The Passion of Cleopatra Page 10

  "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 Elliott 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 s
aid, "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 thanks 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.

  He saw the ship on which his mother had been held captive sailing out onto the vast, dark sea.

  Elliott, dearest Earl of Rutherford. May you be a mystery strong enough to hold back the dark force I had no choice but to unleash upon you.

  9

  The Mediterranean Sea

  They sailed through the night.

  Their destination was a craggy pile of rocks, several hours from the coast of Greece.

  Few would dare call it an island. Fewer still even knew of its existence.

  But deep inside its central cavern, their maker slept, walled off from the sun.

  Throughout their journey, they argued over the implications of what they had been told.

  When their brothers and sisters in London had cabled them weeks before about a mysterious Egyptologist in London--a man who had appeared out of nowhere, it seemed, only to suddenly stand at the center of a great scandal surrounding a recently unearthed sarcophagus from Egypt--they had accused their dear siblings of nurturing desperate, childish fantasies.

  A particular shade of blue eyes and an uncertain past were not enough to brand someone an immortal. The pure elixir could not be found in time. Inventing phantom immortals who might possibly lead them to it, this would be an intolerable way to spend their final days, they'd insisted.

  Undeterred, their siblings had sent news clippings to their next port of call, clippings they had now spread across the dining table in the yacht's central cabin. MUMMY'S CURSE KILLS STRATFORD SHIPPING MAGNATE, "RAMSES THE DAMNED" STRIKES DOWN THOSE WHO DISTURB HIS REST, and then HEIRESS DEFIES MUMMY'S CURSE, "RAMSES THE DAMNED" TO VISIT LONDON.

  But when they had first read these articles, they had remained unconvinced.

  Their master had granted them two centuries of life. No more. And he had never hidden this fact from them. He had even nicknamed them accordingly, his fracti, the final fracti. For when they perished, there would be no one left who knew of his island tomb. No one left to expose his withered form to the sun. And so their death would ensure a kind of death for him.

  This had been the plan for two centuries. And they should continue to honor the pact they had all made; they should resign themselves to their fate. Within months, their bodies would begin to crumble and disintegrate, a process that would take only a few days. If only their brothers and sisters hadn't remained in London, if only they had also taken to the seas to enjoy as much of the world as they could before they decayed, they would not have fallen prey to such hopeful fantasies.

  With such assurance they had said these things, by letter, by cable, and even by telephone, when the cables about this Reginald Ramsey and his strange connection to Ramses the Damned did not stop.

  And of course, they had balked, their brothers and sisters, insisted that they were going to place the house in Mayfair where this Egyptian allegedly resided under constant surveillance. So be it, they had said to them.

  Spend your final days in vain hope if you wish.

>   And then, they too had spotted a man they believed to be an immortal, an immortal they didn't recognize. An aristocrat, a skilled gambler. The Earl of Rutherford. So skilled, he seemed to possess senses heightened by the elixir. The purest version of it, or the corrupted form that had granted them two centuries of additional life? This they did not know, and now, in the wake of the young prostitute's account, they were desperate to find out.

  But had they too now fallen prey to the same trap? They spent the hours at sea debating this and had come no closer to an answer by the time they reached their destination.

  As they approached the island where their maker slept, they moved out onto the deck so they could watch the pile of rocks appear out of the dawn.

  A special bond knitted them together, and always had. They had often lived separately from the other fracti. They were not surprised when their siblings declined to join them on their journey around the world by sea. The three of them, Jeneva, Callum, and the giant Matthias, had all been made on the same night over two hundred years before, plucked from their deathbeds in the same London slum. Provided with wealth and a new life by their maker.

  And so if he was to be awakened, it should be the three of them to do it. And yet...

  "His command was clear," Jeneva said. "We were to wake him only if the pure elixir was found. Not for the mere hope of it."

  "Perhaps after two centuries of sleep, he will thirst for life," Callum offered.

  "You believe he wishes to be awakened just in time to watch us perish?" Matthias said. Even when quiet, his voice seemed like a rumble from the depths of his giant body. But he did not speak of his eventual death as a mortal would, for he had lived two centuries and more.

  "We wake him because there is a chance we will not," Callum said. "Not now, not ever."

  "A slim chance," Jeneva said. "A ghost of a chance, really."

  "Nevertheless," Callum said, "it is enough."

  Matthias was apparently convinced as well. He went to help as their skiff was lowered into the water.

  The island had no beaches and nothing resembling a dock, so they would be forced to row to its rock-strewn coast.

  They maintained the smallest crew they could, a captain and a single deckhand, both paid small fortunes to turn a blind eye to all of their peculiarities. These men had assisted with the kidnapping of Michel Malveaux's mother as if it were one of the transfers aboard of prepared foods they made in every port.