He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [59]
I wriggled a bit. Risha turned his aristocratic head and gave me a critical look, and David gripped me more firmly. Unfortunately the movement resulted in my parasol, slung beside the saddle, jabbing painfully into my anatomy. I let out a shriek.
“Take her straight on home,” Emerson cried loudly. “We will follow.”
“Just in time,” I muttered, while we withdrew as fast as safety permitted. “Nefret had just come out of the tomb; she got only a glimpse of us. David, did you happen to notice the woman to whom Emerson was talking when we arrived?”
David shifted me into a less uncomfortable position. “Mrs. Fortescue,” he said. “Had she been invited to visit the dig?”
“We had spoken of it, but I had not got round to issuing a particular invitation. An odd coincidence, is it not, that she happened to drop by today?”
As soon as I entered the house I told Fatima to prepare a very extensive tea, which got her out of the way. David and I then hurried to Ramses’s room. When I saw that the bed was unoccupied, my heart sank down into my boots. Then Ramses stepped out from behind the door. He was fully dressed, straight as a lance, and several shades paler than usual.
“Goodness, what a fright you gave me!” I exclaimed. “Get back into bed at once. And take off your shirt, I want to dress the wounds. You had no business—”
“I wanted to be certain it was you. How did it go?”
“All right, I think.” David examined him critically. “You’re a trifle off-color.”
“Am I?” He went to the mirror.
I watched as he uncorked a bottle and applied a thin layer of liquid to his face. He must have been in and out of bed several times; not only was he clean-shaven but he had set up a peculiar-looking apparatus on his desk—tubes and coils and glass vessels of various sizes. From it wafted a horrible smell.
“Where is Seshat?” I inquired. “I told her to make sure you stayed in bed.”
Ramses returned the little bottle to the cupboard and closed the door. “What did you expect her to do, knock me down and sit on me? She went out the window when she heard you coming. She’d been here all day.”
“What went wrong last night?” David asked.
“Later.” Ramses sat down, rather heavily, on the side of the bed. “Where are the others?”
“On their way,” I said. “Ramses, I insist you allow me—”
“Get on with it, then, while David tells me what I did today.”
So I got on with it, and David summarized the events of the day. The account served to distract Ramses from the unpleasant things I was doing to him. He was rather white around the mouth by the time I finished, but he laughed when David described our arrival at Giza.
“I wish I could have seen you. Your idea, Mother?”
“Yes. I would have preferred to do something more flamboyant, but I was afraid to risk it. You may be sure Nefret would have been first on the spot, burning to tend to me, and then she would have got a close look at David.”
Ramses nodded approval. “Good thinking. And you say Mrs. Fortescue just happened to be there?”
“Do you suspect her?” I asked.
“It did occur to me,” said my son, glancing at David, “that her—uh—affability the evening we dined together might have been prompted by something other than—er . . .”
“So, she was affable, was she?” I remarked.
“So David told you about that, did he?” remarked Ramses, in the same tone. “I thought so. I don’t know how you do it, but he babbles like a brook whenever you get him to yourself. I would not have referred to it had I not felt it necessary to clear up certain misapprehensions you both seem to harbor. I do not suspect the lady any more than I suspect all other newcomers without official credentials, but the fact remains that she did her best to detain me when I was on my way to an important meeting. Difficult as it may be for you and David to believe, she may not have been swept off her feet by—er . . .”
“Now, now, don’t get excited,” I said soothingly. “Without wishing in any way to contradict your appraisal of your personal attractions,