by Lenora Bell
“I need you to tell me what you’re doing here,” he said.
“Having a lark.” She tossed her head, which didn’t have nearly the same effect it did when she had long hair to toss about. “A friend and I placed a wager about infiltrating all-male societies.”
That much was true. Her musical friend Miss Beaton was attempting to win a symphonic composition contest sponsored by the Royal Society of Musicians by using a male pseudonym.
Ravenwood hooked a thumb into his waistcoat pocket. “No, why are you here? In the library examining the Rosetta Stone?”
She shrugged. “Decided to take a tour because the meeting was so dull. You call this an exclusive society? Sadly lacking in secretive rites, I must say. Where are the intricate handshakes and the funny hats? I haven’t even heard any talk of mythical Rosy Crosses or plots to take over the world.”
“Wait a few hours.” His smile became a smirk. “There’s a doorway concealed behind the tapestry and we all go down to a secret chamber in the cellar and drink blood and debauch virgins in ominous rituals.”
He would have to bring up debauching.
And she would have to picture him by candlelight as he bound her wrists; preparing to have his diabolical way with her . . . she applied a mental dash of cold water to her overactive imagination.
“All I saw,” she said tartly, “was you fondling a marble statue. What’s the matter, can’t find a real woman to show you her bosom?”
The side of his lip lifted higher. “Speaking of bosoms . . .” He walked closer and she suppressed the instinctual urge to retreat. His gaze traveled over her cravat and waistcoat. “What the devil’s happened to yours?”
“Women have been binding their chests and passing as men since time immemorial.”
“Shameful waste of a damned fine bosom, if you ask me.”
“I’d like to stop discussing bosoms now.”
“You’re the one who introduced the topic, and since you don’t appear to be willing to answer my initial question I’ll play along, until you grow weary of our battle of wits and innuendo and decide to tell me the truth.”
“I thought you lived for our battles of wit and innuendo,” she said with as glib a tone as she could manage.
“They do make life more interesting,” he drawled. “But I’m after answers. Admit it, Indy.” He walked closer. “You’re trapped between a stone and a hard place.”
The hard place being him.
All of him.
From the glint in his eyes, to those cheekbones like cutlass blades, to the impressive framework of muscles bulging beneath his coat.
She certainly wasn’t going to think about any other parts of him that might have cause to bulge and harden.
Certainly not.
“Have you been brawling?” she asked. “That’s quite the bruise you have over your eye.”
“Don’t attempt to distract me. It won’t work.”
“Raise the alarm then, have me arrested. You can crow about this until the blessed day you die.” She shifted her stance, preparing to make a run for it if he called her bluff.
“I wouldn’t sound the alarm.”
“I’ve no idea the depths of depravity you sink to these days.”
“I know you, Indy,” he said evenly, ignoring her dig. “You wouldn’t have risked everything to sneak into this meeting if it wasn’t important. What are you up to?”
“Do you think I would tell you and risk having you take all the credit?”
“You know I wouldn’t do that, either.”
“I know nothing of the sort. I’m talking to the man who keeps the Wish Diamond in his private collection so that he can drape the necklace over his courtesans, when everyone knows that a diamond of such historical significance, formerly owned by Alexander the Great, should have been surrendered to a museum. You’re nothing better than a . . .” Stay calm, Indy. Don’t lose your temper. “An antiquities pirate.” It was the tamest insult she could think of on short notice.
He struck a swashbuckling pose. “Care to walk the plank, my pretty?”
Indy glared at him. “So you admit that your practices are unethical.”
“Can we please not rehash the tired subject of our ethical differences? What I’m more interested in is the improbable idea that you honestly thought I wouldn’t recognize you.”
“You didn’t recognize me.”
“I would have in a few more minutes.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“What are you hiding behind your back?”
Blazing blue bollocks. She’d noticed that he often directed conversations along one line and then suddenly, out of nowhere, introduced a new topic with the intent of tricking her into admitting something.
“Nothing.” She tightened her grip on the paper she held, the map that she believed could identify Cleopatra’s burial place in the region of the ancient city of Alexandria beneath a temple dedicated to . . . well, that’s why she needed to read the Rosetta Stone.
Was it a temple to the goddess Isis, or the god Osiris? The hieroglyphs on the map were faded by age and frustratingly faint. She must do a careful comparison with the hieroglyphs and scripts on the stone.
“Then move your hands where I can see them,” he said.
Flipping up the tails of her coat, she stuffed the paper down the back of her trousers. Another advantage to male attire she’d just discovered.
“See? Nothing.” She held out her empty hands.
He snorted. “I know you just stuffed a paper down the back of your trousers.”
She slowed her voice to treacle. “You’re welcome to try and find it, Your Grace.”
He approached her slowly, holding her gaze, stopping dangerously near.
There was no way she was going to retreat. There was nowhere to go. The stone was behind her, and Raven was in front, all copper eyes and sensual lips.
Broad, broad chest and flat, narrow abdomen.
Brain softening to the consistency of pea soup.
Body taking control.
