The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [10]
There was a flat roof just under Percy’s window and an easy drop to the ground,” Ramses finished. “He could have got out of it almost anytime if he hadn’t been such a—er—cautious soul. I knew Zaal’s men would be roaring drunk that night, so we waited till the sounds of revelry died into snores, and proceeded on our way. The hardest part was trying not to trip over recumbent bodies.”
“So it was you who took the beating.”
Ramses shrugged. “I wanted to get away that same night, and I was afraid Percy would collapse completely if anyone touched him. It wasn’t all that bad. Zaal was saving me for … Oh, the devil with it. You caught me fairly, but I hope you won’t tell anyone else. Especially Percy.”
“Why not? Humiliating him publicly would be a breach of form, I suppose, but what’s wrong with making him feel thoroughly ashamed of himself?”
“Good God, David, are you really so naive about human nature? Percy has held a grudge against me since we were children. How do you suppose he’d feel if he learned I was the sole witness to his contemptible performance?” Ramses stood up and stretched stiffened muscles. “I’d better change my shirt before I go downstairs. I seem to have spilled quite a lot of beer on it.”
David wasn’t so easily put off. “What are you going to do about this?”
“About what? Oh—Percy’s interesting fabrications. Nothing. And neither are you. If you breathe a word of this—”
“Not even to Nefret?”
“Especially to Nefret.”
“There you go again,” David exclaimed. “Why do you object to showing yourself in a favorable light to a girl you want to impress? You’ve been in love with her for years. Don’t tell me you’ve stopped caring for her.”
“Let’s just say that I’ve decided to stop dashing my brains out against the stone wall of her indifference. If she hasn’t learned to appreciate my sterling character and spectacular good looks by this time, it’s not likely she will.”
“But she is very—”
“Fond of me?” Ramses conquered a childish urge to throw his beer-stained shirt at David. “I know she is. That’s precisely why you mustn’t breathe a word of this to her. Even if you swore her to secrecy, one day that flaming temper of hers would get the better of her and she wouldn’t be able to resist taunting Percy, or blurting out the truth to someone who had made a rude remark about me. Then the word would get back to Percy, and he’d resent me even more. I have enough enemies as it is.”
“I can’t argue with that.” David picked up the despised volume and rose. “But what possible harm can your cousin do you? He’s too much of a coward to attack you directly, and no English gentleman would knife an enemy in the back, would he?”
Ramses turned and began rummaging in the wardrobe. It was hard not to snap back when David jeered about proper form and noblesse oblige and conduct becoming an English gentleman. He despised that sort of snobbery as much as David did, and David knew it.
Conquering his irritation, he took out a clean shirt and faced his friend. “Tell Mother I’ll be down shortly.”
David gave Ramses a long, level look before going out. It was rather like seeing one’s reflection in a mirror, Ramses thought. No close observer would have mistaken one for the other, but a superficial description would have fit either—height six feet, hair and eyes black, face long, skin olive, nose prominent, build … slight?
Smiling, he slipped into his shirt and began doing up the buttons. Percy was a joke—a bad joke, a braggart and coward and sneak. No, a knife between the ribs wasn’t his style, but there were other