by Olivia Drake
Yet would he condemn her for deceiving him? Would he react with fury as he’d done when he’d found out about Lady Milford?
Bella swallowed the dryness in her throat. “I’ll tell you under one condition. You must promise you won’t get angry and shout at me.”
A slight dip of his eyelashes implied regret for his earlier outburst. “You have my word.”
She hoped he meant it. He might despise her again, and that would be difficult to bear. Yet she felt compelled to confess, anyway. “You were right to think that I came to Aylwin House under false pretenses. I did. But only because on his deathbed, my father told me to return to England and find you.”
“To find me?”
“Yes, though I didn’t know who you were at the time, not until Lady Milford came to visit me. You see, Papa fell very ill. On the night before he died, he had a moment of lucidness.” Her throat caught as she remembered sitting by his bedside, seeing his blue eyes open and focus on her. “He reached for my hand. And he said very clearly, ‘Return to Oxford. Promise me. Find Aylwin. Find the map. You have half … the pharaoh’s treasure.’”
Miles said nothing. Only the hissing of the fire disturbed the silence as Bella waited tensely for him to react. Maybe he would think her real purpose was far worse than plotting to entrap him into marriage. Maybe he would brand her a thief.
She forced herself to continue. “I came here hoping to find the map and the treasure. Not to enrich myself, but so that I could provide for Lila and Cyrus. At the time, I didn’t know you, Miles. I feared that you would try to stop me from claiming our inheritance.”
A frown furrowed his brow. He pushed to his feet and towered over her. “So all this time, you’ve been searching for a treasure map?”
“Yes, but I never found it.” Her fingers dug into the arms of the chair. “When you forbade me to enter the storeroom with the papyri, I thought I might as well look in the archives, to see if the map might have been misfiled with the other documents.”
He began to pace back and forth in front of the desk. “A pharaoh’s treasure … that doesn’t even make sense. My father funded the entire expedition. Since he had to pay the Egyptian government dearly for every artifact he sent back to England, he would never have promised half the contents of a burial chamber to your father, who was merely an employee.”
Bella hadn’t considered that. Had she come to Aylwin House on a fool’s errand? “All I know is what Papa told me. There must be some explanation.”
As if lost in thought, Miles frowned into the fire. “I assisted every day at the excavation site. I never heard any mention of a treasure map. Are you certain that Sir Seymour wasn’t delusional from the fever?”
“I—I don’t believe so. Papa seemed very determined that I would understand him. I told him we’d talk further in the morning. But he passed away during the night. I never had a chance to ask him for more information.”
Bella blinked to clear the mistiness from her eyes. Not for the world did she intend to succumb to tears. Now that she’d made her confession, it was too important to find out what Miles might know.
Which didn’t appear to be much of anything.
Too restless to sit, she rose from the chair and watched him pace. “Hasani mentioned that your father originally went to Egypt with the purpose of finding the burial site of a young pharaoh. According to legend, it was untouched by grave robbers and full of many gold artifacts. But Aylwin never located that particular tomb.”
“Tutankhamen. But those stories of a vast treasure trove were merely hearsay. There was no actual proof to back up the rumors.”
Bella refused to let her dream fizzle to nothingness. It would be too devastating to fail to fulfill her father’s last wishes. Yet she could see by Miles’s expression that he was genuinely puzzled.
She stopped his pacing with a touch to his wrist. “Is it possible that your father might have discovered such a map and didn’t tell you? Could it be among your collection of papyri?”
Miles slowly shook his head. “I’m familiar with every one of those ancient documents. They’re all written in hieroglyphs. I’ve never seen a geographical map…” Then an arrested expression came over his face and he turned to her, catching hold of her arms. “What did your father say again? Tell me exactly.”
She dutifully repeated, “‘Return to Oxford. Promise me. Find Aylwin. Find the map. You have half the pharaoh’s treasure.’”
