Copyright 2013 Colette Gale
Previously published by The Penguin Group, North America.
MASTER © 2008, 2014 Colette Gale
All rights reserved.
~
To all the women who knew Haydée was nothing but a midlife crisis.
~
Biographer’s Note
Not long after I finished compiling the documentation that became Unmasqued, in which was revealed the true story of The Phantom of the Opera, I was fortunate enough to acquire some personal effects that shed new light on another familiar tale: that of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Alexandre Dumas’ novel of betrayal and revenge tells the story of the horribly wronged Edmond Dantès and his bid for vengeance against the villains—his friends—who sent him to prison for fourteen years. The tale has been adapted for film and television, and it has been translated and republished, abridged and dissected in numerous ways since its initial publication in serial format through the mid-1840s.
However, through my acquisition of the personal diaries and letters of one of the most pivotal players in the narrative, I’ve discovered that the story told by Dumas—along with its other adaptations—is incomplete and misleading.
I have had the pleasure of studying and organizing into a fleshed-out, chronological tale the diaries of Mercédès Herrera, the first and true love of Edmond Dantès. To my astonishment, through this study, I have learned that she was as much a victim of the events told by Dumas as Dantès was. Perhaps even more so.
Her diaries, along with her personal letters from Valentine Villefort and a journal that belonged to Monte Cristo’s servant, Haydée, bring to light a much different and more accurate chronicle about what occurred in her life during the years of Dantès’ imprisonment. The letters and journal in particular also expose certain other events that occurred when he came back to Paris as the wealthy, learned, and powerful Count of Monte Cristo.
Thus, within this volume is my attempt to make public the true story—with all its explicit details taken directly from her personal effects—of Edmond Dantès and Mercédès Herrera, a pair of lovers divided by greed, jealousy, tragedy, and revenge.
It is the story of The Count of Monte Cristo as it has never been told before.
— Colette Gale
August 2014
Prologue
Prisoner No. 34
1819
Château d’If
Off the Coast of Marseille, France
He knew every gray stone in his prison cell, every mortar-filled line between each of them, every change in topography of the dirt floor beneath his filthy, cold, bare feet.
He had stopped counting the days of his imprisonment after one thousand of them, for he no longer cared to keep track of what had become this eternity of worm-filled black bread, dank water, and horrible, dark solitude.
He’d spoken to no one for an aeon, since the day he’d gone mad at the jailer, demanding to know how he’d come to be here, incarcerated—what he’d done, what crime he’d committed, who had sent him here, what horrible error had been made. But the only answer he’d received had been being thrown into this cell, even smaller and darker than the one he’d previously occupied.
He had nearly stopped reminding himself of his own name.
Edmond Dantès.
His lips moved silently, for there was no one there to hear.
But the name that did come to his lips, in a quiet, gentle murmur, like a lifeline to a drowning sailor, was the talisman he’d clung to all these days, these years.
“Mercédès.”
He said it again, no more than a release of breath in his silent world. “Mercédès.”
How many times had he spoken her name?
At first, with anguish . . . he’d been taken from her, from the woman he was to marry, without a chance for farewell.
Then, with despair. Would he ever see her again? Touch her?
With pain. Would she wait for him? Had she tried to find him?
For a time, the only noises he made were the syllables of her name, desperately sobbed into the threadbare blanket, woven with dust, his lips dry and cracked and tasting dirt. Would she remember him?
At last. . . reverently. As if her name, her memory, were a light in the blackness of his life. Something to fixate upon, to yearn for, to live for. A talisman. To keep him sane.
“Mercédès.”
When his mind verged on madness, when he longed to end his life but had no weapon with which to do it . . . when he gave up all hope, he remembered her lively, dark eyes, filled with intelligence and laughter. The smooth, sweet curve of her golden arms, the oval of her beautiful face, reminding him of the painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary hanging in Église des Accoules, the church in which they’d meant to wed.
Her lips . . . God had made them full and red, surely designed to fit Dantès’ own mouth. He saw them wide with happiness on the day he’d come back from the sea and told her he’d been named captain of his own ship . . . then soft and pliant under his own mouth later that afternoon.
How could he have known he’d be taken from her only two days later?
Who had done this to him? Who had betrayed him?
He remembered how his hands, rough from handling the lines at sea, had smoothed up her warm arms, drawing her close to him on the hidden hillside, bringing her so that he could feast on her mouth, draw cries of pleasure from those sensual, promising lips. Gently tease her so that he could see the light of love in her chocolate eyes before the sweep of her thick lashes came modestly down like the shutters on her little weather-beaten house.
