Beast (9 page)

The use of ambergris in perfume blending came to Europe chiefly through contact with the Arabs
during the Crusades.

Charles Harcourt, Prince d'Harcourt

On the Nature and Uses of Ambergris

Charles heard someone behind him calling, but did not imagine that the sound had anything to do with him. it didn't occur to him that Louise Vandermeer would give chase, not even when he heard the tap of footsteps running.

"You!" a voice said firmly, loudly.

He glanced back, just to see what the commotion was. then was stopped by a surprising and irresistible sight: the splendid Miss Vandermeer, breathless and running pell-mell, zig then zag, toward him down the narrow corridor of a rocking ship. He halted so abruptly that she all but ploughed into him. Charles had to set her back onto her feet. How astonishing to find her slender, sturdy arms suddenly warm in his hands. Then he pulled back, bending his head so the folds of his kaffiyeh fell forward. He touched his dark glasses self-consciously, checking, and stepped back. He was about to turn.

"No. you stop where you are!" said the imperial young voice.

He felt the tip of a finger press into his chest. He pushed her finger away as he said. "Excuse me?" He bowed slightly, using this posture to hide his glance over the top of his glasses at her.
My, oh, my, was
she something up close
.

She narrowed her eyes—eyes that were so blue they were violet—large, clear, with long, lush eyelashes. Her hair, thick and shining, was an exceptional color: a dark, ashen beige at the temple that quickly became densely streaked with blond, varying in paleness from a kind of ivory gilt to silvery white.

Her skin, meanwhile, was as flawless as the surface of a plateful of cream, setting off a long-necked, high-boned, hollow-cheeked beauty—a perfect, patrician good-looks. From any distance, from any angle, this girl was impossibly gorgeous.

"You're the one," she said with utter conviction. "I know it." There was a moment, as the ship tilted again, wherein she had to make a decision: She chose to grab the far handrail, stepping away rather than closer.

Charles stepped back as well, pulling himself into the protection of whatever shadows he could find.

Along the floor of the hallway were lines of small electric lights; not much illumination but it was everywhere. More sporadically, and more elegantly, sconces dotted the walls every twenty or so feet, small-bulbed electric "candles" of vaseline glass—only a soft radiance, though more visibility than Charles would have liked. He wanted to retreat from this too well-lit situation; he wanted to stare at Louise Vandermeer while he had her in the light.

"You may as well admit it," she said. She had marvelous stability, her feet braced, her knees giving her a swaying balance. "I recognize your voice, your English, from just the two words you've spoken."

Charles rather doubted this. He was inclined to stonewall, deny everything. Yet somehow this confrontation here in the teeter-tottering hall was so unexpected, so interesting. He found himself saying,

"I intend you no harm.'" He took several more steps backward, while she followed like a hound on a fox.

He wanted to laugh. He was aghast and at the same time vastly entertained by his own scrambling bewilderment. How had she done this? How had she picked him out from among so many other people?

How had she decided he was the one? "Also." he told her, "I must find us a new place to meet.

Anywhere on the open deck has become too dangerous with the storm."

With his admission, she stopped. She put her fists on her waist. "I'm not meeting you anywhere."

He bowed again slightly and kept on backing. "As you wish. Perhaps you shall find what you are looking for another way. It was dangerous, the manner in which you were chasing whatever you are after."

"You just don't bother yourself with what I am 'after.' It—I am none of your concern."

He paused, marginally safe in the shadow of his half-bow, in a penumbra of the double illumination.

"Actually," he said, "you are a puzzle, though a more and more engrossing one." Charles felt this keenly, all at once; he meant it. "What
do
you want, Louise?"

She frowned deeply. "How do you know my name? Who are you?"

"I am whoever, whatever you want me to be."

"Pardon?"

"Come tonight. I will get word to you where. Then, if you want an ear to listen, I shall lend you mine. If you want sympathy, I will give it. If you want advice, I shall find some. And if you want a mouth to kiss you. I shall put my mouth to yours. I am yours to command, my dear."

"Why?"

"For the pleasure of pleasing you."