His fingers tightened on her arms. “That isn’t the way you said it the first time. ‘Find the map. You have half…’ Then you paused before adding, ‘the pharaoh’s treasure.’”
“Papa did pause there,” Bella said, remembering. “I thought he was just having difficulty speaking. He was very weak. Are you suggesting that he stopped on purpose?”
“Indeed. ‘Find the map. You have half.’ He may have been trying to convey that you have half the map.”
The notion stunned her. “That can’t be. Where is it, then?”
“Perhaps in one of the crates or stuck in one of his journals. But if you have half, then that means I must have the other half, which is why Sir Seymour insisted that you return to England and find me.”
“How incredible. Do you truly think so?”
“Yes,” he said in a galvanized tone. “Especially since I have a fragment of a papyrus document that has never made any sense to me. Come, I’ll show you.”
Miles turned on his heel, picked up a branch of candles, and strode into the storeroom adjacent to the study. Bella followed closely behind. Excitement bubbled in her. Could his theory really be true? Oh, she hoped so. Nothing else made sense.
The tall cabinets of drawers looked the same as on the night when he had caught her snooping in here, the night when he had pulled her into his arms and kissed her for the first time, awakening her deepest feminine desires. That memory alone caused a flush of longing in her.
But she mustn’t think such thoughts. Not now, not ever. Even if she decided to remain at Aylwin House for a time, her stay could only be temporary. Any longer, and it would be too tempting to give herself to Miles again even though he had made plain his aversion to marriage.
He proceeded to the far end of the small room and handed her the candelabrum. “Hold this, if you will.”
She grasped the ornate silver base while he opened the topmost drawer of a cabinet and withdrew a single, thin sheet of papyrus about the size of his palm. He carried it back out to his desk, where he laid it down carefully atop the polished mahogany. Bella set the candelabrum nearby so that the light of the candles illuminated the fragile sheet.
Hieroglyphic pictures in faded ink covered the scrap of papyrus. There were little holes here and there, and she could see the fiber of the reeds that had been used to make the paper. Much to her disappointment, however, she saw no roads or other topographical illustrations.
Miles picked up his gold spectacles from the desk and put them on to examine the papyrus closely. He pointed to one side. “See that ragged edge? It appears as if it was torn, perhaps in half.”
“But it doesn’t look at all like a map.”
“True, but the words and phrases seem to be directions. Left and right, with references to specific landmarks. I would have to sit down and study the hieroglyphs more closely. But I do believe this papyrus could very well be what your father would call a map.”
The possibility was so amazing that Bella caught hold of his arm. “Oh, Miles. So the treasure map really does exist, after all.”
He removed his spectacles, tossed them aside, and smiled, his eyes softening as he brushed his fingers over her cheek. “Yes. But it’s worthless without both pieces. Now we shall have to look for your half.”
* * *
An hour later, they had pulled out all three crates and searched fruitlessly through dozens of leather-bound journals and other papers. There was no scrap of papyrus anywhere, even though they carefully checked the individual pages of each notebook to see if it could have been
tucked in between them.
While they worked, they’d speculated on what must have happened. Either Aylwin or her father had discovered the papyrus, perhaps in the tomb they’d been excavating. Recognizing that it gave directions to an undiscovered treasure trove, they had torn it in half, each man keeping a piece as a safeguard against thievery.
As he opened the last crate, Bella had a disquieting thought. “Miles, could this map have had something to do with your father’s death? Do you suppose he might have been killed by someone who’d wanted to steal his half of it?”
Miles glanced up, his eyes meeting hers. His face had hardened into a bleak expression. “The likelihood had occurred to me, yes.”
A bone-deep horror gripped Bella. She forgot the notebook lying open in her lap as her mind grappled with the revelation. “Then perhaps that would also explain why Papa left Egypt so swiftly. He feared for his own life. So he took Mama and me away in the night.” She paused, feeling sick. “But Miles, he left you without protection. How could he have done so if he’d suspected there was a murderer on the loose?”