All she wanted to do was rip off the itchy moustache, shake her hair loose from the confines of the wig, and unbind her bosom so that she could breathe more freely. Her bosom wasn’t heaving. Not in the slightest.
“Don’t think I won’t put you over my knee and pull those trousers down, Indy,” he said roughly.
“Don’t think you won’t encounter the point of my dagger if you try anything of the sort,” she retorted.
“Why are you here?” he repeated. “Tell me or I’ll put you over my knee and give you my own brand of punishment for breaking and entering.”
Don’t. Don’t even picture being bent over his knee. His hand moving to the edge of her trousers and tugging them over her hips. His palm covering the bare flesh of her bottom . . . blast her lurid imagination!
As much as she hated to admit it, the best way to convince him to leave might be to tell him the truth, at least the partial truth.
“I’m here because I’ve no other way to view the Rosetta Stone in person,” she said carefully. “I’ve been working from an imperfect ink lithograph and I need to consult the primary source.”
“You’re translating something important?”
She would never tell him about the map. She didn’t trust him even the width of a coin. She couldn’t trust anyone. Male colleagues had sought to discredit her work too many times. “I need to consult the stone to verify something.”
“Well then, by all means, please continue with whatever it was you were doing. Don’t mind me. I’ll just stand here while you work and then escort you out before anyone realizes there’s an overly ambitious female in their midst.”
Don’t mind him.
When he stood there with his formidable arms crossed over his chest, looking like every filthy, forbidden fantasy she’d ever imagined in her lonely bed at night.
Don’t mind him.
When she’d never been able to concentrate on anything else when he was nearby.
“I’d prefer it if you left the ambitious lady to her work,” she said, crossing her arms over her (currently squashed flat) chest.
“Wouldn’t the newspaper writers love to see us right now?” he asked with a sardonic grin. “I can imagine the headline: The Rogue Duke Ruins Lady Danger’s Daring Deception.”
“Humph. I was thinking more along the lines of: Lady Danger Penetrates Male Sanctum, Pronounces it ‘Right Dull and Dreary.’”
“Pardon?” he sputtered. “Penetrates male what?”
“Sanctum.” She tried not to laugh and lost the battle, the sound emerging from her lips halfway between a giggle and a snort.
The gleam of humor in his eyes told her that he enjoyed their verbal sparring just as much as she did, fight it as she might.
They faced each other in the lamplight, adversaries who used to be compatriots.
He knew how to make her laugh. He knew how to wound her.
He was her one and only weakness.
He always had been.
Raven kicked himself for not recognizing her instantly. How could he have been so careless?
She was pure, unadulterated temptation.
Hell in Hessian boots.
Even with all her heavy black hair tucked under a wig. Even with that ridiculous moustache pasted haphazardly above her full lips.
Especially wearing tight trousers that hugged her shapely bum.
It was easy to maintain a steady stream of suggestive jests around her because that’s where his mind always went when she was in the room.
All this talk of putting her over his knee had achieved a truly impressive result, which she would no doubt be able to discern the shape of should her gaze travel . . . damn it!
Her gaze traveled.
Even worse, her pink tongue appeared and she licked her lips. Did she even know what that did to him?
Staring at the outline of his prick and licking her lips.
Raven went weak at the knees. Literally. He longed to sink to the floor. Kneel in front of her. He wouldn’t put her over his knee. He’d back her up against that basalt chunk of history and pleasure her with his tongue until she moaned obscenities.
She’d always been his weakness.
The one woman who made the hard choices even more difficult.
Whenever he saw her, all of the sacrifices he’d made seemed to make so much less sense.
“Tell me why you’re here and maybe I can help,” he said hastily, because his thoughts were going in too many forbidden directions at once.
“You think I trust you enough to ask for your help?” The look of contempt on her face nearly stopped his heart from beating.
Of course she didn’t trust him. Not after what he’d done to her.
Hellfire, he wouldn’t trust himself if they met on the street. He’d think: That man’s an overly confident jackass. What’s he hiding?
The cover he’d constructed to hide his clandestine activities had become all too believable.
Mercenary fortune hunter. Notorious adventurer-rogue. Drunkard.
The more despicable he acted, the more his celebrity grew. There were those who even wanted him to become the next president of the Society of Antiquities.
And someone as brilliant as Indy had to resort to impersonating a man to attend a meeting.
It was so wrong.
“You’re like a bad case of indigestion, Ravenwood. Always ruining my fun.”
“And you’re a pain in my arse, Indy. You know you could be thrown in prison for . . . this.” He waved at her costume. “I’d prefer that your slender neck stayed free of a noose.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“Our professional rivalry doesn’t mean I want to see you arrested.”
“Admit it.” Her gaze sharpened. “You enjoy our rivalry.”
He would never admit it, but it was true. He anticipated their next meeting with a nameless emotion halfway between pain and pleasure.
He could no more ignore her then he could cut off his hand. Cut out his heart.
He couldn’t have her for a friend, or a lover, so he took what he could get. If enmity were all he could have of her, he’d battle to the bitter end.
She was the most brilliant, complicated, vexing, and gorgeous woman in the world.
