I come from, we call that a frenemy.”
Mallory smiles. “What a good word. Is it Welsh? Frenemy. I’ll remember that.” She doesn’t leave. She takes a step to his bedside table. In her hands is a decanter and a plate. “I brought you a piece of pie. Margrave mentioned the other day that you liked apple pie and there was hardly any left after supper. I saved you a piece and some wine if you’re thirsty.”
“It’s after four in the morning. Leave it. I’ll have it for breakfast.”
She sets it by his bed.
He waits.
“I’m so tired, sire,” Mallory whispers.
Julian swings open the covers.
She takes off her clothes, folds them, stacks them neatly in the corner, and climbs into bed with him. He spoons her, draws the quilt over them, and covers her with his arm.
“I’m worried about that man, Mallory,” Julian said. “I can’t help it. I don’t know if you are safe with him.”
“Oh, sire,” she coos. “You are so kind-hearted. Trust me, you don’t have to worry about him.”
She nestles against him, milling into him a little, murmuring something sexy and inaudible. Julian starts to say something, but she is already asleep. He lies awake cradling her, running his fingers up and down her arm, remembering how much Josephine had loved falling asleep like this back in L.A., in another life. They would deplete themselves there, too, and fall into a stupor at the break of dawn. What sweet days they were before the demon that lay in wait came for them. What warm days of syrupy, salty bliss, of ocean water, of lilies and superhighways. That wasn’t shadowboxing, that wasn’t a shadowlife. That was real.
Or is this real?
Julian clutches the sleeping girl to him, embraces her in a brothel built into the wall of a palace that’s about to crumble and be dismantled for marble. Josephine, Mia, Mary, Mallory, he whispers. I really believed our time had run out, even as I continued to search for you in the London of my nightmares—or is it the London of my dreams? You are my love, the heat of my heart, raising me in flames above my mundane days and dropping me naked at your feet. Where will all this lead us? Where will all this end? I wish I knew. I wish I could see the future. Because sometimes, even when we are like this, it feels to me that you and I are nothing but winged phantoms, Josephine.
THE FOLLOWING EVENING MALLORY’S AT HIS DOOR AGAIN. “The lord is back.”
“He’s here every night now?” Julian says. “Doesn’t he have some government business to attend to? A bill to veto? A bishop to consecrate? A family of his own, perhaps? You’d think a man of his, um, stature had some other hobbies.”
“He’s a widower,” Mallory says. “He works late, and to unwind he comes here to spend a little time with me. I offered him a double with me and Marg. But all he wants is you and me.”
That’s all I want, too. You and me. Quietly Julian sits. His body throbs for her. Though not on these terms! he pretends to justify to himself.
Even that’s a lie.
To his marrow, Julian is relieved that the girl in his hands is real. That someone other than him sees Julian make love to her and says, yes! I see her. She is under him, and she is alive. Her arms are around his back. She wraps her legs around him. His hands grip her hips. She bears his weight. She lives. She is not a hallucination. She is not his imagination.
Look, I, the vile creature, see it, too.
The pearls are cast before swine, yes, but they are pearls, and they are cast.
Once again Fabian asks Julian for all sorts of things, and Julian complies. With every fevered caress, Mallory grows more vivid, Fabian more dim, and the silver piles up on the table next to the wine.
Julian almost forgets the man heavy in the chair and sees only the light moaning girl under him. After it’s over and it’s nearly dawn, she knocks on his door again and climbs into his bed. As he cradles her in his arms, he tries to make pillow talk in the foggy minutes before they’re both unconscious. “What kind of name is Mallory? Is it derived from Mary?”
“Mother thought so,” the girl replies. “She was sore mistaken. When she went to baptize me, she found out Mallory was derived not from Mary but from France.”
“Did your mother love France?”
“Oh, no,” Mallory says. “Hence her predicament. When she found out that my name meant suffering in French, she hated France even more.”
Julian also doesn’t like that her name means suffering. “Mallory is a good name.”
“Thank you, sire.”
“I like your name, your face, your voice. I like all of you.”
“Thank you, sire.”
“You can just go ahead and call me Julian.” As you used to.
“Very well.” Then: “Is your name derived from Caesar? Like a conquering emperor, strong in battle, virile, constant as the northern star?”
“I don’t know about that. Maybe the constant part.” He lifts his head off the pillow and leans over her to study her sleepy face. “Mallory, are you quoting Julius Caesar to me?”
She smiles. “I saw it in a playhouse once. Mother and I were walking past the Fortune a few years back when it was still open. They let us in for half a penny. I liked it.”
“Oh, you would, Mal. You would.”
She nestles into him. “Julian … yours is my favorite name in the whole world.”
And the next night, and the next, lust and love abounding.
When Fabian is away one night, Julian falls into a panic. He cannot be without her.
“He’s not here today,” Mallory confirms, peeking into Julian’s room. “You must be so grateful we don’t have to work—again. Now you can finally get a good night’s rest, be refreshed for the morning.” She vanishes before she can see his wounded expression.
Half a minute goes by before she reopens the door and pokes her head in. Her face is lit with a luminous smile. “You keep saying you don’t think I’m funny, sire,” Mallory says. “I just wanted to prove you wrong.”
Julian utterly loses himself in this version of his girl. She is quiet, unassuming, agreeable. She is never painted, yet her mouth is always red; she is youthful and lovely. Her body is abundant everything. Every night Julian’s carnal strings are pulled by his naked puppet master, first in front of Fabian and
