Master: An Erotic Novel of the Count of Monte Cristo (33 page)

“And me,” she whispered, suddenly empty. “And
me
.” She looked down at him, and their gazes locked solidly. Determination and faint mockery flared in his dark eyes; they were no longer as flat and emotionless as she’d been used to seeing. “You would take my son from me?”

His gaze did not waver. “I have waited many years to make this trip to Paris. I’ll not be dissuaded from this.”

Her lips would barely move, they were so cold. Her whole body suddenly felt as though she’d been thrust in an icy sea and her hands began to tremble against the sides of her gown. “Edmond, what has befallen you that you could do such a thing?” She knew her voice came out in a soft wail, a low, horror-stricken one, but she didn’t care. It was incomprehensible to her. “What has happened to you, Edmond Dantès?”

His eyes closed for a moment, severing that unsettling connection between them. “Edmond Dantès . . . it has been so long since I’ve heard that name. Spoken it.” He opened his eyes, and they blazed up at her from where he sat. “Edmond Dantès is dead. He died a decade ago.”

“No,” she said, sinking to her knees next to him. She reached up and grasped his wrist where it rested on the arm of his chair, closing her fingers tightly around it. “Don’t lie to me, Edmond. I know it’s you. I know you’re still in there—behind that mask, that tight, fake, closed, dark mask of politeness, of inscrutable politeness. I know you’re there. I knew it the moment I saw you . . . and you know it is I, Mercédès. The woman who has always loved you.”

“Loved me?” He jerked his hand away, snapping it so hard that she lost her balance and lurched toward the chair. “How long did you wait before you spread your legs for Morcerf? How long?”

Anger sliced through her. Anger and horror and disgust. And deep grief. He could have no idea what she’d gone through. She pulled awkwardly to her feet, tripping on her gown as she replied, “You know how long I waited until I married Fernand, Edmond. You know because I told you . . . Sinbad.”

“Sinbad?” There was a faint note of admiration in his voice. “How long have you known?”

“Long enough to wonder why, if you had come back to Marseille in disguise ten years ago, you didn’t tell me it was you. You didn’t tell me, Edmond. . . . You didn’t come back to me when you could have.” Now, suddenly, she was sobbing, shaking, and she reached out blindly, her fingers closing over the heavy brocade curtains to steady herself as she looked down at him. “
You let me think you were dead
. For twenty-four years.”

“You were married to Fernand,” he replied harshly. “What was I to do? You waited a mere eighteen months for the man you said you’d love forever.”

“I waited as long as I could . . . but then I had no choice,” she said softly, still gripping the heavy velvet, leaning her cheek against it. She couldn’t tell him why; it was better that he believed she’d grown tired of waiting than to know the truth about her, and the choices she’d made, the bargains she’d wrought. “I had no word from you, nothing. Villefort would tell your father, Monsieur Morrel, me,
nothing
of you. It was as if you’d disappeared, Edmond. Vanished. Your father died a year later of a broken heart, certain you were dead. I would have done anything to find you, Edmond. Anything. I believed . . .” Her breath hitched, catching her words. She gathered herself together and continued. “I believed if you were alive, you would contact me—”

“I was in Château d’If. There was no contact. There was nothing, Mercédès—nothing but dark and rats and worm-filled bread and brackish water. There was no light, no voices, nothing but stone walls and one threadbare blanket. No hope, no words, no life. Nothing. Nothing but the memory of the woman who swore she’d love me forever. That was the only thing that kept me sane for those first four years.”

Her lips trembled so hard she could barely speak. Her stomach roiled and pitched, and she felt as though she would never be right again. Oh God. What horrors he must have lived through. “But why, Edmond? How did you get there? And how . . . how did you ever get out?”

“It was your husband, in part, who sent me there. He and Danglars and Villefort.”

Villefort
. Her stomach pitched anew. “What—how?”

“I didn’t know for certain while I was there, but once I escaped, I was able to confirm the suspicions that I’d formed with the help of a fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria.” A tinge of sorrow laced his voice; then he continued in the flat tone he’d been using.