"Because I'm beautiful." She asked in that faintly amused, faintly condescending tone from last night, "Do you adore me?"

He laughed. "Hardly. And this is the first I have seen you in reasonably good light."

She thought about this, her slender, high-arched brows drawing together into a delicate furrow. "Why then? Why would you want to do anything for me?"

"Because you are so suspicious." He laughed again and kept backing; she kepi following, though more cautiously now, at greater distance. "And tenacious." He shook his head with confounded wonder. "And because you are smart enough to know that coming tonight is a little risky, yet you are so curious—and a little full of yourself—that you will probably come, anyway. Oh, and because you smell like jasmine, only ever so much better."

She contradicted only one part of this: "I am
not
full of myself," she said.

There was something plaintive in her protest; a child's wretched outcry in the face of what she feared was true. Charles felt a twinge of pity—surely misplaced—for this lovely, resourceful, supremely confident human being; then, more concretely, he felt something stop his heel. A wall had come up against it, a bend in the corridor. "Oh, but you are," he told her. "My guess is, You can never quite get away from the fact of your beauty, that you live by it. But not tonight. Tonight, if you meet me, you will do so in the dark."

"No, I won't."

He turned swiftly, cloth sailing as he took the bend in the corridor.

He thought for a moment that she was going to pursue him again. But instead she simply rounded the turn and called after him, "I'll meet you. all right. And when I do, I'll bring my father. And the ship's captain…"

Charles knew she wouldn't. He kept walking, laughing, immensely enjoying himself. She was surprising.

He hadn't predicted her energy or anger or, yes, her astounding willingness and capacity for aggression.

But he felt fairly safe in one prediction: Behind him stood a young lady who routinely circumvented the rules. Louise Vandermeer paid little homage to authority; she would not quickly resort to its protection.

There was no doubt about it, Louise Vandermeer was not the perfect little creature Charles had been given to believe—hardly Papa's little prize, more like Papa's little heartburn. Whichever, Charles wanted more information, and he knew where to get it. His mind was suddenly filled, delighted, with the young woman beside whom, he remembered, Pia had had breakfast.

Thus, he went up the aft staircase, then doubled back to begin navigating through the narrow corridors of the next deck, bracing himself on walls as he rolled with the movement of the ship. Pia would be somewhere through her midmorning change of clothes, her first of many.

He came across her just as she was backing out of her dressing cabin. She and Roland always booked two cabins when they crossed, one for themselves and one for Pia's steamer trunks; in this second cabin she lined up all her trunks and dressed out of them, a real convenience considering she changed her clothes four and five times a day. As she backed out now, bending down to lock the door, the drapes and sweepers of her silver-satin skirt billowed out to take up half the corridor.

Charles moved these aside as he leaned on the doorjamb.

She jumped, stood straight, then frowned. "Charles?" She put her palm to her chest. "It
is
you."

"Who else?" Smiling, he slipped the dark spectacles down his nose to look at her over them.

She asked, "Was that you at breakfast as well?"

"At breakfast?" He shook his head. "I ate breakfast alone." Then he realized the source of confusion.

The kaffiyeh and agal he had talked off a man standing guard at the doors to the suite next to his, one of the bodyguards of the old emir's son. (It hadn't hurt that Charles had known the old emir, nor that he knew about the blessings and respect an Arab placed upon his head apparel.) These fellows had gone to breakfast while Charles had decked himself out. The rest, the glasses and gallibiya, his robe, belonged to him. All in all, a fairly neat disguise, and an attire that he was somewhat familiar with, having lived in clothes like these years ago in Tunisia. He was quite pleased with himself. He wiggled his eyebrows as he grinned over the glasses at Pia. "A regular Arab prince, eh?"

Her relief turned to chagrin. She gave him an aggrieved look. "A regular idiot." she whispered. "What are you doing here? Roland is just inside." She nodded toward the silent, closed door one cabin over, then bent down again, preparing to insert her key into the lock. Charles's shoulder, however, prevented her from fully closing the door. She stood up and turned around, scowling, about to speak.

