“Naw, he always fixes me breakfast. It’s a bonding thing. Come on, you’re hungry, aren’t you?” She took my arm and tugged me forward. Reluctantly, I let my own desire to see him override my better judgment, and followed her. “I heard one of the diggers talking in the shower about a change to their schedule, and that they were going to go after some treasure that Gunner found.”
“He didn’t actually find a treasure; he simply translated some stones that have riddles on them that he jokingly said might be clues to a hidden treasure.”
“Cool!” She charged ahead at a pace that had me almost trotting to keep up. “We can get all the details from Gunner while he makes us breakfast. He’s really good at waffles. I love waffles, don’t you? Especially the big fluffy kind with strawberries and clotted cream. Num!”
I hurried after her, trying to think of some excuse to give Gunner for showing up uninvited and expecting to be fed. But by the time I followed Cressy through the maze of rooms that made up the ground floor of the castle, and emerged into the small kitchen, I was breathless, clueless, and downright flabbergasted. That last bit was due to the fact that Gunner was standing at a large stove with his back to us, clad only in a pair of silk sleeping shorts.
I couldn’t stop staring at the expanse of his back, noting the lovely lines of muscle in shoulders, arms, and flanks. He half turned when Cressy stomped into the room, demanding, “I hope you’re making lots of something, Gunner, because we’re famished.”
“I was making an omelet, actually. If you’d like one, I’d be happy to—” He stopped, evidently having seen me behind Cressy. “Ah. Good morning, Lorina.”
“Morning.” Lord, the man had a gorgeous chest. And now that it was unclothed, I could see just how gorgeous it was. He wasn’t horribly hirsute, but not naked as a plucked turkey, either. There was a lovely line of hair that led down his chest to his belly button. I made an effort to swallow, and tried to drag my eyes off all that naked flesh. “I apologize for inviting myself to breakfast, but Cressy seemed to believe that you wouldn’t mind.”
“Not at all.” He turned back to the stove, and I willed my eyeballs back into their accustomed places. The silk shorts he wore seemed to caress his behind, a lovely, lovely behind, one that made my mouth water, my hands itch, and deep, secret parts of me tingle in a most distracting manner. “I hope you don’t mind an omelet, though.”
“No waffles?” Cressy rummaged around in a cupboard and pulled out a couple of plates and mugs, setting them haphazardly down on the table. “I love waffles!”
“I know you do, but you can’t eat them every day. Or rather, I can’t eat them every day.” Gunner flipped the omelet out onto a plate, and thumped his way over to the refrigerator to get a bowl of eggs, then returned to the stove.
“Why not? Oh man, I need some juice bad. Juice and coffee. And maybe some fruit. Ooh, is this ham? I want some of that, too.” Cressy, who had her head in the fridge, pulled out milk, orange juice, a bunch of grapes, and a packet of ham, and set them on the table before moving over to another cupboard and grabbing a package of cereal. “Juice, Lorina?”
“Coffee will be fine, thanks.”
“Help yourself,” Gunner said, nodding toward a coffeemaker. “Cream is in the fridge, unless Cressy has just poured it all over that bowl of cereal.”
“Have you ever had cereal with cream?” Cressy asked around a mouthful of flakes. “It’s awesome!”
“Oh, to have the metabolism of a seventeen-year-old,” Gunner said to me with a conspiratorial smile.
I felt oddly warmed by that, and might have commented on it if my brain weren’t still stuttering to itself over the fact that a nearly naked Gunner was within arm’s reach. “You certainly don’t look like your metabolism is falling down on the job,” my mouth said wholly without my permission.
Gunner’s eyebrows rose for a second before he looked down at himself, then over to me, another smile forming on his lips, this one slow and very knowing. “Your eyes are dilating again,” he said in a volume that was barely audible over Cressida’s humming as she crunched her way through a bowl of cereal.
“I have no doubt they are.” I glanced at Cressy, and kept to myself the fact that there were a lot of other parts that were equally aware of him.
