Guardian of the Horizon Read Free Page B

you froze her with that cold stare and speech. What did you expect, that the idea of being parted from you for a year would miraculously arouse latent passions? It doesn't work that way." After a moment he added, "Go ahead and hit me if it will make you feel better." Ramses uncurled his fists and turned to the desk. He opened a drawer, looking for a cigarette. "I'm sorry," David said. "But if you don't get over your habit of bottling up your feelings, you're going to explode one day. For God's sake, Ramses, you're barely twenty, and the family wouldn't hear of your marrying anyhow. Give it a little more time." "Always the optimist. You don't see it, do you? You wouldn't, though; you don't want anything more from her than she is capable of giving you. What I want may not be there at all." He offered the packet to David, who took a cigarette and leaned against the desk. "Are you still harping on that? Far be it from me to deny that you have to beat women off with a club, but there must have been a few who didn't react. Nefret is one of them--so far. It doesn't mean she's incapable of love." Ramses felt himself flushing angrily. "Believe it or not, I'm not that egotistical. Maybe you're right. I hope so. But doesn't it seem strange to you that a woman of twenty-three has never been in love, not even once? Lord only knows how many men have been in love with her. She flirts with them, practices her little wiles on them, makes friends with them, and then turns them down flat when they get courage enough to propose to her. All of them! That's not natural, David. And don't tell me I wouldn't have known. Nefret's not the sort to hide her feelings. The signs are unmistakable, especially to the eyes of a jealous lover--which, God help me, I am. After all, we don't know what happened to her during those years before ..." He broke off and David gave him a curious look. "The years when she lived with the missionaries in the Sudan? What could have happened, with them looking after her?" It was the story they had concocted to explain Nefret's background when they brought her back to England. Not even to Davidhad Ramses told the true story--of the Lost Oasis with its strange mixture of ancient Egyptian and Meroitic cultures, and Nefret's role as the priestess of a heathen goddess. Like his parents, he had sworn to keep the very existence of the place secret. "You're on the wrong track, I tell you." David leaned back, long legs stretched out, face sober. "I believe that in this case I can claim to understand her better than you. I had to make the same transition, from one world to another, practically overnight--from a ragged slave, beaten and filthy and starved, to a proper young English gentleman." He laughed. "There were times when I thought it would kill me." "You never complained. I didn't realize ... I ought to have done." "Why should I complain? I had to wash more often than I liked and give up habits like spitting and speaking gutter Arabic and going about comfortably half-naked, but I was at least familiar with your world, and I still had ties to my own. Can't you imagine how much more difficult it was for Nefret? Growing up in a native village, completely isolated from the modern world ... It must have been like Mr. Wells's time machine--from primitive Nubia to modern England, in the blink of an eye. Perhaps the only way she could manage it was to suppress her memories of the past." "I hadn't thought of that," Ramses admitted. "No, you are obsessed with her--er--sexuality. If I may use that word." "It's a perfectly good word," Ramses said, amused by David's embarrassment. "I think you've gone a bit overboard with the English-gentleman role, David. Perhaps you're right, but it doesn't help. Being away from her for a while will let me get my feelings in order." "Maybe you'll fall in love with someone else," David said cheerfully. "A pretty little fraulein with flaxen braids and a nicely rounded figure and . . . All right, all right, I'm