His hands slid around her waist and he pressed a soft kiss against her mouth. Eleanor opened her mouth to his and slid her arms under the drape of his coat. Her fingers smoothed over his vest, over the lump within one pocket. She did not pause but wrapped her arms fully around him.
“Not here,” Christian murmured.
“No, not here,” she agreed and stepped away from him. This time, her fingers did skim into his vest pocket, scooping the pouch carefully into her hand. She had learned to pick pockets as a child, for her father usually carried interesting things he didn’t want anyone else to see. Eleanor palmed the pouch and let it vanish into her own trouser pocket as Christian stepped away. His eyes were on the crumbling columns and not her.
“Can you imagine this place?” he asked her and turned in a slow circle to look around them. “Of course you can—it’s what you do.”
If he smiled, Eleanor missed it, her attention straying to the bit of bright light on the otherwise black hillside. Her heart beat a steady rhythm inside her chest, and she slipped her hand into her pocket, feeling the item inside the leather pouch. It could only be a ring.
“Will you draw this place for me, Eleanor?” He kept his voice low, reverent.
She looked back at Christian and said, “Yes.” She wanted very much to add the image of this place to her book. It would almost be easy to forget about the ring, to forget how he’d obtained it. It was also easy to lie to herself.
“Isn’t this breathtaking!” Caroline crossed to them, her lamp still bright, illuminating an arc of space around her. To Eleanor, she looked like an angel dropped down from the starry heavens, one angel bent on mischief which Eleanor couldn’t fully name.
Eleanor bade them both goodnight and hoped Caroline proved a distraction for Christian. At the sound of his rumbling laughter, it seemed guaranteed. In the Remous, Eleanor slipped into a single bunk along the wall, pulled the blanket over her, and withdrew the leather pouch. She had almost hoped she was wrong, but the gold ring that fell into her palm was the Lady’s scarab. Eleanor closed her trembling hand around it. Part of her thought the world would shimmer away, that the ring would carry her back to her mother—or at least the moment of her loss.
She could not see her mother for all the dust that churned. Every way she turned there was another horse, the complaint of sandy gears, the whinny of a creature bound inside the clockwork, the slap of a tail or a rein . . .
The Remous stayed solid around her, no portal of light opening to carry her away, no mechanical horses to knock her to the ground. She would have welcomed that portal, no matter where it led. To her mother or elsewhere. She was growing weary of the search, of the idea that those closest to her were compounding the difficulty.
Eleanor turned the ring over in her fingers. What the hell was Christian about? Had he planned to meet Miss Irving here all along? How had she come to have a ring at all?
These answers, she decided, didn’t matter. Not tonight. Tonight there was a ring, a ring she hadn’t seen in more than a dozen years. She fought between anger and sleep, until she heard Christian and Caroline return to the ship. To Eleanor’s surprise, Christian denied Caroline when she made an intimate advance and directed her to a single bunk rather than drawing her into his own.
Eleanor stayed in her bunk until the pair fell asleep. Christian didn’t take long, and Eleanor found it amazing Caroline didn’t get up and prowl the ship after he dropped off. Clearly she had need of Christian for a while longer.
Eleanor returned the ring to its pouch and slid it into her vest, where it pressed against her ribs. She crept out of the Remous with her pack and dropped onto the ground, listening for any signs of pursuit or discovery. All stood silent, and she took the time to retrieve her lamp from the column before leaving.
Christian was a creature of habit and would wake with the first sunlight of the new day. Eleanor took advantage of the habit now, feeling a twinge of regret. Without him, she couldn’t have covered nearly so much ground in her search, having no funds to secure a ship of her own. But with him— Was he using her for his own ends?
Without another thought for him, she moved through the broken stones beyond the ruin, toward the flickering light on the distant hillside.
