Heloise giggled in delight. Raven doubled up with a curse, waving his hands to shoo the creature away while simultaneously trying to avoid the flapping wings, pecking beak, and scratching claws. After a blur of arms and feathers, the outraged fowl finally escaped through the open door and Raven flopped back onto the straw with a final curse. Stray feathers floated down around him and settled on his prone body like snow. Heloise’s stomach gave an odd little twist. He looked like a banished angel, just fallen from heaven, and not happy about it one bit.
He glared up at her. “Wretch.”
She widened her eyes and feigned innocence. “Me?”
He extended his arms toward her. “Jump down. I’ll catch you.”
She snorted. “You won’t. I’ll flatten you.”
His mouth quirked at the corners and his eyes took on a mischievous glint. “Oh, believe me, I can handle your weight anytime.”
Heloise felt her cheeks warm again. “I can do it myself.”
He shrugged and rolled to one side to give her room to land. Without giving herself time to worry about how high up she was, she jumped. The mound of hay cushioned her fall nicely but she couldn’t control her forward momentum. She sprawled right on top of Raven.
She tried to push herself off him while simultaneously trying to avoid putting her hands on some utterly inappropriate part of his anatomy, but the unstable straw made the task almost impossible. Raven, the beast, made absolutely no move to help. In fact, he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying her predicament. While she struggled and squirmed, getting more flustered by the minute, he extended his arms out to the side and rested his head back in the straw with an earthy chuckle.
Heloise lost her balance again. Her breasts squashed against his chest and her knee slid between his thighs. She let out a howl of frustration and deliberately dug an elbow into his ribs.
“Oomph!” he groaned, half sitting up. “That’s enough!”
He made to grab her but she dodged his hands, made a fist, and whacked him on the shoulder. It hurt her hand.
“Hey!” he laughed. “What’s that about? You fell on me.”
She pummeled him again, aroused, infuriated, and embarrassed all at once. He captured her wrists and secured them above her head with one hand. “Enough,” he said again.
Before she could say anything else he switched their positions and rolled on top of her. Heloise froze. His long body covered hers, pushing her down into the soft give of hay. She held her breath at the full delicious weight of him along her body. Her brain turned to mush.
Slowly, so slowly she could have pulled away, he reached out and captured a tiny feather that had settled on her eyelash. He balanced it on the tip of his finger then blew it gently, watching as it seesawed down to her throat.
A bright spark of longing arced between them, urging her to close the scant distance. Her skin tingled in anticipation as she recalled the exact texture of those lips, the wicked taste of him. Her stomach muscles contracted as she prepared to curl toward him and press her mouth to his. Time stretched to infinity.
“No.”
Raven pressed his lips together, shook his head as if to clear it, and rolled off her. He brushed the straw from his breeches with a brisk movement, picked up his pistols, and stalked away.
Heloise dropped her head back into the straw with a groan. This was not disappointment. Or frustration. It was relief. She didn’t want to kiss him. He made her reckless and stupid. He made her hot enough to burn.
Chapter 17
Bloody woman, Raven thought viciously, spurring his horse. She was a born tease, gnawing away at his self-control. At least he hadn’t kissed her again. He should never have bloody kissed her in the first place, because now, instead of just his overactive imagination, he was cursed with the memory of exactly what those lips felt like against his own and exactly how good she tasted. He wanted more. He wanted that soft, smart mouth on his own. If only to shut her up.
He sneaked a glance at her as she turned her face up to the sun, basking like those little lizards on the rocks or a flower unfurling in the heat. Her mobile mouth curled upward in a contented smile. He, of course, found it erotic. He found everything she did erotic. She could be eating a piece of burnt toast and he’d find it erotic.
Dressing her as a boy had been a mistake. Yes, it allowed her greater ease of movement and acted as a basic disguise. But those breeches outlined her pert little derriere all too clearly.
“I love this warmth,” she said. “It seeps right down into your bones.”
