Cleopatra�s Perfume (18 page)

“Cocaine,” was all he said.

“So?” I admitted. We were newly married, but I still retained a wildness in me he had yet to tame. “I’m not hooked.”

“Aren’t you?” He jerked my head back and pulled on my hair, his searing gaze startling me, glaring at my telltale pallor, but I didn’t
flinch. He could see through my artful makeup job. “How long have you been hiding this from me?”

I twisted in his grasp, sneering. “You knew what I was when you married me. A cabaret girl in glossy eye shadow who haunted the nightclubs, smoking, drinking—”

“I
forbid
you to touch that accursed drug ever again.”

“Forbid
me,
Lady Eve Marlowe?” I boasted, emphasizing my new title. “I can do as I wish.”

“Not in my domain. I’m your husband and you’ll act in a manner befitting your station.”

Taunting him, I said, “I imagine you’re fearful what your vapid friends would say if they found out your wife is both a commoner
and
an addict.”

“I don’t care what my friends think or say about us.”

Curious, I studied his face, his clear gray eyes revealing a most unusual thing to me. He was telling me the truth. He
didn’t
care what smart society thought about him
or
me. I also saw a man filled with confidence, a man willing to take control of any situation, even a wayward young wife on drugs. I realized then my husband was indeed lord of the manor. When he looked at me, I instinctively felt I should run from him, but I didn’t.

I asked, “Then why are you acting like this?”

“Because I love you, Eve Charles.”

Eve Charles,
he called me. An involuntary shudder went through me. When we were in a public gathering, he always referred to me as the Lady Eve or Lady Marlowe. In private, he called me Eve, but he rarely mentioned the girl I was when he met me in Berlin.

I drew back, ashamed of my outburst, but I wasn’t ready to concede
to him. Not yet. Denial is the first line of defense for an addict. In a confident voice, I said, “I can handle the drug. It’s not harmful.”

“Not harmful?” Before I could stop him, he ripped open my dress then scooped up the white powder from the rug and rubbed it all over my exposed breasts and down to my belly. I squirmed, but couldn’t escape from his large hands smearing ugly white streaks all over my nude skin.

“What are you doing?” Fear crept into my voice for the first time.

“You want the drug more than you want me, so you shall have it!” he yelled, his angry voice shooting from his lips.

“No, stop,
please!
” I begged him, but he wouldn’t release me.

“One day you will find your flesh filled with open sores, your skin crawling with slimy wormlike creatures only your mind can see,” he said, his breath ragged. His change in demeanor shocked me. Here was a man who could be both brutal and suave and that mesmerized me. “Your brain struggling to think, to remember, but you can’t,” he continued. “The ecstasy you thought you had gone forever.”

He didn’t let up, ranting, rubbing my skin raw with the drug, his words as well as his hands paralyzing my body. Tiny spasms made my legs shake, my arms go limp, my mouth feel numb. In his hands I was but a marionette, suspended between life and my love of the stimulant.

Days dragged into weeks then into months, but he kept watch over me while I went through the hell of withdrawal, screaming for it, begging, completely unhinged, confessing my sins with an urgency I couldn’t stop, ready to do
anything
to get the drug, glaring into my husband’s eyes like a demon starving for the fires of hell.

I couldn’t stop the strong craving eating at me, driving me to get
more cocaine. An unbelievable fatigue settled over me and I couldn’t move. At times I was so weak I needed his support to get out of bed to find my way to the bath. Then when his lordship touched me or held my hand or kissed my cheek, I felt no pleasure, only anxiety and irritability, then intense agitation. I accused him of spying on me, suspected him of stealing my drugs, then I became so depressed I sank into a dark mood as deep as an abyss and wanted to kill myself. When I did sleep, I experienced vivid and unpleasant dreams. When I woke up, agitation again took control of me, making me crawl over the carpet where I spilled the cocaine and try to sniff it up my nose.

