who, after watching Julie dance with another, came now up the marble stairs.
"I'm asking you to trust in me," Randolph was saying." I guarantee this marriage. All it takes is a little time."
"Surely you don't think I enjoy pressing you," Elliott answered. Thick-tongued. Drunk all right." I'm much more comfortable in a dream world, Randolph, where money simply doesn't exist. But the fact is, we cannot afford such reverie, either of us. This marriage is essential for us both."
"Then I shall go to see Lawrence myself."
Elliott turned to see his son only a few steps away, waiting like a schoolboy for the adults to acknowledge him.
"Father, I badly need consolation," Alex said.
"What you need is courage, young man," Randolph said crossly." Don't tell me you've taken no for an answer again."
Alex took a glass of champagne from the passing waiter.
"She loves me. She loves me not," he said softly." The simple fact is I cannot live without her. She's driving me mad."
"Of course you cannot." Elliott laughed gently." Now, look. That clumsy young man down there is stepping on her feet. I'm sure she'd be very grateful if you came to her rescue at once."
Alex nodded, scarcely noticing as his father took the half-full glass from him and drank down the champagne. He straightened his shoulders and headed back to the dance floor. Such a perfect picture.
"The puzzling part is this," Randolph said under his breath." She loves him. She always has."
"Yes, but she's like her father. She loves her freedom. And frankly I don't blame her. In a way she's too much for Alex. But he'd make her happy, I know that he would."
"Of course."
"And she would make him supremely happy; and perhaps no one else ever will."
"Nonsense," Randolph said." Any young woman in London
would give her eyeteeth for the chance to make Alex happy. The eighteenth Earl of Rutherford?"
"Is that really so important? Our titles, our money, the endless maintenance of our decorative and tiresome little world?" Elliott glanced around the ballroom. This was that lucid and dangerous state with drinking, when everything began to shimmer; when there was meaning in the grain of the marble; when one could make the most offensive speeches." I wonder sometimes if I should be in Egypt with Lawrence. And if Alex shouldn't peddle his beloved title to someone else."
He could see the panic in Randolph's eyes. Dear God, what did the title mean to these merchant princes, these businessmen who had all but the title? It wasn't only that Alex might eventually control Julie, and thereby control the Stratford millions, and that Alex himself would be far easier than Julie to control. It was the prospect of true nobility, of nieces and nephews roaming the park of the old Rutherford estate in Yorkshire, of that miserable Henry Stratford trading on the alliance in every despicable way that he could.
"We're not defeated yet, Elliott," Randolph said." And I rather like your decorative and tiresome little world. What else is there when you get right down to it?"
Elliott smiled. One more mouthful of champagne and he must tell Randolph what else there was. He just might...
"I love you, fine English," Malenka said to him. She kissed him, then helped him with his tie, the soft touch of her fingers against his chin making the hairs rise on his neck.
What lovely fools women were, Henry Stratford thought. But this Egyptian woman he had enjoyed more than most. She was dark-skinned, a dancer by profession - a quiet and luscious beauty with whom he could do exactly what he wanted. You never knew that kind of freedom with an English whore.
He could see himself settling someday in an Eastern country with such a woman - free of all British respectability. That is, after he had made his fortune at the tables - that one great win he needed to put him quite beyond the world's reach.
For the moment, there was work to be done. The crowd around the tomb had doubled in size since last evening. And the trick was to reach his uncle Lawrence before the man was swept up utterly by the museum people and the authorities - to reach him now when he just might agree to anything in return for being left alone.
"Go on, dearest." He kissed Malenka again and watched her wrap the dark cloak about herself and hurry to the waiting car. How grateful she was for