Like you, he thought. The damned woman managed to sneak between the cracks inside his soul. She made him want things he couldn’t have. “You’ll burn,” he warned gruffly. “Keep your face out of the sun.”
She ignored his scolding. “So who is this contact we’re going to meet?”
“A chap called George Scovell.”
Heloise yanked so hard on the reins that her horse stopped dead. “Major Scovell? The Major Scovell?”
Raven frowned at her rapturous reaction. She appeared delighted. Enthralled even. “Yes. You know him?”
“I’ve never met him personally, but of course I know of him. He’s been our continental counterpart for years. In code-breaking circles the man’s a legend.” Her eyes gleamed. “Major Scovell’s the one who broke the Portuguese cipher back in 1812. Thanks to him, Wellington was able to continue the siege of Badajoz secure in the knowledge that French reinforcements were too far away to threaten Ciudad Rodrigo, the fortress he’d captured a few months earlier.”
Raven noted her starry-eyed look with a sharp stab of annoyance and closed his eyes. Oh, wonderful. That’s all he needed, a major case of hero worship.
Heloise carried on, blissfully unaware of his darkening mood. “And then, of course, Major Scovell came up with the impregnable system used by our own army.”
“No doubt you’re going to tell me about that, too?”
If she was aware of his sarcasm she gave no sign. “He gave the same edition of a pocket dictionary to each of the two parties. The code is based on the location of words within these dictionaries, so ‘134A18’ translates to page 134, column A, row 18.”
“Thrilling.”
She sent him a chiding look for his obvious lack of enthusiasm. “The word ‘cryptography’ comes from the Greek word meaning hidden writing.”
He held up a hand. “No more etymology, you hear me, or I’ll throw you in the nearest river myself.”
She set her lips into a mutinous line. “Fine.”
She looked so chagrined he unbent a little. She was magnificent in a huff, but he preferred listening to her talk. He’d bet she could make even calculus sound fascinating. “How did you get into code-breaking, anyway?”
“About five years ago, just after my accident, Castlereagh came to visit Father. He happened to read a paper I’d written on translating the Rosetta Stone and challenged me to read some basic codes.” She smiled in memory. “They only took a couple of minutes—they were simple substitution cyphers—but he was impressed. He gave me more. I cracked every one. He told Father he could use a mind like mine at the Foreign Office and Father agreed, so Castlereagh started sending me messages to decode.”
“So how do you go about breaking a code?”
She shot him a suspicious look. “You’re really interested?”
“Absolutely,” he lied.
Her smile did strange things to his insides. “Well, the simplest type of code is a letter substitution code. That’s where you just swap one letter of the alphabet for another by shifting them along a certain number of places. So A is B, B is C, and so on. Codes like that have been used for thousands of years. It’s called a Caesar shift, after the Roman emperor who often used it.”
“I’ve heard of those. I’m not a complete idiot.”
She didn’t look convinced. “Codes like that are easy to crack using frequency analysis.”
“And that is…?”
“Certain letters are used mo
re often in each language. In English it’s E, T, and A. In French, it’s E, S, and A. If you find the most common letters in a coded message, the chances are they belong to a high-frequency letter in the original language. You try substituting them and see whether words start to make any sense. After that it’s basically a lot of educated guesswork. You use the decoded words to try to deduce the meaning of the coded words from the context.”
Raven smothered a yawn. She looked like an erotic nursery rhyme character in that hat. Mary Mary Quite Contrary. Or Little Bo Peep. Except for those damned breeches. They outlined every inch of her long, slim thighs. He imagined them wrapped around his hips and almost groaned.
“Sometimes it’s as simple as looking for a repeated phrase. Napoleon’s correspondence from his generals, for example, almost always concluded with the phrase ‘Vive l’Empereur.’ In the same way, you can expect military messages to be concerned with troops, location, provisions, and so on, so you look for words like ‘brigade,’ ‘division,’ ‘artillery,’ and ‘enemy’ to help you guess the rest of the code.”
