The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [113]
Then I got a good look at his face.
I threw myself against him and hung on with both hands. For a second or two I was afraid he was too furious to care about hurting me. Then the fingers that had gripped my ribs relaxed and he said, “Get up and get out. I don’t know how much longer I can hang on here.”
I didn’t know how much longer I could hang on. That cool voice hadn’t deceived me. I got a tighter grip on his shirt and leaned hard against him. I didn’t dare raise even my head, which was pressed against his shoulder; I had the feeling that if I relaxed the slightest little bit he’d move me aside as impersonally and efficiently as if I were a piece of furniture, and then what he would do to Percy I didn’t dare think. I could hear Percy wheezing and groaning, but he wasn’t much hurt; when he finally moved it was at a trot. His footsteps faded into silence.
Ramses lifted me off my feet—and his—I was standing on them. Holding me in one arm, he walked to the door and slammed it.
“Unhand me,” he said. “Don’t bother pretending you’re about to faint, you’ve ripped my shirt and I think those sharp points in my neck are your teeth”
“Put me down, then.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He lowered me to the floor.
“No, you aren’t.” I raised my head and examined his throat. “No blood.”
“Would you care to try again?”
“Stop it!” I put my hands on his shoulders and tried to shake him. “Can’t you admit for once in your life that you’re a human being, with human emotions? You wanted to kill him. You would have killed him. I had to prevent you, the best way I could.”
“Why?”
The question took my breath away. I fumbled with my feelings like a clumsy-handed servant rummaging in a bureau drawer. When I understood, or thought I understood, I stepped back and swung at him. My wrist smacked into his raised hand.
“I suppose that can be taken as a reply. “His eyes moved from my face to my throat. My shirt was open almost to the waist. I hadn’t noticed. “Did Percy do that?” he asked.
“You did, I think. When you pulled us apart. “It might have been true.
“Sorry.”
“Please don’t.”
“Apologize?” He raised his eyebrows and curled the corners of his mouth. “Whatever you say. You appear a trifle agitated still. Sit down and I’ll get you a glass of brandy.”
“Not yet. I mean …” I couldn’t stand to look at him. That travesty of a smile turned me cold. I
pulled the edges of my shirt together. “I’m going to change. Will you stay here? Don’t go away?”
“I’ll be here. “He crossed to the window and stood with his back to me.
You know how your eyes can deceive you at times—how a group of shapes and shadows can take on a certain form and then shift into another? It wasn’t really like that; there was no physical change in him, he was exactly the same as he’d always been. I knew every line of his long body and every curl on his disheveled black head. I’d just never seen him before. You know what I’m trying to say, don’t you? The change is in the heart.
I must have made some sound—a gasp, a wordless breath. He spun round, and there it was again. The features I knew better than I do my own were the same, but now I saw the tenderness those stubbornly set lips tried to hide, and the refined modeling of temples and cheekbones, and his eyes—wide open and unguarded for once, all his defenses down.
He stood quite still for a few seconds, watching me. Then he held out his hand. “Come here,” he said.
I couldn’t move. I felt as if I were standing on my head instead of my feet. The world had turned inside out and upside down.
“It’s too late, you know,” he said, in the same muted voice. “Too late for me, whatever you decide. Can you at least meet me halfway?”
I don’t remember any interval between that rather heartbreaking question and the moment when his arms pressed me close and his lips settled onto mine.
Why hadn’t I known? How could