Ramses the Damned Read online

  “I have made many friends in Monte Carlo.”

  “I see. But you prefer the company of men, don’t you? I could feel it.”

  “Was it a feeling you enjoyed?”

  “Very much so. But I can dance by the light of either the sun or the moon. If that’s not the case with you, dear boy, you should feel no shame over it. But neither should you become smitten with the first man who doesn’t make love to you as if it’s a quick and shameful thing that must be dispatched promptly so as to avoid discovery.”

  “You believe you are this man to me?” There was a tremor in Michel’s voice, and the presence of it turned his question into a statement, a confession. Yes. You have been this man to me, Earl of Rutherford.

  “Do not allow me to be, dear Michel. This is what I ask of you. Take your memories of me and of this night, and allow them to inspire you.”

  “Inspire me in what way?”

  “Inspire you to shun all those who would treat you as if you were something shameful.”

  Mustn’t cry at these words. Must remain calm, poised. Professional, if such a concept could even apply to this night. After all, Elliott had not yet offered a gift, and Michel could not bring himself to ask for one. Indeed, this unhurried exchange, here on this balcony with its beautiful view, was gift enough.

  “You are a complete mystery, Elliott, a mystery who says strange things about life and death and kings.”

  Elliott laughed and rose to his feet. When he cupped Michel’s face in his hands, Michel could not help but gaze up into the man’s dazzlingly blue eyes.

  “Think of me as a mystery, then,” Elliott whispered.

  “A mystery soon to depart.”

  “The night is not over yet, and in your presence, dear Michel, I feel miraculously restored.”

  Astonishing. Could he really go again?

  When Elliott threw him on the bed, Michel had his answer.

  He thought suddenly of the statues of bare-breasted women that were part of the hotel’s façade. They were only a few stories below them now, those statues, their arms spread like wings. For the first time inside this grand hotel, Michel felt as if he were literally supported by those bare-breasted stone women and their brazen and sensual courage.

  * * *

  It was not the first time he had walked home with the sunrise, smelling of another’s skin. But it was the first time he had done so with a heart this heavy.

  So he wasn’t surprised it took him so long to notice the footfalls behind him.

  It was their speed that finally drew his attention.

  By the time he looked up, the woman was walking directly beside him. She looked neither drunken nor disheveled. A jeweled clip held her golden hair in a precise bun atop her head, but her corset seemed loose beneath her blouse; her gored skirt made it appear as if she was ready to spend the morning dipping in and out of shops. But the shops wouldn’t be open for hours. Indeed, only the faintest blush of dawn kissed the harbor’s waters.

  There was something off about her shoes. They were hard, durable, designed for something other than a leisurely stroll.

  “I trust you had a pleasant evening with the Earl of Rutherford.” She had a perfect British accent. It was the night for them, apparently.

  “And who are you, mademoiselle?” he asked.

  “Someone who notices things as well as you do, Michel Malveaux.”

  On another night, he would have sought to charm her, to seduce her. To channel her curiosity into a sensual experience she would then wish to keep secret. This would in turn keep anything she might have witnessed between him and the earl a secret as well. This was how secrets worked. But his departure from Elliott’s room had left him shaken and raw. To say nothing of the fact that he was utterly exhausted by the man’s insatiable desires.

  “If you will excuse me, it is quite late, and I have no desire to discuss my evening at this time.”

  In an instant, she had seized one of his wrists. Her grip was powerful, astonishingly so. And the eyes he suddenly found himself staring into were as blue as the Earl of Rutherford’s.

  “Whether or not it’s early or late is a matter of some debate, wouldn’t you say?” she asked. “And depends largely on how one has spent the hours preceding this one.”

  It was not the first time he had been threatened. Customers had pulled knives on him, menaced him with empty liquor bottles. But always he had managed to find a way to charm them. This woman, on the other hand, possessed a focus and a malice that was neither drunken nor desperate nor lecherous. And so Michel saw only one choice: to lie.

  “Regardless of the hour, my evening was my own. I do not know who this Earl of Rutherford is and I wish you to release my hand at once.”

  She did nothing of the kind. “And yet, when I first said his name, you expressed no confusion. You only asked me what mine was.”

  “And you have still not told me. Please let me go.”

  He yanked his wrist free from her grip. She released it with a smile and a pronounced withdrawal of her own hand. Both gestures suggested she could have easily maintained her grip no matter how much he struggled.

  “I am merely passing through,” she answered, and he saw it was no answer at all. “But you are local, and you have a reputation to protect.” She practically sneered when she said the word reputation.

  “There is a code here, mademoiselle, but apparently you are unaware of it.”

  “Is there, now?”

  “Yes. Those who are passing through have no power to besmirch the reputations of those who remain. That simply isn’t how it works in Monte Carlo.”

  It was utter nonsense, this claim. A shrill complaint from a wealthy visitor to one of the hotels could get him banned for life. The prince himself might escort him to the border should his behavior in any manner threaten the flow of tourists to this little paradise by the sea. But the woman before him seemed impressed by his confidence, if nothing else. Perhaps a bit of the earl’s fearlessness had rubbed off on him.

