It was not disbelief he saw, she was thinking now as the house came in sight, it was a pang of cold shock to hear him speak that way about Hori. No one can repair that damage. I feel guilty wallowing in my own pleasure while Hori, and Mother, too, in her own way, are so unhappy.
She did not have to go far to find Harmin. He was sprawled under a tree in his garden, an empty flagon of beer beside him, one of the silent black servants a short way off standing under a palm. Sheritra signalled to Bakmut to wait, and hurried over the brittle grass with an anticipatory smile. How inviting he looks, she thought. How delicious, lying supine on the mat, with his black hair spread over the cushion, his arm flung across that broad chest, his strong legs parted!
He half raised himself as she came up and knelt, and she bent and placed her mouth on his. He was flushed from the heat of the day and his lips were dry. After a moment he pulled away and sat up fully.
“Oh Harmin, I miss you so all the time!” she said. “I know we talked yesterday when you visited your mother, but the time was short and you seemed preoccupied. I am always desperate for a few minutes alone with you.”
“Well here I am,” he said without returning her smile. “I wish that you had waited to visit me until this evening, Sheritra. I did not sleep well last night and I am trying to remedy the lack.”
He did indeed took tired, she thought, disappointment at his words giving way to concern. His eyes were bleary, the delicate lids puffed. Tentatively she touched his face.
“I did not mean to be so forward,” she apologized. “It is just that I have good news for us, Harmin. Father has finally agreed to our betrothal.”
He smiled then, but it was not a free, glad expression. “If you had come to me a week ago with this information I would have been overjoyed,” he said sullenly, fumbling for the cup at his elbow. “But I am not sure that I want to be betrothed to a woman who neither trusts nor loves me.” He would not meet her eyes. Lifting the cup, he drained it to the dregs, and Sheritra watched him in a haze of bewilderment.
“Harmin!” she said after a moment. “What do you mean? You taught me trust! You taught me love! I adore you with all my heart! What are you saying?”
He threw the cup into the shrubbery, and when he answered, his tone was cold and spiteful. “Do you deny that you have been conspiring with Hori in the most despicable way to discredit me and my mother?”
“Not conspiring, Harmin! I …”
He snorted. “I can see the guilt on your face, Highness. My mother told me that Hori had gone to Koptos to try and ruin her. It was humiliating, hearing such a thing from her instead of from you. It did not occur to you to come and talk to me about it, did it? Of course not! I mean less to you than he does.”
Sheritra felt as though he had struck her. “How did she know where Hori had gone?”
“She encountered him by the watersteps on the morning he left. He told her what he was going to do and she begged him with tears, with tears! to cease his vindictive persecution, so unjust, so fruitless, but he would not listen. And you!” he sneered. “You knew that he was going and you knew why, yet you did not take me into your confidence.”
“What makes you think Hori told me anything?” she tried to challenge him, but she could not deny his accusation and her words came out weakly. It would be useless to try and explain that to take him into her confidence would have meant telling him what she thought of Tbubui, and that she had not wanted to hurt him. And that was not the only reason, she thought dismally. Hori had urged her not to press for a betrothal until he came back. He did not know whether or not Harmin was involved with his mother in deceiving Khaemwaset, and thus deceiving Sheritra also.
“He tells you everything,” Harmin said petulantly. “You share more with him than you do with me. I am deeply hurt, Sheritra, first that you chose to shut me out and second that you could even imagine that my mother or I could be capable of perpetrating such a huge lie on your family.”
But she has, Sheritra thought in despair, looking at his sulky, brooding face. I believed Hori implicitly when he told me Ptah-Seankh’s story. Oh Harmin, I pray fervently that you are hurt and angry because you know nothing of your mother’s true nature, not because you are afraid of exposure. Suddenly she realized the implications of the thought and her mouth went dry. How can I possibly doubt him? she asked herself in a rush of tenderness. He is as much a victim of Tbubui’s machinations as Father. Poor Harmin.
“My dearest brother,” she said softly, edging closer to him and putting an arm about his neck. “I did not confide in you because I did not want to hurt you. I believe, and so does Hori, that your mother has been lying to Khaemwaset. Such a truth is hard for a son to bear. Please believe me, I did not want to see you suffer!”