He opened his mouth to say something, but evidently thought better of it, saying simply, “Sit down. Do you like your omelet with or without cheese?”
“With, please. Can I help you? I suspect you shouldn’t be on that ankle.”
“On the contrary, the cast comes off tomorrow, so I consider this practice for walking again. An omelet is entirely within my culinary purview.”
“Your father,” I told Cressy, sitting down with a mug of coffee, “likes to intimidate me with that plummy accent and fancy words.”
Gunner laughed.
“Don’t let him,” Cressy said, stuffing her mouth with a handful of grapes. Thankfully, she waited until she had chewed and swallowed before adding, “We had to take a semester of psychology last year, and I can tell that he’s just trying to impress you. It’s because he’s not the oldest son.”
“Hey!” Gunner protested.
“And he’s adopted.”
“I am right here, you know, perfectly able to hear you.”
“And probably has some weird thing where he thinks he’s not as good as other people because his birth mom was African, and his dad was Serbian.”
“I object to you speaking of me as if I was a mental patient. And in case you were thinking of defying me, your father, the authority figure in your life who has custody of you for the summer, let me remind you that I also hold the keys to the car that takes you to your beloved riding lessons.” Gunner brought the omelet over to the table, sliding it onto a plate. He returned to the stove to continue cooking a third omelet. “Lorina, I forbid you to listen to this hell-spawn child of mine, for she knows not of what she speaks. Yes, I might have been trying to impress you, although I doubt if words like ‘culinary purview’ would do that, but even if that was so, I was motivated solely by the desire to have you think well of me, and not because of my heritage or the fact that I was adopted. Would anyone care for a grilled tomato?”
“Ew!” Cressy said.
Likewise, I made a face that Gunner caught.
“Americans,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’m Canadian!”
“North Americans, then. If you don’t mind me asking, what are your plans for today, Lorina?”
Cressy answered before I could. “I don’t know what she’s going to do, but I’m going to the stable to muck out, and then going to help with a class of special-needs kids who get walked around on horses. It’s going to be great fun.”
“I know what your plans are, hence my directing the question to Lorina.” Gunner sat down with the third omelet.
I will admit to eating more than I had planned, partly because I really was hungry, but mostly as a way to divert my attention from the sight of a naked chest sitting opposite me.
“You could come with me, if you wanted, Lorina,” Cressy offered around a mouthful of egg and ham. “I bet Madame Leigh wouldn’t mind extra helpers, and it’s for a really good cause.”
“I’m sure it is, but I have work to do here,” I said, averting my eyes from the play of muscle as Gunner lifted a fork to his mouth. Really, men who looked like him should be illegal. They were pure distraction, and didn’t allow a person—a normal, average female person who was self-sufficient and in control of her life—to enjoy her eggs the way she should.
“Lorina?” Gunner prompted.
Unbidden, my gaze lifted, locking on him. There he was, sitting just as if he were innocent, and yet the opposite was so clearly true. A man like Gunner filled an unwary woman’s head with lustful thoughts of touching him, and rubbing her breasts on his chest, and, god help us, licking all that sleek, tempting flesh.
>
“Lorina? Is something wrong?”
I had a mental image of what he would look like emerging from a shower, wet and warm and slippery with soapy water. My tongue seemed to grow two sizes as I imagined stroking my hands all over that delicious body.
“Earth to Lorina.” A sharp blow to my shoulder abruptly recalled me from the Land of Gunner’s Naked Self. Cressy poked me again on the shoulder. “You OK? You have the wildest look on your face.”
“Soapy,” I said, giving myself a mental shake to dissipate those erotic images. “Er . . . sorry, what was the question?”
Gunner gave me an odd look, part question, and part concern. “I asked what you had planned for the day.”
“Oh. Um.” It took me a couple of seconds, but I managed to get my brain working again. “Well, we have the treasure piece for the camera to do this morning, and until Roger demands we do another piece, which, knowing him, will be this afternoon, I have pictures to take.”
