The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters [4]
Nefret caught me staring at her and the color in her face deepened. “Yes, Mother?” she inquired. “Is there a smudge on my nose?”
“Why, no, my dear. I was just thinking how that shade of blue becomes you.”
The subject was one into which no person of sensibility could properly probe, and I felt certain I would be the first to be informed.
After Ramses, of course.
A great deal of soup was spilled, and not only by Sennia. Most of the diners stuck it out until the end, however, and after Sennia had finished the light meal which was all I allowed her, she began to fidget and look round. How she had got to know so many of the other passengers I could not imagine, since we had never let her out of our sight, but her waves and smiles were acknowledged by several persons. One was a tall gray-haired gentleman whom I had seen once or twice on deck; his forbidding face broke into a smile and he waved back. Sennia received an even more energetic response from a man seated at the captain’s table. He had a round face, as red and wrinkled as a well-preserved winter apple, and he bobbed up and down in his chair, waving, until the young man next to him put a restraining hand on his arm. He was as stiff as the older man—his father?—was friendly. Eyeglasses gave him a scholarly look, but he was dressed with foppish elegance, every hair in place.
“Who are they?” I asked Sennia.
“They are Americans. Can I have an ice?”
“May I have an ice. Yes, you may.”
“Is the lady his wife?” Nefret asked. “Goodness, look at that frock, and the diamonds, and the rubies.”
“Vulgarly large,” I said with a sniff.
“I think they are very beautiful,” said Miss Sennia. “She let me look at them one day—it was in the saloon—but only because Mr. Albion told her to. She is not as nice as he is, and their son is not nice at all.” She took firm hold of the bowl and dug her spoon into the pink mound. “Mr. Albion wanted to meet you, but I told him you did not meet people.”
“Good girl,” said Emerson approvingly.
Between bites Sennia told us about the gray-haired gentleman, who was going out to join a firm in Alexandria, and about several of the other passengers. The storm began to subside, the howls of the wind were not so loud, the motion not quite so violent; but I believe we were all relieved when the attendants came round with champagne and the captain rose to propose a toast. It was somewhat long-winded. I remember only the end.
“To the health of His gracious Majesty and to victory in 1917!”
Somehow I was not surprised to hear a familiar voice amend the statement. “To peace,” said Ramses. We drank to that.
* * *
As it turned out, we reached Alexandria without being torpedoed, and were met by Selim and Daoud. Selim had replaced his father Abdullah as our reis, or foreman; he and his Uncle Daoud, like Abdullah’s other relations, were as close as family, and valued assistants in all our endeavors. They assisted us in resuscitating poor Basima and Gargery, our butler, who had suffered horribly from seasickness the entire time, and Sennia’s cat, who had not been seasick but whose normally bad temper was even more strained by long confinement in a room that was in constant motion. It would have been impossible to leave the nasty beast behind because Sennia, and, to a lesser degree, Nefret, were the only persons who could control him. Horus was the only cat with us that year. Seshat, Ramses’s erstwhile companion and guardian, had given up a professional career for domesticity. Perhaps she felt she could now trust Nefret to look after him.
Basima brightened as soon as she set foot on dry land, and Gargery, though still unsteady, went off with Daoud to see about the luggage. We had a great deal more than usual this time, for we had reached a momentous