She glanced up at him lazily, obviously somnolent with the heat. “Yes, Prince, I am. I suppose Harmin told you.”
“Would you like to inspect my remedies?”
For answer she rose. Nubnofret glanced their way but Khaemwaset, reading her absent expression, knew that she did not mind. He started for the house.
“Do you treat your own staff?” he asked Tbubui as they passed into the welcome gloom of the hall and made their way to Khaemwaset’s office. “Or have you your own physician in residence?”
“I prefer to treat them myself,” she answered behind him, and Khaemwaset could have sworn that he felt her warm breath between his naked shoulder-blades. “That way I am learning all the time. They do not seem to mind my mistakes.”
She stood looking about the orderly room, now filled with the deep, drugged stillness of the later afternoon. Khaemwaset unlocked the library and beckoned her within, closing the door behind her. Without pause he opened the chest that contained his herbs and philtres, not marvelling at how he was breaking his own usually rigid rule regarding whose hands disturbed them, and Tbubui became immediately brisk and curious.
She examined them carefully and questioned him fully on their cost and use, the seductive, magnetic woman gone, replaced by one whose intelligence and concentration inflamed him in a new way.
He forced himself to answer her rationally, to make his voice obey him, but he was trembling as her heavily ringed hands caressed his pots and jars, and her hair fell forward as she bent over the chests.
Handing the collection back to him her fingers brushed his, her inadvertent touch cool although beads of sweat had collected in the hollow of her throat and the skin between her breasts glistened with moisture.
At last he locked his medicines away, then stood, intending to usher her out. He found her with her head thrown back and her eyes closed, one hand working the back of her neck. “It is so quiet in here,” she murmured. “Almost as quiet as my home. This room has an atmosphere that banishes the outside world as though it did not exist.”
Khaemwaset’s control deserted him. Sliding his own hand behind her neck he forced her back until the wall stopped them, then he leaned into her and brought his mouth down on her own. A stab of pleasure such as he had never known lanced his abdomen and he groaned, preternaturally aware of the soft underside of her lips as his tongue flicked over them, the cold resistance of her teeth before they parted. Her breath was in his mouth Then it was over. He withdrew shakily, his own breath coming hard, and she lifted a hand to her face, brushing against his penis lightly, briefly, as she did so.
“What ails you, Prince?” she said in a low voice, her eyes all at once heavy-lidded, her nostrils flaring. “Why this?”
You ail me, he wanted to blurt. I sicken from you like a love-hungry youth. Your mouth is not enough, Tbubui. I must have all of you, my tongue in the valleys I can imagine so painfully but not yet see, my hands gauging the texture, the temperature of your skin, my body ceasing to obey my mind and for once knowing only its driving need. For once … He did not apologize.
“I sought you for a long time,” he said huskily. “My servants grew exhausted. I was robbed of sleep, my food was as the sand, dry and tasteless. That kiss was compensation for it all.”
“And was it compensation enough, Prince?” she asked, her smile gently mocking; “Or will you demand a full recompense? It will not be easy. No, it will not. For I am of noble birth and no mean person.”
Immediately an urge to violence mingled with his lust. He wanted to bruise her lips with his teeth, knead her breasts until she cried out. For one blinding moment he hated her constant poise. The words of desire died on his tongue, and with a curt gesture he ushered her from the room.
The guests left at sunset, though Nubnofret had invited them to stay for the evening meal. “We have another commitment, unfortunately,” Sisenet explained, “but we thank you for your boundless kindness. Remember to send me word about that wall in the tomb,” he added, turning to Hori. “I am very interested. Indeed the whole day has been intriguing. I have enjoyed myself enormously, standing alive in the presence of the dead.”
They took their leave, and began to file up the shadowed ramp at the foot of the watersteps. Their skiff waited motionless on the red-splashed, smooth mirror the Nile had become at that hour.
All at once Tbubui stumbled. With a cry she slipped towards the unguarded edge of the ramp, arms flung out to catch a non-existent rail, and Khaemwaset jumped forward, but before he could reach her Harmin had pulled her back.
“Are you all right?” Khaemwaset called, hurrying up to her. She nodded, trembling in every limb, her face chalk white. Harmin, an arm across her shoulders, turned her and she walked unsteadily into the skiff. Sisenet followed without speaking a word, and the tiny boat cast off and glided away. Khaemwaset returned to his family.