“Ah, yes. The photography.” He busied himself with a piece of toast. “That’s a shame. I had an idea during the night that I wanted to investigate, and I thought you might be interested in helping me pursue it.”
“An idea about what?” I asked warily.
“This supposed treasure.”
“I thought we were agreed that there wasn’t one? And speaking of that, one of the archaeologists has already blamed me for the production company forcing all the diggers to stop their work and now search for more of those mouse stones, assuming there are any more.”
“We can hardly help that—it’s not our decision to make, and to be honest, once the word gets out that there may be some treasure, the glut of publicity that will descend upon our heads will appease even the sourest of diggers. Not to mention will likely increase the tourist traffic to the castle. Hmm. I may have to warn the tour guides to be prepared for an influx of visitors.”
I frowned. “Yes, but publicity at what cost?”
“At the cost of valuable archaeology, of course,” he said before I could answer my own rhetorical question. “Which is to be regretted, but since the decision is out of our hands, why shouldn’t we make the best of the situation?”
“By cashing in on tourists?” I asked, more than a little shocked at his crass commercialism.
He shook his head. “No, that doesn’t matter. Tourists will come to the castle no matter what’s going on here. What I meant is that the dig means massive amounts of attention from the public, more than what would be generated by the TV show alone, so why shouldn’t we use that to further the bounds of knowledge?”
I shook my head, confused. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
“He means it’ll make archaeology seem cool and exciting. Very Indiana Jones, right, Gunner?”
“Exactly so.” He beamed at his daughter. “You obviously get your intelligence from my side of the family.”
Cressy giggled, and rolled her eyes.
Really, I could not continue with Gunner’s chest just sitting there asking to be pounced on. It was beyond human endurance. “Exposure aside—and speaking of that, would you mind terribly putting on some clothes?—what is your idea about the treasure?”
There was a distinct twinkle in his eye as he said, “Are you one of those prudish people who doesn’t like to see other people’s skin?”
“Not in the least. You can be stark naked if you like,” I said with a dismissive sniff that hopefully disguised the fact that I was fairly drooling at the sight of all his skin at the moment.
“Ew,” Cressy said, glancing over from a small TV that had been silently displaying the morning news. “Please don’t, Gunner. I’d have to go to all sorts of therapy, and who knows what they’d find wrong with me? Besides, that’s just icky. I don’t want to see you naked.”
“Thank god for small mercies,” Gunner said, and, leaning back, caught a ragged sweater off a hook, and pulled it over his wonderful chest. “Better?” he asked me.
“Infinitely so,” I lied, annoyed at myself for making him cover up. At the same time, I knew I wouldn’t have lasted much longer without doing something I was sure to regret. “Please go on with your idea about this stupid treasure hunt.”
“Well,” he said, setting down his fork and leaning forward, moving the salt and pepper shakers into formation with a napkin basket and Cressy’s empty glass. “Imagine this is the trench on the north side of the castle.”
“Trench ten,” I said, frowning as he set a pot of jam down.
“Right. And in that trench, what did we find? Cressy?”
“Beats me,” Cressy answered, giving up on the TV to pop earbuds into her ears, and pulling out an MP3 player. “Unless it’s jewelry or skeletons, it’s beyond boring.”
“I’ll tell you what they found, you heathen child—they found one of those mouse stones. And that’s where the courtyard of the Roman villa was.”
“Big whoop.”
Both Gunner and I frowned at her.
“It is a big deal. It means that the building they’ve uncovered so far really is a villa, and not a military base, as they first thought. Although . . .” I toyed with the saltshaker. “I thought trenches two and three were the courtyard. How could the courtyard extend this far? The villa would have to have been mega-huge.”
“The answer is that the courtyard that clearly runs under the north edge of the existing castle belongs to a separate villa. In other words, we have multiple villas located on a relatively small amount of land, with the temple lying between them.” Gunner sat back with an air of satisfaction. “And that means that it’s likely the remains of the second villa are under the castle foundation.”