Miles stroked her arm reassuringly. “You needn’t look so aghast. By escaping with his half of the map, Sir Seymour rendered my half utterly useless. So I was perfectly safe.”
“But he should have brought you with us.”
“Quite the contrary. Upon my father’s death, I became Duke of Aylwin. If Sir Seymour had kidnapped an underage peer, the full force of the law would have been after him.”
Bella digested that for a moment. Perhaps Miles was right, her father had taken the best course of action under the circumstances. “Do you suppose the intruder was also looking for Papa’s half of the map? And what if he’s already found it?”
“It’s possible,” Miles said rather grimly, as he took another leather-bound journal out of the crate. “That’s why I do wish you’d told me about this map sooner. We’re dealing with someone who may have already killed once.”
Bella couldn’t have told him before now. She’d been too determined to find the treasure map on her own, too afraid that he would try to thwart her. It had taken her decision to leave Aylwin House to realize that she had nothing more to lose.
So she merely said, “Do you think the culprit might be William Banbury-Davis? He was in Egypt, too. Maybe he’d heard a rumor about the map and wanted it for himself. He very much resented my father for being chosen to go on the expedition instead of him. Perhaps he wanted the glory of discovering a lost tomb full of treasure.”
“I’m aware of all that.” Miles set down the journal and slid his fingers through hers. “Bella, you’re to leave this investigation to me. If the map does indeed give directions to a trove of ancient treasure, there are those who would do great harm to get their hands on it. I won’t have you putting yourself in danger.”
“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “Yes, you are.” Then his fingers tightened around hers, his thumb stroking her palm. He looked very serious again. “But do listen to me, please. You’ve come to mean the world to me. If anything ever happened to you, I honestly don’t know how I could go on living.”
Her heart turned over at the rough note of emotion in his voice. His eyes were steady on her, resolute and candid. The world faded away to just the two of them, alone in his study while the rest of the house slept. She could only think of how close they sat, how very much she yearned for him. Nothing else mattered to her but Miles, not the map, not the treasure, not even their quarrel. Could she truly mean so much to him? It seemed an impossible dream …
“Oh, Miles,” she murmured on a thread of longing.
She couldn’t have said who made the first move. But then they were in each other’s arms, and he was kissing her so deeply and tenderly that all resistance melted from her body. In some part of herself, she knew she ought not allow him, yet it felt so right to be held in his embrace that all of her objections faded into nothingness.
His hands roved up and down her back, playing with her hair, brushing her neck and ears with a light touch. She indulged her own need to stroke him, too, to reassure herself that he was real. Her fingers slipped beneath his coat to memorize his lean waist and the hard contours of his chest. A fever beat in her blood. How was it that he could stir her so completely, as if like the map, they were two parts that joined to become a whole? Her life would be bleak without him. And yet how could it be otherwise? Their situations were just too different, his station being so exalted, and hers so ordinary.
Miles drew back slightly, dropping gentle kisses over her brow, as if he were reluctant to give full vent to his desires. He caught her face in his palms so that she looked into his ardent dark eyes. “God help me, Bella, I do love you. I intend to marry you. I need to marry you.”
She trembled. He couldn’t be serious. “It’s only lust that makes you say so.”
“Yes, I do lust for you. How could I not?” He traced his thumb over her damp lips. “But that can’t explain why you haunt me day and night. Or why I can scarcely bear to be apart from you. Or why you can twist my heart into knots with just a look or a word.” He gave her a fierce look as if to convince her by force alone. “You will be my wife.”
She had to be dreaming. How could he have changed his ironclad view of marriage so drastically in the space of a few hours?
She tried to make light of it. “Oh, Miles. Do you think to bully me with the Ducal Stare?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to coax you to say yes.” He kissed her lips tenderly. “Say it, my love. Please. I need you with me, always.”