When my husband found me sprawled on the floor trying to inhale any tiny white specks I could find, he dragged me to my feet, kicking and screaming. I became so violent he had to tie my wrists to the bedpost while I yelled until I was hoarse, then I whimpered like a child, imploring him to give me just one hit. When he didn’t, I cursed him, then seized with a maniacal frenzy, I thrashed about until from sheer exhaustion I lost consciousness. The strain on Lord Marlowe was terrible and I believe he suffered more than I did, watching me crying and cursing for the drug and unable to do anything but keep it from me.

Our marriage became stronger because of his commitment to rid my mind as well as my body of the poison that had possessed me, yet he also took care of me and protected me during my private war with the intoxicant. Interestingly, our game of dominance became more sensual as I healed, taking risks we’d never dare take with anyone else. I inspired him, Lord Marlowe often told me when he performed intricate rope tying on me, binding my wrists together
in front of me, then throwing one end of the rope over a bar suspended from the ceiling in our hideaway cottage in Coventry, a place we visited often to indulge in our games. He pulled the rope tight so I was stretched taut, releasing the weight from the balls of my feet, my heels suspended in midair, my arms raised with my hands bound high over my head.

Whispering to me in a low, husky voice, he uttered such verbal delicacies as, “Which of your hot little holes shall I torment this evening, milady? The front or the rear? Shall we say the front? Ah, yes, I will make your clit burn until you find relief, but that relief will only be temporary because I shall then circle around to the rear and you will be helpless to stop me.” Then he’d spread my legs wide so he could tie each of my ankles to an iron ring embedded in the wooden floor. I remained still and silent, but inside I was tight with apprehension, knowing what naughty game awaited me.

I loved stretching my body, putting it on display for his lordship to enjoy. I felt regal, worthy of his attention, the distinct smell of the leather restraints evoking a sense of strength and security. I was safe in his hands. He would spend hours tantalizing me with his fingers, his mouth, the tip of his hard cock, his slim, black riding crop arcing in the air before striking my nude buttocks with a pleasant stinging sensation. I hear you gasping, wondering if it hurt. I have to smile at that thought and ask you this: Think about the last time you experienced an orgasm. Wasn’t some amount of pain involved? Don’t be shy. There are only the two of us here. Yes, that’s right. I knew you would admit it. Remember how your orgasm built? Starting with a delicious ache in your groin, then a burning sensation that yearned for release, your heartbeat accelerating, your skin flushed, sweat
dripping from your pores, then an explosion carried you over into oblivion, waves of pleasure crashing over you. So you see, dear reader, the focus of administering the crop to naked buttocks isn’t on pain, but on playing the game.
And
achieving orgasm.

I shall wait before I continue with my story if you find you must take a few minutes to relieve the tension building up in you.

We were a muse-and-maestro duet, my late husband and I, well known in royal circles for our devotion to each other, though Lord Marlowe said it was my style as Lady Marlowe, honed by his lordship, that women envied. I insisted it was my handsome husband women wanted, a man skilled in the ways of exciting a woman to the point of madness. Together we forged a bond no one could break, no matter how cruel people could be with their snide remarks about the “lowbrow colonial” his lordship had married, a cabaret dancer with no pedigree.

I learned to ignore the gossip, the leading questions, the clever innuendos behind my back. Instead, I prided myself on how far I had traveled from my beginnings in a New York City tenement to the Berlin cabarets to be coming a member of the British royal peerage with a man I loved and who loved me. I know for certain I
never
would have crossed that line again into drug abuse had his lordship not decided to drive by motorcar from London to meet me at our hideaway cottage in Coventry on a rainy autumn evening, a night when the orange-red leaves turned a dark gray and nothing was ever the same.

His lordship had rung me up earlier in the day, promising me a weekend of sassy bondage games, including my favorite with the
crimson cord, a heavy coil of rope with a dangling tassel at the end used for bell-pulls in manor houses in times gone by. Smooth and supple with a satiny shine,
this
crimson cord came from the estate of…oh, I shan’t say, but I
will
tell you this. There is one less bell-pull at a country estate belonging to a member of the royal family.

