Eros Element

by Cecilia Dominic

  “Yesterday.” Iris clenched a fist below the counter. Damn these Italians and their disorganization.

  “Are you sure you can’t tell us who it is?” Marie flashed a smile and a bank note. “We could collaborate.”

  “No, Signorina. I will pass along your information to the permit holder should he come in. Pronto!”

  With the indication to let the next person in line know it was their turn shouted in Iris’s face, she knew it was futile. She hated to ask, but once they jolted along in a steamcart—they’d soon decided to let the Italian drivers handle the Italian roads and hired one—she turned to Marie.

  “We can’t have come all this way to be stopped by a permit, of all things.” She hated bureaucracy and was surprised to find it to such a degree in a place that seemed so very chaotic. They couldn’t even figure out how to unite and become a country, for goodness’s sake. But it made sense if the part of Rome they wanted to dig in belonged to the Catholic Church, a bastion of rules and regulations.

  “It’s frustrating,” Marie agreed.

  “I hate to ask you this, but can you contact Cobb and see if he can use his influence for us? We haven’t seen anything about his dirigible crashing in the papers, so I assume he’s alive.” They had seen a blurb about an incident in Paris at the home of the Marquis of Monceau. Iris’s name hadn’t been mentioned specifically, but she cringed at the thought and hoped they could return to England without going through Paris.

  “And you’re sure this is the place.”

  “As sure as I can be. I saw it in two visions, and the echo-worm readings show it’s the right size.”

  Marie gazed at the street. “If Cobb wanted to be contacted, he would have been in touch. I suspect he’s sitting back and monitoring us to see if we succeed.”

  “So you’re not communicating with him?”

  Marie shook her head. “Not in any great detail. But I haven’t heard back from him.”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence. They found the men at the cafe across the square, from where they could monitor the site but stay out of the sun. A stone carafe of wine with condensation beading on the outside sat in the middle of the table, and Iris swallowed against her thirst.

  “Pour me some?” she asked once they added chairs for her and Marie.

  “It went that well, did it?” asked Bledsoe. “You’re not one to drink in the middle of the day. Or at all.”

  “Someone already pulled the permit,” Marie explained. “But they wouldn’t tell us who.”

  “It’s too strange,” Iris said. “Too coincidental. I thought we got out of Paris without anyone seeing us, but maybe someone did. Maybe they followed us and decided to let us do the work of finding the place.”

  “But how would they know to go to the Vatican permitting office first?” asked Marie.

  A shadow fell across the table. “Some of us are better at hiring people to do our work for us. It does make things more efficient, Miss McTavish.”

  Iris looked up to see the smug face of Lord Jeremy Scott.

  “Surprised?” he asked.

  Big hairy ox’s bollocks!

  Edward wanted to do something, but he waited to see what course of action Iris would prefer. There was something in the lordling’s smile that made Edward want to step in front of Iris to protect her from… Well, he wasn’t sure, but Lord Jeremy Scott seemed up to no good.

  “How did you find us?” Iris asked.

  Edward nodded internally. Ah, investigation, a logical course.

  Scott studied his nails. “The clerk at the Hôtel Auberge sent me a tube when you checked out, and by the time you had your luggage loaded onto the theatre’s coach, my men were in place to follow you.”

  “But we didn’t see anyone,” O’Connell said. “We were looking, especially for your men.”

  “Live and learn, gentlemen. I hired professionals for this job. It didn’t come cheap, but it was worth it because now I’m able to join you for a lovely lunch. Let’s discuss how to proceed with this archaeological dig that will make my name in the field.” He gestured for a waiter to bring him a glass.

  “We didn’t invite you to join us,” Iris said.

  “Ah, but you don’t have any say, do you, Miss McTavish? Considering I hold the papers on your house, you should try to stay on my good side.”

  “But how did that happen?” Edward asked.

  “There was debt after my parents’ illnesses,” Iris said.

  Something wary about her demeanor reminded Edward of how he felt when the dean approached him. Now Edward knew he could comfort her because he recognized this dance. “I know we don’t make much at the University, but your father should be able to pay off most of it with his salary even if we don’t succeed with this venture. You won’t be in this person’s debt for long.”

  “Ah yes, your father.” Lord Jeremy raised his glass. “I have a toast to make to the great man.”

  “Don’t,” Iris said through clenched teeth. “Don’t you dare.”

  With a triumphant expression, Lord Jeremy Scott said, “To the late Irvin McTavish, may his soul rest in peace.”

  “He’s dead?” Edward put his hand on Iris’s wrist. “My condolences. This must be horrible news for you.”

  “It’s not news, though, is it, Miss McTavish?” The odious lordling inclined his head at Iris, who looked like she wanted to snap his head off like a brittle statue’s, although she would never destroy a precious artifact. But why didn’t she look more distraught at such horrible tidings?

  “I don’t wish to speak of this,” Iris said at the same time Scott added, “She’s known all along.”

  “We found out in Paris,” Marie put in. “But we didn’t tell you, Professor, because you were on pain medication, and we needed to keep it a secret. Miss McTavish would have had to go back to England if word got out, and our goals would be compromised.”