A wistful sigh eddied from her as she touched his dear face, his jaw raspy with stubble. “I can’t be a duchess. I don’t know how.”
“Then I shall relinquish the dukedom,” he declared. “But one way or another, I shall wed you. And I’ll devote myself to winning your heart. You’ll come to love me, too, in time.”
She blinked in surprise. “Do you think that I don’t—”
He placed his finger over her lips. “You said ‘my love’ to me when we were in bed. I hoped then that you might—but when you also spoke the same to your brother, I realized it was merely a term of endearment.” Miles gave her a fervent look. “Marry me, darling, for I’ve enough love for both of us.”
Bella could no longer hold back the emotion that spilled from her heart, and she threw her arms around him. “Miles, of course I love you. You’re my dearest love. And you needn’t change anything about yourself. I adore you exactly as you are. Except—if I am to be your wife, you may never visit a bawdy house ever again!”
He chuckled. “You’re my one and only. I promise you that.”
An exultant smile lightened his face before he kissed her again, even more feverishly this time, until she felt drunk from the pleasure of it. Then he stood, sweeping her up into his arms.
Looping her arms around his neck, Bella laughed. “What are you doing?”
His eyes gleamed with promise. “I can’t properly make love to you here. It’s high time you were introduced to the ducal bedchamber, where you’ll be spending every night for the rest of our lives.”
A sparkle of excitement filled the evening, and she clung to him, nuzzling his neck as he carried her out into the corridor, his footsteps firm and strong. She could scarcely believe this moment was real and that Miles loved her. He passed through a doorway, kicking the door shut with his foot, and then walked into a large chamber lit by a lamp on the bedside table and the glowing embers on the hearth.
Miles set her down by the large canopied bed and they kissed and caressed while shedding themselves of the layers of their clothing. Then he laid her down on the cool sheets, and when she reached for him, he ordered, “Wait. You will allow me to please you first.”
For once she submitted to his command. It was just too impossible to resist the delight of his touch, for he had begun to stroke her all over, breasts, belly, thighs, moving down her legs to kiss the deli
cate tattoos that encircled her ankles. He worked his way back up to caress her everywhere, from the crook of her elbow to the valley of her bosom to the triangle of hair between her legs. He parted her there, plying her with his finger and then his tongue, so that she quivered with a fire that swiftly burned out of control.
Even as the rapture burst in her, he came down over her and she felt the pressure of him filling her. Instinctively she arched her hips to draw him in deeply and completely, for nothing had ever felt more right than being joined with Miles. He paused, breathing hard while gazing down into her slumberous eyes, a look of unguarded adoration on his face, an expression so tender that she feared again that she must be dreaming. “Bella,” he muttered. “You’re mine. Forever.”
She tiptoed her fingers over the familiar contours of his face. “My dearest, dearest love.”
She couldn’t form any more words as he began to thrust into her, slowly at first as she clutched his back and lifted herself to his rhythm, then harder and faster until she shattered around him, the waves of bliss spreading out and lapping every part of her body, while he groaned from his own release, voicing her name on a sharp cry.
In the aftermath, they lay in a sweaty tangle that felt like heaven. She loved the heaviness of him atop her and murmured a protest when he shifted position to take his weight from her. He chuckled deep in his chest and settled her close to the length of his body, tucking her head under his chin and planting a kiss in her tousled hair.
They whispered and talked about inconsequential matters. By unspoken agreement, they avoided the mystery of the missing map piece, for Bella wasn’t yet ready to allow the outside world to intrude upon their idyll. Miles also revealed more about his visit to Lady Milford, admitting that he’d stubbornly proclaimed that he had no interest in marriage and then jesting that now he would have to allow the woman to gloat. “She had the temerity to say that she hoped I would fall in love with you. I blasted her with a denial in no uncertain terms.” He gave Bella a wry smile. “Yet her comment forced me to realize the truth—that I do love you. And the very thought that I could have driven you away filled me with dread.”