Tomb of the Golden Bird - Elizabeth Peters [160]
“Don’t worry,” said Nefret, taking Ramses’s arm. “I’ll be there to protect him.”
They made it to the station with time to spare. Daoud went along to see them off, as was his custom, and the three of them joined Selim in a final scan of the departing passengers. None matched the appearance of the missing couple.
Seated across from his wife in the dining car at a table for two, Ramses felt a sense of unreality. The motion of the train didn’t detract from the pleasant ambience—soft lights, white linen on the table, assiduous service. He couldn’t remember the last time they had dined alone, just the two of them, with not a familiar face in sight and no prospect of seeing one until they reached Cairo. Almost twelve hours with no responsibilities and no interruptions—the prospect was dazzling.
As she often did, Nefret read his mind. “I feel as if we were eloping,” she said.
“So do I. It’s wonderful.”
He took the hand she held out and raised it to his lips, indifferent to the hovering waiter. “I’ve given you so many bad hours, Nefret. Why do you put up with me?”
“On the whole, your virtues outweigh your vices,” she said with that enchanting chuckle of hers. “And I’ve given you a few bad hours. D’you remember the time I talked you and David into letting me go after the Book of the Dead with you?”
“I was thinking about it last night, as a matter of fact. And of the time you marched into a room with a murderer and let him take you hostage.”
“Were you making a list of my misdeeds?”
“Balancing them against mine.” He let go her hand, and the waiter offered menus.
“Such as the time…”
Some people might consider reminiscences of near death and catastrophe unsuitable for dinner conversation, but it had all been so long ago—the follies and foibles of their youth. They could even talk about the hardest years, when mutual stubbornness and misunderstanding had kept them apart. It had taken Nefret a long time to stop blaming herself for that. Guilt, as his mother often remarked, is a wasteful emotion; forgive yourself and go on to do better. As was the case with most of his mother’s aphorisms, you wanted to swear when she uttered the banal words with that bland assurance of hers, but they had a way of sinking in.
He didn’t think of them again that night—nor, to judge by her behavior, did Nefret. At one point Ramses heard himself murmur, “Wonderful things,” as Howard Carter had done under quite different circumstances. Nefret’s laughter was the sweetest sound he had heard for years.
Neither of them woke until the train had stopped in Cairo. “Back to the real world,” Ramses said.
“Curse it,” Nefret agreed with a smile. “Let’s get it over. Straight to Russell’s office?”
Ramses consulted his watch. “It’s still early. He won’t be there for a while. We may as well have a leisurely breakfast.”
They had it on the terrace of Shepheard’s. It wasn’t Ramses’s favorite place in Cairo, but staying there had become a habit, and they could always count on getting a room if they had to stay over. The sunlight was dulled by the inevitable and omniprescent dust kicked up by hooves of animals and feet of humans and wheels of vehicles. Across the way the green gardens of the Ezbekieh were reminders of other youthful escapades. There was hardly a part of Cairo that was free of such memories, but this one was a favorite of Nefret’s.
“D’you remember—” she began.
“Yes, and I’d rather not be reminded of it.”
She went on remorselessly, “—that horrid girl who lured you into the gardens late at night? You never did admit whether she kissed you before she fainted dead away and you had to carry her out in your arms.”
“I was only sixteen,” Ramses protested.
“Did she?”
“Yes.” He grinned. “It was quite a kiss, too. Or would have been, if we hadn’t been interrupted by a would-be assassin.”
“They do keep turning up,” Nefret said, laughing.
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you? You enjoyed all of it.”
“Well, not all of it. The