Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [175]
Ramses was even more suspicious than his father. As we left the table, he took me by the arm and drew me aside. “Now see here, Mother,” he began, his eyebrows forming an alarming angle.
“Ramses,” I said, just as firmly. “Do you suppose I would do anything to endanger Nefret?”
“Not intentionally. But you—”
“It is high time you got over treating her—and me!—like children.”
His finely cut lips relaxed into a half-smile. “That’s what she said. I’m trying, Mother. It isn’t easy.”
“I know, dear boy. We feel the same about you and your Father.”
“About us? But we aren’t—”
“Feeble, helpless women?”
Ramses threw up his hands. “All right, Mother, you win. Try not to—oh, confound it, you know what I mean to say. Nefret isn’t—er—she isn’t the only one I care about.”
One of his hands had come to rest on my shoulder. I patted it affectionately. “And your father is not the only one I care about. Look after one another, and don’t let him do anything foolish. I know the signs. He is up to something,”
“Unlike you?”
I decided to ignore this.
We finally got them off, including Bertie. Katherine tried to prevent him, but I felt obliged to oppose her wishes. The boy had improved amazingly in the past few days, and in my opinion maternal fussing is deleterious to young persons.
“I never fussed over Ramses,” I pointed out to her. “And see how well he has turned out!”
There were several domestic matters to be dealt with before we could leave for Luxor. I had always envied male police officers and detectives their freedom from such distractions; Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for example, never had to concern himself with ordering meals, settling disputes with contentious servants, or coping with small sulky children and large sulky cats. Then there was Christmas, now less than a week away. It had to be celebrated in proper fashion, for all our sakes, but especially for Sennia’s. She had been happily occupied with nursing Gargery and Bertie, but with both her patients on the way to recovery she had begun to complain—about being forced to remain inside the stout walls of the Castle, about seeing too little of Ramses. It was hard on the child; but I could hardly tell her why we dared not let her go abroad.
Then there was Fatima, who was baking Christmas cakes and biscuits in Cyrus’s kitchen, to the extreme exasperation of Cyrus’s chef. And Horus, who had taken to prowling up and down in front of the door where the Vandergelts’ cat Sekhmet dwelled in more than Oriental splendor. Sekhmet had belonged to us before Cyrus and Katherine adopted her; she had only been bred once—to Horus himself, in point of fact—and I had my suspicions about Horus’s present interest . . .
With my usual tact, I soothed the chef, set Sennia to making paper ornaments for the tree (wondering where the devil I was to find one), instructed Gargery to keep her amused, and asked Nefret to remove Horus long enough so that the terrified servant who was supposed to look after Sekhmet could get into the room. Unfortunately, Sekhmet whizzed through the door as soon as it opened—thus confirming my diagnosis of her condition—and Nefret was rather badly scratched before we managed to capture both animals.
Nefret laughed, though. “Life is never so interesting without you, Mother,” she said affectionately, while I painted her scratches with iodine. “When are you going to tell me what scheme you have formed? I don’t believe for an instant that you really mean to shop today.”
“I will tell you all about it as soon as we are alone, my dear. It is certainly a nuisance to keep track of what various persons know and what must be kept from them! I was forced to give Katherine some idea of my plan, to prevent her from accompanying us, so all that remains is to get away without Miss Minton. Mark my words, she will be lying in wait for us.”
In fact, the cursed woman was seated in the carriage when we came out of the house, elegantly attired in a shepherd’s check suit