on, you know. STRATFORD HEIRESS SUFFERS FEVER IN ALEXANDRIA, CHANGING THE COLOR OF HER EYES TO BLUE. Something like that. Alex sent me the clipping."
"What is it, Ramses?" asked Julie.
He realized he'd fallen to staring at her. He didn't reply at first. He looked at Elliott.
In the dim light of the candles, they looked impossibly beautiful to him, his immortal companions.
"You are gods to me," he whispered. He picked up the wine, and drank it slowly in one draught, and didn't wait for the waiter to refill his glass. He savored the rich taste of the Chianti, and then he smiled. "You can't imagine what it is like," he said. "After all those centuries alone, alone with this power, alone on this journey, and now you are with me, both of you. And I've asked myself why, why was it so easy for me to give you the elixir when for centuries I'd suffered this loneliness, this isolation. It's because you are like gods to me, you two, you paragons of this time."
"You are the god to us," said Elliott, "and I think you know it."
Ramses nodded. "But you can never know how you seem--how learned, independent, strong."
"I think I understand," said Elliott.
"And you can never know what it means to me to have you as companions." Ramses fell silent. He drank the second glass of wine and sat back approving as the waiter set down the first course of the meal, a pungent soup of seafood and vegetables simmering in a red broth. Food, how he hungered for it, always, and how they hungered for it now, too, both of them, but they were too young yet in the elixir to be weary of the hunger.
Julie clasped her hands and bowed her head. She murmured a silent prayer to gods Ramses didn't know.
"And to whom are you praying, my dear?" asked Elliott. He was drinking the soup with ungentlemanly haste. "Do tell me."
"Does it matter, Elliott?" Julie asked. "I pray to the god who listens, the god who knows, the god who may want a prayer from me. Perhaps the god who created the elixir. I don't know. Don't you ever pray anymore, Elliott?"
Elliott glanced at Ramses. Then back at Julie. He had already finished the soup, and Ramses was just beginning. A shadow of sadness passed over Elliott.
"I don't think I do, my dear," said Elliott. "When I drank the elixir I didn't think of God. If I had, perhaps I wouldn't have drunk it."
"Why?" asked Ramses in astonishment.
In that long-ago Hittite grotto, when Ramses had reached for the goblet of the elixir, he'd been convinced that he as pharaoh always did the will of the gods. And if this liquid, this sacred liquid, was the property of a Hittite god, well, then it had been Ramses' right to steal it.
"I would have thought more of Edith, and of my son," Elliott said. "As it is, I'm forever separated from them. And I'm not sure that is the will of the domestic gods worshipped by us British."
"Stuff and nonsense, Elliott," said Julie. "Your only thought now is to take care of both of them."
"That's true," said Ramses. "And you have ahead of you your adventures in Monte Carlo. Someday I want to see Monte Carlo. I want to see everything."
"Yes. As a matter of fact, I'll be taking a car out this very night," said Elliott. "I think my winnings here in Venice have begun to attract notice."
"You're not in any danger?" asked Julie.
"Oh, no, nothing of that sort," Elliott replied. "Just a major streak of luck among gentlemen, but I don't mean to push it. And I must say, I will miss you. Both of you. I will miss you terribly."
"But surely you're coming to London, aren't you?" Julie asked. "I mean for the engagement party. You know I've promised Alex that he and Edith can host this party? They're doing this for us. They so want to make us happy."
"Engagement party," Ramses muttered. "Such strange customs. But if Julie wants this, I will go along with it."
"Yes, I've heard from them both on that. I'm honored that you are allowing this. I wish I could be there. But I don't think I'll be seeing you that soon. However, I do want to thank you for your kindness to Alex, Julie."
Ramses could see complete sincerity in Elliott when he said these words, with none of the usual bite. What was the word for it? Sarcasm? Cynicism? He couldn't remember. He knew only the Earl of Rutherford loved Julie, and he loved his son, Alex, and it was a sadness to Elliott that Julie and Alex would never be married now, but the Earl of Rutherford accepted all this perfectly.
The young Alex Savarell had really quite gotten over Julie. He was in fact mourning for the mysterious woman he'd known in Cairo, the nameless and tragic woman he'd loved, the woman who might have killed him as easily as she had killed others--the Cleopatra awakened so fiendishly from the sleep of death by the elixir.
The familiar flush of shame passed over Ramses again as he contemplated this. All my life, however long, wherever that I go, that sin...
But the night was too beautiful, the roast fowl set before him too savory, the air too moist and sweet, to think of those things. He wasn't sad himself that they would be returning to England for this party. He wanted to see England all over again, see the green and forested parts of England, see the fabled lakes of England, all of England that he had not seen before.
A small orchestra nearby had begun to play, one of those dreamy waltzes that Ramses so loved, but there was no floor here for dancing, and only a few violins fed the swelling sound, yet it was still delightful.