CHAPTER FOUR
Paris, France ~ October 1889
It was Virgil’s fondest desire to seek shelter in the opium den and lose himself to the bliss of the drug, which was why he suspected Auberon stayed by his side all evening after leaving the Galerie des Machines. A new wave of guards stood outside the main doors, alert for further incursions. Virgil felt it both foolish and useless. Mistral had made its point, such as it was. If Eleanor failed to cooperate, her family would become a target.
He didn’t see Eleanor Folley bending to threats. She had likely experienced worse in her travels, and the most regrettable aspect of today’s attack would be whatever became of her friendship with Mrs. Juliana Day. The woman hadn’t known of Eleanor’s exploits, nor did Eleanor want her to know. Virgil chewed on that as he and Auberon stepped into the night, for he knew what it was to hold a secret and pray no one discovered it.
“I think we have a firm duty to remain here,” Auberon said.
Virgil looked at Auberon, reading from his voice that rather than it being a duty, it would be a delight to spend the evening at the Exposition Universelle. Auberon grasped Virgil by the arm and pulled him deeper into the eighty-some-odd buildings that clustered at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Did light gleam off the surface of a lagoon? Was it was deep enough to drown his friend in?
Evening crept closer, but many of the buildings displayed their mastery over electricity, to tempt the crowds into staying well past sunset. Even the tower supported a beacon at its topmost point, spreading brilliant light across the whole of the Exposition.
“Ah—eels! Come on, old man.”
Auberon pulled a reluctant Virgil across the cobblestone walks toward a profusion of vendors, around which clustered parents and their children. Outside of his sister’s flock, he and children didn’t usually get on, but neither did he get on with the eels Auberon enjoyed.
“Why is it always eels with you?” Virgil murmured and drew his arm free from Auberon’s hold. The scents of potatoes, pea soup, and spice cake assaulted Virgil’s nose and awakened his own appetite.
Auberon grinned, a bright flash of teeth in his dark face. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
Perhaps it was the wolf in him that refused something as wriggly and slimy as eels. Virgil’s nose wrinkled as they neared the vendors and Auberon set to ordering. The eel vendor tipped his head toward Virgil and Virgil shook him off, also trying to dislodge a child who stepped upon his foot.
“Sebastian!”
Sebastian’s mother grasped him by the arm and pulled him back to her side, though not before the cup of cider in the youngster’s hand tipped and spilled a warm shower all over Virgil’s shoe.
“Oh, sir, forgive him, please.”
Virgil stared at his shoe and only realized he was growling when Auberon nudged him and insisted to the woman that no harm was done. Auberon thrust a meat pie into Virgil’s hands and took him by the arm once more to lead him away from the vendors.
“Your hackles are up, old man,” Auberon said. “Vendor mentioned something about a Cairo Street. Thought we could look.”
A path of cider footprints trailed in their wake as they moved deeper into the Exposition. Virgil was aware that Auberon continued to talk, but he registered few of the actual words. Hunger had taken him over. He devoured bite after bite of meat pie, trying not to look at the fried fish and hot eels that Auberon tore into.
They walked in companionable silence for some time, observing the Exposition and its crowds around them. The walkways were mostly themed: an Italian street flowed into a Grecian scene, which then melted into Egypt. Virgil followed Auberon into what purported to be Cairo, a street populated by Egyptians and smelling of exotic spice and oils. Youths in brightly col
ored robes called for people to come ride the donkeys; several finely dressed Parisians attempted it, though one lady could not coordinate her dainty boots and voluminous skirts, and one gentleman found himself entirely too tall, feet dragging on the street to the delight of the Egyptians. Auberon laughed out loud, though before Virgil could find any humor in it, he discovered something else.
Eleanor Folley stood a distance down the street, studying what looked like a fragment of a column propped against one of the manufactured stucco walls of the Cairo scene. Hieroglyphs and a faint splash of paint covered the column, but Virgil’s attention stayed on Eleanor, taking in the curl of her hair against the nape of her neck, the cut of her vest and the way it fitted against her waist, the sudden new curve of her bottom in trousers. It was like discovering a new land, of sorts. Virgil tried to take note of anything that might give him a clue as to what she was about this evening, but he kept coming back to her trousers.
