The Passion of Cleopatra (Ramses the Damned 2)

Was it anger or guilt or heartbreak she felt when she remembered this man, this viscount from London? There was something there, for sure. Something between her and this Alex that was enough to distract her even now.

And there were other gaps in the story, other moments when her pauses became long silences that suggested either a failure of memory or riots of emotion to which she refused to surrender. And Teddy could sense from these silences that in those first days of madness, of not knowing what she truly was, she had taken life.

&n

bsp; And so be it.

She was not a creature governed by natural laws. How dare he impose upon her the laws of man?

"And the accident?" he asked finally. "The one in which you were so terribly burned?"

It was the first thing he'd said in an hour. The winds had finally died down, and the excited chatter of the men nearby was no longer being blown away from their tent. Of course they were excited. She had promised to give them a percentage of the treasures to which she had led them all that day.

"An accident, yes," she said. "It was a terrible accident."

And she would not say more.

And so it had ended badly. Terribly, perhaps. Two tragic ends with this immortal Ramses, and she did not want to speak of either one. But in those first few hours after her miraculous healing, she had alluded to revenge. And now, he realized that whatever she asked of him, he would give himself over to it.

"You wish to see these people again?" he asked, knowing as he spoke that there was a very real possibility she wished to do these people harm.

For a while, she gazed at him. He wanted to believe she was assessing him, judging whether or not he was a worthy companion now that she had revealed her truth. But he knew that was unlikely, and it pained him. It pained him to believe she was gazing through him and into her own history.

"In time," she whispered. "In time."

"And so what do you wish to do now?"

"I wish to be alive, Teddy." Her smile gave him as much pleasure as the feel of her fingernails along his spine. "I wish to be alive with you."

No other words had ever brought him such joy.

2

Venice

Ramses felt he was living in a dream. Never had he beheld a city more magnificent. He gazed out the window now, across the Grand Canal at the endless row of palaces facing him, and looked to the brilliant afternoon blue sky above, and then down once more at the dark green water. Sleek black gondolas streaked past, crowded with brightly costumed Europeans or Americans gazing with awe and enthusiasm on the same wonders that held him captive and silent. So many luxuriant hats, laden with plumes and flowers. And on the banks the flower markets with their radiant blooms. Ah, Italy. Ah, paradise. He smiled, marveling that he could not learn modern languages fast enough to unpack their treasure load of words to describe this loveliness. There were dazzling names for the faded red and dark green of these old buildings, for their decorative arches and balconies, names for the periods of history and the styles which had given birth to them.

Ah, this great earth, this splendid earth, and this time of all times that it could nurture such dense metropolises where commoner and noble alike could enjoy such beauty so effortlessly. He wanted to see more, he wanted to see the whole world, and yet never to leave here.

The afternoon heat was being swept away by the breeze off the Adriatic. The city had risen from its siesta. Time for him to go out as well.

He closed the green shutters and moved back into the splendid bedroom, which was in itself magical to him, a treasure. Kings and queens had lodged in this gaily painted chamber, or so he had been told.

"Appropriate for you, my darling," Julie had said to him. "And the cost means nothing." His Julie gave him her all with perfect trust.

Stratford Shipping, the great corporation she'd inherited from her father, was back on track under the watchful eye of her remorseful uncle, and gold, she assured Ramses, would always be plentiful. But no amount of gold in Ramses' time could have purchased this level of luxury.

Floors of patterned wood as hard and lustrous as stone, inlaid bed and dressing tables trimmed in shining brass, and mirrors, ah, the enormous mirrors. Everywhere he looked he saw himself smiling faintly in these vast dark mirrors as if his duplicate lived and breathed on the other side of the glass.

This was a glorious age, no doubt of it, and the culmination of many glorious ages during which he'd slept in his tomb in Egypt, lost to time, lost to consciousness, and not even dreaming that such wonders might await him.

Ramses the Damned, who had closed his eyes rather than witness the utter fall of Egypt. Ramses the Damned, who had known that once he was buried away from the sun, he would grow powerless, and then slumber, slumber unendingly--until brought into the sunlight by unwary mortals of a future age.

He might have pondered all this in quiet here forever, what he had missed, and what enchanted him now everywhere that he turned.

But Elliott Savarell--the Earl of Rutherford--and his beloved Julie were waiting for him, and this city waited for him, waited for him again to travel its lovely watery alleyways to the Piazza San Marco, where he must again enter the church that had almost brought him to his knees when he'd first seen it. All over this land, he'd seen churches filled with statues and paintings of unimaginable perfection, but no hallowed sanctuary had subdued him as had San Marco.

Quickly, he finished his toilet, adjusting the black tie at his neck, and putting on the gold cuff links that Julie had given him. He ran the pearl-handled brush through his thick brown hair. And applied the smallest amount of cologne to his smooth-shaven face. In the mirror he saw a modern man, a European man of dark tan skin and radiant blue eyes, and nothing of the ruler he had been to thousands in a time that could not have imagined this one.