"I was afraid of her. I was horrified."
"But you sheltered her. It couldn't have been merely for your own ends."
"Ends? No. I don't think so. I found her irresistible, as I found you irresistible. It was the mystery. I wanted to seize it. Move into it. Besides ..."
"Yes."
"She was ... a living thing. A being in pain."
Ramsey thought about this for a moment.
"You will persuade Julie to go back to London--until this is over," Elliott asked.
"Yes, I'll do that," Ramsey said.
He went out quietly, closing the door behind him.
They walked through the City of the Dead, "the place of the exalted ones," as they said in Arabic. Where the Mamluke Sultans had built their mausoleums; they had seen the fortress of Babylon; they had wandered the bazaars; now the heat of the afternoon wore on Alex, and her soul was chastened and shocked by the things she'd discovered, the long thread of history having connected the centuries for her from this radiant afternoon to the time she'd been alive.
She wanted to see no more of the ancient ruins. She wanted only to be with him.
"I like you, young lord," she said to him. "You comfort me. You make me forget my pain. And the scores I must settle."
"But what do you mean, my darling?"
She was overcome again by that sense of his fragility, this mortal man. She laid her fingers on his neck. The memories rose, threatening inundation; all too similar to the black waves from which she'd risen, as if death were water.
Was it different for each being? Had Antony gone down in black waves? Nothing separated her from that moment if she wanted to seize it, to see Ramses turn his back again and refuse to give Antony the elixir; to see herself on her knees, begging. "Don't let him die."
"So fragile, all of you ..." she whispered.
"I don't understand, dearest."
And so I'm to be alone, am I? In this wilderness of those who can die! Oh, Ramses, I curse you! Yet when she saw the ancient bedchamber again, when she saw the man dying on the couch, and the other, immortal, turning his back on her, she saw something she had not seen in those tragic moments. She saw that both were human; she saw the grief in Ramses' eyes.
Later, when she'd lain as if dead herself, refusing to move or speak, after they'd buried Antony, Ramses had said to her: "You were the finest of them all. You were the one. You had the courage of a man and the heart of a woman. You had the wits of a King and a Queen's cunning. You were the finest. I thought your lovers would be a school for you; not your ruin."
What would she say now if she could revisit that chamber? I know. I und
erstand? Yet the bitterness welled in her, the dark uncontrollable hatred when she looked at young Lord Summerfield walking beside her, this fair and fragile mortal boy-man.
"Dearest, can you confide in me? I've only known you for a short while, but I ..."
"What is it you want to say, Alex?"
"It sounds so foolish."
"Tell me."
"That I love you."
She lifted her hand to his cheek, touched it tenderly with her knuckles.
"But who are you? Where did you come from?" he whispered. He took her hand and kissed it, his thumbs rubbing her palm. A faint ripple of passion softened her all over; made the heat throb in her breasts.
"I'll never hurt you, Lord Alex."
"Your Highness, tell me your name."