Master: An Erotic Novel of the Count of Monte Cristo (3 page)

“See this,” Mercédès said, giving the red velvet purse to Maximilien. “She is right—you are saved.”

Monsieur Morrel had cracked open the door. The kindly man, his gray hair brushed neatly and his face shaved smooth as if he were ready to attend church, rather than his own suicide, looked out. “Julie—”

But Maximilien shoved on the door, opening it fully. “Papa, put that weapon down! Julie is right. We are saved. Look at this!”

And no sooner had Monsieur Morrel opened the purse and comprehended its contents, and the family was sharing tears of joy, than Mercédès knew it was time for her to leave. She placed the basket of oranges and the small packet of ribbons on a little table at the foot of the stairs and made her way out onto the sunny street.

What a miracle! What a miraculous thing to have happened to such a good family!

When Edmond had been taken off by the officers of the court from the midst of his own betrothal party, Monsieur Morrel had immediately gone to the crown prosecutor’s office to plead his innocence, to post his bond, and to demand information about the charges and his disappearance.

The crown prosecutor, Monsieur Villefort, had been able— or willing—to give Monsieur Morrel little information about Edmond, despite several visits made by the shipmaster. The only thing he had told Morrel was that Edmond was being held on charges of being a rabid Bonapartist, and that Morrel’s incessant attention to the matter shed an unflattering light on himself and his shipping company.

Monsieur Morrel had visited Mercédès and Edmond’s father, providing the old man with the very same red velvet purse filled with enough francs to feed him for months. But
Père
Dantès would not eat, and within weeks of hearing that his son had been imprisoned, he died of starvation.

That had been a dark time.

Yet Mercédès’ life had become even darker since she had gone to Prosecutor Villefort to ask for information herself.

Shouts drew her attention, and she realized she’d begun to walk the short distance from the House of Morrel to the wharf. Ship masts striped the horizon, thrusting up from the cluster of vessels at the docks, and the familiar tang of sea salt reminded her how much she’d missed the simplicity of this bustling seaside town. Paris was full of pretension and fashion and falseness, to her mind, and she’d never felt completely comfortable since she and Fernand had moved there.

That was part of the reason she’d immersed herself in her education—it was a way to keep distance from a life she hadn’t been born to, and didn’t fully understand. She would have been perfectly content to remain in her little house in Marseille, growing her own vegetables and herbs . . . or sailing with Edmond.

The shouts had become more excited, and Mercédès tilted her head, straining to understand what the men were calling.

“The
Pharaon
! The
Pharaon
has returned!”

Frowning, she picked up her heavy skirts, crinolines and all, and ran toward the docks. Julie had just told her that the ship had been lost. . . . How could this be?

But when she reached the docks, the familiar sight of Edmond’s last ship—looking gleaming, and as if it were brand-new—sat, golden and proud-masted in the harbor. People were running and shouting and staring in disbelief.

“Tell Morrel!” someone shouted. “It is a miracle!”

Another miracle for the Morrels. Surely some angel had smiled down on them at last.

Mercédès felt a surprise tear sting the corner of her eyes. Where was her angel?

She was sincerely glad for the Morrels and their good fortune, but suddenly overcome by her own problems and fears. She missed her son, Albert, who was safely ensconced in their opulent home in Paris while she tried to determine a way to bring him with her. But Fernand would never allow it—he loved his only child too much.

If she could figure out a way to do that, she would never return to Fernand.

Mercédès saw Julie and her family as they rushed onto the scene, Monsieur Morrel stumbling along as though he’d just awakened from a dream. As she pushed through the crowd, which had continued to grow due to the miraculous news, she caught sight of a tall, dark-haired man ahead of her.

She stopped, her heart pausing for a moment, then continuing on in a painful, rapid beat.

Edmond.

From behind, he’d almost looked like Edmond for a moment there.

