Lord of the Silent - Elizabeth Peters [99]
“He really got under your skin, didn’t he?”
“Ever since I can remember he’s been the enemy, the one man who defeated even Father, time after time. Coming to grips with him became my greatest ambition. And now—” He realized he was gripping the rail so tightly his fingers ached. “Now he’s a bloody hero, and my uncle! How can I set the police on his trail? If I tell Father we’ve encountered him, Father will want to go after him himself, and Mother will find out, she always does, and he was absolutely right about that, damn him, she’d poke her nose into every trouble spot in Luxor!”
Nefret slipped her arm through his and leaned her head against his shoulder. “So we’re back to the old habit of keeping things from one another,” she said soberly.
“You’re a fine one to talk.”
“I said I was sorry!”
“I’m just being adorable.”
Nefret chuckled. “Well done. If you keep practicing you’ll soon be able to shout me down when I’m horrid to you. No, but seriously, darling, why not tell the parents? If anyone can influence Sethos, it’s Mother.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He turned his head and found her mouth in a convenient location, so he took advantage of it. “You may be right, but let’s see if we can find him before we decide. And if I get my hands on him again I’ll tie him down until he’s answered all my questions! How did he know about Queen Tiy’s jewelry? What else is he after? Who is working for him? We’ve got to stop him somehow, and if we can do it before Mother gets involved, we’ll save ourselves a lot of grief.”
Nefret didn’t argue. She knew that look—mouth set, eyes hooded—but she wondered whether Ramses understood his own motives for pursuing a search that was almost certainly doomed to failure. Really, men could be so obtuse at times. After having come up with the brilliant idea of using his mother’s portrait to attract Sethos, he was now rejecting the logical next step—that of using his mother in person. His feelings about his uncle were ambivalent, a bewildering mixture of admiration, resentment, and unwilling fascination. She felt the same, but in her case the resentment was almost entirely secondhand. For Ramses, and his father, it must still rankle—the many times Sethos had slipped through their fingers, his unrepentant devotion to his brother’s wife.
And when you came to think about it, using one’s mother as bait to catch a thief wasn’t very nice.
Preceding her husband down the stairs to the lower deck, she told herself that though it might be a waste of time to search for a man so elusive and so determined to avoid them, at least it wouldn’t be dangerous. Neither of them had anything to fear from Sethos.
• • •
Ten
• • •
From Manuscript H (CONTINUED)
They had neglected to inform Jamil there might be a change in their plans for that day. Jumana was with him, and she looked so crestfallen when Ramses explained that they wouldn’t need her that Nefret said impulsively, “Why can’t she come with us?”
“She can’t come to the dealers with us,” Ramses said. “It will be difficult enough bullying them into giving away useful information without a wide-eyed female child present.”
Nefret had to admit he was right. She and her mother-in-law had a unique status, but Jumana would be treated like any other Egyptian female. She was also a member of a family with connections all over Gurneh and Luxor, some of them legal, some not. Abdullah’s uncle had accrued a sizable fortune by methods no one was rude enough to inquire into. The dealers wouldn’t speak freely in front of her. But the wide, imploring eyes were difficult to resist.
“Jamil can take us across the river, and she can stay with him.”
Jamil gave Nefret an outraged look. He probably had plans of his own, involving a long leisurely gossip with friends in the glamorous coffee shops of Luxor. She really