Ramses the Damned Page 13

  “How’s that?”

  “Fear of stirring some of my old romantic feelings for you, perhaps.”

  “I’m not quite that vain, I hope.”

  “No. You are not vain at all. I only wish to assure you that I have released all old expectations, as it were. There was a time, before our trip, when I was content to wait forever. I was confident that one day you would come to see my feelings for you as something other than a burden.”

  “I never saw them as a burden, Alex.”

  “You did. And it’s perfectly understandable. It was my father who wanted us to marry. My father and your uncle. And so what defense did I have against any man who truly captured your heart? As soon as Mr. Ramsey entered your life, it was clear I’d lost the game. I’m resigned to it now. My only regret is that I didn’t lose with a bit more grace early on.”

  He was speaking of that ugly evening on the ship bound for Egypt when Alex had quoted all sorts of judgment-laced half-truths about Egyptian history in a manner surely designed to taunt his new rival for Julie’s affection. Worse, he’d refused to retreat from any of them once it was clear how much he’d upset their Egyptian traveling companion.

  Still, he was, as had become his habit, being mercifully unfair to himself. Spurned suitors throughout history had done far worse than start a small quarrel at a dinner table.

  “You are a perfect gentleman, Alex Savarell, and you always will be.”

  “You are being kind.”

  “Because you have earned nothing from me but kindness.”

  “I simply mean to say you should not hesitate to show me anything which makes you even finer of feature. You are free now, Julie. Free of any old feelings of mine which were unreturned, however politely. Freed by my obsession with a madwoman, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, Alex. I’m not sure that’s an acceptable price.”

  “Well, fortunately, I’m the only one who’ll have to pay it.”

  “Only so as long as you insist on taking responsibility for someone else’s lunacy and delusions,” Julie said.

  “Then there isn’t some great weakness in me?” he asked. “Something that repelled you? Something that repelled her as well, that caused her to drive off so recklessly even as I begged her not to?”

  “Of course not!”

  “So I’m without flaw? That’s good to know.”

  “You have the same weaknesses as so many men of high breeding.”

  “And those are?” he asked with a cocked eyebrow.

  “A bit of stubbornness, and a tendency to dismiss strong feeling.”

  “Ramsey has certainly encouraged you to be more free with your opinions. I’ll say that much. And so you don’t agree with my father?”

  “With regards to what?” she asked, straightening. She was hoping for more information on Elliott aside from the gossip that he’d been spotted in various casinos throughout Europe, and the few mentions Alex had made of the substantial sums he’d sent home. She missed Elliott.

  “It’s something he said a while ago,” Alex answered. “I overheard him say it, actually. He told a friend that my salvation was that I felt nothing too deeply. What would he think of me now, undone by a tumble with a seductive delusional hysteric?”

  “It was unfair of Elliott to say such a thing,” she answered. She meant it. There was something so undeniably good in Alex, so undeniably innocent.

  “Was it?” Alex asked. “Perhaps not. Not when he was convinced the person about whom he was saying it had no real feelings.”

  “But you are a man of deep feelings, Alex. That much is very clear. And if anything, this painful experience you had in Cairo, it’s left you with a new sensitivity that you should embrace. I dare say, many women might find it very attractive.” Alex smiled and averted his eyes like a young boy. “You see, sometimes, Alex, we have to lose things to learn compassion. And sometimes we are overcome by change that arrives with some measure of violence, but leaves us transformed for the better.”

  “Like your new eyes, for instance,” he said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Do you remember what you said to me on the ship that night? When I made such a fool of myself quarreling with Ramsey over Egyptian history?”

  “I’m afraid I only remember the quarrel.”

  “What is your passion?” he said, quoting her. “That’s what you said to me. You asked me what my joy was. My passion. And in the moment, I couldn’t answer. You don’t remember?”

  “I do now. Yes.”