  Now Iris shot Edward a fearful glance, and he remembered her promise not to hide anything from him.

  “You could have told me,” he said. “If it’s important, no matter how much medication I had, I wouldn’t have said anything. Why didn’t you trust me?” As much as it hurt, he could admit it was the logical thing to do. He’d blurted out their purpose in going to Paris to Radcliffe, and thank goodness the doctor had remained trustworthy.

  “I’m sorry, Edward.” Iris drew her wrist from under his hand and looked at him with tears in her eyes. “But I’ve lied to you all along.”

  “You’ve lied to everyone,” Scott said. “Now I know why you were so confident your father wouldn’t approve of my suit for you. He was already dead.”

  “But that happened before we left Huntington Village.” Edward tried to put all the pieces together to make sense of them, to convince himself she had only lied about her father’s death since Paris, but he couldn’t. “So you knew he’d died when you accepted this assignment on his behalf.”

  She nodded and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I had to. I couldn’t keep up the household on what we had left, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to get out of dire financial straits.” She glared at Scott. “I didn’t count on my maid betraying me. Or was that your doing too?”

  “I might have arranged for her and my footman to meet, but she caught his eye long before I got involved.”

  Johann put his cup down on the table hard enough that the noise directed everyone’s attention to him. “This is all very well, but we need to figure out what we’re going to do. Obviously Miss McTavish needs the money to rescue her house.”

  The sun seemed to beat down on Edward, and he squinted against the tears the bright light brought forth. The tendril of jealousy that he had fought at seeing how Iris and Johann interacted now curled inward and stabbed him through the middle of his chest, then expanded into a root-web of anger when he thought about her lying the whole time.
The two thoughts batted his mind back and forth like sadistic cats. Why hadn’t he jumped in to defend her rather than letting Johann do it? Oh, right, because she’d lied. He should have known all women were the same.

  Time to celebrate another bloody brilliant Edward Bailey discovery.

  He had a small sample size, but it was large enough for definitive conclusion: women were not to be trusted. He poured himself a half cup of wine and downed the sour liquid in one gulp.

  It’s interesting how something can be cold and hot at the same time.

  He poured and drank another one.

  “Edward,” Iris pleaded. “Edward, please look at me.”

  He blinked and saw she seemed blurry at the edges but still attractive. That wouldn’t do. He reached for the wine carafe again, but she stopped him.

  “Let him drown his sorrows,” Scott said. “It’s about time he found out your true nature. Thankfully I’m willing to rescue him from you.”

  Iris withdrew her hand. “What do you mean?”

  “If you want access to the site, you need to do one simple thing for me.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Agree to marry me. I have the contract with me now.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Hotel Segreto, Rome, 16 June 1870

  “You don’t need me to marry you if you have the rights to the site,” Iris told him. “I am willing to trade my cooperation and help with the excavation and cataloging since I know you don’t have the knowledge to make sense of what’s in there.”

  Lord Jeremy smiled at her, but no amount of wrinkling at the corners of his squinty eyes could make him look warm or generous. “Even so, you need access to it. And I want your father’s notes, particularly on discoveries he hadn’t published yet. His acquired knowledge will become the property of the University since there is no male heir, and we will both lose access to it.”

  Iris saw the logic in his statement, but her father had not wanted her to marry Lord Jeremy, and she recalled the vision of him from Irvin’s things. She knew humiliating him in front of the others wouldn’t help her case, so she stood and gestured for Jeremy Scott to follow her. They walked into the hotel lobby, where she found a quiet corner.

  “This is more than about his notes, isn’t it?” she asked. “You want revenge on him for something.”

  Now all pretense of joviality dropped from Scott’s features. “Your father thought I cheated in his class and kicked me out.”

  “Did you cheat?” Iris crossed her arms and scowled at him.

  “Don’t give me that school marm look, Miss McTavish. I didn’t cheat, I delegated.”

  “You had someone write a paper for you.” She knew from his expression she hit home. “Why would I want to marry a cheater?”

  “Why would anyone but me want to marry a liar? You said yourself you’re not the type for marriage, but you don’t have a home to go to since I hold the deed to your house. Do you really think you’ll be able to survive on your own, especially if you turn back from your quest now? I can’t imagine your patron will take kindly to your willfulness.”

  “Willful child, you’ll never find a man to put up with you.” Iris’s mother’s voice came into her mind, and her father’s chimed in with, “You have to look at all the evidence and see what makes the most sense. Even if it’s a conclusion you don’t want to be true, you have to accept it and move forward without bias.”

  She had to try one more thing. “What if I give you access to his notes before the university gets to them? Then will you allow me to assist with the excavations without having to marry you?”

  “There’s no guarantee you’ll be able to do that.” He put his hand on her waist and drew her to him. His breath smelled of garlic, and she turned her head away. “Marry me, Iris. It’s the only way you’ll get what you want.”

