Master Read online

  Praise forUnmasqued

  "Erotically wicked! Spellbinding! A unique retelling of The Phantom of the Opera.”

  —Bertrice Small

  "Colette Gale leads us through a labyrinth of dark, extravagant eroticism, to the romance at the story’s heart. Grandly conceived, wildly inventive in its smallest details—I, for one, will never hear harp music in quite the same way again.”

  —Pam Rosenthal, author of The Slightest Provocation

  “Unmasqued is a very wicked and original look at an age-old story. Readers will be entranced . . . a very dark thriller with a well-written cast of characters. . . . The pageantry and politics of nineteenth-century Paris and its wealthiest citizens are well-described, drawing the reader right into the drama. . . . This reader was well able to envision a time and people of a bygone era. Lush and sensual from beginning to end, erotic and romantic in the extreme, Unmasqued is sure to please fans of historical fiction as well as erotica. If you like your historical romance with a ‘dark’ and erotic bent, you will be well-pleased with the purchase of this one.”

  —Erotic Romance Writers

  ALSO BY COLETTE GALE

  Unmasqued

  Master

  An Erotic Novel of the Count of Monte Cristo

  Colette Gale

  SIGNET ECLIPSE

  Published by New American Library, a division of

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  First published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Colette Gale, 2008

  All rights reserved

  SIGNET ECLIPSE and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Gale, Colette.

  Master: an erotic novel of the Count of Monte Cristo / Colette Gale.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-4406-3331-7

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To all the women who knew Haydée

  was nothing but a midlife crisis.

  Contents

  ONE - A Purse of Red Velvet

  TWO - The End of an Agreement

  THREE - In Aladdin’s Cave

  FOUR - The Return

  FIVE - The Bath

  SIX - A Cluster of Grapes

  SEVEN - Haydée Stalks Her Prey

  EIGHT - At the Theater

  NINE - In the Bedchamber

  TEN - Battle of Wills

  ELEVEN - Behind the Iron Gate

  TWELVE - The Insult

  THIRTEEN - The Visitor

  FOURTEEN - Acceptance & Regret

  FIFTEEN - The Punishment

  SIXTEEN - The Dismissal

  SEVENTEEN - Confrontation in the Garden

  EIGHTEEN - The Revelation

  About the Author

  BIOGRAPHER’S NOTE

  Not long after I finished compiling the documentation that became Unmasqued, in which was revealed the true story of The Phantom of the Opera, I was fortunate enough to acquire some personal effects that shed new light on another familiar tale: that of The Count of Monte Cristo.

  Alexandre Dumas’ novel of betrayal and revenge tells the story of the horribly wronged Edmond Dantès and his bid for vengeance against the villains—his friends—who sent him to prison for fourteen years. The tale has been adapted for film and television, and it has been translated and republished, abridged and dissected in numerous ways since its initial publication in serial format through the mid-1840s.

  However, through my acquisition of the personal diaries and letters of one of the most pivotal players in the narrative, I’ve discovered that the story told by Dumas—along with its other adaptations—is incomplete and misleading.

  I have had the pleasure of studying and organizing into a fleshed-out, chronological tale the diaries of Mercédès Herrera, the first and true love of Edmond Dantès. To my astonishment, through this study, I have learned that she was as much a victim of the events told by Dumas as Dantès was. Perhaps even more so.

  Her diaries, along with her personal letters from Valentine Villefort and a journal that belonged to Monte Cristo’s servant, Haydée, bring to light a much different and more accurate chronicle about what occurred in her life during the years of Dantès’ imprisonment. The letters and journal in particular also expose certain other events that occurred when he came back to Paris as the wealthy, learned, and powerful Count of Monte Cristo.

  Thus, within this volume is my attempt to make public the true story—with all its explicit details taken directly from her personal effects—of Edmond Dantès and Mercédès Herrera, a pair of lovers divided by greed, jealousy, tragedy, and revenge.

  It is the story of The Count of Monte Cristo as it has never been told before.

  —Colette Gale

  May 2008

  PROLOGUE

  Prisoner No. 34

  1819Château d’IfOff the Coast of Marseille, France

  He knew every gray stone in his prison cell, every mortar-filled line between each of them, every change in topography of the dirt floor beneath his filthy, cold, bare feet.

  He had stopped counting the days of his imprisonment after one thousand of them, for he no longer cared to keep track of what had become this eternity of worm-filled black bread, dank water, and horrible, dark solitude.

