The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [189]
“Possibly. Anyhow, what brought matters to a head was the day I came home and found Percy with Nefret.” He was watching David closely, and he knew his friend too well to miss the signs of self-consciousness. “Do stop me if this is familiar ground,” he said gently.
David shook his head. He looked so miserable, Ramses took pity on him; divided loyalties were hellishly unpleasant, and David must have been sworn to secrecy by Lia. About what, though? Surely Nefret would not have confessed, even to her best friend, that she had given herself to a man she didn’t love; surely Lia wouldn’t repeat that painfully personal confidence, even to her husband …
At any rate he had no right to speak of it. Choosing his words with care, Ramses went on, “Well, there they were, you see. When I walked in he had hold of her and was trying to kiss her. It would have annoyed me a bit to see anyone forcing himself on any girl, but knowing what I knew about Percy’s habits, I rather lost my head. I knocked him across the room, and then Nefret grabbed hold of me and hung on. It was the only way she could have stopped me from murdering the bastard, but he wouldn’t have understood that. He assumed she and I were …”
David waited for him to go on. Then he said, “That would be a logical deduction, wouldn’t it?”
“To Percy it would. He doesn’t understand friendship or disinterested affection. You can imagine the effect of that touching scene on a man so blindly vain and self-centered. He must have gone raging back to Kalaan and set up the encounter for the following day. It’s a pity you missed it; this family is good at melodrama, and that was a stellar performance by all concerned.”
David was not deceived by the mocking tone. “Tell me. If you can bring yourself to do so.”
“Mother didn’t give you a word-for-word account?” He couldn’t keep up the pretense; reaching for a cigarette, he was ashamed to see that his hand was shaking. “David, she was wonderful. So was Father. They believed me. How in God’s name they could I don’t know! I must have looked guilty as hell when I saw Sennia, and Kalaan blandly announced she was my daughter. The resemblance was strong enough to carry conviction in itself, and then the little thing ran to me, holding out her arms and calling me Father, and I …” He tossed the unlit cigarette aside and hid his face in his hands. “I know how poor old cowardly Saint Peter must have felt,” he said in a muffled voice.
David put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “You denied she was your child? It was the truth.”
“Yes, but she trusted me, you see, and I … At least I only denied her once.” He passed his hand over his eyes and tried to smile. “Someday I may be able to forgive myself for that. Nefret never will. It was the denial, almost as much as the accusation, that made her despise me.”
“But, my brother—”
“Just let me finish, please. I had to claim Sennia, to keep her from Kalaan; only a male relative could do that. Even then, Mother and Father never doubted me.”
“But Nefret did. And you will never forgive her
for that?”
Ramses did not reply. After a moment David said, “If she made a mistake she has paid dearly for it. There is a reason, perhaps, why it was harder for her than for your parents.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. She always told me I didn’t understand women. There’s no question of forgiveness; how could I blame her for anything when she’s so unhappy? I’d tell her so if she would let me. I don’t even blame her for not wanting to see me. In a way I was responsible for Geoffrey’s death, and she loved him.”
“I don’t believe it,” David said. “She was fond of him, she was sorry for him, she was furious with you. And Percy—”
“No, that’s going too far.” Ramses shook his head vehemently. “If Percy couldn’t have her himself he might settle for the lesser satisfaction of keeping her from me, but there is no way he could have known Geoffrey had a chance with Nefret. None of us did.”
“And what about Rashida’s death?”
“You wondered too, did you?” Ramses got to his feet and began pacing. “I keep