The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [108]
“Splendid,” I said heartily. “I am delighted that you are going ahead with your project, Katherine, and I promise I will do my part. I meant some days ago to make the acquaintance of Fatima’s teacher, but I have not had the time to do so.”
“I have. Fatima gave me her name, and I called on her yesterday. She is an interesting woman, Amelia—handsome and well-educated and obviously of a superior class. Admirable as are the methods of the Americans, we can learn something from teachers like Sayyida Amin.”
“Ah, so she prefers the title Sayyida to that of Madame? That suggests she is not in sympathy with Western ideas of emancipation.”
“A good many educated Egyptians, male and female, resent our presence and our ideas,” Katherine said soberly. “It is not surprising that they should.”
“Quite. Kindly condescension can be as infuriating as outright insult. Not that either of us would fall into those errors! I am sorry I was unable to go with you, Katherine. I have been just a little preoccupied recently.”
“You certainly have!”
I told her of the present progress of the investigation—or, to be more accurate, the lack of progress. I would not have ventured to tell any other woman of my acquaintance about Nefret’s visit to the house of ill fame, but I felt certain Katherine’s unorthodox background would make her more tolerant of those who have, often through no fault of their own, strayed beyond the bounds of conventional society. As usual, my judgment was correct.
“She is a remarkable girl, Amelia. One can only admire her courage and compassion—and fear for her well-being. You are going to have your hands full.”
“They are already full. Ramses is enough to drive any parent over the brink of sanity, and I daresay even David will have his problems.”
I had observed him talking with a girl who was a stranger to me—one of the recent crop of tourists, I assumed. She was fair-haired and elaborately dressed in a frock of azure blue embroidered with rosebuds that bared plump white shoulders. It was unusual to see David without Ramses or Nefret or both; he was rather shy with strangers, but he appeared to be responding to this young woman, who was flirting with him over her fan.
At that moment a stocky older lady, whom I took to be the girl’s mama, bustled up to them. Taking the girl firmly by the arm, she drew her away, without so much as a nod at David.
“I daresay he already has a good many,” Katherine said thoughtfully. “He is a handsome young fellow, and those exotic looks of his cannot but be intriguing to the girls; but what responsible mama would allow her daughter to become seriously involved with him?”
“She needn’t have been so rude about it. Goodness, Katherine, we sound like a pair of empty-headed gossips.”
At that point Katherine was called away by guests who were about to take their leave. I remained where I was, observing that Ramses had joined David, and that Emerson had collared Howard Carter and was lecturing him about something, and that Nefret was . . . Where was she?
My agitated gaze soon found her, the center of a group of young gentlemen, but that pang of alarm, brief though it had been, made me decide we had better return home. I do not often suffer from nerves, but I did that night.
I collected my family and Sir Edward and we made our excuses. As we stood waiting for the carriage, Cyrus’s gatekeeper, an elderly Egyptian who had been with him for many years, came up to me.
“A person gave me this, Sitt Hakim. She said it was for Nur Misur, but—”
“Then you should give it to me, Sayid,” Nefret exclaimed. She reached for the grubby little packet, barely an inch square, that rested on the gatekeeper’s palm.
Ramses’s hand got there before hers. “Hold on, Nefret. Who was it who gave you this, Sayid?”
The old man shrugged. “A woman. She said—”
We