The Passion of Cleopatra (Ramses the Damned 2)

"There is nothing you can do, dear Teddy. There is only one who could possibly help and he is..."

"Ramses," Teddy finished for her.

She turned to him, accepting the comfort of his embrace again.

"What did you see?" he asked. "It seemed as if you were looking through me."

"A vision. A woman I didn't recognize. She was in some other place."

"It was a dream."

"I am wide awake. I do not sleep. I have no need for it."

"That's just it, don't you see? You don't sleep, but your body is still human and your mind is still human and so your mind must process things in the same way. Mortals do it through dreams. And so you must do it through a kind of dreaming while you're awake. That's all, my darling. That's all it is. Truly."

Oh, how she wanted to believe this pronouncement. And how touching the earnestness with which he delivered it. He was, after all, a man of medicine and science, despite the scandal in his past.

"Dearest Teddy, I fear the treatment of a being such as myself lies far outside your area of expertise."

"Indeed," he answered. "And so there's only one who might have the answers to what ails you. Ramses the Great."

"Ramses the Damned," she whispered.

When he pulled away from her suddenly, she was afraid she had lost him. But he was rifling in his jacket pocket. He found it quickly, the folded-up piece of paper he'd been searching for.

"I went back to the Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo. I know you said you didn't want to see them again. But Ramses and his friends, I thought perhaps they might be looking for you, and if there was a search under way, you should be aware of it. There was no sign of them except for this. A cable that had been sitting at the front desk for only a few days."

"A cable?" she asked, baffled, taking the paper from his hands.

"Yes. They're transmissions. Words. They come over the wires and are written down. Do you need me to read it to you? This was for Elliott Savarell, the man who took care of you. This friend of Ramses. It was his son who sent it. He obviously thought his father was still in residence at the hotel, but the front desk said he had not been there for some time."

But she had read it herself already.

FATHER ARE YOU WELL STOP BETROTHAL PARTY FOR JULIE AND RAMSEY EIGHTEEN APRIL OUR ESTATE YORKSHIRE STOP MOTHER THRILLED PLEASE COME OR WRITE YOUR SON ALEX

Alex Savarell was the author of this message. The beautiful, adoring man with whom she'd shared a single, unforgettable night in Cairo. A man who had promised her everything, even though he hadn't been truly aware of what she was, of how she'd come to live again.

There was so much to absorb in this simple, terse message. And yet, that was the word that seemed to drift towards her off the paper again and again, as powerful as the strange vision she'd suffered only moments before.

Alex...

"That's him, isn't it? Mr. Ramsey? That's his alias. He's to be married, to this Julie Stratford. That's the daughter of the man who discovered his tomb, isn't it?"

"Yes," she answered.

"You wish to go to him?" Teddy asked.

She forced herself to look into his eyes, to banish all thoughts of other men she'd lain with, and women she had almost killed.

"I do not. I do not wish to go to him. I wish to find answers that only he will possess. And so, I have no other choice."

"We, my darling," he said, taking her hand. "We have no other choice, my Bella Regina Cleopatra."

*

It was she! The woman in the picture. And her companion was a handsome young man, probably British, just like the men who were supposedly searching for this woman.

The man had followed them there from the train station, and now he was sure. It was a fine sketch, done by an expensive artist, so there was no mistaking the resemblance. It had been delivered to him weeks before by his cousin, who claimed a friend of his from Cairo was searching for this woman. His cousin knew little else, except his friend, a Samir Ibrahim, had been the compatriot of a famous British archeologist who had recently died, and the man's relatives were desperate to find this woman for some reason.