  She drew away from him and walked into the sunlight, which now seemed mocking in its cheery brightness. She gazed across the square at the arched remnants of a civilization long dead and felt the eighteen hundred years that separated her from its builders and the designers of the space below. What was one lifetime of misery in the context of history? How could she deny the good this discovery could bring, a power source that would lift the poor from slavery to coal? She’d lectured Edward on the need to remain practical in his science. Perhaps her mother was right—as a woman, it was her lot to sacrifice herself, and at least she could to pursue her intellectual hobbies. At least as much as Lord Jeremy—Jeremy now—would allow it.

  Don’t be foolish, of course he’ll allow it. He can’t do it without help.

  That felt like a hollow victory compared to what she was giving up, most of all Edward. But she knew that was futile from the beginning. He valued honesty above all else, and she’d lied to him. The Maestro was right—she should have left well enough alone.

  Iris walked back to the table at the cafe. She felt the other men’s eyes on her, but she gazed at Edward. He stared into the bottom of his wine cup. She so badly wanted to take him aside, to make him believe she’d done what she had to do to survive, but a little voice said she should have trusted him all along. Maybe it was for the best. A deeper attachment would have hurt him more. As for Marie, the expression on her face was unreadable aside from a hint of sympathetic pity. Now Iris’s stomach flipped with shame at having judged Marie for whatever had happened with Cobb. Perhaps he’d put her in a similar situation, given her an impossible choice. Iris wanted to hate all men, but that wasn’t reasonable, either.

  “I have an announcement,” she said. “I have consented to marry Lord Jeremy Scott. Excavations at the site will begin as soon as we can gather and organize the crew.”

  She turned and fled into the hotel before she had to face their halfhearted congratulations or Jeremy’s smug smirk.

  The following Monday, Iris stood at the edge of a ramp that led down into the gloom. Lord Jeremy Scott stood beside her, and on the other side, Marie, who had proved adept at getting the Italian workers to move in a less chaotic and more efficient way. Consequently, they broke ground the Friday after Iris agreed to marry Scott, and rather than having to dig, they had to remove rubble that had been put into the space, which ended up being some sort of underground chapel with a skylight on one end, and settled enough to create the chamber the echo-worm detected. Patrick O’Connell had rigged a pulley system to clear the rubble quickly. Now Iris and Lord Jeremy—she couldn’t think of him as simply Jeremy—were to lead the others into the space for the first time to discover what had been left behind and see what condition any decoration might be in.

  Iris couldn’t help but check behind her to see where Edward stood. As usual, he didn’t meet her gaze, just stared straight ahead. While she, Marie and Lord Jeremy oversaw the work, the others had hired an academic translator and gone around to the libraries in Rome to see if they could find any mentions in old manuscripts as to what the space might have been. So far vague clues hinted that this might have been some sort of neo-Pythagorean gathering space, but as they were persecuted at the time it was built in the first century AD, secrecy surrounded it. If it indeed had been used by the cult, this discovery would make Iris’s—no, Lord Jeremy Scott’s—name in the field.

  It’s worth it for the discovery, Iris reminded herself, but she resented the situation.

  “Are you ready?” her fiancé asked.

  “Yes.”

  One of the workers handed him a torch, and he reached for her hand, but she folded her arms. “After you,” she said. “It’s too narrow for both of us.” But Edward and I could have fit.

  She followed him into the space, which smelled of stone dust and now the sulfur of the torch. It brought back memories of the visions she’d had, and something told her this was the right place.

  The flickering torch and the light from the skylight opening revealed a room that would be considered small by
Roman basilica standards, but the structure reminded Iris of the large chapels with a central aisle and another on either side. The sun illuminated an altar, on which a box lay on its side. Lord Jeremy started toward it, but Iris held him back.

  “Remember, we have to look first, catalog second, and then we can pick them up and take them apart.” She kept her voice low in respect for the sacred space. People had died there.

  “Right.” He squeezed her hand. “I lost my head with the excitement.”

  Or you never bothered to learn how you’re supposed to do this. But she gave him enough of a smile to placate him.

  As they walked through, the torchlight illuminated scenes in stucco. Iris itched to stop and sketch them, but she reminded herself to get the overall impression of the place, and she could study the details later. She glanced back to the others and saw her own sense of wonder reflected on their faces. Even Edward dropped his stone-faced sneer, which she had to admit was a slight improvement over the pout he often sported at the beginning of the trip, and gazed at the stuccoes and columns with awe and respect for the long-dead architects and artists. She paused so he moved closer to her before he realized where he stood and moved back a step. Iris sighed, but when she looked up, she found the angle of the light to be familiar and maneuvered so the vision of the past and perception of the present merged.

  When Iris stepped on the spot where the slave girl had stood, probably as the finishing touches were put on the chapel, a shiver ran from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head, and she couldn’t stifle her gasp.

  “What is it?” Edward asked. “Are you all right?”

  Another layer of the past, this one from the previous week, superimposed itself, and Iris blinked to bring herself back into the moment. “This looks familiar.”

  “How?” He frowned. “You’ve never been here.”

  I promised myself I would be honest with him, and I have nothing to lose by telling him at this point. “Objects tell me things. It’s like they give me their memories. One of the statues in the Louvre was of a person who had been here. A kore, or female kouros, which were sometimes made to commemorate someone. She must have been a beloved slave girl.”