"Oh," Georgia beamed in girlish excitement. "What kind of music?"
"Waltzes, gallopade, some other kind that I can’t remember how to pronounce," she answered obliging, trying to hide her blush with a yawn. "Servaes is a very accomplished dancer. And he is incredibly smart. He speaks different languages, knows about ancient Egyptian mythology, and seems well traveled and experienced."
"So when are you going to see him again?"
"I think he is a bit much," Hathor said. She began to finger her coffee mug, swirling the dark drink in circles. As nonchalantly as she could muster, she said, "I don’t know that I’ll go back out with him."
"Why on earth not?" The older woman’s eyes rounded in surprise. "He sounds absolutely charming."
"He is. But I sort of got scared and yelled at him," Hathor admitted. She slowly stood, before reaching to help her aunt to standing. Georgia swatted at her niece’s hand, doing it herself. She leaned over to pick up her basket.
"That doesn’t sound like you. You must really like him if you’re pushing him away so soon." Georgia led the way back into the house.
"Yeah, I do, Georgie. I’ve never met anyone like him. In some strange way it is almost like we have known each other for years." Hathor’s voice was wistful with longing. Her feet shuffled along the floor. "And when I’m with him, I get the feeling he feels the same way."
"Then what is the problem?" Georgia shot.
"What if I’m wrong?" Hathor responded in exasperation. It was mostly directed inward. "I don’t want to be played for a fool."
"You could invite him over for dinner. I’ll be happy to cook," Georgia offered, hopeful to get a look at her niece’s mystery man. "Then I could watch him for you and give you my opinion."
"I don’t know," Hathor mumbled. "It is just that he is so incredibly handsome --"
"You’ve mentioned that, dear," Georgia interjected.
"-- and I know that he must have women trailing after him everywhere he goes," she continued, pretending like the older woman didn’t speak.
"And you got scared and pushed him away because you didn’t think that a charming, smart, handsome man could possibly be interested in you," Georgia concluded.
"Yes," Hathor muttered feebly. "That is it exactly. I can’t compete."
"Is he asking you to compete? Surely he is interested if he went to all this trouble to get you to see him. How many men would go to such lengths just to make you happy on a first date? What other man, alive or dead, can you think of that would know exactly what kind of evening you would like, especially with only having met you?"
"None, but that is what frightens me. If he can read me like that and I buy into it, what happens if he is not sincere? What happens if I fall in love with him? Because I can see it happening, Georgie. I’ve never felt so strongly so fast. I have never felt so strongly period. I can’t take another disappointment. I can’t take finding out the man I love is with someone else."
"It’s not your fault what happened between you and Tom, Hat." Georgia sighed. She knew the girl to be more reserved since breaking off her engagement to her on and off high school and college sweetheart. "And it is for the best. He was never right for you."
"I know. I was with him so I would have an excuse not to date anyone else. Listen, I don’t want to talk about it." Hathor couldn’t finish her coffee so she poured it into the sink. She stared at the dark trails over white porcelain before turning on the water. Absently, she ascertained, "Shouldn’t we be drinking tea or something? I always feel like we will be arrested."
"Ah, tea is overrated. Besides, when there are guests we have teatime everyday promptly at four," Georgia responded with a pat to her niece’s shoulder. She knew that Hathor needed to talk of something else. The poor girl had been delivered some very hard blows when it came to men. "Why don’t you go take a nice warm bath and get dressed? I plan to take you out to town today. What is the point of having all this money if we don’t go shopping?"
"All right," Hathor agreed. "I need to bring that dress by the cleaners anyway so I can give it back. Servaes said to keep it, but I can’t do that. I don’t want him to get in trouble if it comes up missing from a prop room. Besides, it is a shame for it never to get used again."
"Hum," Georgia answered, thinking that for a girl who claimed to not want to talk about Servaes, she was doing a poor job of it.
"So what all are we doing today?" Hathor asked, fingering her messy hair.
"I’m taking you to my spa for a haircut and manicure."
"Spa? Do they douse you in mud and make you lie still for hours with cucumbers on your eyelids?" Hathor’s forehead wrinkled in distaste. She glanced doubtfully at Georgia.
