Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [103]
“So you will write it all down and then my name will be in your newspaper?”
“I won’t print anything without your permission.”
Nefret’s face twisted into a look of exaggerated incredulity. Kuentz laughed. “So what do I care? A poor hungry archaeologist does not refuse a free meal, especially with a beautiful lady. Thank you, I will come. At eight, yes? And you, my friends the young Emersons, will visit me again at Deir el Medina, where I will show you many things of interest.”
He bowed and walked away. Ramses pushed his chair back. “I forgot to ask him about something. Excuse me.”
“Was it true?” Miss Minton demanded. “What he said about the German House being a center for dealing in illegal antiquities?”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Nefret said truthfully. Ramses was still talking with Kuentz. Knowing that if they were discussing archaeology he might go on at length, oblivious of the time, Nefret raised her hand to summon the waiter.
“But there has been an increase in such activities this year, hasn’t there?”
“I didn’t know you were interested in the subject, Miss Minton.”
“Didn’t you?” There was a note in her voice that made Nefret look up from the coins she was counting out on the table. “Don’t tell me you did not read the manuscript Mrs. Emerson took—oh, quite by mistake! I’ll wager you talked it over at length, all of you, dissecting my emotions and speculating about my feelings. Perhaps it gave you a good laugh.”
Nefret felt her face heating up. At the time, she had not questioned her mother-in-law’s bland appropriation (she would never have called it theft) of the document. Yet it was really like stealing someone’s private diary and showing it to others. The author had spared herself very little, because she had never meant anyone else to read it; no doubt she had explored every other possible source of information before she consulted a woman whom she knew disliked and mistrusted her.
“No one laughed,” she said. It was a rather feeble stab at reassurance and tacit apology, but the other woman nodded in acknowledgment. She was blushing too—and I don’t wonder, Nefret thought. I know how I would feel if I had spread my heart out on a sheet of paper and someone else had read it.
“I wouldn’t blame you for laughing,” Miss Minton murmured. “I wrote it for myself, you know—soon afterward—while the details were still fresh in my mind. I never meant anyone else to see it.”
“What made you decide to show it to Mother?”
“Desperation,” the other woman said simply. “I don’t suppose you can understand, you with your happy marriage to a man who is everything you could ever want, and that close-knit, magnificently eccentric family. I had no lover, no family, no friends. The competition in my business was keen; I didn’t feel I had time for such distractions. I was ripe for the plucking, and he . . .” Her wide mouth expanded into a sudden grin. “My dear, he was superb. There wasn’t a single false note! Oh, I knew he was putting on a performance, but I didn’t care. Something told me that if I didn’t find out who he was and what he was really like, I would spend the rest of my life measuring other men against that impossibly romantic image, and having them fail—and hoping against hope that I would meet him again. That’s not a very practical program for a woman of my age.”
The grin and the glint of self-deprecating humor that brightened her eyes struck a responsive note in Nefret. She wasn’t moved to confess all, however.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Did you ever meet him?”
“Sethos?” She hesitated for a moment, trying to anticipate where a truthful answer might lead her, and then decided it could do no harm. “Yes. He unquestionably had a knack for making himself . . . interesting.”
“You felt it too?”
Nefret smiled. “Not really. But I was already head over heels about someone else.”
“You love him very much, don’t you? And he feels the same for you. You are both lucky, Mrs.—” She broke off with a little sound of amused vexation. “It is almost impossible for me to think