  “Get some rest, Michel,” the woman said. “I’m sure we shall meet again.”

  “I hope so. Perhaps under more pleasant circumstances, which might allow the two of us to see each other in a different light.”

  He lifted her hand and gave it a gentle kiss.

  He should have tried this ploy sooner. Now it was probably too late for seduction. Now he had earned her ire, whoever she was. Whatever her motives.

  She smiled, nodded, and then retreated with footsteps as swift as the ones that had brought her to him.

  Where had she come from? The hotel? One of the boats in the harbor? And what had she been after? Information about the Earl of Rutherford or information about him?

  Should he send word to Elliott that a strange woman had seen them together, had suspected something?

  This last thought tormented him by the time he reached his tiny apartment.

  Sending word to Elliott, making any attempt to communicate with him again, would be to break a confidence he maintained with all his clients, for there was only one way to do it, and that was through the front desk of the hotel.

  Had the woman been an angry wife of some previous client?

  Could she be Elliott’s wife?

  They were insane, these thoughts. They set upon him like a flock of seagulls and he the only man for miles with bread in his hand.

  It has nothing to do with the Earl of Rutherford, he finally told himself, and these words, along with the ones that followed, became a mantra that ushered in sleep. The Earl of Rutherford is fearless. The Earl of Rutherford does not have a care in the world and never will.

  He woke only a few hours later, feeling mildly rested but still unbearably anxious.

  Before he could think twice on the matter, he phoned the front desk at the Hotel de Paris and asked to be put through to Elliott’s room. When they told him the man had checked out hours before, Michel felt both piercing longing and a terrible relief.

  He was grateful Ellio
tt had departed so soon after they’d said goodbye, for that meant he probably had been spared a run-in with the strange night-wandering madwoman with the powerful grip.

  He would miss Elliott terribly.

  He would hope secretly for his return.

  He would cherish every memory he could of their time together, would use those moments to satisfy himself. Too dangerous to write them down and risk discovery, but oh, how he wanted to. His memory would have to do.

  But as he ended his call with the hotel, he figured that would be the end of the whole brief affair.

  Three days later there was a knock on the door to his apartment. He was almost dressed for the evening, almost ready to strike out for the casino in search of clients new and old. He was still fastening one of his cuff links when he opened the door and saw an envelope resting on the front step.

  His cuff link forgotten, he tore open the envelope, removed a sheet of paper featuring a hand-drawn map of the harbor. An arrow pointed to a single boat slip.

  Attached to this piece of paper with a tiny pin was the diamond-encrusted emerald ring he’d shipped to his mother weeks before.

  8

  He raced out of his apartment in trousers, dress shirt, and bow tie. To the tourists he passed along the way, he must have looked like a waiter terribly late for his shift.

  But he didn’t care what anyone thought. His only thoughts were of his mother. His poor, frail mother, only a day’s travel away by train. His mother who had cherished the ring he now held in his pocket so much she’d worn it whenever someone had come to visit.

  Someone had taken this ring from her.

  Or they had brought her here to Monte Carlo with it.

  Both possibilities terrified him.

  Night had fallen by the time he reached the harbor. The boat slip in question was filled by a vessel almost as grand as the royal yacht of Monaco itself. It looked like a miniature ocean liner with its own lone smokestack and a long white hull lined with portholes.

  The woman with the powerful grip was waiting for him on the deck. She had traded her morning dress for a dark and frilly tea gown. And this terrified him for some reason, that she would consider the terrible gift that had been left on his front step to be an occasion worthy of fancy dress. Now he saw the reason for her hard-soled shoes, and an explanation for why she had seemed to appear out of the harbor itself.

  This boat, it was her home.

  “Where is she?” Michel cried before he could stop himself.

  “Calm yourself and you may come aboard,” the woman said. Maddening, her superiority. He would have snapped her neck and thrown her into the ocean if he could. “We don’t want to alarm her any further.”

  So she was here. This woman had somehow managed to bring his mother here. As a captive, surely, which meant she wasn’t working alone.

  The woman extended her hand.

  She wasn’t simply offering to help him on board. She was reminding him of the strength she’d shown him when they’d first met. Of course, he had no choice but to accept the offer of help, even though the touch of her skin sickened him.

  Inside, the yacht was decorated as elegantly as the rooms at the Hotel de Paris. Brass fittings, sparse antiques, and pastel upholsteries, all of it bolted down in ways visible and invisible to keep it from being tossed about at sea.

  Behind the wheelhouse, a long central cabin led to a more sunken room, behind which Michel saw a narrow passage leading to private cabins along a short hallway lined in dark hardwood.

  In the center of this sunken room a woman of exactly his mother’s size was bound to a chair. There was a sack over her head. She was flanked by two well-dressed men. One of the men was enormous. And while his long red beard was trimmed and fairly under control, it still gave him the appearance of a great Viking stuffed into what the British called evening dress. The other man looked positively spry by comparison. But they both regarded Michel with the same flat stare as the woman who’d brought him to this place.

  Ghastly that they wore tuxedos and bow ties while executing a kidnapping. Ghastly and terrifying, for it suggested they were capable of committing such crimes without so much as snagging a seam.

