Master: An Erotic Novel of the Count of Monte Cristo (2 page)

“Edmond,” she murmured, pulling him toward her, away from her breasts so that she could look in his eyes. The expression there filled him with such joy, such anticipation and love that he nearly wept as she guided his face back to hers. She rose beneath him, lifting her mouth, her swollen, puckered lips ardent as they fit and slipped and sucked against his, her hand surprising him as it slipped down the front of his trousers.

Time blurred for him then, but it was a vortex of sensation—her fingers brushing his hot cock, their mouths mashing together, her low, deep moans, the silky warmth of her bare skin.

Then, somehow, he lay on his back, the brilliance of the blue sky cut by a hovering olive tree above. Mercédès rose over him, her slender torso and glorious breasts half-covered by the fall of her rich dark hair. Her red lips parting to show white teeth, straight but for a crooked one on top that gave relief to her perfection.

He helped her move, straddling him, felt the tight slickness as she fit over his waiting erection. Watched the way her eyes half-closed and her teasing smile sagged into wonder and pleasure.

Oh, the pleasure.

And he moved beneath her, slowly at first, his hands on her hips, her thighs bent next to his torso. She reached above, her breasts rising, her fingers brushing the low-hanging olive leaves as her face tipped up, her lips parted, her breath came faster. His world centered at the place where they’d joined, slick and hot and rhythmic. He moved, she moved, and the beauty of it all uncoiled slowly, like a line dropping its anchor to sea until suddenly they were both crying out, both trembling, sweaty and warm and collapsing together on the grass.

“Mercédès,” he remembered whispering, pushing the hair away from her face, “I love you.”

She rose to kiss him again, her breasts full against his chest, her work-worn hand skimming his shoulder. “I’ll always love you, Edmond.”

How many times he had relived those glorious moments during the dark years in this dungeon. The memories, the images had been all that kept him sane those early days . . . and now . . . now perhaps they tugged him into madness, a deep well that he welcomed, for surely it would be a relief to be insane rather than to imagine he’d never see daylight again.

He prayed for death.

He stopped eating.

On the fourth day of his determination to commit suicide, he stared at the plate of black bread and the cup of brackish water. In his wavering, sick mind, he saw two cups, then three. And multiple hunks of bread taunting him. He swore he saw a light in his cell. He felt Mercédès’ touch, saw the face of his beloved
père.

And then, somewhere, he heard a faint scratching.

And, long hours later, a small section of the stones that made up his cell crumbled away, and an elderly man’s head poked in.

“I am Abbé Faria,” he said. “And apparently, this is not the way out.”

ONE

Mercédès Herrera Mondego, Comtesse de Morcerf, turned in to the wide walkway that led to the grand entrance of the House of Morrel, a well-known shipping company.

Perhaps she could do nothing to help the family, but Monsieur Morrel had been so kind to Edmond when he sailed on Morrel ships, and to his father and Mercédès when he had been taken away more than fourteen years ago, that she felt compelled to be there on this tragic day.

The family would need a friend.

On her arm, she had a basket of oranges, purchased fresh from the market, and some ribbons and lace she’d brought from Paris that Julie might like. Simple gifts, but ones the family would appreciate. They were much too proud to take any monetary offerings.

Bad luck and misfortune had struck the business over the last years, and it showed in the empty corridors and silence of the once-busy company. Four of their five ships had been lost at sea, and now the future of the twenty-five-year-old firm was in jeopardy. How poorly the years had treated the Morrels since Edmond had sailed their ships!

How poorly the years had treated Mercédès herself.

No longer the simple young woman who’d waited for her love to return from the sea, Mercédès was thirty years old and now a comtesse. She’d learned to read and draw and to play the piano. She’d hired tutors to help her learn to speak better French, as well as Italian, Greek, and Latin. She’d learned mathematics and geography, and studied literature—rather masculine pursuits, but her education had distracted her from the years of grief and anger and darkness.