"There is nothing like a seaweed mud wrap to make you feel inspired," Georgia said with a wink. "Maybe it will help build your confidence."
"Ugh, no thanks." Hathor walked to the door. "You can keep your kelp. I’ll use soap. But I will take the haircut. I need one."
Georgia giggled, her voice ringing with delight as Hathor made her way upstairs. Calling behind the young girl, she said, "All right, no mud wrap this time. But someday you have just got to try it!"
* * * *
"And he took you dancing?" the red-haired beautician gawked openly in amazement. Her slender body moved with energetic grace as her fingers slipped through the wet tresses of Hathor’s hair. Her lips puckered as she lifted her shears to gently trim off the ends. Hathor watched her quietly, noticing that the woman, like every other cosmetologist working in the salon, wore too much make-up and hairspray. Yet, somehow, the excess fitted them. Shaking her head, the woman waved over a few of her friends from nearby stations. "Sara, Nan, you have got to hear this."
Nan, a stout woman with an energetic walk and dyed, black hair that sprouted about her head in short curls, smiled as she took a seat in a nearby salon chair. Her stiff British voice clipped, "What’s this Candi?"
"This one," Candi answered, her voice softer than her friend’s. She turned to Hathor in her chair. As she again lifted her client’s brown-red locks into her comb, she waved her cutting shears around in animated motions. Proceeding, she gossiped, "had a date last night. This bloke shows up in a top hat, an old fashioned tux and some old music and takes her dancing in a garden. And that’s not the half of it! Look in that box. Earlier in the day, he sends her this dress and shoes --"
"And a corset and chemise," piped in Georgia, watching her niece’s blushing face. Georgia lifted the lid from her dryer and made her way over to better hear. She had been only too happy to confess the whole story while Candi rolled her hair into a curler set. "He had it delivered by two servants in a carriage. Very handsomely done."
Hathor glanced uncomfortably around the fashionable London parlor. The metal edged walls of cut out circles and the trendy posters, sporting haircuts she’d never seen on a living person, surrounded her, offering no reprise from the gossip. The cosmetologists sighed and gushed excitedly. It was early afternoon and most of their coworkers looked to be on a lunch break.
"So what happened?" Sara breathed dreamily.
"She turns him away at the end of the night!" Candi announced in disbelief.
"And he wasn’t even that-way," Georgia offered with a meaningful twist of her hand. "He liked her."
The women giggled. Hathor glanced at her aunt in open-mouthed astonishment.
"If he was as cute as you say, I would have dragged him into my bed," Candi submitted, "and given the bloke a proper send off."
"Can we see the dress?" Sara asked with a shy smile.
"Yeah, go ahead!" Georgia got up and went over to her shopping bags. "We just picked it up from the cleaners next door so be careful."
As the women lifted the lid to the box, Georgia dug into her shopping bag. "And here, look at this."
She handed a box over to the women. Hathor frowned. She recognized it as the jeweled necklace he had given her. Georgia had shown them to almost everyone they encountered.
Nan looked a
t the jewelry as Sara set the lid back over the dress with an exclamation of awe. Nan’s plump fingers ran over the cool blue stones. Sara came over and glanced around her friend’s shoulder.
"Here," Sara said. "Let me see that."
Nan handed it to her.
"Done!" Candi announced, whipping the cape off Hathor’s shoulders. "Are you sure you don’t want me to dry and style it?"
"No, I’ll manage," Hathor answered.
"Oh, my!" exclaimed Sara suddenly. "These are real!"
"What?" Hathor gasped, finally deeming to join the conversation. She got out of the chair and pulled her wet hair back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. "No, they are just great fakes."
"No," Sara shook her head. "My father is an antique dealer. I use to help him appraise jewels and paintings for the museum collectors. This necklace is very old. You can tell by the way the settings are fashioned together." As she spoke, she got up and went to her purse. Taking out an eye loop to better look, she said, "Yes. And these jewels are very real. I would say France, maybe Italy, sixteen, seventeen hundreds. The fakes don’t look like this."
