Highlander - Donna Lettow [75]
“There’s more to her than that, Marcus.”
“Oh, please, has the world become so politically correct that a man can’t comment on a woman’s looks anymore? Or vice versa, for that matter.” Constantine threw up his hands with a laugh. “it was a ten-second video clip, Duncan. She may indeed have the intellect of Einstein and the wisdom of Solomon, but in ten seconds I’m afraid all I had time to notice was her lovely face. So sue me. Cigar?” He opened a box of cigars and offered it to MacLeod, who shook his head no. “You really care for her, don’t you?”
“We’ve only known each other a few days,” MacLeod said, as if that answered the question.
“Since when did that matter? Or am I more out of touch with the world than I realized?” Constantine asked with a fond smile.
The approach of a fellow Immortal spared MacLeod from answering. “Avram?” he wondered.
Constantine checked the elaborate grandfather clock across the room. “Probably not. Avram phoned to say he’d be a few minutes late. But I’ve invited another friend to join us. It’s rare that a group of us can get together without someone losing their head over it, so I thought I’d take advantage of it. If you’ll excuse me …” He started for the foyer before the doorbell had even begun to chime.
“I don’t believe you two have met,” MacLeod heard Constantine say as he returned. “Adam Pierson, this is—”
“Oh, we’ve met,” MacLeod said as he saw Methos lounge in the doorway of the study in his oversize pullover and grungy raincoat. The five-thousand-year-old man was still playing at the perennial graduate student. “But I didn’t know you two knew each other.”
Methos shrugged out of his raincoat and dropped himself down on the settee. “It’s hard to be a Classicist in Paris and avoid the Big Kahuna of antiquities for very long.”
“Glass of wine, Pierson?”
“I don’t suppose you have anything that tastes like it was bottled within this century? No, I didn’t think so.” He propped his Doc Martens up on the coffee table and eyed MacLeod’s snifter. “I’ll have whatever he’s having.”
Constantine handed Methos a glass of brandy, then pushed his feet off the furniture. Returning to his seat near MacLeod, he said, “Turns out, we’d met before. I helped him out of a little jam once.”
“Marcus …” Methos said, a hint of threat in his voice. Constantine gleefully ignored him.
“What was it? Thirty-four? Thirty-five? Our young friend here was Remus, a slave in the household of one Valerius Petronius, Senator, and the horrifying force of nature that was his wife, Druscilla.”
“Marcus, I’m warning you …”
MacLeod was enjoying the show. He’d never seen Methos squirm quite so much. “You were a slave?”
“It was all part of a plan,” Methos said a little more petulantly than he probably would have liked. “I was Valerius’s advisor.” He put his feet back up on the coffee table with a loud thud and a glare at Constantine.
“Druscilla the Emasculator, we called her. Wasn’t man nor boy on the Palatine Hill safe from her. Voracious she was, absolutely voracious. And Petronius, that poor blind fool, had no idea what was going on. Until the day the Emasculator set her sights on her husband’s trusted advisor.”
“Look, Marcus, you got your bloody nail. Do you want a pound of flesh now, too?”
MacLeod was intrigued. “So what happened?”
Methos jumped in before Constantine could continue. “Same old ancient saga. I certainly wasn’t the first, you can look it up in Genesis 39—I say no, she cries rape, dead slave, game over. End of story, okay?”
“Well, not quite the end,” Constantine added. “Luckily, Petronius had a certain friend who heard about the incident and rescued young Remus from the cross before he died too many times and helped him out of the country.”
“You never touched her?”
It was obvious the idea still horrified Methos. “Touch her? Are you kidding? The woman had six inches and 150 pounds on me—she came near me, I ran like hell. And because of her overactive libido, Caligula became emperor in ’37 instead of Petronius.