Charles remembered that she was put out with him. He had completely forgotten their argument. His mind shifted gears. Or tried to. In truth, he mildly resented being put off track of all he wanted to ask her about the girl with whom she'd had breakfast. Dutifully, though, he put his index finger across her open mouth and leaned closer. He bit her ear gently then whispered, "You have calmed down, I trust?" She smelled nice, not like jasmine exactly, but good. And of course she was an adult, a full-grown woman, which had its advantages. He nibbled her ear more enthusiastically.

She shoved at him. "Stop." She glanced up at his face, then down the length of him. Frowning deeply, she said, "You're up to something. What?"

"Cuckolding Roland strikes me as a fine idea suddenly." He grinned and ran his finger along her bare shoulder.

She made a sour face and pushed him all the way back. "Charles," she said, "I sat with your little fiancee at breakfast, and, honestly, this marriage with the Vandermeer girl has to be a joke. She's a child, for God's sake." Pia crossed her arms, perversely refusing to hurry now.

This wasn't exactly the cooperative tone in which he'd hoped to launch this conversation. He decided to attack it obliquely. "How is Roland feeling?" he asked as the floor beneath his feet slowly angled forward.

He had to stand up straight to balance himself.

"Terrible. The doctor has given him something." The boat's continuing list became severe enough that she had to catch herself on her palm to keep from falling into the wall. Something low in the boat creaked, a long crooning groan of steel. Pia grimaced, muttering under her breath, "This damned ship. I took a little of Roland's medicine myself." She looked at Charles. "You aren't the least bit queasy, are you?" He shook his head. She tilted hers. "And you're plotting something. What is it?"

"Nothing." He smiled.

"Not 'nothing,'" she insisted. "You have that wicked look about you." She made a leap: "Your bride."

Satisfied, she chuckled voicelessly. "She has somehow displeased you." Her voice took on a sly note.

"They call her 'Lulu.' Isn't that sweet?"

"No. It's insipid." Charles cocked a brow and threw her a teasing smile. "Though, happily, she doesn't look the least bit like her name."

Pia ignored this, her good humor blooming. "Did you know she has a puppy in the kennel here? And a cat in her stateroom? Children so love animals, don't they?"

He sniffed.

Pia laughed. "I mean, she is eighteen,
really
eighteen, Charles. The conversation at breakfast included Cayenne the cat, her puppy named Bear, her studies at school, oh, and a new French lip color one can only get in Paris. I mean, if you
like
eighteen-year-olds—"

She knew he didn't. But just to be perverse, he told her, "I intend to develop a taste for baby-smooth skin and puppylike eagerness. It shouldn't be too hard: She's quite fetching."

Pia's smile faded ever so slightly. "If she's so appealing, then what's wrong? What are you doing walking about the ship like this?" She indicated his clothing.

"You think I should stay in my rooms and just wait for you?"

"Well, that is what we planned, isn't it?"

"We planned being together most of the time, because Roland gets seasick."

"Well, he's
really
ill now—"

"So should I run to my room? Are you on your way up?"

"No." She let out an exhalation of wounded dignity. Then glanced at him again. "You're having fun. I can tell. You're involved in one of your little machinations. What are you doing, Charles?"

"Will you help?"

"Will you not marry her, if I do?"

"I don't know
what
I'm going to do yet." He contemplated the idea of Louise Vandermeer again.

"She's certainly a lot younger and wilder and"—he paused—"oh, a little sadder, somehow, than I was expecting."

"Sadder? God, Charles. She's a little snot, is what she is. A vile, smart-mouthed little thing who is far too big for her own britches."

He laughed. "What a marvelous display of jealousy. So you'll help?"

She leaned a hip on her fist, thinking about his question, then said, "Perhaps. If you tell me the problem."

"Well, it seems my betrothed is slightly appalled by the notion of a lame, one-eyed husband."

This brought forth a small, involuntary giggle. "Oh, Charles, that is such a silly—"

"Precisely."

Her laughter turned mean as she added, "But what you deserve for playing with children."

"She's not so young that she isn't responsible for her own words and actions, or for keeping her own promises."

"No." Pia's smile grew slowly wider. "So have you figured out something terribly mischievous?"