“Fernand and Danglars conspired against me—Fernand because, of course, he wanted you, though I cannot understand why, now that I know he prefers men—and Danglars because he thought he should have the captaincy of the
Pharaon
. Greed and jealousy, Mercédès. Greed and jealousy sent an innocent man to the deepest, darkest of prisons for fourteen years.

“The captain of the
Pharaon
, who died while we were on that last voyage, gave me a letter to deliver to a man in Paris by the name of Monsieur Noirtier. You may know him as the grandfather of Valentine Villefort, and the father of Monsieur Villefort. As you know, I was not able to read, and I had no way of knowing that the letter was information for the Bonaparte sympathizers who were helping Napoleon in his escape from Elba. But somehow Danglars and Fernand discovered that this letter was in my possession, and they wrote an anonymous note reporting it to the crown prosecutor—who was, of course, Villefort.

“Villefort called for me—that was when the officers came to take me from our betrothal party—and questioned me about the letter, which I immediately gave him and told him I had no idea what it said. He would have released me. In fact, he had already done so, and I was walking out the door when he opened it and read his father’s name. Because the letter incriminated his father as a Bonaparte sympathizer, Villefort knew that this knowledge could never come to light, for it would ruin his own position as a crown prosecutor and career as loyalist to the king—and since I was the only other person who could possibly know the information in the letter, he sent me away in secret to the prison.

“I never had a trial. I never saw anyone where I could plead my case . . . and for a long time, I thought it was a mistake that would be corrected. But it never was.”

By now, Mercédès had released her grip on the curtains. She’d slid to the floor, and was in a pile of skirts and crinolines, staring up at him, at the man she’d loved, with horror and disbelief. Her cheeks and bodice were soaked wet from tears, and she felt them plop in a steady stream onto her hands, seeping through her gloves. “My God, my God, Edmond . . .”

He seemed not to hear her, for he continued steadily, as if nothing would stop him from telling the story. “The only reason I was able to escape was because of my fellow prisoner, Abbé Faria. I thank God for the day I met him, for it was he who kept me from descending into madness, and who stopped me from committing suicide when he accidentally tunneled into my cell. He thought it was the way out, and he was horribly, thankfully wrong.” Here again was a different note in his voice, a bit of wry humor; and then it was gone.

“We visited each other in our cells secretly for ten years, during which he gave me a complete education and told me about a secret treasure buried on the Isle of Monte Cristo. When the abbé died, I was able to replace his body with my own in his burial shroud, so when the jailers came to take his corpse away, I went instead. I thought they meant to bury the shroud, but instead, they wrapped chains around my legs and threw me off of a cliff, never knowing they had done so to a living man. I managed to escape from the chains, somehow, miraculously, and that was when I knew God wanted me to live.

“And that my purpose was to avenge the wrongs done to me . . . and to repay those who had done right by me.”

“That was why you gave the purse of money, and the diamond, to save the Morrels’ shipping company,” Mercédès said quietly. “As Sinbad, and as Lord Wilmore.”

He gave a brief nod. “Yes. And so . . . now . . . here we are.”

“You came to Paris to destroy the men who sent you to prison. And . . . and me.”

Monte Cristo—for even now, she wasn’t certain she could ever think of him as Edmond again—gave her a steady look. “Danglars’ house of cards, which was built by the same money loaned, and reloaned, and reloaned, is about to fall down about him. In two more days, he’ll be finished, completely destroyed. All because of his own greed and dishonesty.

“Villefort’s daughter is a suspected poisoner, and in perhaps another day, a young man will step forward—you may have heard of him, for he was engaged to be married to Eugénie Danglars. He was thought to be a prince, but, alas, he is nothing but a common criminal. And he will step forward, likely tomorrow, to announce that he is the illegitimate son of Villefort and the Baroness Danglars, birthed in secret and buried alive,
left to die
, some twenty-two years ago. It is only a matter of days before Villefort is finished.”

Mercédès could not control a gasp of horror. Left to die? Buried alive?

