Read Online Children of the Storm by Elizabeth Peters - Free Book Online

forward to his time with Selim and with the children. In any case, you must finish that article before we leave for Cairo to meet the family. You don’t want it hanging over your head once they are here.”
    “When are you leaving?” Cyrus asked.
    “We are taking the train Sunday evening.” I gathered my belongings—handbag, gloves, parasol—and rose. “By that time we ought to have heard from Mr. Russell, and possibly from . . . someone else. One way or another, whatever the results of our initial inquiries, we will continue to pursue them in Cairo.”
    I took Emerson’s arm and we started down the curving staircase. “Quite a crowd in Luxor this season,” I remarked. “It is nice to see things getting back to normal. Oh—there is Marjorie. Stop a minute, Emerson, she is waving at us.”
    “Wave back and keep walking,” said Emerson. “You may indulge in gossip to your heart’s content, Peabody, but on your own time. I have no patience with such stuff.”
    He put his hand over mine and pulled me with him. We had almost reached the foot of the stairs when I saw a little eddy, so to speak, in the crowd. Raised voices and a flurry of rapid movement betokened a disturbance of some kind. Owing to my lack of inches, I could not make out the cause, but Ramses, who had gone ahead with Nefret, obviously beheld something that provoked him into action. He dropped his wife’s arm and ran forward.
    Needless to say, the rest of us were not far behind him. Emerson thrust through the ring of gaping spectators. They had prudently backed away from the two principal performers, who were grappling with each other. The struggle was brief; with an abrupt movement Ramses (for as the Reader must have surmised, one of the combatants was my son) caught the other man in a hard grip and twisted his arm behind him. His opponent was a burly, dark-haired fellow whose teeth were bared in a grimace of pain or rage. The third participant lay on the ground, apparently unconscious.
    He was no more than a boy, slender and frail, dressed in a suit that could only have been cut by a British tailor. His cap had fallen off. Golden lashes fanned his smooth cheeks, and golden curls crowned his bare head. His gentle countenance and slight form suggested a fallen angel, struck down by some diabolical adversary. The other man looked devilish enough, his face dark with choler and his muscles bulging as he continued to writhe in Ramses’s grasp.
    “Let me go, you fool,” he cried. “Let me go to him.”
    “Hold on to him, Ramses,” I ordered.
    “I have every intention of doing so, Mother. They were struggling when I first saw them, and then this fellow struck the boy. Is he badly hurt?”
    “I can’t see any wounds or bruises,” Nefret said. She bent over the youth and was about to loosen his collar when his golden lashes fluttered and lifted, framing eyes of a soft, celestial blue. A dreamy smile curved the delicate lips. “You are very beautiful,” he said, catching hold of Nefret’s hand. “Are you an angel or a goddess? The Egyptian goddesses had dark hair . . .”
    “A friend,” Nefret said gently. “I will take care of you.”
    “François will take care of me.” His eyes moved in innocent curiosity around the circle of staring faces. “Where is he? Where is my good François?”
    “Here, young master, here.” François, for so the boy’s smile of recognition proved him to be, had accepted the futility of struggle. His body relaxed and his features lost their ferocity. They were no more pleasant in repose; his nose was crooked and a seamed scar twisted his mouth. He had the shallow, retreating brow that some authorities consider evidence of a criminal nature, and the lower portion of his face was out of proportion, with a long jaw and large cheekbones. “Let me go to him,” he begged. “Monsieur, s’il vous plaît—je vous en prie—”
    “It appears,” I remarked, “that we may have misjudged the situation. Release