Even now, God knew how many years later, Dantès clung to the memory of the slip-slide of their kiss, the rhythm of his tongue mating with hers in that warm, wet cavern that echoed the tight, musky one between her legs.
He was there again, as his hands drew away the simple peasant blouse she wore, the undyed linen creamy against her sun-drenched skin, baring a simple gold cross and two lovely breasts, along with the faint scent of kitchen smoke mingled with lemon. Her breasts . . . the size of oranges, with their own pebbling flesh tightening under his palms, dusky nipples pointing up to the sun as he loved her there in the thick, warm grass and crushed chamomile.
She arched toward him as his hands smoothed down her narrow back, her chin tipping up and the bundle of walnut hair loosening beneath her skull. As he bent to close his lips around an offered nipple, Dantès’ own desire surged when he heard her soft cry of pleasure turn to a deeper one of need. Her legs shifted, opened slightly next to him, her bare thigh brushing his salt-crusted seaman’s trousers. He hadn’t even bothered to change before coming to take her away to their reunion on this secluded hillock.
He sucked and licked, slowly swirling his strong tongue around the point of her nipple, taking all the time he needed and wanted, feeling the comfortable heaviness of his cock as it filled and swelled. One of her hands had loosened the thong that held his dark hair back; now it fell over his face, curtaining it as he bent to her.
Mercédès untied the fastenings of his shirt, her breath quickening when his hand crept to cover her other breast. He spread his fingers over it, then lightly brushed the backs of his nails over her nipple as he gave a long, deep tug on the other one. She moved restlessly, shivered as he toyed with her, the sun hot on the back of his head and his suddenly bare back.
“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
A Purse of Red Velvet
Ten years later
Marseille, France
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 gloveless. 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 fireplace 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 would 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.
“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.”
“Your son? And how old is this future count?”
“Twelve,” she replied automatically. “He is twelve.”
“And only one child, in how many years of marriage to this count of yours?”
Mercédès thought she detected a hint of malice in his voice; but for what reason, she couldn’t fathom. “Nearly thirteen years,” she replied. Thirteen years of misery and humiliation and abuse. No, perhaps only twelve years. The worst had not truly begun for some time after their wedding. Yet she’d known pain and misery even before she agreed to marry Fernand.
But that was not something to be revealed to this stranger, who looked at her with such an expression in his eyes . . . an expression that seemed to shift from heated to angry to uncertain, and then masked itself into a mocking one.
“What do you want from me?” she asked suddenly, feeling the tension of the room bearing down on her again.
“Want?” he asked, his voice liquid. His fingers closed; she saw them crumple the light silk of his trousers. “From you? Nothing, my dear countess. I want nothing from you.”
But his voice had become steely and the expression in his eyes harsh. Suddenly Mercédès became frightened again, frightened, and yet. . . expectant. Apprehensive and . . . breathless.
Yes, her chest filled and tightened, and she couldn’t breathe for a minute. And then she looked away, her heart slamming in her bosom, her fingers shaking behind the folds of her rumpled skirt.
“Then I shall be on my way,” she told him, standing and starting boldly toward the doorway of the room they were in.
Sinbad stepped to one side, blocking her path. He was much taller than she. Sturdy, muscular, and he smelled of the sea.
“If you want nothing from me, then let me pass,” she said with a calm she did not feel. Her heart was racing, her palms damp, her belly aflutter.
“You do not wish to show any gratitude to your rescuer?”
She swallowed, refusing to look up at him. Instead, she focused her attention on the broad shoulder in front of her, covered by pale blue silk that clung to the muscles of his chest in a way that cotton and linen would not. The collarless shirt was buttoned up to the throat with simple silk knots. “I have a few francs with me, but more at the—”
“My dear countess, I am in no need of your money. That is, in fact, the last thing I want from you.”
Mercédès gripped her hands tightly in the sides of her skirt, feeling the pounding of her heart all the way down her arms like the beat of a funereal drum. She’d glanced up at his words, but the mockery in his eyes sent her gaze skittering away and suddenly she found it locked on his mustache and the hint of fine lips beneath it.
He smiled and those lips stretched, quirking at one corner, drawing the dark bristles up and away in a fascinating, sensual movement.
“Perhaps,” he continued in a low voice, “I should ask you what it is you want from me.”
“Nothing. Nothing but to pass you, to leave.”
“Then pass. Do not stand there like a frightened cat. If that is what you truly wish, then walk on by, Countess.”