  “It’s to be loved, Julie. It’s to be loved as that woman loved me. Or seemed to love me. I’d never known that kind of passion, that kind of devotion, before. In some sense, it’s why I was able to set you free so easily upon our return. Because it was clear you’d never felt for me the way that woman did, and after she died, all I wanted was to be loved that way again. And every time I hear you or Ramsey say that her love was born of madness, my heart breaks again.”

  Better to believe she was mad, Julie thought, than to know you were her pawn.

  But was she? What did Julie truly know of Cleopatra’s murderous clone? What did she know aside from that awful moment of believing her life would end at the woman’s hands? Had the creature in question felt genuine desire for Alex? Had she felt a love for him that was as frenzied and irrational yet genuine as her desire to exact revenge on Ramses?

  She didn’t know the answers to any of the questions, and she doubted she would ever learn them. Better yet, she hoped she would never learn them. To do so would mean encountering that awful creature again.

  For now, she had no choice but to let Alex believe the flames had claimed her.

  To let him believe that someday he would rekindle just as ferocious a passion but with a woman of pure heart.

  * * *

  Alex seemed in better spirits when they emerged from the hotel onto the crowded sidewalk. He pulled his silver pocket watch from his jacket and checked the time.

  “No word yet on whether my father will return for our party,” Alex said. There was warmth in the way he said the words. Our party. And so he wasn’t hosting the event out of some grim sense of obligation, a desire to save face. This cheered her. “I think my father misses your father terribly and wants some time alone.”

  “Of course,” said Julie. “But I hope Elliott will return. At least, I hope he’ll consider it, and I hope you’re urging him to in your letters.”

  “Indeed, I will. It took some work finding him. He’s always on the move, it seems. He didn’t linger very long in Cairo after we all left. I’m afraid the cable I sent him just sat there. I finally caught up with him at one of his favorite hotels in Rome. He cabled back to say he’d be in Monte Carlo within the week. I sent him a rather long letter there. No response yet. Here’s hoping it reached him. It makes me rather nervous, I must admit. To have him abroad with all this talk of war.

  “Mother, on the other hand, is beside herself with excitement. She’s back from Paris. I don’t believe she’s spent this much time at our country estate in years. By the time she’s finished her preparations, all of Yorkshire will be excited to celebrate you and Mr. Reginald Ramsey as a happily engaged couple.”

  “It’s so very dear of you both to do this,” Julie said. “Truly, Alex.”

  “Consider it an outgrowth of my new sensitivity.”

  He graced her with a polite peck on the cheek.

  “Where’s the Rolls?” he asked. “Didn’t Edward drive you?”

  “Oh, I decided to walk.”

  “My. That’s a great distance. You don’t want me to see you home?”

  “I quite enjoy the walk, actually.”

  Because I can walk and walk now without fear of ever tiring. Much as your father is probably walking now, clear across Europe.

  “Very well, then,” he said.

  But all she said was “It was a pleasure to see you, Alex. And I mean no offense when I say it is also a pleasure to see you somewhat changed.”

  He
reached up and slid the glasses off the bridge of her nose, exposing her blue eyes to passersby. Then he folded them and placed them gently in her hand.

  “The feeling is mutual, Julie.”

  And then she was gone, and after a few minutes, she decided to keep the glasses exactly where Alex had placed them.

  14

  “Alex must leave London at once!” Julie cried.

  She burst into the drawing room without regard for who might be in it. But she could sense Ramses very nearby.

  The doors to the adjacent library opened, and he emerged, alarmed by her cry.

  The conservatory beyond was a riot of blossoms he’d planted before they’d left for Egypt. Blossoms which had exploded to fullness in a matter of minutes after Ramses had sprinkled them with only a few drops of the elixir. They would never die, these flowers, and soon the maid, Rita, would grow suspicious of their vitality and life, and Julie would have no choice but to drop them into the Thames and hope they floated away forever. And it was through the conservatory’s stained-glass windows that the sun’s rays had awakened Ramses months before.

