She got a brief look of a second room through its open door. It was plainer than the first, but both lacked personal touches of any kind. A handsome bed stood against the far wall, a wardrobe on another, a rug similar to the one in the front room also covering this oak floor. A basin gleamed in the soft afternoon light from the one window.
“I haven’t required much,” Mallory said in explanation, crossing the sitting room to lift a bottle of whiskey. It was the middle of the afternoon, but Eleanor welcomed the idea. “Mistral provides meals, there is a communal lavatory . . . ” He trailed off, dribbling whiskey into two glasses.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said when he pressed the whiskey into her hand. But glimpsing his rooms, his home, was very like getting a glimpse of Mallory, post-Caroline. There was little that was personal, little that was him, here. They were rooms for work and sleep alone, and she felt thankful she had been allowed to see him outside this space.
She sank onto the couch with a small groan, realizing only then how tired she was. She had not slept on the flight back to Paris, too eager to reach her father and confirm his condition. She looked at Mallory, to see the smudges beneath his own eyes. He had not slept either.
“You will forgive me—I don’t have proper guest accommodations,” he said.
Eleanor grinned at the formality of his words. When uneasy, he still fell back on such. She had no doubt his unease came in part from having her here—in this scant place he called home. Even though he had brought her here, it would be strange to have a woman within these walls. “I’m comfortable right here,” she said and took a drink of the whiskey.
“I never have guests. Auberon’s more family than guest at this point.” He finished his whiskey in one gulp. “Here.”
He joined her on the couch and lifted one of her boots into his lap. As though he had done it a hundred times before, his fingers pulled at the bootlaces, easing them apart. Eleanor didn’t protest. She cradled her whiskey in her lap. The long days were beginning to blur together.
“You haven’t had these off often since . . . On the Nuit, you—” He broke off as he pulled the first boot free. “Forgive me. I don’t mean to . . . That is . . . ” He laughed now, a low, rich sound that made Eleanor think of his advance on her in the hallway.
“We were both barefoot on the Nuit,” she said, remembering. She felt the warmth spread through her body, but knew the whiskey wasn’t to blame. It had been a long while since she had spent time alone with a man, a man who had a plain interest in her. She wriggled her freed toes; when Mallory appeared reluctant to reach for her other boot, she offered it to him. He set to work on the laces.
“Are you hungry?” he asked, sliding his finger beneath one pair of crossed lacings and then the next. “Mrs. Gonne keeps a brilliant kitchen here.”
Eleanor closed her eyes; she thought of Mallory in the library, angry over the idea that Christian had been in her rooms. Angry enough that he had marked her. As his? She opened her eyes to find Mallory studying her, his eyes intent.
“I am hungry,” she said, but it was not food that called to her. Still, these things that did call—the desire to know more of Mallory’s mark upon her—were things that should wait. And yet, there would be no Cleo knocking upon the door this time. No Gin. No Auberon. A shiver coursed down her spine at the very idea. Was it fear or anticipation, or some heady mix of both? She wasn’t sure.
Mallory tugged her second boot off and dropped it to the floor. With his fingers encircling her stocking-clad ankle, he shifted on the couch, closer to her, his mouth mere inches from her own. She wondered if he could feel her pulse and the way it pounded, having pooled into her ankle where he held her.
“You drive me to deep distraction, Miss Folley,” he whispered. He moved closer, his cheek brushing hers, and she thought she could smell the dark myrrh of him, the edge of the animal wanting out. “I shall see what Mrs. Gonne has prepared today, so at least one hunger may be satisfied.”
Eleanor exhaled when Mallory stepped away. He lingered, looking down at her with a hunger of his own before he crossed to the door and let himself out. She slid back into the pillows, holding her whiskey close, and listened to the retreat of his footsteps down the hallway. She listened for Mallory to come back, but when he did, she was already asleep.