“And your husband . . . he has lost his job and his position, and his wealth will soon follow. And his hotheaded son will soon be taught a lesson—”

“Edmond!” She lurched toward him, grasping at his arm from her crumpled position on the floor. “You would truly do that? Send an innocent man to his death? My son? Please, Edmond, please. I beg you. . . . I’m . . . begging . . . you.” The tears were falling fast and hard, and she heard the same desperation in her voice that she’d had when she’d begged Villefort all those years ago. Begged and pleaded for some news, something about Edmond. Anything.

She felt the flexing of the count’s muscles beneath her fingers, the slight shift, the barest tremble. Then, suddenly, all of the tension drained out of him. He looked down at her, his face dark and tight. But contemplative and suddenly—suddenly— quite arch and smug. “I won’t shoot at him. But you must give me something in return.”

“Whatever you want. Name it, Edmond. Whatever your revenge against me needs to be, I willingly give it in exchange for the life of my son.”

“Eighteen months you waited for me . . . and so I desire eighteen months of you. . . .” His voice was smooth and sleek, like a coiled snake. “As my slave—my willing, subservient, groveling slave. Eighteen months of doing my every command, following my every whim.” He looked at her, his eyes burning into hers, and she felt a deep shiver inside. Damp sprang anew to her palms, and her mouth dried and her throat tightened.

So. He would have it at last. Have her the way he wanted her, have his revenge, have her under his control. But to save the life of her child, there was no question what she would do.

“I’ll do it,” she told him without hesitation, without fear.

For nothing could be worse than she’d experienced at the hands of Monsieur Villefort. Nothing.

He seemed to relax further, to release his last remaining bit of tension. He glanced out the window, and she saw the faint color of dawn over the squat cream-colored buildings. “You will return here tonight at eight o’clock. You’ll need no clothing, only one dress and perhaps one night rail. You won’t need a maid. Do give my regards to your husband.”

She stood, pulling to her feet on stiff legs, awkward from the weight and volume of her skirts. He made no move to assist her.

FOURTEEN

A
s dawn approached, he planned for death.

He wore a dark coat with a crisp white shirt under it. A simple, subdued neckcloth of bloodred, appropriately, and a dark brown waistcoat. Fine trousers of rich brown, and butter-soft leather boots the color of ink.

No one would say that the Count of Monte Cristo appeared less fashionable in death than in life.

He walked over to the chair in which he’d sat only hours ago—when Mercédès had begged for her son’s life—looking out once again at the city spread before him. He couldn’t help but recall the day he’d first arrived here in Paris and stood at this very same span of windows, watching the sun prepare to rise.

How much he’d accomplished in these last two months. Nearly everything he’d planned had been seen to its fruition . . . or soon would be. Caderousse was dead, though by no fault of Monte Cristo. Danglars, Villefort and Morcerf were only days—perhaps hours—from their final ruin.

And the beauty of it all was the knowledge that these men had created their own downfalls through years of deceit, dishonesty, greed, jealousy—even beyond what they’d done to poor Edmond Dantès.

All Monte Cristo had done was help expose the ugly underbelly of the lives they’d chosen to live.

His only regret was that he wouldn’t live to see it happen, that they would never know who’d exposed their true beings. That Edmond Dantès had come back for his revenge.

Yet perhaps it was best this way, that his life should end at the hands of Albert Morcerf. Monte Cristo smoothed his fingers over the back of the chair, letting his hand drop to the sleek wood of its curved arm as he moved to sit down in it once more.

In retrospect, he couldn’t believe that he’d given his word to Mercédès—after all this, all of his years of planning and plotting, burning with the heat of vengeance, he’d softened that little bit, edging back from his goals, changing the ultimate ending he’d planned. He’d die instead of Morcerf’s son, and his empty life would end.

As the one challenged in the duel, Monte Cristo would have the honor of shooting first. He would aim in the air and fire harmlessly into the trees. Then Albert, who was better than a fair shot, would take aim and put a bullet into Monte Cristo’s heart, finishing the destruction his mother had begun years ago.

And yet . . . for the first time that he could remember, he felt . . . easier. Lighter. Just the slightest bit, but enough that he noticed the lessening of tension in his chest, the ease in his neck and jaw. Something like serenity.