Raven grunted. Would she talk this much when she was making love? He shifted uncomfortably in the saddle as his body urged him to find out.
“French codes of recent years have been much stronger than simple substitutions though,” she continued, mercifully unaware of the direction of his depraved thoughts. “Five years ago they started using a new code they called the Great Paris Cipher, which used several different methods of encrypting simultaneously. It was amazingly complicated, but Major Scovell cracked it in less than a year.” She sounded as if someone had just presented her with the Crown Jewels.
Raven rolled his eyes. “How did he crack it, if it was so damn complicated?”
Heloise frowned at his irreverence. Clearly the man was a god in her eyes.
“The code wasn’t the weakness, it was the French themselves. They were overconfident in the cipher’s security. Instead of using it properly, they’d often only encrypt part of a message, mistakenly believing the encoded parts would be strong enough to keep the full meaning a secret. But by leaving some words in common French, they provided Scovell with an invaluable foothold.”
Raven tried to pull himself together. She was looking at him expectantly, so clearly some comment was expected of him. He opted for the all-encompassing, “Hmm?”
Heloise inhaled sharply. “Oh, goodness, I just realized something wonderful.”
“What?”
“Major Scovell always gets sent copies of the messages we receive in London. And he sends us copies of the ones his men have intercepted. That way we have all our code-breaking resources working on a message at the same time. Sometimes he’s been the first to crack a code, other times its been myself or Edward who’ve managed it.”
Her expression clouded at the memory of her murdered colleague and Raven hastened to regain her attention. “So?”
“Don’t you see? I’ve been feeling guilty for not going back to London to translate those other messages, but now I can do exactly that. Scovell should have copies of them all. I’ll be able to show him how to read the code and together we can see if any of them contain any further mention of Kit.”
She beamed at him and Raven found himself smiling in response to her palpable excitement. It was highly unlikely that the remaining messages would help their cause, but she seemed so delighted to have a purpose again.
“Have you ever met Major Scovell? I can’t wait to meet him.”
Raven frowned. “A few times. He’s old enough to be your father.”
Heloise tilted her head at this apparent non-sequitur and Raven hastened to cover his blunder. “He lost his left arm in some battle or other, so don’t let that surprise you.” He was saved from having to say more as they emerged from between two peaks and the landscape opened up before them.
Rolling countryside undulated toward the distant city of León, nestled like a sun-warmed cat among the foothills. The gothic spires of the cathedral rose above a higgledy panorama of terra-cotta roof tiles and sand-colored stone walls.
Raven breathed a sigh of relief.
—
It was strange to be among the bustle of a city again, after the solitude of the mountains. Heloise followed Raven through a maze of medieval streets, past scurrying children and vendors hawking wares, until he stopped in front of what appeared to be a monastery, set on one side of a small cobbled square. Arched niches on either side of a huge metal-studded door held weathered stone figures of saints in armor.
Raven seemed unimpressed by the imposing exterior and pounded loudly on the door with his fist. A metal grille slid open to reveal a suspicious eye.
“I’m here to see Scovell. Tell him it’s Hades.”
The grille slid closed.
Heloise must have made an involuntary sound because Raven turned to her with an amused expression.
“Your code name’s Hades?” she squeaked.
“Didn’t I mention that?”
She shook her head.
“Rather appropriate, don’t you think, considering I’ve kidnapped you? Does that make you Persephone?”
She was spared having to answer by the creak of the opening door.
The deceptively plain exterior belied an oasis of luxury within and Heloise gaped in astonishment. The bustle of the street and the cries of the vendors faded away as they rode into a huge central courtyard, framed on all sides by colonnaded cloisters. An elaborate tiered fountain gurgled in the center, flanked by arching palm trees and potted plants.
“This place used to be a Moorish palace. The Spanish comte who owns it fled to England before the war. In gratitude for asylum he allows His Majesty’s government to use it while he’s in absentia.”