Dublin, Ireland ~ Sometime in 1870
Eleven-year-old Eleanor crouched under the kitchen table and stared in rapt astonishment at the book her father had made for her. Better than even the silhouette whirligig of a few years ago, this book was a surprise each time she opened it. She was almost afraid to touch it, fearful that the delicate temple walls would crumble.
She opened the book, the back of it creaking, and the page before her sprang to life. A small paper mechanism turned within the book and its folds of paper and caused the temple to rise from the pages, to stand in three dimensions before her. She stroked a finger across the temple wall and it held.
Black lines at the base of the temple resolved themselves into people as the temple came upright; her father had left the people for her to paint if she wanted. So, too, the temple itself, with its gently bulging columns and stone-block walls. Eleanor pictured the people in colored linens, the temple walls as brilliant as sunshine.
“Ren, why can’t you understand?”
Her mother’s voice, from above the canopy of the kitchen table. Eleanor looked up but didn’t move from her book, listening to the whisper of paper across its old surface.
“I understand exactly, Lila. Exactly what you mean to do.” Her father’s voice was tired, sounding the way it did when Eleanor asked one time too many to see his collection of bones.
Dalila Folley’s feet had been resting flat against the floor, but she moved now, perching one foot atop the other. Eleanor watched them, comparing them to her father’s feet, presently encased in ratty slippers, but pale when they were not. Where her mother was the color of rich Egyptian soil, her father was fresh cream with a sprinkling of freckles.
“I have supported this for almost ten years now, Lila. I don’t know why . . . ” There was a pause and a slow exhalation. “I don’t know why you can’t stop.”
Eleanor turned the page in her book, collapsing the temple and causing a sphinx to rise in the pages that followed. There was a soft thump from the tabletop, perhaps a fist against the scarred wood. They thought she was in bed sleeping, but Eleanor had to have one last look at her magical book before sleeping, and she had left the book under the kitchen table.
“And I should stop now? Now, when I have found her?”
More papers shuffled, and Eleanor stared into the eyes of the sphinx, wishing the creature might unravel the riddle being spoken above. The folded paper remained only that, folds that might look like an ancient mouth, but were silent until she made them move.
“I have already started the process, Ren. Gaining permissions. I intend to excavate. How can you ask me to stop?” Dalila’s voice broke on the edge of tears. “How?”
Eleanor watched her father’s feet swing away as he maneuvered himself out of his chair. And then his knees, striking the kitchen floor when he knelt beside his wife’s chair.
“I cannot bear to lose you,” he whispered.
Eleanor heard the soft sound of lips against lips, and she pressed a finger over the sphinx’s mouth. Shh.
“I cannot bear it, Lila. I thought I would be able to. I thought we would have enough time, but there is never enough, not even with the damnable Glass.”
“Come with me,” Dalila whispered.
He moved away from her then, faster than a man of his age should have been able to. Eleanor watched his feet stalk a path across the scarred wood floor, deeper into the kitchen.
“How can you ask that of me?”
“We could all go—”
“Absolutely not.”
“Ren—”
“No.”
He left the kitchen then, and Eleanor watched her mother’s toes curl. She hear
d her mother crying, a sound that was uncommon at best from Dalila Folley. She moved from the table a moment later, feet padding down the hall after Renshaw, and Eleanor was left alone with the paper sphinx. She lifted her finger from its mouth.
“Tell me what it means,” she whispered to the sphinx, but the beast remained silent.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Paris, France ~ February 1886
“Virgil?”
“Coming.”
Virgil closed the small wooden chest and slid it deeper onto his wardrobe shelf, until it pressed against the back and could go no farther. He set another box in front of it, then turned to the other boxes on his bed. Two boxes, everything he had of Caroline, or at the least, everything he was willing to hand over to her parents. They didn’t need what was in the smaller box, he reasoned. One box of clothing, one box of more personal items, including her framed petals and pressed leaves from her travels. He pictured Sabrina Irving hanging them in her parlor; they would make a nice pairing with the botanical prints she already possessed, spreading faded and green against the bright lemon wallpaper.