The man turned, and she couldn’t stop watching him as he moved gracefully through the crowd. His eyes were shadowed by the hat he wore low on his forehead, and he sported a dark, well-trimmed beard and mustache. His garb was not that of a common sailor, but the loose-fitting clothes of the Orient: sleeves and trousers of pale blue silk, gathered at the wrists and ankles. Dark hair fell in a braided queue from the back of his neck well past his shoulder blades.

Perhaps he felt the weight of her gaze on him, for he paused, turning to look in her direction. She, in turn, felt his attention settle on her as if to determine why she had been staring at him so boldly. Before their eyes met, Mercédès’ manners won out, and she quickly averted her attention to the joyous Morrel family, moving through the throng of well-wishers to get nearer to them.

It was an odd thing for her, a distinguished comtesse: pushing through a crowd of ordinary people, smashing her skirts and crushing the very full sleeves of which the fashion mavens were so proud, scuffing her slippers in the dirt.

Fourteen years ago, Mercédès would have thought nothing of moving about alone, or with a single companion; but along with her wealth and power had come propriety and restriction.

A sense of freedom such that she hadn’t had for years settled over her. She was here in Marseille, the city of the happiest— and most sorrowful—times of her life. She was alone, without constraints, without a schedule, without expectations.

Alone.

A short while later, when she looked over again, the man was gone.

And her chest felt tight once more, her grief from the loss of Edmond opened like a new wound to the flesh.

As the merrymaking at the
Pharaon
’s return came to an end—for the sailors and townspeople alike seized upon any cause for celebration on a humid summer evening—Mercédès found herself drifting from the wharves, her feet following a familiar path.

Before she quite realized it, she had walked for some time, and made her way along the narrow, uphill street that led past
Père
Dantès’ house. Here, Edmond had courted her, brought her from the close-knit Catalan world into his. She hadn’t been along this street for more than twelve years.

Suddenly, she realized the sun had dipped behind the irregular row of houses between this hill and the bay, and a narrow thoroughfare that had only moments ago been bathed in soft golden light was now browning. Shadows fell in thick blocks on the cobbled street, casting doorways and small yards into darkness.

The street was curiously empty and silent, and Mercédès felt the lift of hair on the back of her neck. A quiet scuff behind her had her heart thumping faster, and her parasol at the ready. She turned and saw three figures suddenly a mere two houses away. One man leaned nonchalantly against a low plaster wall covered with ivy. Another stood next to him, his hat brim low over his face.

And the third in the center of the empty street had his hands on his hips.

Even from her distance, Mercédès could tell that they were roughly dressed and had likely either just put in from a voyage, or bore the remnants from an evening of celebration.

But where was everyone else? The street was empty.

Her heart began to beat faster, and she closed her fingers tightly around the parasol. Its pointed tip would make a fair weapon, but it was all she had.

And it was obvious she would need one.

The man in the street began to walk toward her, purpose in his step, and Mercédès picked up her skirts and started to run. But even as she did, another figure moved from the growing shadows and stepped into the street in front of her.

She stumbled to a halt, but began to angle slightly toward the edge of the street.

“What be your hurry?” drawled the man behind her. “Don’t you want to keep us a bit of company?”

“A fine ransom the bitch’ll fetch us,” commented the one in front of her. “From the looks o’ her clothes.” He swiped toward her, grasping a handful of her generous sleeve.

“Release me,” Mercédès said in a voice much calmer than she felt. “You’ll receive no ransom but a visit from the authorities if you do not let me on my way. My husband is a very powerful man.”

The one who’d come from behind was much closer now. He laughed and gestured for his companions to come closer. “Now, my fair lady, wouldn’t ye like to see a bit of the world? From the deck of a ship, perhaps? We’ve got room on ours, and we be shipping out in the morn.”

The others laughed, and suddenly they were pulling at her, flipping something heavy and cloaking over her head, a hand slamming over her face to muffle her screams and smother her very breath. She managed to get one good strike with the parasol before someone jerked it out of her hands and the enveloping cloth wrapped tightly around her arms. Her flailing foot slammed into something soft, but she couldn’t revel in that minor success, for she was upended over someone’s shoulder and her face was full of prickly wool.

