"So that what, Julie?"
"So that he would be able to drink of the world as we do. So that he would see its colors and its magic. So that he would be willing to risk injury, to his body and his heart, if it be in the pursuit of deepening his experience of being alive.
"This is my great worry, you see? In fact, it seems my only worry now. That I will wish to share the change that has overtaken me with everyone for whom I care deeply."
"Share the elixir, you mean?"
"Of course, it's not mine to share. But you know what I mean. You must have felt similar things throughout your existence."
"I have, but know this. The experience you are having is yours alone. The elixir did not really change you. Oh, it's made you stronger, more resolute. Of course. I enjoy this very much, these changes. But it has not changed your heart. It has unleashed what was already there. It has set your loving nature free. It will not do these things in everyone to whom it's given. But I know it's tempting, this belief."
"But if the fear of death is removed, does the person not..."
"Not what? Become good? I brought Cleopatra out of death itself and removed her fear of it. And did she not bring death to innocents in Cairo?"
"That's different, Ramses. She is a different creature. One for whom we do not even have a name."
"The elixir cannot cure a broken soul. Trust me in this. Your experience of it, it belongs solely to you."
"And you belong solely to me," she whispered. "And you are part of this experience I don't wish to share with anyone. Not in that way."
A kiss, deep and fearless and without regard for passersby. Then he pulled back from her and took her hand. "Come," he said. "To the cathedral."
"No, darling," she said. "Not on this our last night. I want to seek the dark corners of Paris again, the dark narrow lanes, the taverns and cabarets where I would never have dared to set foot in the past." She laughed. "I want to see all the dangerous places. I want to see the thieves eye us as prey and then instinctively, inevitably, as they always do, turn away from us--as if we were angels."
He smiled. He understood, as much as any man could understand, she thought. Any man, who had never known what it means to be a woman.
And off they walked together, away from the river, and towards parts of Paris unknown to them, two adventurers of which the mortal world knew nothing.
7
Monte Carlo
The Englishman made love like a Frenchman, and for this Michel Malveaux was blissfully grateful.
The waiters and croupiers in the casino had referred to the man as the Earl of Rutherford, and that was how Michel preferred to think of him now. The title was an elegant reminder of how different he was from Michel's other clients.
He'd taken Michel to bed with the same vigor with which he had played the casino's tables for several days now. The vigor of a man half his age. The vigor of a man half Michel's age, for that matter. There was no sense of hurried shame in his movements. Neither was there hesitancy or nervousness. Indeed, the handsome, blue-eyed aristocrat stroked and probed and tasted Michel's body with the same abandon as the young men Michel had experimented with in the vineyards behind his family's farm when he was a boy.
No, nothing at all like his other clients, those men and women who invited him back to their hotel rooms with furtive, coded signals. Who bid him a hasty farewell once the deed was done, but not before giving him the requisite gift. Money, jewels, or the promise of a fine meal, all intended to buy both his discretion and perhaps his return the next night under similar circumstances.
Even the room was different.
Michel had been inside most at the Hotel de Paris, but not this particular suite, with its wallpaper the color of a cloudless sky, its soaring windows so easily opened onto the sea, and its small balcony. And how fearless of the earl to leave the windows open, to allow the ocean air to kiss their naked bodies as they engaged in a passion most would find unspeakable.
But it was this very fearlessness that had first drawn Michel to the man several days before. The earl was one of the best gamblers he had ever seen. Possessed of an almost otherworldly ability to read the deck, the wheel, and the croupier's expressions. And at the very moment each day when it seemed he might draw the suspicion of the house, he would graciously push back from the table. Then he would generously tip the waiters, who had kept him well fed with a steady supply of the small nibbles that seemed to sustain him.
What were his tricks? Michel was desperate to know. For this was why he'd come to Monte Carlo years before: to learn the secrets of the best gamblers, to master luck itself, so that he could support his ailing, widowed mother.
His poor mother.
She believed he had achieved this goal. It would have broken her heart to know the money he mailed home came from servicing the private, sensual needs of the wealthy. He'd recently sent her an emerald ring encrusted with diamonds, and she'd written just the other day to tell him she wore it proudly and with great joy whenever her sisters came to visit. If she knew it had been gifted to him by a German general and his wife after he'd brought them both to simultaneous moments of release, she would be shattered, he was sure.
But he'd been a younger and more foolish man when he'd left home. And after only a few months of living in a crowded apartment with several croupiers, he'd been forced into realization. He was already an excellent lover, but it would take him some time to become a better gambler. No choice but to put his first gift to use while he sought to acquire the second.
But now there was so much more he wanted to know about this man, beyond his tricks at the tables. So very much more.
And when the earl brought him to climax, the cries that escaped from Michel sounded both pleading and ecstatic, and the Earl of Rutherford seemed to delight in them, for he increased his thrusts until the two of them lay in a heap in the tangled sheets.