He carried the boxes into the sitting room, where Howard and Sabrina Irving perched upon his couch, the picture of grief. Both wore black, Sabrina’s white-blond hair draped with a black veil; in this they matched Virgil, but in little else.
“This should be all of it,” Virgil said and set the boxes on the table before them. “There was never much, with Caroline being so often away . . . ”
Virgil tried to explain the lack of items, but neither Irving was bothered by the quantity of boxes. Neither seemed interested in the least, if he had to be honest with himself. Howard had mentioned cleaning out the small room Caroline kept in Cairo; had the bulk of her belongings been there? He had wanted to get these final things to her parents before moving to the rooms Mistral was so generous to provide, but Howard and Sabrina had wanted to come together. Today was their first opportunity, a day when snow silently fell beyond the windows that looked toward Notre Dame.
“Is there anything you need, Virgil, dear?”
Sabrina asked the question, but her voice sounded distant, as though she could never give him whatever he might request. She reached for one of the boxes he had brought, seemed about to open it, then pulled her black-gloved hand back into her lap.
“No,” Virgil said. “There’s nothing.” What could any of them give one another? Not even comfort in this strange time. Virgil couldn’t fathom how he was supposed to grieve for this woman, this woman he had killed.
“We won’t keep you,” Howard Irving said, and touched his wife’s shoulder. They rose as one from the couch, Howard lifting both boxes. “As you said. Not much here.”
There was never much, Virgil thought as he walked them the short distance to the door. There, Sabrina lost her tenuous control and began to weep. She reached blindly for Virgil, clutching at his arms until he pulled her into an awkward embrace.
“Oh, Virgil, she was all we had.” Sabrina bent her head against Virgil’s chest, and Virgil could do no more than hold her while she sobbed. “How can we—Why—?” Anything she might have said was consumed by her tears.
Virgil swallowed hard. Mistral informed him her parents had been told that Caroline died on the northern coast of Africa in the line of duty. They knew nothing of her journey to the Russian Empire or the true cause of her death. Nor had they seen her body, sealed in a lead-lined coffin. As Virgil looked over Sabrina’s bent head and into Howard’s eyes, he saw something that made him doubt their ignorance. Irving’s eyes were hard, flinty, and while it could have been only grief, it felt like something more. Virgil told himself it was his own guilt that made him feel such. How could it not?
“One more day,” Sabrina whispered. “If we could have only that. She—“ Sabrina lifted her head now and smiled at Virgil through the tears that mottled her cheeks. “She mentioned children the last time we spoke.”
Virgil managed a weak smile, hoping Sabrina wouldn’t read the truth behind it. “We spoke of children,” Virgil said. Of not having them. Of never having them.
“Come on, Sabrina, we’ve kept the boy long enough.” Howard nodded to Virgil. “Son, I’ll be seeing you.”
Virgil nodded and opened the door for them, allowing them into the hallway beyond. Howard balanced the boxes in one arm, guiding Sabrina with the other. Virgil watched until they entered the elevator, then ducked back into the apartment, believing he closed the door on more than just the corridor that day.
Paris, France ~ October 1889
Now Virgil took the small wooden chest from the back of wardrobe shelf and brought it to his bed. He sat, holding the box on his lap as though it contained vipers or explosives. Nothing so dramatic, he reminded himself and opened the box.
He pulled out a copy of his and Caroline’s wedding invitation, followed by the cold circle of her wedding ring. These he set aside, withdrawing a small journal (leather-bound with a tied band), a dried and yellowed rose (from Caroline’s wedding bouquet), a small chandelier crystal fashioned into a pendant (a gift from Imogene, to reinforce Caroline’s “sparkly.”)
They were small things, things that didn’t shout Caroline’s name to him, but still anchored her in his mind. He took up the journal and untied the band holding it closed.
Caroline’s handwriting was as precise as Mistral’s own machine-written telegrams. The book was filled with a variety of meetings, only one of which Virgil was certain was true. On their wedding date, Caroline had written his name and drawn a small flower with branching grape leaves. It was so unlike her; it was the one thing that gave Virgil hope that her love hadn’t been a ruse. Hadn’t been another lie. Some part of her, surely, had loved him. Hadn’t she?