I tried to picture the layout in my mind. “I don’t know enough about archaeology to say whether that’s a reasonable conclusion or not, but since assumedly you do, I’ll go along with it. There’s no way that you can dig to find out whether or not that’s true, though.”
“We can’t destroy the castle to see what’s underneath it, but there may be a way around that.”
“I don’t see how, unless you’re talking about that high-tech ground-scanning stuff. But in any case, why are you so focused on this villa? Two of the stones were found elsewhere.”
“Don’t focus on the minutiae. You have to see the big picture.” He moved a few plates and cups around on the table. “Let’s say that you live in the villa that’s located out in the south pasture. You hear rumors of a great army sweeping toward you, and you’re well aware that the nearest fort is at Tunston—that’s a good thirteen miles away. The tribes that have united under Boudicca—remember, the finds we have from the villa all date to around sixty AD, which means it was the right time period for Boudicca’s attempts to drive out the Romans—those tribes are destroying everything they come across.”
“That would be terrifying,” I said, giving a little shiver. “The people here must have felt so isolated and unprotected.”
“Hence the explanation for the skeletons in the grove,” Gunner said, nodding.
“Those were sad!” Cressy said, looking up from her cell phone. “All those kids in there with the women. And no men! Why weren’t the men there? Where were the men? Stupid men leaving women and children alone!”
“It’s likely the men were cut down defending the villas.”
“OK, now I’m seriously confused,” I said, trying to make sense of what Gunner was saying. “What does this attack have to do with the mouse stones, and hence the supposed treasure?”
“Let’s go back to the scenario—let’s say you live in the first villa.”
“Gotcha. Are you going to make me a slave?”
“No, you can be the wife of the owner, if you like.”
“Oooh! The one with all the clothes, and pretty jewelry, and scads of servants? I can live with being the lady of the manor.”
; “It’s a role you’re suited for.” Gunner smiled at me, and I lost my thoughts for a few seconds.
Cressy looked up from her cell phone. “Can I be there, too? Only I want to be a female warrior, not a grand lady. I wouldn’t mind some of the jewelry, though.”
“All right,” Gunner agreed, “you can be Lorina’s personal guard. One who wears gold jewelry.”
“Woot! I get a sword, too, right?”
“A sword and a shield. Now, the people who have escaped ahead of the advancing army tell you a tale that makes your blood run cold. Romans, all Romans—men, women, and children—are all being slaughtered by Boudicca and the Trinovantes tribe, and whoever else they gathered along the way.”
“The Trinovantes sound like they sucked,” Cressy said stalwartly. “I would totally defend you from them, Lorina.”
“I appreciate that, although I fear that we might be outnumbered.” I bit my lip and eyed Gunner. “What happened next?”
“Ideally, you women, the children, and any elderly and infirm are moved to a safe place along with your household valuables—gold and silver jewelry, and any plates that you happened to have—so that the attackers can’t kill you all and walk off with your things.”
“That makes sense,” I said, beginning to see a light. “Get the people and the priceless stuff to safety because the house could be destroyed.”
“Correct. But if the villa is caught off guard and you don’t have time to get people and valuables out, then what?” He waited, obviously expecting Cressy and me to provide a reasonable answer.
“Well . . .” I looked at Cressy. Her forehead was wrinkled in thought. “I guess if the attackers were marching down the Roman road to my front door, I’d run out the back with my arms stuffed full of everything I could carry.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Cressy said slowly. “You’re the lady of the manor, aren’t you? That’s like the captain of a ship. You’d stay with it, and send the others away.”
“Right. I like that. Less cowardly.” I lifted my chin. I had enough cowardice in my real life to burden this fantasy life with it. “I’d hide the jewelry and gold plates, get the vulnerable people to a safe place, and organize the boiling-oil line to defend my home.”
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