After learning of Edmond Dantès’ death in prison nearly fourteen years ago, she had agreed to marry her cousin Fernand Mondego, who had climbed his way up the ranks and through the French navy to become the Comte de Morcerf. They lived in Paris, in a beautiful house on rue du Helder, grander than anything she could have aspired to if she and Edmond had married.

She would have preferred
Père
Dantès’ little house here in Marseille with one crooked shutter and a tiny yard, or to be sailing the sea on her husband’s ship, as she and Edmond had always planned to do. To see the world. Together.

Julie Morrel, the shipmaster’s daughter, was peering out a window when Mercédès came up the cobbled walkway. She beckoned frantically to Mercédès to wait, and then she disappeared from the window.

Moments later, she reappeared from the rear of the building, walking quickly down the pathway, bareheaded and glove-less. It was much too warm for a spencer or cloak; Mercédès carried a fringed white parasol to keep the sun away in lieu of a bonnet.

“Mercédès—Lady de Morcerf—what can you be doing here? And without a driver?” Julie asked, slipping her arm around Mercédès’ wide puffed sleeve and directing her back down the walk.

Julie was a beautiful young woman with sparkling dark eyes and a gently plump figure; today those eyes were dull and worried.

“I remembered that today was the day your father’s debt is to be called,” Mercédès replied, walking along with the young woman, their full skirts swishing in tandem. Despite the fact that they were separated in age by a decade, the two women had become friends and confidantes, and it was only because Julia had mentioned her family’s dire straits in a recent letter that Mercédès was aware of the looming tragedy.

It had been that letter that brought Mercédès from Paris here to Marseille. “How is Monsieur Morrel?”

“He has locked himself in his office and refuses to see anyone, even Maximilien. The debt is to be paid at noon today, and it’s already past eleven o’clock. There is no hope.”

“But where are you going?” asked Mercédès, wondering why such a loving daughter would be leaving her father at such a time. “And where is your brother if he is not with monsieur?”

“Maximilien paces outside of Papa’s office door, but there is nothing he can do. But I . . . I have one small bit of hope. Come, we must hurry.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the Allées de Meilhan, to a certain house there.”

Mercédès looked at the young woman in shock, but kept her pace. “Julie, what are you about?”

“You know that my father’s debt is to be called today, but I didn’t tell you all of the story. The debt was actually due to be paid three months ago today, but something quite extraordinary happened that day. My father had a visitor—a man who introduced himself as Lord Wilmore—who came to deliver the news that he had purchased Papa’s debt. While he was in the office, the news about the
Pharaon
came.”

Mercédès felt a wave of sorrow. The
Pharaon
was the last ship Edmond had sailed, and when it had returned to the harbor those fourteen years ago, Morrel had named him its captain. That was the day she and Edmond had made love on the hillside, and it was two days later that her lover had been taken away by the authorities—during their betrothal party.

“What happened to the
Pharaon
?”

“It was lost in a hurricane, and while Lord Wilmore was with my father, the three sailors who had survived the accident came to bring the news.” Julie looked up at Mercédès, shielding her brow with a plump hand. “My papa, though it was his last ship, and his only hope for salvaging the company, cared not for the loss of the ship but for the loss of lives that had accompanied its destruction. He paid the wages for his good sailors out of our last bit of money, and made a small stipend to the widows of the ones lost at sea. Then he turned to Lord Wilmore.”

“But he did not call the debt, did he? If it is due today, he must have given your father an extension.”

Julie nodded, gesturing for Mercédès to turn with her down Via Meilhen. The houses here were crowded plaster ones, with narrow stoops and irregular walkways. The smell of baking bread wafted from one of the nearby windows. “My father did not lower himself to ask for an extension, but Lord Wilmore offered it and Papa accepted gratefully. But there was little he could do. He went to Paris to see Baron Danglars—do you know him?”

Mercédès did indeed know Danglars. He had been a purser on the
Pharaon
with Edmond and now did business with her husband. “Did he not once sail for your father too?”

“Indeed, but now he has become a successful banker, and my father thought that due to their past business relationships he would grant him a loan. But Danglars turned him away. And there is no one else.”