She hesitated only a moment, then stepped toward him. He’d positioned himself directly in front of the door; the only way she could move past would be to brush against him, to touch that silken sleeve, and for her skirt to bell over his slippered foot.
“But I don’t believe that is what you truly wish . . . ,” he whispered as she came closer.
She was touching him now. Her pink linen sleeve, which puffed out three times wider than her upper arm, was crushed as it slid against the blue silk; her skirt crinkled against his leg.
He put out his arm between her and the door, effectively stopping her. “Is it?” He pivoted toward her, and so they were standing toe-to-toe, chest to bosom, silk brushing linen.
She felt his warmth and smelled the sea tang on his skin and the gentle scent of man mixed with something like nutmeg. Edmond. Just like Edmond.
“Kiss me, Countess,” he said softly. His flexed fingers trembled against the wall. “You want to.”
She did want to. . . . Lord have mercy, she did.
A woman who had never, despite all he’d done to her, betrayed her husband, wanted to kiss the silken-clad, salty, sweaty sailor who stood in front of her. She wanted to lose herself in the memories, the faint familiarity he brought with him.
“Let me pass,” she said again. “Please.”
His arm dropped back to his side. He stepped away, leaving the doorway open. “You are a devoted wife, Countess. How fortunate your husband is.”
She gathered up her skirts and hurried past him, her heart still slamming in her chest, and found herself in the same room she and Julie had been in earlier that day—where Julie had found on the fireplace mantel a red velvet purse filled with the miracle that had saved her family.
Clearly this man was who he claimed to be—Sinbad.
Mercédès turned back to see that he’d followed her, and stood in the doorway between the two rooms. He leaned against the opening, arms crossed over his middle, his eyes dark and their lids at half-mast. A fire burning in the fireplace gave off unnecessary heat and the only illumination in this room besides a small oil lamp.
Before she realized what she was doing, Mercédès was walking toward him, back toward Sinbad and the temptation he represented: the mysterious pull, the incessant draw, the desire to indulge her sorrow and grief and memories.
He straightened as she came toward him, understanding glinting in his eyes, but he said nothing. Only waited.
His shoulders trembled when she spread her hands on the front of them, her fingers curling just over the top, skidding the fabric a bit against his warm skin. He didn’t move except to look down at her, and she couldn’t read—didn’t even try, truth be told—the expression in his eyes. She just raised her face, closed her own eyes, and brought her mouth to his.
At first, she barely brushed against the soft bristles of his mustache and beard and the smooth line of his lips, just to see what it was like. It amazed her to feel the tremors in his body as she touched him. Then she pushed closer, pressing her mouth against his, angling to the side so that they fit together better, her lips parted just enough that his upper lip slipped between and she could taste him.
Something happened, and a great burst of warmth, a rush of emotion and desire, trammeled through her as though unleashed. The pungent smell of the sea was in his hair, on his salty skin; his lips were moving beneath hers now, no longer tentative but hungry and demanding. She was lost in the kiss, caught in the swirl of sensations: her fingers slipping over silk, making warm friction, feeling the swell and dip of muscles beneath . . . the slick, hot dance of their tongues . . . his fingers clutching her waist, digging into her skin . . . the tightening and heaviness of her breasts beneath layers of corset and chemise and linen.
Mercédès didn’t protest when he swung her up in his arms and brought her back into the room they’d just vacated, once again depositing her on the large cushionlike bed. But this time, he came with her, his hands holding her shoulders to the mattress as if to be certain she wouldn’t rise up and attempt to leave.
But she had no intention of doing so.
It—he—was so much like Edmond, her lost Edmond. . . . It was his rough fingertips catching on the delicate skin of her neck, and the salt on his clothes, the smell of his hair as she tugged it from its queue, and even that of his skin, moist there at the juncture of neck and shoulder. The way he tipped his head to kiss her . . . when she closed her eyes, and she let herself go, she was back on that hillside with Edmond on that last glorious day. . . .
Her hands reaching up into the olive branches above, looking down at his dark, tanned torso and its little patch of hair down the middle of his chest. The lazy smile he gave her from below, his teeth gleaming and amazingly straight, the feel of him full and hard inside her as she rocked back and forth. His weather-beaten hands on the delicate skin of her breasts, the rasp of cracked and peeling knuckles as they turned to brush along the sides. . . .
Now, though, brought back to the world she lived in today, Mercédès noticed the fumble as this man, this compelling stranger, worked at the mother-of-pearl buttons at the back of her dress. She felt the tightening and shifting of her bodice as he pulled and twisted to loosen it from behind, his hands smashed between her back and the cushion.