"You are such a bloody snob!" Nan exclaimed, with a poke to Sara’s side. Sara swatted her away. Nan laughed.
"But that’s not possible," Hathor denied, ignoring the banter. Narrowing her gaze to study the gems, she declared, "They are fakes. You’re wrong."
"Well, it has been a long time since I’ve appraised, but I don’t think I am. If I were you, I’d keep them in a very safe place. If I’m right, they’re worth a lot of money." Sara sighed wistfully, giving the gems over to Georgia who quickly stuffed them back in the box and shoved them into her purse for safekeeping. She kept the purse hugged on her lap.
Helplessly, Hathor looked at Georgia, who could only direct a weak shrug in her direction. Hathor’s knees weakened, her face paled. Suddenly, the front doors burst opened and a group of chattering beauticians came in. Their animated talk broke into the stunned silence.
"What’s going on?" Candi asked. "You’re late."
"We were just hav’n a pint at the pub watchin’ the news," one of the women chimed in as the group hurried past to the back.
"You know that poor little girl that’s been missing since last week?" a tall willowy woman inquired, stopping to lean on the station. Her pink hair was striped with lavender. Catching her reflection in a mirror, she licked her fingers and began pulling at her bangs to straighten them.
"Oh, did you hear about that?" Candi questioned, waiting to watch Hathor shake her head in denial. "This little four-year-old just disappeared right out of her mother’s house on the east end. Snatched from her bed without a trace! Mother’s had a hard time of it. If someone took my son, I don’t know what I’d do."
"Anyway," the willowy woman interrupted, finishing with her hair and moving on to touch up her lipstick. "They found her. She just turned up last night in her parent’s dooryard. No one knows how she got there. They said she was pretty beaten up but that there were no signs of molestation."
"Thank God for that," Nan interjected with a sorrowful shake of her head.
"But that’s not the strange thing. They said that in her hand she was carrying a note telling them where they could find the teddy bear that she had when she was abducted. It was in her grandfather’s closet. It seemed the old guy locked her up or something. They searched his house and found kiddy-porn on his bed. The guy’s missing, and there is an alert out for him for questioning. Could you imagine if he walked in here? I’d grab the sick bas --"
"Ugh," Sara spat in disgust, to stop the other woman’s words.
"How could anyone…?" Candi shivered.
"The grandfather’s name in Franklin St. James, or some such thing," the willowy storyteller finished. She turned to lean her backside on the countertop, pushing her makeup back into her black smock. "I hope they find him and throw him in the river. He should be shot."
Franklin. He was a bad man. Hathor froze. Servaes subtle words echoing in her ear. She gulped. Surely, he didn’t actually kill him. It had to be a coincidence.
"Sick bugger," Nan mumbled. Standing, she walked back to the break room with the other chattering ladies, no doubt wanting to get her say in.
Hathor swayed on her feet. She sat quickly in a nearby chair, not wanting to believe what she heard. Could it be she spent the night with some kind of bizarre hero? Or was he a killer? She numbly waited as Georgia’s hair was unrolled and styled to a big, round, puffy ball. She couldn’t move. Her heart fluttered wildly, her hands shook and her mind reeled in feverish denial.
The gossipy hairdresser moved onto a new subject, keeping her aunt’s attention captivated with the latest happenings of London Town. Hathor was glad that they paid her no mind, sure if they asked her opinion she would burst into confused tears. Already Servaes invaded her every thought. She was falling hard and didn’t like it.
Hathor’s hands continue to shake. She clutched them together to keep them still. Her throat constricted with mixed emotions. As she closed her eyes to block out the sunlight streaming in from the window, she shivered. It was Servaes’ handsome face she saw and his passionate kiss she felt against her skin. When she was with him, she was scared. But, he didn’t feel like a killer to her. He didn’t feel wrong.
Please, don’t let me fall for him, thought Hathor almost like a prayer. Don’t let me fall in love. Not with him.