While Eleanor slept undisturbed on the couch, Virgil stretched out on his bed, flipping through the pages he hadn’t viewed in more than three years. All lies, he thought; places Caroline never went, because she was too busy pretending—
A dried flower fell out of the book with a whisper, alighting on his chest. Virgil plucked it between thumb and forefinger and realized that it wasn’t a flower at all. It was a dried grape leaf.
He twirled the leaf by its stem and marveled at its presence in Caroline’s journal. What’s simple is true, he reminded himself as he listened to Eleanor’s even breathing from the other room.
He knew, then, where the fourth ring was.
Virgil couldn’t let Eleanor sleep. Not with this idea bursting to life in his mind. He paced the sitting room for a good five minutes, debating while Eleanor slept on. He set the leaf on the table and paced more; he lit a fire in the fireplace and paced a new path. Still, at last, he had to crouch beside Eleanor and shake her awake. He couldn’t stand it—needed another person to share his theory. His crazy theory. Eleanor groaned a little as she came awake and muttered something about a jackal. She looked startled to find Virgil there.
“Sleeping beauty,” he murmured. “I’ve things to show you.”
“No spindles,” she said as he helped her sit up.
“Never that,” Virgil promised and took Eleanor’s hand, opening it so that her palm lay flat. Onto it, he placed the grape leaf.
“It’s a grape leaf,” she said around a yawn. “Mallory . . . Virgil. I’m not fully awake, but I’m right, yes?”
Virgil settled onto the couch beside her. “You are correct. It was in Caroline’s book, you see.”
“Mmm.” Eleanor yawned again, not bothering to cover her mouth as she still held the grape leaf. “I don’t see.” She leaned into Virgil, still drowsy from sleep. “It looks old. You know, one of the earliest things I ever found was the impression of a leaf pressed into a stone, and as a child, it was like a miracle, for I couldn’t understand it: how a soft thing like a leaf might leave the mark of itself on something as hard as a stone.”
Virgil slid an arm around Eleanor, knowing that he was coming to understand how such a thing was possible. How a soft thing like an Eleanor might leave the mark of h
erself on something as hard as he.
“One thing Caroline enjoyed outside of her work was flowers and plants,” he said slowly. This idea was maddening, and he wanted to voice it with care. “She was always bringing home little bits from her missions. In retrospect, I suppose this was the first way I began to realize that Caroline went places other than where she said she was going. She framed a collection of them, petals and leaves. It was something I returned to her parents. But this—” He touched the leaf on Eleanor’s palm. “—this ended up in a box of items I kept.”
“Virgil?”
“The vineyard,” Virgil said. “Chateau Mallory.”
Eleanor shifted on the couch: not out of his hold, but deeper into it. She set the grape leaf on the table, then met Virgil’s gaze. Waiting. He tried to order his thoughts.
“Caroline was only at the vineyard once, for the wedding. I never took her there before—there was never the opportunity, and she never wanted to go.”
“Virgil, this leaf could have come from anywhere—”
“But I don’t think it did.” He remained excited by the idea continuing to take shape in his mind. “Caroline wasn’t sentimental. She marked our wedding in her book with a grape leaf, but beyond that, everything was precise and cold. Facts only, no emotion. Taking a keepsake from where we wed makes little sense to me, unless it was also a reminder to her of something else. Something practical.”
“And we were guided back here,” Eleanor said. “Just so I’m certain we’re operating on the same theory, you think Caroline hid a ring at the vineyard.”
With the words out, Virgil could only nod. It sounded ridiculous, as ridiculous as the first time he and Eleanor had spoken of the Glass aloud, or debated if the Lady was her grandmother.
“Why would she choose the vineyard?” Eleanor asked.
Rings of Anubis: A Folley & Mallory Adventure Page 30