  But now all of this seemed menacing, somehow, even the low, insistent gurgle of the conservatory’s fountain. Overwhelming, laced with darkness. She’d known a return to London might be less than blissful. But it was grief for her father she had feared once she was surrounded by his belongings again; not this overwhelming concern for someone who still lived. Perhaps her immortality gave as much strength to her emotions, be they joyous or grim, as it did to her grip.

  Even after Ramses curved an arm around her, she still felt if she were standing on the deck of a keeling ship.

  “He is obsessed, Ramses. He is utterly obsessed. I never could have predicted it.”

  “With you?”

  “No. With Cleopatra.” A wolf’s growl, the way she said the woman’s name. The queen’s name. The demon’s name.

  Quickly, Ramses guided her into her father’s old library off the drawing room, the one they called the Egyptian Room. The handsome bookcases had heavy glass doors to protect the precious volumes within from dust, and small statues and relics lined the top of each. Ramses closed off the drawing room, a sure sign that Rita was still about, preparing platters of food, no doubt.

  They were alone now with her father’s old journals and books with his notes scrawled in the margins. None of these things was a comfort. Not in this moment.

  “We will tell him to cancel the party,” Julie said, her words coming out of her in a rush. “We’ll say you’re being called to meet with contacts in India. Then we’ll arrange for Alex to take a trip around the world. I can fund it, of course. Perhaps he can go to Paris with his mother. And Elliott’s sending home all sorts of money. From every casino in Europe, it sounds like. So it should be a—”

  “But why, Julie? Why now?”

  “You want to see India, don’t you? You’ve said so many times.”

  “I want to see the world and I want to see it with you. But to cancel the party? To send Alex away this abruptly? I don’t understand what drives this.”

  “Don’t you see? He’s been shaken to his core by what’s happened. And if we aren’t to tell him the truth about it, he’s just going to pine away for that awful, hideous creature.”

  “You didn’t speak of her with this anger when we learned she was still alive. What has changed?”

  “I didn’t think we had anything to fear from her.”

  “And now we do?”

  “Yes. Don’t you see? Alex…He hasn’t done what he vowed to do. He hasn’t returned to the business of living, or some tepid definition of it. He’s unrecognizable, Ramses. He’s a new man, but he’s a new man who pines only for her.”

  “And you feel jealousy?”

  “No! It’s fear, Ramses. I fear for him. For if she has his heart, imagine the damage she can do to the rest of him.”

  “And that’s why you wish to send him away? To protect him from Cleopatra?”

  “In part. In part, yes. But I also wish for him to have some adventure, some new experience. Something that will fill the need he feels for her. It’s as if he’s discovered new truths about himself. And if he simply crawls back into the cave of his life and licks his gentlemanly wounds, his obsession with her will grow. And then he might try to look for her. Think of what a disaster that could be, Ramses. What an absolute disaster!”

  “But you cannot send him around the world forever, Julie.”

  “I cannot. But I can hope that if he strikes out with this new sense of himself, this new desire to be loved, as he puts it, it will guide him to something else entirely new. Some new passion. Some new woman. Something that will make his thoughts of Cleopatra a distant memory.”

  “But Alex Savarell has no passions. This is what makes him Alex Savarell.”

  “The old version of him, yes. But you didn’t see the man I saw today, Ramses. He’s as changed as we are, only he hasn’t consumed the elixir.”

  “So you wish to send him off in search of a new lover?”

  “Or maybe not. Perhaps many lovers! Let him lose himself entirely in the realm of the senses. Let him move to a tropical isle and read nothing but this D. H. Lawrence fellow. It doesn’t matter, Ramses. What matters is that he satisfy this hunger he now feels in some way that doesn’t involve that creature. If he needs a harem to do it, I shall fund every last courtesan.”

  “Your twentieth century, it has foolish ideas when it comes to harems. Their members were not dolls or statues. They had feelings, requests, demands. The management of a harem was not quite the escape a London aristocrat would like to believe.”

