The Ape Who Guards the Balance - Elizabeth Peters [86]
“Later, my dear.”
“You don’t mean to sit up all night standing guard, do you?”
“Not all night. David and I will take it in turn. He would have struck me, I think, if I had not agreed.” Emerson’s hard face softened. “He’s fit enough, Peabody. Selim’s young wife stuffed him full of lamb stew, and Nefret assures me the wound is negligible.”
“I meant to examine him again,” I murmured. “Ramses too. She wouldn’t let me . . .”
Emerson took my hand. His voice seemed to come from a great distance. “She didn’t mean it, you know, Peabody.”
“Yes, she did. Oh, Emerson—was I in error? I honestly believed I was acting for the best . . . for their own good . . .” A great yawn interrupted my speech, and the truth dawned at last. “Curse it, Emerson! You put laudanum in the milk. How could. . . .”
“Sleep well, my love.” I felt his lips brush my cheek, and felt nothing more.
I woke before the others, rested and ready to take up the reins once more. Emerson was sleeping heavily; he did not stir even when I planted a kiss on his bristly cheek, so I dressed and tiptoed out.
The others were in the same state as Emerson, even David, whose cousin Achmet had taken over the duties of guard. I stood for a while by Ramses’s bed, looking down at him. Nefret must have made him take laudanum, or one of her newfangled medicines, for he was deeply asleep. When I brushed the tangled curls away from his face he only murmured and smiled.
I was on the verandah busily making notes when Cyrus and Katherine rode up, Cyrus on his favorite mare Queenie and Katherine on a placid broad-backed pony. Her straw hat was tied under her chin with a large bow, and she looked more than ever like a pleasant pussycat.
Emerson and the children came in shortly thereafter, and we sat down to breakfast. Conversation was sporadic, and not only because we were eating. One was conscious of a certain air of constraint. I was relieved to see that Ramses’s appetite was normal, though he had some little difficulty eating with his left hand. I wondered how Nefret had bullied him into wearing a sling, and whether his injuries were more extensive than I had realized, and whether I ought not insist on examining him myself . . .
“The sling is just to protect his hand, Aunt Amelia. His arm is not hurt.”
They were the first words Nefret had addressed to me since she had uttered those stinging accusations the night before. Her blue eyes were anxious and her smile tentative. I smiled warmly back at her.
“Thank you, my dear, for reassuring me. I have complete confidence in your skill. And thank you for tending to me so efficiently. I slept like a baby and woke refreshed.”
“Oh, Aunt Amelia, I am sorry for what I said last night! I didn’t—”
“You are becoming tediously repetitive, Nefret.” Ramses pushed his plate away. “And you are wasting time. I see that Mother has organized her thoughts in her usual efficient fashion and in writing; shall we ask her to begin?”
I shuffled my papers together and picked them up, wishing I had thought to do so before my son’s vulturine stare fell upon them. The pages had a good many lines scratched out and scribbled over. The complexity of my thought processes does not lend itself to written organization. However, I had decided what to say and I proceeded to say it.
“I agree with Ramses; we ought not waste time in apologies and expressions of regret. If anyone of us has erred, she—er—he or she did so with the best of intentions. There is nothing so futile as—”
“Peabody,” said Emerson. “Please. Abjure aphorisms, if you are able.”
The glint in his handsome blue eyes was one of amusement rather than annoyance. The same affectionate amusement warmed the other faces—except, of course, for that of Ramses. His expression was no more rigid than usual, however, so I concluded we were in accord once more, all grievances forgot.
“Certainly, my dear,” I said. “I begin with the assumption that you are all familiar with the history of our original encounters with Sethos. Ramses has told David and Nefret, and Cyrus