“Virgil.”
He forced himself to look at Auberon, who stood a few steps away. Virgil had come to a standstill with what remained of his meat pie dripping juices down his hand. The scents of cider and meat pie twined around him until his own nose twitched in revulsion, but he straightened and stood taller. Forced his attention from Eleanor’s trousers. Less wolf, more gentleman.
“A remarkable tweed,” Virgil said and stepped once more to Auberon’s side.
Auberon’s mouth twitched, but he said nothing. Virgil withdrew his handkerchief to clean up the mess of his pie, then consumed the last few bites. His eyes strayed back to Miss Folley as, beside her, Mrs. Day gave a tentative smile. Eleanor looked annoyed, and Virgil wondered how she’d been lured from protecting the Folley booth. Perhaps her father remained there yet.
“It’s quite possible,” Virgil said, “Hubert may try to deliver the ring to Miss Folley.”
“That’s our best-case scenario, for we have only to watch her to capture him and reclaim the ring,” Auberon said, and then it was he who stopped to gape at something farther down the Cairo street. “God’s trousers.”
“What is it about trousers this evening?” Virgil looked, but didn’t immediately see what had caught Auberon’s attention. It was difficult enough to drag his own from Miss Folley.
“Miss Barclay is here.”
Those four words from Auberon caused Virgil to look anew at the crowds before them, and this time he found with ease the source of Auberon’s distress. The corner building of the Cairo scene was edged with brightly painted columns, between which stood dancers on shorter podiums. Short beaded bodices of magenta and copper and gauzy flowing skirts of scarlet left midriffs quite bare. Were it not for the golden chains that draped over their bellies, they would be wholly exposed. The women didn’t move their legs to the music, but rather their bellies, causing the chains to shimmer in the light.
Among these dancers was Cleo Barclay, a woman who worked for Mistral’s sister agency, Sirocco, in Cairo. While Virgil knew Cleo was well versed in all things Egyptian (he presumed her given name had cursed her with an interest from a young age), he had no idea she could belly dance. Judging by the half-strangled look on Auberon’s face, neither did he.
The light from three nearby lamps spilled over her sepia skin and gilded her curling, ebon hair from root to tip. She was draped in gold jewelry around belly and neck, these metals emphasizing the amber of her eyes even from a distance, but nothing was quite so fabulous as her mechanical arms. From the elbows down, her arms gleamed in gold and copper, a collection of gears, cogs, and other fine metalwork. Her fingers were miniature masterpieces that now worked to click brass castanets in accompaniment to the small band of musicians nearby. Drums, a flute, the rhythmic rattle of a tambourine; it was a cacophony one could not ignore.
“I see no trousers,” Virgil said. The idea of trousers brought his thoughts back to Eleanor, who appreciated the dancers as well.
Auberon’s elbow met Virgil’s ribs, hard.
“Mmmph.” Virgil took a step away, trying not to chuckle. The last he knew, Cleo was confined to Sirocco’s private hospital in Cairo after an accident on the site of a temple dig. Cleo had been lucky to escape with her life. When they managed to extract her from under a fallen statue, it had been at the expense of her arms. Doctor Peregrine Fairbrass had been convinced he could save her and clearly had.
Virgil’s face brightened. “Did you eat a bad eel? It’s good news, you fool.” He gave Auberon a nudge. “She’s alive and she’ll love Paris—won’t she?—and likely even Eiffel’s god-awful tower. If she doesn’t demand to visit the upper levels, I’ll buy your next eels.”
Auberon grunted, his mouth set in a firm line. “Did you say you have a map? With the Lady’s excavation marked?”
“Indeed I do.” Yet Virgil made no move to withdraw the map from his pocket. He took his time in, once again, cleaning his hands on his handkerchief, watching the dancers, and grinning broadly when Cleo picked him out in the crowd. He lifted a hand to her and she waved, her expression faltering when she noted Auberon.