“Ravenwood!”
They turned in unison toward the booming voice. An elderly soldier in British army uniform strode out from behind some intricate latticework. His white mustache and bristling side whiskers framed a swarthy, sun-kissed complexion that was the same terra-cotta red as the roof tiles. As Raven had warned, the man’s left sleeve was empty, folded across his chest and pinned to his jacket. Heloise felt an instant affinity with the old man whose physical disability was as obvious as her own. His blue eyes were as sharp and intelligent as Raven’s.
The soldier noticed the direction of her gaze and bowed. “I might have lost an arm like old Nelson, but at least I’ve still got both my eyes,” he joked.
Heloise smiled as Raven shook the man’s outstretched hand. Lord Admiral Nelson had lost not only an arm but the use of one eye before he’d died a hero at the Battle of Trafalgar.
“Well, well, Ravenwood. Pleasure to see you again. How’s your grandfather? Is he well?”
Raven’s jaw hardened. “I assume so. He prefers to stay in London. We seldom visit.”
The subtle rebuff was lost on Scovell, who’d already turned an approvingly paternal eye on Heloise. “And who’s this charming creature? What brings you to our distant outpost of civilization, my dear? Especially in the company of a hell-born rogue like Ravenwood?”
“Major Scovell, may I present Miss Heloise Hampden.”
Scovell raised his eyebrows. “Hampden, you say? Why, you’re Castlereagh’s girl!” He clasped her hand and shook it eagerly. “I’ve heard great things about you, my dear. Why, that paper you wrote on the Rosetta Stone’s Coptic translation last year was extremely impressive. I—”
“Miss Hampden is extremely fatigued, sir,” Raven said. “We’ve ridden direct from Santander.”
The old soldier flushed. “Of course. Where are my manners? Don’t get many female guests here, you know. Poor child, you must be exhausted. I’ll have one of the men show you to a room and we’ll meet up later for tea, eh? How’s that?”
Heloise sighed. “That sounds wonderful, thank you.”
Scovell turned to Raven. “And you, my boy, can explain why you’re here.”
Chapter 18
A soldier in the green uniform of a rifleman sho
wed Heloise to her room, an enormous chamber off the central courtyard. As the daughter of a viscount she was accustomed to luxury, but she’d never seen anything to rival this.
The furnishings were evocative of another, more elegant age. Every item was of the highest quality, from the exquisite ivory inlaid chest-on-stand to the giltwood, silk-upholstered chairs and the extraordinary four-post bed that looked fit for royalty. Plumes of ostrich feathers adorned each top corner, dyed to the exact claret color as the shot silk drapes. Colored tiles, too many to count, decorated the floor in dizzying geometric patterns.
Heloise bit back a laugh. Compared to last night’s hay barn, anywhere with a feather bed and an intact roof would have seemed like a palace, but here she was, actually in a palace. From one extreme to the other.
Her satchel had been placed on the end of the bed, so she stripped and washed herself as best she could using the pitcher and bowl set on a marble-topped cupboard. It was a shame she didn’t have time for a bath, but it was still heavenly to be clean again. She combed the tangles from her hair and donned her pale blue dress, glad to be out of those awful breeches. Since she had no other shoes, she put on the accursed leather boots and prayed nobody looked too closely at her feet.
A door opened onto a shared balcony that ran the entire length of the building. Heloise stepped out and gazed over the exquisite gardens that seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance, identifying the purple square petals of a bougainvillea and the tiny star-shaped orange blossom clambering over an arch.
She leaned against the doorjamb and closed her eyes. The scent of jasmine drifted up to her, sultry and exotic, filling her nose and throat. The place reminded her of pictures she’d seen of the great Moorish palace at Granada. She could just imagine the sultan’s harem gliding down these corridors, too, see the shimmer of gossamer veils, hear the swish of satin slippers and giggles swiftly hushed.
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