Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [151]
“It’s Mother, isn’t it?” she asked.
“What?” His eyebrows tilted.
“She’s the one you don’t trust to behave. For heaven’s sake, Ramses, your mother has passed unscathed through more hair-raising adventures than any woman in fact or fiction, and she’s enjoyed every second of it! It’s time you began treating her like an equal.”
For a moment she was afraid she had pushed him too far. Then his tight lips relaxed into a sheepish smile. “I will if she will.”
Nefret laughed. “I’ll have a word with her. You gave her a bad fright last winter, darling. Until then she hadn’t been able to admit how much she cared for you, and now she’s making up for lost time. So you agree?”
“Yes. It’s amazing,” he added ingenuously. “I feel the way one of those poor overburdened donkeys must feel when the last load is lifted off his back. What have I done to deserve you?”
The return of Nasir with a fresh pot of coffee prevented Nefret from telling him, in considerable detail and with appropriate gestures. She pushed the toast rack toward him.
“We need to work out a few of the details,” she admitted.
“Quite a few. ‘Everything to everybody’ is going a bit far. Are you planning to confess all to—er—Emmeline?”
“She’ll do the confessing,” Nefret said grimly. “If it takes me all morning. I’m against mentioning the arrival of the family, though. He—she—would take a chance on trying to swim the river rather than face Mother.”
“When do you propose to break it to Mother and Father?”
After all his resistance, he had finally accepted the inevitable. Nefret smiled fondly at him. “As soon as we can get them to ourselves. Then we can decide how much to tell Cyrus, and what to do with Emmeline, and . . . Now what’s the matter?”
“I was picturing how they’d react—Father heading straight for the Amelia, by the first means of transport he can steal or borrow, and Mother right behind him. We could take him somewhere else, give them time to cool off before they confront him. I’ve had an idea—”
“Let him go before we’ve forced him to confess?”
“Certainly not.”
Nasir loaded a tray with food for “the poor sick lady.” They had managed to get Margaret away unseen and unsuspected, but it would have been impossible to account for Nefret’s frequent visits to the guest room without explaining that she had a patient. Nasir had been very sympathetic.
Sethos was at the window. He had draped a sheet round him in a fair imitation of a toga, and with his three days’ growth of beard and hostile eyes he reminded Nefret of one of the wickeder Roman emperors—Nero or Caracalla.
“Get back in bed,” she ordered, as Ramses put the tray on the table.
“I never want to see another bed as long as I live.”
“Sit down and eat your breakfast, then.” She shook two tablets from the bottle of quinine and held them out. He swallowed them with a grimace.
“Look here, you two, this has gone far enough. Does Vandergelt know he has an ailing sister?”
“No,” Ramses admitted.
“So he hasn’t come round to see how she’s getting on? Disgraceful. You can’t keep this up much longer. It’s becoming too complicated.”
You don’t know the half of it, Ramses thought.
“If you are thinking of leaving us,” said Nefret, arms folded, “you had better reconsider. You aren’t over this yet.”
“I’m recovering nicely, thank you, Doctor. All I need is enough quinine to get me through the next few days. I can swallow pills with no help from anyone.”
“Where?” Ramses asked.
“A hotel.”
“That’s absurd,” Nefret exclaimed.
“Explain it to her, Ramses.” Sethos returned to his eggs and toast.
It was the same scheme that had occurred to Ramses. He gave his fuming wife a reassuring nod. “It’s the only possible alternative. He’ll need a few more days of rest and creature comforts, which would be hard to come by in a cave in the hills. There’s safety in numbers and a certain anonymity in the role of a tourist.”
And if Sethos’s enemies caught up with him, it wouldn’t be here. Ramses did not underestimate them; they had