At first, she tensed, turning her head to break the kiss. No, no, she couldn’t let him do that. . . . And as if sensing her reluctance, he stopped, moving his hands up to lift her shoulders, pulling her closer toward him. His hips pressed into the tops of her thighs, and she felt his erection straining beneath the silk of thin, loose trousers. A sharp spiral of surprise, and desire, shot down from her belly to her sex, where she automatically shifted to let him rub against her there.
He murmured a soft groan against her mouth, and slid one hand around to cup her breast as he rocked gently against her. Mercédès gasped when she felt the awakening between her legs, the lust swell there, burgeoning and lifting after so many years of nothing.
There were so many layers between his hand and her breast—corset, chemise, bodice—that she could barely sense the thumb that tried to stroke over the top of it, yet she felt the tightening and heaviness grow, the surge of sensation gathering in her nipple. She arched, bowing her back, pressing up into his palm, pushing away everything but the beautiful, living sensations channeling through her, all centering into the moist throb of her sex.
Mercédès pulled at the tiny silk knots that acted as buttons on his shirt, looking up as he raised his face to the ceiling and released a long, shuddering breath as if recognizing her final acquiescence. Beneath the silk she found warm, smooth skin, the muscles there flexing beneath her fingertips as he held himself up on trembling arms.
“Let me,” he said, rolling to the side, then off the bed, his shirt flapping with his sudden movements. He shrugged it off, and it fluttered down into the darkness beyond the bed as he came to kneel next to her. She saw his chest, the dark tan marks from rolled-up sleeves and the vee of an unbuttoned shirt, and the pale white of the rest of his skin, fairly glowing in the faint light. He was lean and rangy, with wiry muscles roping along his arms to the gold bands at his wrists, and boxy shoulders, and a flat belly with only the narrowest trail of hair leading down to his trousers.
Pulling her to sit upright, he moved around behind her, and again she felt the tightening and loosening of her bodice . . . but this time she didn’t hesitate. Mercédès pulled off her slippers and unrolled her silk stockings as she felt the final give of her bodice. As it opened and fell away from its high neck and the covering of her shoulders and bodice, she was aware that he was already unlacing her corset, tugging and jolting urgently as if unfamiliar with such trappings.
Suddenly, two warm, raspy hands slid around, cupping her breasts from behind. The chill of his golden armbands was a shock to her as they brushed against the sensitive skin beneath her arms, and she gasped . . . but then she forgot everything but what he was doing.
The brush of long whiskers—softer than Fernand’s short, bristling mustache—and a warm mouth on the side of her neck, sucking and licking just beneath her ear, just at her most sensitive spot. . . . How could he have known? How could she have forgotten?
He nibbled and sucked and licked, and she gasped and closed her eyes, feeling her pip swell even further, knowing that her legs were getting damp from its moistness. He caught each nipple between a thumb and forefinger, gently tweaking and caressing, teasing them into hard points and making her breathing come faster and harder.
She twisted in his arms, her sagging dress and corset a bundle of confused fabric and lace and boning. Their mouths met again, and she slipped her hands down between them, grasping his heavy cock where it strained through the silk.
Dios mio, she thought. . . . How could a man hide his arousal in trousers such as this? It was almost as if he were naked. She could feel the ridge of his head, slide her fingers along the sweet curve of the erection that jutted freely. The silk made warm friction, and he tensed and stilled as she thumbed over the foreskin of his cock’s head, down over the front, where she felt the smallest dampness, and back up and over.
His breathing was heavy and raspy, and hers matched; the room was tight and close again, and suddenly he had her back on the cushions, pulling away from her teasing hands and lifting her skirts. He wasted no time, bringing his hands up her thighs, under the layers of skirt and crinoline and chemise, finding that pulsing wetness of her sex. She let her legs splay open and felt the weight of her dress and its undergarments lifted from her hips and piled on her belly. His hands were gentle but firm on the insides of her thighs, spreading them just at the juncture where her sex was now bare to him, to the open room.
He used his thumb to slide up along the front of her sex, slipping and sliding sensuously, slowly and thoroughly between her labia, into their folds, and around her tight pip, down inside her quim. Mercédès moaned, closed her eyes, and let her hips thrash as much as they could under his relentless thumb. Up and down, around and down and in and out, it moved, slowly, easily . . . and she felt her pleasure gathering there, building and throbbing and pounding.