* * * *
Hathor passed the day in a haze, doing her best to smile for her aunt. But, by the end of the shopping trip, Georgia knew that her niece was deeply shaken by her mysterious man. After leaving the beauty parlor, Georgia insisted that they go to a jeweler and ask about the necklace. It was as Sara said. The jewels were very real and very old. Georgia lied and told the man that the stones were family heirlooms.
Hathor left her aunt in her bedroom to take a nap, going to her own bedroom to wait for the sunset. Her heart skipped as she wondered if Servaes would come back to visit her, despite her harsh words to him. She knew she needed to talk to him. She needed to know what was going on. Was he some rich Marquis living an elaborate fairy tale life? Did he have anything to do with the missing pervert? Would he forgive her and kiss her again, making her forget all her questions?
Spending the evening straightening her hair and bothering with makeup, Hathor’s eyes constantly strayed to the balcony waiting for darkness. Servaes would only come if it was night. She found she didn’t really mind it.
Finally, as the sun lowered in the distance, throwing the land in a brilliant display of orange and red, Hathor slipped on a slender cut dress of cream floral lace design. She watched the sunset from her balcony before slowly making her way downstairs and out the front door undetected by her aunt.
As she crossed over the garden paths, caressed by the gentle breeze of night, she sighed. Making up her mind that, if Franklin was what they said he was, then he deserved to be dead. And, if Servaes were responsible, she would listen to what he had to say about it and not automatically overreact.
For some reason that she couldn’t ascertain, she was unafraid of him. His eyes haunted her with chills. His body drove her to distraction. His voice echoed hauntingly around her until her body trembled with intense longing. He was in her dreams, in newly formed memories, in memories she couldn’t have really had. He was her mystery, her unsolved enigma. She was not afraid.
Going to the bench where he first spoke to her, she sat and waited. She listened to the insects buzzing in the distance, listened to the wind howling above in the trees, the sound of water in the fountain. She waited as the moon reached far into the sky, marking the slow passing of time.
"If he comes, I will give myself to him," she murmured with tears in her eyes. "I will do what Georgia said and take what he can offer. Then I will never regret not going for it. If he doesn’t come, well then it wasn’t meant to be and I should be glad for it."
Her feet tapped nervously on the cobblestone pathway. She closed her eyes, wondering what
he would look like naked. What would he do to her? How would his warm fingers feel against her flesh? Her lips trembling, she whispered, "I don’t care what he wants to pretend to be. If he wants to be a vampire and only come out at night then let him. I’ll change my schedule. The world is crazy. Why can’t he be what he wants, so long as it makes him happy? I want to be crazy too."
As the hours passed and he didn’t show, her heart sunk deeper into the pit of her stomach. She knew that the feelings swirling around in her were more than just a physical attraction. It was a connection, one she couldn’t explain or reason. Servaes invaded her soul with charm and sophistication, and she chased him away because of her foolish fears.
The night crept until finally the twilight came slowly in a display of pink and reds, bringing sadness with it. Hathor stood, having restlessly snoozed on the stone bench. She made her way back inside the house and into her bed.
Crying out in agony, her mind chanted, He didn’t come. He didn’t come. He might never come again.
* * * *
Hathor spent the next several days in a state of half consciousness. She couldn’t stop herself from wandering out to the garden each night, deeming only to stay until midnight and leaving for bed each time at half past one. Servaes didn’t come to her again, and each night she would determine that it wasn’t meant to be.
The day caught her looking out of the front window, watching for a carriage to deliver a message, to pick up the gown. One never came. Pulling the drapes back for the twelfth time in a half-hour, Hathor sighed. She looked longingly down the stone drive to the iron gate. Her ears strained for the sound of horse’s hooves. Occasionally a car would pass by, never slowing to come in.
"There you are," Georgia stated. "I thought you might still be here."
"I was reading," Hathor lied, "and I thought I heard something outside."
"Hum," Georgia answered thoughtfully. She was no fool. She knew her niece waited for a man who was respecting her request and staying away. "Is anyone there?"
"No," Hathor sighed in heavy melancholy. She dropped the drape and turned back around. In surprise, she eyed her aunt’s packed suitcases. "Are you leaving?"
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