We played the game in this manner: Lord Marlowe would maneuver the cord so he could tie my wrists together in front of me with the coil pulled tight between my legs, forcing open my sex. My hard pleasure bud throbbed, begging for him to stroke it, but he ignored me, a devilish look in his eye telling me he would make me suffer before he would succumb to temptation and rub my pink nub vigorously with his thumb. Instead, he gave my arse a playful slap, then fondled my breasts with his expert touch, my belly, my thighs, my buttocks,
everywhere
on my nude body but the hard ridge between my legs. I struggled and complained,
begging
him to touch my clit, pleading, promising him
anything,
but it only fueled his desire to keep me waiting.

I thought about those naughty escapades on this rainy night, waiting. Hours went by, the storm worsened. I took out the crimson cord, ran my fingers over the braided rope, the scent of my hot eroticism lingering on the coil from nights past and mixing with the fresh aroma seeping through my knickers. You can imagine what excitement rushed through me, anticipating his presence. But he never arrived.

Frantic, I tried ringing up Mrs. Wills in London to see if his lordship had left the city as planned, but the telephone lines were down because of the intense storm. Thunder. Lightning. A night that seemed to bear the wrath of God. I threw on a mackintosh and stood on the open veranda for hours, watching the raindrops soak the
ground with puddles that shone like broken mirrors in the glow of the porch light.
Something was wrong,
but I refused to believe it. I blamed myself for leaving London earlier in the week to pick up a book the local antiquarian in Coventry had brought back for me on his recent trip to Venice. I wanted to surprise his lordship with a first edition of
A Book of Fifty Drawings
by Aubrey Beardsley, erotic Victorian drawings from the late nineteenth century.

Around 4:00 a.m. I received news his motorcar had crashed through a railing on a small bridge and plunged into a raging stream where it struck a rock. Lord Marlowe, they said, was thrown from the vehicle and died instantly.

After the final arrangements had been made, I returned to our cottage in Coventry and closed up the house. Before I did so, I took the crimson cord and wound it up tight into a ball, then placed it into a shiny round black hatbox and tied it up with a white ribbon. I removed the wall plate over the mantelpiece above the fireplace and hid it in a secret spot, a place where for years the previous owner had stored love letters from her fiancé killed in Flanders during the Great War. Passionate, moving letters, filled with love and devotion. We had found the letters, his lordship and I, when we bought the cottage after the owner passed away. We were so struck by the beauty of what they’d written to each other and their enduring love, we left them in that sacred spot. I removed the letters and believed that by placing Lord Marlowe’s crimson coil of rope inside the hidden panel, it now became
our
sacred spot.

I visit our cottage in Coventry often, and when I’m there I take out the crimson rope, look at it, play with it and rub it against my
nude skin, feeling once again the passion we shared come back to excite me.
What?
you say, no tears, no remorse, no sadness? I have no time for tears. Though I deign to write about that tragic night with a swiftness to my pen, understand, dear reader, it’s because I must. To allow my emotions to well up inside me at this time would do more harm than good when I face the prospect of not succeeding with my mission, not to mention betrayal. Yes, I was warned I could be walking into a trap devised by the Gestapo, using Maxi as bait.

Dear Maxi. She’s not yet entered into my recollection in the telling of this tale, but she will. I implore your patience on that. She was very much a part of the incident that propelled me back to England, but to think the enemy would use her to entrap me is preposterous, though I must remain cautious. Though what the Gestapo would hope to find out from me is ludicrous. Then again, this is a horrible war, as I have witnessed firsthand, and I imagine they will stop at nothing to secure information,
any
information, about what the Allied powers have planned. I do believe America will be forced to enter this war, though I don’t know when. I’m but a small person in this fight, but maybe that’s what makes me dangerous to them. I’m willing to sacrifice whatever I must to defeat the Nazis.

Despondent, I started using drugs again in Cairo with Ramzi. I was searching for something new, something exciting to take away my loneliness, yet knowing nothing could replace what I’d lost. While what I experienced with Lord Marlowe was a profound love, I can only excuse my liaison with Ramzi by saying we were thrown together by an uncontrollable force, two people who adored each other with equal fervor. I was flush with a fever so intense nothing
could cool my fire for him, not drugs nor impending war nor fear of duplicity by my lover. (I suspected Ramzi and Laila were devising a plan to solicit more money from me; I never dreamed it went way beyond that to include murder, as you shall see.)