  He’d spoken to no one for an aeon, since the day he’d gone mad at the jailer, demanding to know how he’d come to be here, incarcerated—what he’d done, what crime he’d committed, who had sent him here, what horrible error had been made. But the only answer he’d received had been being thrown into this c
ell, even smaller and darker than the one he’d previously occupied.

  He had nearly stopped reminding himself of his own name.

  Edmond Dantès.

  His lips moved silently, for there was no one there to hear.

  But the name that did come to his lips, in a quiet, gentle murmur, like a lifeline to a drowning sailor, was the talisman he’d clung to all these days, these years.

  “Mercédès.”

  He said it again, no more than a release of breath in his silent world. “Mercédès.”

  How many times had he spoken her name?

  At first, with anguish . . . he’d been taken from her, from the woman he was to marry, without a chance for farewell.

  Then, with despair. Would he ever see her again? Touch her?

  With pain. Would she wait for him? Had she tried to find him?

  For a time, the only noises he made were the syllables of her name, desperately sobbed into the threadbare blanket, woven with dust, his lips dry and cracked and tasting dirt. Would she remember him?

  At last . . . reverently. As if her name, her memory, were a light in the blackness of his life. Something to fixate upon, to yearn for, to live for. A talisman. To keep him sane.

  “Mercédès.”

  When his mind verged on madness, when he longed to end his life but had no weapon with which to do it . . . when he gave up all hope, he remembered her lively, dark eyes, filled with intelligence and laughter. The smooth, sweet curve of her golden arms, the oval of her beautiful face, reminding him of the painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary hanging in Église des Accoules, the church in which they’d meant to wed.

  Her lips . . . God had made them full and red, surely designed to fit Dantès’ own mouth. He saw them wide with happiness on the day he’d come back from the sea and told her he’d been named captain of his own ship . . . then soft and pliant under his own mouth later that afternoon.

  How could he have known he’d be taken from her only two days later?

  Who had done this to him? Who had betrayed him?

  He remembered how his hands, rough from handling the lines at sea, had smoothed up her warm arms, drawing her close to him on the hidden hillside, bringing her so that he could feast on her mouth, draw cries of pleasure from those sensual, promising lips. Gently tease her so that he could see the light of love in her chocolate eyes before the sweep of her thick lashes came modestly down like the shutters on her little weather-beaten house.

  Even now, God knew how many years later, Dantès clung to the memory of the slip-slide of their kiss, the rhythm of his tongue mating with hers in that warm, wet cavern that echoed the tight, musky one between her legs.

  He was there again, as his hands drew away the simple peasant blouse she wore, the undyed linen creamy against her sun-drenched skin, baring a simple gold cross and two lovely breasts, along with the faint scent of kitchen smoke mingled with lemon. Her breasts . . . the size of oranges, with their own pebbling flesh tightening under his palms, dusky nipples pointing up to the sun as he loved her there in the thick, warm grass and crushed chamomile.

  She arched toward him as his hands smoothed down her narrow back, her chin tipping up and the bundle of walnut hair loosening beneath her skull. As he bent to close his lips around an offered nipple, Dantès’ own desire surged when he heard her soft cry of pleasure turn to a deeper one of need. Her legs shifted, opened slightly next to him, her bare thigh brushing his salt-crusted seaman’s trousers. He hadn’t even bothered to change before coming to take her away to their reunion on this secluded hillock.

  He sucked and licked, slowly swirling his strong tongue around the point of her nipple, taking all the time he needed and wanted, feeling the comfortable heaviness of his cock as it filled and swelled. One of her hands had loosened the thong that held his dark hair back; now it fell over his face, curtaining it as he bent to her.

  Mercédès untied the fastenings of his shirt, her breath quickening when his hand crept to cover her other breast. He spread his fingers over it, then lightly brushed the backs of his nails over her nipple as he gave a long, deep tug on the other one. She moved restlessly, shivered as he toyed with her, the sun hot on the back of his head and his suddenly bare back.

  “Edmond,” she murmured, pulling him toward her, away from her breasts so that she could look in his eyes. The expression there filled him with such joy, such anticipation and love that he nearly wept as she guided his face back to hers. She rose beneath him, lifting her mouth, her swollen, puckered lips ardent as they fit and slipped and sucked against his, her hand surprising him as it slipped down the front of his trousers.

  Time blurred for him then, but it was a vortex of sensation—her fingers brushing his hot cock, their mouths mashing together, her low, deep moans, the silky warmth of her bare skin.

