Page 145

"You're crying," he said.

"Yes. But I am happy. Stay with me, young lord. Do not leave me just now."

He appeared startled, then transfixed. She combed the past slowly; had she ever known anyone so gentle? Perhaps in childhood, when she'd been too stupid to know what it meant.

"I don't want to leave you for the world, Your Highness," he said. He appeared sad again for a second, half disbelieving. And then at a loss.

"And the opera tonight, my lord, shall we go together? Shall we dance at the opera ball?"

Lovely the light that came to his eyes. "That would be heaven," he whispered.

She gestured to the plates before him. "Your food, my lord."

He picked at it in mortal fashion. Then lifted a bundle from beside his plate, which she had taken no notice of before. He tore off the wrapping and opened what appeared to be a thick manuscript covered over with tiny writing.

"Tell me what this is."

"Why, a newspaper," he said, half laughing. He glanced at it. "And awful news, too."

"Read aloud."

"You wouldn't really want to hear it. Some poor woman in a dress shop, with her neck broken like all the rest. And they've got a picture of Ramsey with Julie. What a disaster!"

Ramses?

"It's the talk of Cairo, Your Highness. You may as well know now. My friends have been involved in a fair bit of trouble, but that's just it, they've nothing to do with it. They've only been associated with it. There ... you see this man?"

Ramses. They are friends of Lawrence Stratford, the archaeologist, the one who dug up the mummy of Ramses the Damned.

"He's a dear friend of my father and of me. They're searching for him. Some foolishness about stealing a mummy from the Cairo Museum. It's all hogwash. It will soon blow over." He broke off. "Your Highness? Don't let this story frighten you. There's nothing to it, really."

She stared at this "picture," not a drawing like the rest but a dense image, rather like a painting, yet it was all done in ink, undoubtedly. The ink even rubbed off on her fingers. And there he stood. Ramses, beside a camel and a camel driver, dressed in the curious heavy clothes of this age. The print beneath said "Valley of the Kings."

She almost laughed aloud; yet she did not move or say a word. It seemed the moment stretched into eternity. The young lord was talking, but she couldn't hear him. Was he saying that he must call his father, that his father must need him now?

In a trance, she watched him move away from her. He had laid the paper down. The picture. She looked at him. He was picking up a strange instrument from the table. He was talking into it. Asking for Lord Rutherford.

At once she was on her feet. Gently she took the thing away from him. She set it down.

"Don't leave me now, young lord," she said. "Your father can wait for you. I need you now."

Baffled, he looked at her; he made no move to stop her as she embraced him.

"Don't bring the world to us just yet," she whispered in his ear, kissing him. "Let us have this time together."

So completely he gave in. So quickly came the fire.

"Don't be timid," she whispered. "Caress me; let your hands do what they will as they did last night."

Once again he belonged to her, enslaving her with his kisses, stroking her breasts through the blue frock.

"Have you come to me by magic?" he whispered. "Just when I thought ... when I thought ..." And then he was kissing her again, and she led him towards the bed.

She picked up the newspaper as they went into the bedroom. As they sank down on the sheets together, she showed it to him, just as he removed the robe.

"Tell me," she said, pointing to the little group of figures standing by the camel in the sun. "Who is that woman beside him?"

"Julie, Julie Stratford," he said.