The Curse of the Pharaohs - Elizabeth Peters [17]
The change in her manner during this speech was remarkable. The soft murmuring voice became brisk and emphatic. She did not pause for breath, but shot out the sharp sentences like bullets. Emerson’s face reddened; he tried to speak, but was not given the opportunity. The lady glided from the room, her black veils billowing out like storm clouds.
“Damn!” said Emerson. He stamped his foot.
“She was very impertinent,” I agreed.
“Impertinent? On the contrary, she tried to state the unpalatable facts as nicely as possible. ‘Quite the family man! Settled down at last!’ Good Gad!”
“Now you are talking just like a man,” I began angrily.
“How surprising! I am not a man, I am a domesticated old fogy, without the courage or the daring—”
“You are responding precisely as she hoped you would,” I exclaimed. “Can’t you see that she chose every word with malicious deliberation? The only one she did not employ was—”
“Henpecked. True, very true. She was too courteous to say it.”
“Oh, so you think you are henpecked, do you?”
“Certainly not,” said Emerson, with the complete lack of consistency the male sex usually exhibits during an argument. “Not that you don’t try—”
“And you try to bully me. If I were not such a strong character—”
The drawing-room doors opened. “Dinner is served,” said Wilkins.
“Tell Cook to put it back a quarter of an hour,” I said. “We had better tuck Ramses in first, Emerson.”
“Yes, yes. I will read to him while you change that abominable frock. I refuse to dine with a woman who looks like an English matron and smells like a compost heap. How dare you say that I bully you?”
“I said you tried. Neither you nor any other man will ever succeed.”
Wilkins stepped back as we approached the door.
“Thank you, Wilkins,” I said.
“Certainly, madam.”
“As for the charge of henpecking—”
“I beg your pardon, madam?”
“I was speaking to Professor Emerson.”
“Yes, madam.”
“Henpecking was the word I used,” snarled Emerson, allowed me to precede him up the stairs. “And henpecking was the word I meant.”
“Then why don’t you accept the lady’s offer? I could see you were panting to do so. What a charming time you two could have, night after night, under the soft Egyptian moon—”
“Oh, don’t talk like a fool, Amelia. The poor woman won’t go back to Luxor; her memories would be too much to bear.”
“Ha!” I laughed sharply. “The naivety of men constantly astonishes me. Of course she will be back. Especially if you are there.”
“I have no intention of going.”
“No one is preventing you.”
We reached the top of the stairs. Emerson turned to the right, to continue up to the nursery. I wheeled left, toward our rooms.
“You will be up shortly, then?” he inquired.
“Ten minutes.”
“Very well, my dear.”
It required even less than ten minutes to rip the gray gown off and replace it with another. When I reached the night nursery the room was dark except for one lamp, by whose light Emerson sat reading. Ramses, in his crib, contemplated the ceiling with rapt attention. It made a pretty little family scene, until one heard what was being said.
“… the anatomical details of the wounds, which included a large gash in the frontal bone, a broken malar bone and orbit, and a spear thrust which smashed off the mastoid process and struck the atlas vertebra, allow us to reconstruct the death scene of the king.”
“Ah, the mummy of Seqenenre,” I said. “Have you got as far as that?”
From the small figure on the cot came a reflective voice. “It appeaws to me that he was muwduwed.”
“What?” said Emerson, baffled by the last word.
“Murdered,” I interpreted. “I would have to agree, Ramses; a man whose skull has been smashed by repeated blows did not die a natural death.”
Sarcasm is wasted on Ramses. “I mean,” he insisted, “that it was a domestic cwime.”
“Out of the question,” Emerson exclaimed. “Petrie has also put forth that absurd idea; it is impossible