  Then, somehow, he lay on his back, the brilliance of the blue sky cut by a hovering olive tree above. Mercédès rose over him, her slender torso and glorious breasts half-covered by the fall of her rich dark hair. Her red lips parting to show white teeth, straight but for a crooked one on top that gave relief to her perfection.

  He helped her move, straddling him, felt the tight slickness as she fit over his waiting erection. Watched the way her eyes half-closed and her teasing smile sagged into wonder and pleasure.

  Oh, the pleasure.

  And he moved beneath her, slowly at first, his hands on her hips, her thighs bent next to his torso. She reached above, her breasts rising, her fingers brushing the low-hanging olive leaves as her face tipped up, her lips parted, her breath came faster. His world centered at the place where they’d joined, slick and hot and rhythmic. He moved, she moved, and the beauty of it all uncoiled slowly, like a line dropping its anchor to sea until suddenly they were both crying out, both trembling, sweaty and warm and collapsing together on the grass.

  “Mercédès,” he remembered whispering, pushing the hair away from her face, “I love you.”

  She rose to kiss him again, her breasts full against his chest, her work-worn hand skimming his shoulder. “I’ll always love you, Edmond.”

  How many times he had relived those glorious moments during the dark years in this dungeon. The memories, the images had been all that kept him sane those early days . . . and now . . . now perhaps they tugged him into madness, a deep well that he welcomed, for surely it would be a relief to be insane rather than to imagine he’d never see daylight again.

  He prayed for death.

  He stopped eating.

  On the fourth day of his determination to commit suicide, he stared at the plate of black bread and the cup of brackish water. In his wavering, sick mind, he saw two cups, then three. And multiple hunks of bread taunting him. He swore he saw a light in his cell. He felt Mercédès’ touch, saw the face of his beloved père.

  And then, somewhere, he heard a faint scratching.

  And, long hours later, a small section of the stones that made up his cell crumbled away, and an elderly man’s head poked in.

  “I am Abbé Faria,” he said. “And apparently, this is not the way out.”

  ONE

  A Purse of Red Velvet

  Ten years later

  Marseille, France

  Mercédès Herrera Mondego, Comtesse de Morcerf, turned in to the wide walkway that led to the grand entrance of the House of Morrel, a well-known shipping company.

  Perhaps she could do nothing to help the family, but Monsieur Morrel had been so kind to Edmond when he sailed on Morrel ships, and to his father and Mercédès when he had been taken away more than fourteen years ago, that she felt compelled to be there on this tragic day.

  The family would need a friend.

  On her arm, she had a basket of oranges, purchased fresh from the market, and some ribbons and lace she’d brought from Paris that Julie might like. Simple gifts, but ones the family would appreciate. They were much too proud to take any monetary offerings.

  Bad luck and misfortune had struck the business over the las
t years, and it showed in the empty corridors and silence of the once-busy company. Four of their five ships had been lost at sea, and now the future of the twenty-five-year-old firm was in jeopardy. How poorly the years had treated the Morrels since Edmond had sailed their ships!

  How poorly the years had treated Mercédès herself.

  No longer the simple young woman who’d waited for her love to return from the sea, Mercédès was thirty years old and now a comtesse. She’d learned to read and draw and to play the piano. She’d hired tutors to help her learn to speak better French, as well as Italian, Greek, and Latin. She’d learned mathematics and geography, and studied literature—rather masculine pursuits, but her education had distracted her from the years of grief and anger and darkness.

  After learning of Edmond Dantès’ death in prison nearly fourteen years ago, she had agreed to marry her cousin Fernand Mondego, who had climbed his way up the ranks and through the French navy to become the Comte de Morcerf. They lived in Paris, in a beautiful house on rue du Helder, grander than anything she could have aspired to if she and Edmond had married.

  She would have preferred Père Dantès’ little house here in Marseille with one crooked shutter and a tiny yard, or to be sailing the sea on her husband’s ship, as she and Edmond had always planned to do. To see the world. Together.

  Julie Morrel, the shipmaster’s daughter, was peering out a window when Mercédès came up the cobbled walkway. She beckoned frantically to Mercédès to wait, and then she disappeared from the window.

  Moments later, she reappeared from the rear of the building, walking quickly down the pathway, bareheaded and glove-less. It was much too warm for a spencer or cloak; Mercédès carried a fringed white parasol to keep the sun away in lieu of a bonnet.

  “Mercédès—Lady de Morcerf—what can you be doing here? And without a driver?” Julie asked, slipping her arm around Mercédès’ wide puffed sleeve and directing her back down the walk.