  “Good evening, Monsieur Malveaux,” the smaller of the two men said.

  “Let me see her.” It felt as if someone had said these words through him.

  The man removed the sack.

  They had gagged his mother with a great loop of fabric tied around her head. Her gaunt and deeply lined face bore the fatigued expression she wore whenever she’d been exhausted by a crying fit. But when she saw him, her eyes widened and she made a desperate sound against the gag. In response, the giant man rested one massive paw gently atop her head. He stroked her hair. Did he have his female companion’s strength?

  Michel rushed to her, fell to his knees before her. They allowed him this display. And this terrified him further. They seemed so unafraid of anything he might do.

  He placed his hands over hers. She cocked her head to one side, trying to convey some message through her eyes alone. He muttered apologies and assurances, even though he didn’t know what events had brought them to this terrible juncture.

  “Now,” the woman finally said, “do you find yourself somewhat more inclined to discuss the evening you shared with the Earl of Rutherford?”

  “Yes.” Michel shot to his feet. The woman stood right next to him now. When he turned in her direction, their noses almost touched. “Everything. I will tell you everything if you promise to let her go. Keep me here for whatever purpose you intend for as long as you like, but, please, let her go!”

  “Excellent,” the smaller man answered. “Let us hear your account, then.”

  Insane, the casual tone of this man’s voice, as if they had brought Michel here only to give them tips on the best dining establishments in Monte Carlo.

  “My mother need not hear this. She knows nothing of this man.”

  “Or your life here, I take it,” the woman said.

  The smaller man said to his compatriot, “Take her in the back. Get her some water. If our new friend proves forthcoming, get her some food. I imagine she’s quite hungry after our trip.”

  The giant picked up the chair holding Michel’s mother in both arms. He leisurely carried her and it down the hallway and into one of the private cabins.

  How could he have made this request? Once his mother passed out of sight, fresh panic seized him. How could he have sent her away like that?

  These people, they manipulated so much in him. His love, his shame, his need for secrecy. Who were these wretched monsters?

  His mother was just a short distance away, but under present circumstances, it felt like miles of mountainous terrain. And so in a breathless rush, he told the story of his night with the Earl of Rutherford.

  Never before had he discussed his life, his profession, in so much unguarded detail. But no judgments radiated from these people, just a cold calculation disguised as attentiveness.

  Whoever they were, his sexual secrets did not seem to concern them. The details of the Earl of Rutherford, however: those held these monstrous people in thrall. And when he repeated the strange words Elliott had shared with him about life and death and kings, the man and woman before him both took a step forward, wide-eyed fascination in their expressions.

  All thanks to a king. They made him repeat this phrase several times.

  And, oh, how it pained him to include the details of the letter written by Elliott’s son. The betrothal party at their estate in Yorkshire. The names Julie Stratford and Reginald Ramsey. But he was also a son, and his mother, his poor, sweet mother’s life hung in the balance.

  “Say this name again,” the woman interrupted him.

  “Which one?”

  “Ramsey, you say? A Mr. Reginald Ramsey?”

  Michel nodded fiercely, and for the first time, the man and woman who held him captive looked away from him and stared piercingly at each other.

  “All tha
nks to a king,” the woman whispered.

  * * *

  His mother’s legs gave out by the time they reached the hill that led to his apartment.

  Michel was still stunned they had been freed so quickly. Impossible not to keep looking over his shoulder as he and his mother had hurried from the harbor.

  When they’d first left the boat, he’d pleaded with his mother to contain herself and stay quiet. The worst thing they could do now was to alert others as to what those terrible people had done.

  But she’d been desperate to rush into the whole terrifying tale, to tell him how they’d simply entered her tiny house and taken her as if she weighed nothing, was nothing. Mattered for nothing. Soon after he’d convinced her to stay silent, exhaustion overtook her.

  Now he was forced to carry her up the hill in both arms, like a groom hoisting his bride over the threshold.

  She was delirious by the time he got her inside his apartment. But she managed to say dazed things about what a beautiful apartment it was, even though it was no more than a single room. About how proud she was of him. How very, very proud. How she had always been so proud. And he could sense that she knew the story he’d had to tell her captors was one of which he thought she would be ashamed, and she was now trying to rid him of his fear and guilt, and this brought tears to his eyes.

  He set her down on his bed, filled a glass with water, and encouraged her to drink. As she did so, he felt the hard lump of the emerald ring in his pants pocket. He withdrew it and gently took her right hand in his. At first she seemed confused by this, then she saw him sliding the ring onto her finger, and a smile broke across her face and tears filled her eyes.

  “My boy,” she whispered. “My darling boy, you have saved me. You saved me again as you always do.”

  He embraced her quickly so that she would not see his tears, so that she would think him as strong as she needed for him to be, now and always.

  After a while, drowsiness overtook her, and by the time he settled her on the bed, she was breathing deeply and evenly.

  He felt suddenly alone, and once more afraid. He was sure this terrible affair was not over. That soon there would be another knock on the door and another awful gift. But when he got to his feet, he saw his partial view of the harbor across the tumble of neighboring rooftops.