Suddenly, she heard the pounding of a horse’s hooves and felt tension in the man who held her. Though she could not see, the sounds told the story: The horseman galloped up, drawing his mount up next to her abductors with an elegant clatter. A sharp click of metal, and then a low, accented voice: “It would be best for you to release the woman, else I shall have to tell Luigi Vampa that you have tread beyond your boundaries.”

Then she felt the hold on her change, and the man—her rescuer—grasped her by the waist and lifted her against his hip and thigh. Suddenly, they were cantering off down the street, Mercédès still wrapped in the mean cloth, her parasol left behind.

He seemed to hold her easily against his leg, her hip half-wedged against his, with a single arm. If she expected he would stop and uncover her rather immediately, thus releasing any strain on his arm, she was to be disappointed, for they continued through several twists and turns and must have gone some distance away.

As she hung there, in such an ungainly manner, Mercédès began to wonder if she had been rescued only to be captured again! She was afraid to struggle and be dropped beneath the horse’s hooves, or in some other dangerous position.

But at last, when she was just about ready to take the chance, their mount slowed and then stopped. She felt the jolt as he dismounted, and then the swoop as he tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of barley—which surely she looked like, still wrapped in the cloying wool.

At that point, she began to struggle and kick again, and was rewarded by being dumped unceremoniously onto . . . not the floor . . . but something soft. Immediately, she began to fight her way out of the cloth.

“I did not intend to frighten you,” he said in that odd accent; it wasn’t English or Italian or anything that she recognized. She felt him as he moved toward her, his hands sure and warm as they unraveled her from her covering.

She looked up, pushing strands of hair out of her face, and gasped. Despite the dim light, she recognized the bearded man in Persian clothing from the docks. The one who’d reminded her of Edmond.

He was looking down at her just as boldly as she gawked up at him.

“You,” she began. “I saw you . . . at the docks.”

“And I saw you.” His voice sounded uneven. “You were foolish to walk off alone. Where is your husband?”

Mercédès realized belatedly that she had been tossed onto a bed covered with an array of large cushions and pillows, and she pulled herself into an upright sitting position. “He is not here,” she replied firmly.

“Not here? He allows his wife, the Comtesse de Morcerf, to wander about Marseille alone?” His voice was smoother now, and there was a decidedly mocking tone beneath that lilting accent. Yet she sensed a tension underlying his sardonic tone.

“How did you know my name?”

He shrugged, spreading his hands nonchalantly. She noticed that his silken sleeves had been rolled up his forearms, showing thick golden bands at both of his wrists. His hands were wide and tanned, funneled with veins and tendons and rough from work, so different from Fernand’s soft lily-white ones. And so much like the sailor’s hands of her lost Edmond.

What would it be like to have such rough hands smoothing over her skin again?

“It was not so difficult to learn your name. You are a friend of the Morrels, and I have some acquaintance with them as well.” His eyes, dark in color, and lined with a narrow stripe of black around the lash line, were steady on her. The space in the room seemed heavy, as though pressing them together.

“Then perhaps you might provide me with your name,” Mercédès replied frostily. Her heart still pounded rapidly, but her fear had begun to abate. Her mouth was dry, and she felt a subtle fluttering in her belly.

“I am called Sinbad. Sinbad the Sailor.”

Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was; after all, the man looked like the legendary Persian Sinbad. He wore a beard, and his skin looked as though it had been sunburned and then tanned. As she grappled with the web of thoughts spinning through her mind, she stammered the first one she was able to seize. “You . . . how did you come by the red velvet purse? With the money in it, for the Morrels? It belonged to
Père
Dantès.”

Sinbad loomed tall over her, and she noticed the lean muscles of his forearms. “It was given to me by an old abbé named Faria. And so, Countess . . . where is your husband?”

“He is . . .” Mercédès paused. If she told him that she’d left Fernand in Paris, and that he didn’t know where she was, what would he do? If he knew that she was alone and unaccounted for, would that put her in other danger? “He will be arriving from Paris tomorrow, with our son.”