Some matters, Virgil decided, were painfully obvious to those who were not so close to the subject. Auberon loved her and she him, and they were both thick-headed clods to continue denying it.
“She’ll appreciate you more than the tower, I wager,” Virgil said and at last drew the map from his jacket pocket. “Could be good to have Miss Barclay’s input on this matter, you know. She and Eleanor—Miss Folley—might work well together.”
“Eleanor, is it?” Auberon looked away from Cleo’s dance and snatched the map from Virgil.
“Entirely too familiar of me, I would agree.” Virgil clasped his hands behind his back, forcing himself to watch Auberon unfold the map. He wanted to look at Eleanor again, but didn’t, and the wolf inside him growled. This evening needed to end so that he might sink into tranquil opium vapors and escape his battle for a little while. In the meanwhile, he touched the ring he wore, hoping for a little balance.
“You know, you have my apologies.”
As the musicians wound down and the crowd applauded the dancers’ efforts, Virgil thought he had misheard Auberon. He looked at his partner, who had unfolded the map but whose attention was still on Virgil.
“I knew they meant to send those agents and said nothing.”
“And you could have done what? Overstepped the line the director drew around you?”
“For the sake of my partner, yes.”
The guilt in Auberon’s voice was plain. Virgil touched Auberon’s arm. “All things considered, Miss Folley may well have needed that extra push.” Still, he didn’t relish that he and Eleanor had been positioned by Mistral to take the lives of those agents. “If Hubert doesn’t attempt to return the ring to Miss Folley, there’s no telling what he might be about.”
He showed Auberon the small mark on the map in the stretch of desert where Dalila Folley had discovered the Lady. The Lady had been fully unearthed the following week by Sirocco archaeologists and carted away in secrecy. Cleo Barclay had a hand in that, and in seeing the Lady stayed safe all these years.
Had Caroline known about the Lady? About Mistral’s involvement with her? During their time together, she had always been vague about her duty stations. The research Virgil had done after her death had shown she spent most of her time in Egypt. All things considered, it wouldn’t make sense for her not to know.
“We need her,” Virgil said as the dancers swayed into motion at the beginning of another song. “Miss Folley knows things it would take us years to unearth.” And she may hold information about Caroline.
“She has put it all behind her—the tomb raiding, I mean.”
It was Auberon who looked toward Eleanor this time. Virgil watched his eyes swing that way, but didn’t follow it. He stayed focused on the map. The map didn’t involve difficult things like curves of tweed.
“I don’t think she’s the kind of person to spend her entire life behind walls,” Virgil said underneath the thrum of the music.
“While she enjoys working with her father, she would rather be in the field.” He knew that much from her file, but he had also seen it clearly in her eyes. She loved her family, but she loved being in the wide world, breaking it open to see what it contained.
Auberon looked to Virgil. “Not that her father has a shred of true respect among his peers, and her ties to Hubert don’t exactly place her in a good light.”
“We can’t know what that relationship was,” Virgil said, and now did look for Eleanor in the crowd. She and Mrs. Day continued to watch the dancers, Mrs. Day laughing when one of the girls demonstrated a dance movement to her and suggested she imitate it. He suspected he knew exactly what Eleanor’s relationship with Hubert had been. Was his theft of the ring part of an elaborate courtship? “But why wait eighteen years?”
“What’s that?” Auberon drew his attention from the dancers again.
“Eighteen years.” Virgil looked up. “Since Dalila Folley unearthed the Lady and disappeared. And now Hubert’s stolen the ring that might open that portal again.”
“Egyptians,” Auberon said as if it explained everything, and gestured to those around them in the street. “Align this with that on a certain date—maybe eighteen years had to pass before it could be opened—and then, magic.” He wriggled his fingers in the air, and added in a more level tone, “That portal is conjecture.”
Virgil allowed that was true, though he sensed that to Eleanor it was anything but conjecture.
Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure Page 7