  “Ramses. Be serious.”

  “I am, Julie,” he said, stroking her hair from her face. “I see that in this moment you are very serious, and very much afraid.”

  “But you do not share my feelings.”

  “If Cleopatra truly wishes to do Alex harm, why did she linger in Alexandria with her handsome new companion? You asked this yourself.”

  “And you have said she is unknowable. It’s possible she is not truly Cleopatra at all, but some vicious clone. How else to explain her callous disregard for life?”

  “In her family, success was measured in how quickly one killed one’s siblings and ascended to the throne. That is one possible explanation for what you now call disregard.”

  “I don’t speak of her actions in Alexandria. I speak of Cairo only months ago. She murdered at random, Ramses. Men she seduced in alleyways. We have the clippings. We know it was her. Why are you defending her?”

  “I don’t defend her,” he said quietly. “And I don’t defend my actions in the Cairo Museum. Perspective, Julie. That is what I seek to offer you in this moment.”

  “Perspective,” Julie whispered, as if she had forgotten the meaning of the word.

  “I say this. If she has the callous disregard for life you claim and she wished to do Alex harm, he would be dead already.”

  “But don’t you see? That’s not the type of harm I fear.”

  “What is it, darling? What is it that you fear?”

  “I fear that she will turn him into a kind of companion. That he will give himself over to her too fully and become a companion in her darkness.”

  “And you fear this because his feelings for her have made him unrecognizable?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. Ramses. Exactly.”

  “I see.”

  But he seemed to have no response to this, and the silence that followed allowed the extremity of her thoughts to hang heavily upon her.

  “Oh, I know it’s absurd. Sending him on a trip around the world. He would never agree to it. But if there was anything I could do to make him impervious to her charms should she enter his life again, I would do it. I would do it right this instant.”

  “This is your guilt, Julie. You believe your lack of love for Alex made him vulnerable to her.”

  “You’re right. I know that you’re right. But to see him so changed, Ra
mses. On the one hand it was exhilarating, but to know that she was the source of it.”

  “And to know she cannot be stopped.”

  “That’s precisely it, Ramses. That’s precisely it.”

  “So I offer you this, and I hope it comforts you. She has made no effort to see him. She has walked this earth for months now. During that time, she has allowed him to pine for her, to grieve for her. Take comfort in this, Julie. She may have the power to seduce him. But she has shown no desire to use it.”

  “I hope you’re right, Ramses. I pray that you are right, even though I am no longer sure to whom I pray.”

  He took her in his arms and kissed her forehead. “If I’m wrong, I shall do everything in my power to correct it. I promise you this.”

  “What else can be done?” Julie whispered.

  Samir’s men continued to watch each ship that arrived from Port Said. They’d also learned the possible identity of the man she traveled with, a doctor by the name of Theodore Dreycliff. His family had left London some time ago.

  “Julie?”

  “Yes, Ramses,” she whispered into his chest.

  “Cleopatra. You called her the clone. You insist she can’t have Cleopatra’s soul. And I try to understand you, but I don’t really understand you. Help me grasp this, Julie.”

  “I’ve tried to explain before,” she answered. “I often reflect upon it when the hour is late. My father, he was more obsessed with reincarnation than I realized. I learned this from reading his notes in the margins of the books he loved. When he began to study Egypt, he thought Egyptians believed in the transmigration of souls. Of course, he soon realized this was a misunderstanding. And he studied it extensively, this misunderstanding. How the Greeks misinterpreted whole sections of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.”

  “Yes. Once again, Herodotus is to blame, I fear. During my reign, the high priests taught that the soul went through a succession of journeys. It grew and evolved during these journeys. But they did not take place in the physical realm. They took place in the afterlife.”

  “Indeed. But still, this idea that we come back again and again to this plane. It captivated him more than I knew. More than he ever let me know. What do you believe, Ramses?”