He craved her as a drunkard craved wine. As a stray cur craved a bone.
He rationed out his glimpses of her. Kept count of them in a journal. He even had a code name for her, as though she were another secret agent.
Minerva attended my lecture on Roman mythology at the Museum today. I was saying how they borrowed an entire pantheon from the Greeks and she interrupted and pointed out that the Romans had Janus, the god of beginnings and endings, the god with two faces. When she spoke about two faces she gave me the most cutting look. The lady is a weapon.
“I’d better go back to the meeting and you’d better leave,” he said in a rush, to stem his thoughts. His mind had taken another wrong turn. Refocus. Regain control.
“You go back to the meeting,” she said. “Let me stay a few minutes and I promise I’ll leave quietly.”
“Can’t do that. I’m sworn to protect these premises.”
She heaved a sigh. “You had to choose this particular time to return to London. Where have you been these past months?”
“Greece. It’s lovely there this time of year.”
“Typical Ravenwood. Lounging on the beach while your agents negotiate for stolen antiquities.”
“What can I say? I live for leisure.”
His mission had been to help negotiate a treaty behind the scenes between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, halting Russian expansion into Greece. His specialty was conflict resolution. Stopping wars before they started . . . or hastening their demise.
“I suppose that’s where you found the bust of Aphrodite,” said Indy.
He nodded. “I’m donating her to the museum.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Has the raven changed his feathers?”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“As much as I enjoy our little chats I have work to do, so go back to your flask and your bawdy jokes.”
“Don’t let me stop you. I’ll even hold the lamp.”
She eyed him warily. “So you can steal my ideas.”
“So I can enjoy the view as you bend over.”
She rolled her eyes. “Very well, stay if you insist. It’s nothing to me.”
The paper was still down the back of her trousers. She wouldn’t take it out unless he left.
He lifted a lamp and held it over the dark expanse of the stone with its columns of engraved lettering.
“Wait a moment. Hold that lamp closer.” She lifted her magnifying glass and studied the top rows of hieroglyphics.
She traced a line with her fingertip. “What on earth?”
“What’s wrong?” Raven didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. He’d viewed the stone before.
She stared at him with consternation in her eyes. “This isn’t the Rosetta Stone.”
“Of course it is,” he scoffed.
“No, it’s really not.” She traced the hieroglyphics for the name of King Ptolemy with her fingertip, looping around the lasso symbol and over the back of the crouching lion. “This is a forgery. A clever one, but a forgery. Is this even basalt?” She rapped on the stone with her knuckle. “I’d say it’s something much lighter.”
“That’s completely absurd. Why wouldn’t this be the Rosetta Stone?”
“You tell me. All I know is that these,” she traced the hieroglyphics again, “were not carved in ancient Egypt. Also, the French made many lithographs before they surrendered it to General Hutchinson during the Capitulation of Alexandria. There were more traces of black ink on the real stone.”
“It must be the dim lighting, or—”
“I’m afraid it’s true,” said a man’s voice.
Sir Malcolm.
He walked into the room and Indy has
tily replaced her tinted spectacles.
“It can’t be true,” Raven said.
“It’s true,” said Malcolm. “The stone has been stolen.”
Chapter 3
“What do you mean, stolen?” asked Raven, perplexed. It wasn’t like Sir Malcolm to withhold such cataclysmic information.
“How can such a heavy slab of basalt disappear?” asked Indy.
“Good evening, Lady India,” said Malcolm.
Indy gaped at him. “You know it’s me?”
“I knew the second I saw you enter Somerset House,” Malcolm replied.
“Then why did you allow me to enter?” asked Indy.
“I’m an admirer of your theories on the Pharaoh Hatshepsut—I think you’re right about her gender. But that’s beside the point, since you’ve just made yet another startling discovery. Very impressive, my lady.” Malcolm made a short bow.
“Ravenwood had no idea it was a forgery,” said Indy with a smug smile.
“You have a magnifying glass,” muttered Raven.
“I have eyes,” she replied.
Malcolm approached Indy. “I do think perhaps you’re one of only three or four of my colleagues who could have discerned the deception so swiftly, my lady.”
“Thank you.” Indy inclined her head, smiling at Malcolm, clearly pleased to be acknowledged as a greater expert than Raven. “His Grace didn’t even recognize that it was me earlier.”
Perfect. Raven was trying to prove that he was fit for service and she was calling him unobservant.
“I was only pretending not to recognize you,” he asserted.
“No you weren’t. I had you completely flummoxed,” she crowed.
“Is the meeting over already?” Raven asked Malcolm.
“Montrose is giving a lecture on Stonehenge and he’s bound to blather on for at least an hour.” Malcolm turned to Indy. “And as for your question on how the stone was stolen, we had a shipment of Greek sculptures with a great many crates involved, and workers with winches and carts milling about. They must have made the switch during the chaos, stealing the stone and replacing it with this forgery.”
“It’s a very clever forgery,” said Indy, “except that the depth of the carving is slightly off in some places. If you look closely with a magnifying glass, it becomes even more apparent.”