few minutes longer. Do you go on, my dear.”
He hesitated for a moment. Then he said softly, “I love you, Mother.” He took my hand and kissed it, and folded my fingers round the stem of the rose. He had stripped it of its thorns.
I was too moved to speak. But maternal affection was not the only emotion that prevented utterance; as I watched him walk away, his head high and his step firm, anger boiled within me. I knew I had to conquer it before I saw Nefret again, or I would take her by the shoulders and shake her, and demand that she love my son!
That would have been unfair as well as very undignified. I knew it; but I had to force my jaws apart to keep from grinding my teeth with outrage and fury. She ought to love him. He was the only man who was truly her equal, in intelligence and integrity, in loving affection and . . . Still waters run deep, it is said. I, his affectionate mother, ought to have realized that beneath that controlled mask his nature was as deep and passionate as hers.
The heat of anger faded, to be replaced with an icy chill of foreboding. Ramses’s feet were set on a path fraught with peril, and a man who fears he has lost the thing he wants most in life takes reckless chances. The young are especially susceptible to this form of romantic pessimism.
Rising, I shook out my skirts and squared my own shoulders. Another challenge! I was up to it! I would see those two wed if I had to lock Nefret up on bread and water until she agreed. But first there was the little matter of making certain Ramses lived long enough to marry her.
The last dance before supper was beginning when I entered the ballroom, to find Emerson lying in wait for me.
“Where have you been?” he demanded. “It is almost time. Has something happened? You are grinding your teeth.”
“Am I?” I was. Hastily I got my countenance under control. “Never mind. The crucial hour is upon us! Tell them to bring the motorcar