Mercédès’ lips tightened as she hurried along. It surprised her not in the least that the sly man with pinched eyes and groping fingers would refuse to help someone in need—especially someone he’d once worked for. He’d been visibly envious when Edmond was given the captaincy of the
Pharaon
, instead of himself. “So the three-month extension is for naught?”

“Perhaps. But there is more to the story,” Julie said. “And, voilà, we are here.” Mercédès followed her young friend up the short walkway and was surprised when Julie opened the front door and walked in.

Mercédès followed more cautiously, but when she heard a soft cry from Julie, who’d walked into the next room, she ran after her, her soft little shoes slipping on the polished wood floor. In the next room, she saw Julie standing in front of a fire-place mantel, holding a red silk purse.

She was sobbing.

Mercédès put an arm around her friend and brought out a fine lace-edged handkerchief to wipe away the tears. Certainly, there would be more to come.

But when Julie raised her face to look at her, Mercédès saw that rather than sorrow, her tears were ones of joy. She was smiling rapturously. “We are saved!”

“I don’t understand.”

Julie thrust the purse at her, and Mercédès took it. “I’ve seen this purse before! This is one your father gave to
Père
Dantès, filled with money, when Edmond was taken away. How did it come to be here?”

“Sinbad the Sailor,” Julie said cryptically, smiling through her sobs. “He sent me a note only one hour ago! Come, we must get back before noon. I must show my father before—before he does something tragic.”

Mercédès opened the purse and inside were two pieces of paper . . . and a diamond! The size of a walnut!
“Dios mio!”
she said, lapsing into her native language.

She pulled out the papers. One of them was a bill for two hundred eighty-seven thousand, five hundred francs—and it was marked
paid
. And the other was a handwritten note that said:
For Julie’s dowry
.

“Now I shall be able to marry Emmanuel!” Julie said, pulling on Mercédès’ arm to drag her out of the house, fairly dancing down the walkway.

Clutching the red velvet purse, Mercédès hurried along with the ecstatic young woman, scarcely able to believe what she held in her hand. How could this be? And who was Sinbad the Sailor?

She peppered her friend with questions as they rushed back to the House of Morrel, skirts flapping. But she received only bits and pieces of the story, tossed over Julie’s shoulder while they hurried along.

From what Mercédès could understand, Lord Wilmore had spoken briefly with Julie on the day of his visit and told her that she would hear from a man called Sinbad the Sailor, and that she should do exactly as Sinbad instructed.

“And this Sinbad told you to come to this house in Allées de Meilhan?” Mercédès asked incredulously. “And you would have come here alone?” Would she have ever done something so foolish, so blind, when she was Julie’s age?

And then she remembered sneaking out to meet Edmond when he was courting her, avoiding the sharp eyes of her mother, and lying to her cousin Fernand when he would have followed her. For the Spanish-Moorish Catalans kept to themselves, away from the French residents of Marseille, even though they lived on the outskirts of the city. They lived and married among themselves and kept their own traditions and cultures. For her to be trysting with a non-Catalan woud have been cause for reprimand.

Sí
, she would have done the same. She’d been young and adventurous then. The whole world and its possibilities had been open to her.

The two women burst into the House of Morrel in a manner that would have caused any spectators about to stop in surprise—especially to see a distinguished comtesse in her fine Parisian clothing haring about on the heels of the younger, less fashionable woman.

“Papa! Papa!” cried Julie, clattering up the steps to the upper offices. “Papa, we are saved!”

“What are you about?” asked Maximilien Morrel, who stood at the top of the landing. He was a youth of seventeen, on the verge of manhood, and Mercédès saw that his handsome face had gone beyond worried to gaunt and was striped with perspiration. “He will not let me in, and it is one minute until noon! I swear I have heard the click of a pistol, for Papa has said he will die and be remembered as an unfortunate, but honorable, man.”

“Papa! You must open the door! We are saved!” cried Julie, banging on the heavy wooden door.