by Lenora Bell
She couldn’t trust Ravenwood to find the stone. She must find it herself.
She glanced up to find Edgar and Mari watching her with matching furrows between their brows.
Indy drew a calming breath. She knew they cared for her, and that’s why they worried.
She forced a smile to her lips. “Please don’t concern yourselves unduly. I can defend myself. Ravenwood leads a dissipated life of luxury and hires servants to do the real work. He’s never had to face an attack in a dark alleyway, as I have, and lived to tell the tale.”
“No one’s impugning your bravery, Lady Danger, we’re only concerned because we love you. And we were rather hoping the children’s favorite auntie might have a long, if not peaceful, life,” said Edgar.
“Where are the twins?” Indy asked. She always loved spending time with the irrepressible and precocious Adele and Michel.
“They’re with my father at the toy shop,” said Mari. “They’ll be sorry they missed your visit. Won’t you stay for tea?”
“Can’t I’m afraid. I have several arrangements to conclude before I depart for Paris.”
Robertson, her brother’s butler, entered the room. “Mr. Peabody from the Observer is here for your interview, Your Grace. I placed him in the Gold Parlor.”
Edgar rose. “I won’t be but a few moments.”
“Why the newspaperman?” asked Indy.
“He’s interviewing me about the steam engine I’ll be racing in the speed trials in Lancashire next month.” He kissed Mari on the cheek and they exchanged another heated glance that spoke of rumpled bedsheets and other such intimate things.
Indy had been instrumental in making their match, and she was very happy for them, but sometimes all the tenderness and moonstruck gazing made her feel uncomfortable.
When love went wrong it festered like an infected wound, threatening the body with gangrene. She would never expose her heart to the dangerous condition again.
“I wonder,” said Mari, after Edgar left the room. “There’s so much emotion in your voice when you speak of Ravenwood. I observed your argument at the antiquities exhibition before Edgar and I were married. It seems to me that since you and the duke have so many shared interests a partnership might be more productive than a rivalry.”
“We may have shared aims but we have opposite methods of achieving them. He does no actual archaeological excavating—he simply purchases stolen antiquities.”
“Shameful,” murmured Mari.
“Reprehensible in the extreme.”
“Edgar won’t tell me what happened between you two—only that you’re sworn enemies. Were you ever thus? Or was there a time when you were friends?”
“I should be going,” said Indy hastily. “I must make arrangements to leave my household early.”
Mari smiled. “You’re more similar to your brother than you know. Both of you are stubborn as mules. Sometimes talking about something painful gives it less power over you.”
“Who said it was painful?”
“I can see it in your eyes when you speak of Ravenwood. Such a degree of anger can only be born from pain. Won’t you sit down and tell me all about it?” Mari patted the chair next to her.
“I’ll stand, thank you,” said Indy. “I must be going soon.” She turned toward her brother’s large desk that dominated one side of the library. “I only came to ask Edgar to oversee the change of travel plans. And to say farewell.”
“I see,” said Mari.
She saw too much.
You must learn to hide your feelings better.
“Ravenwood and I were childhood companions,” Indy finally said, avoiding Mari’s eyes. “Betrothed since birth by our parents. My father threatened to end the engagement once but he never legally did.”
“Edgar never told me any of this. Do you mean that you’re still betrothed? How extraordinary.” Mari sat up straighter. There was a strange glint in her eyes.
“Don’t make too much of it,” said Indy. “In the eyes of the world I jilted him. Only our close families know the truth about the existing contract. It’s quite a complicated and difficult contract to dissolve and neither one of us intend to marry and so . . . it means nothing.”
“Oh I completely understand. Why bother with legal proceedings unnecessarily?”
“Quite.”
Mari’s eyes danced with laughter. Apparently she thought there must be some other reason that Indy hadn’t been eager to legally dissolve the betrothal.
There was no other reason.
She wore the Minerva coin around her neck as a reminder to never love, never trust, again.
And the marriage contract served as enforcement. She couldn’t fall in love and marry, even if she wanted to.
And neither could Ravenwood. Which, for some unknown reason, gave her a feeling of great satisfaction.
“How did you jilt him, and why?” asked Mari.
“It was at my coming-out ball,” said Indy, the memory bleeding into her mind. “I hadn’t seen him in years.”
Standing on the edge of the candlelit ballroom, wearing a ridiculous frothy white gown, waiting breathlessly for Daniel to ask her to dance.
“We wrote to each other faithfully while he was at a private boarding school in Scotland. But then his letters grew few and far between. Eventually he stopped writing to me altogether.”
“How strange. If you used to be friends then why did he stop writing?” asked Mari.
“I don’t know why.”
“Haven’t you asked him?”
“Never,” said Indy, her voice coming out too loudly. She clenched her fists. “I’ll never ask him. I’ll never give him that power over me. I don’t need to know why he did what he did. Nothing will change with the knowledge.”
“Indy.” Mari’s blue eyes filled with emotion. “You sound so like your brother. I hate to think you’re so filled with hurt and pride that you won’t clear up what might be a simple misunderstanding.”
“A simple misunderstanding?” Indy didn’t even attempt to modulate her voice now. “He bloody well kissed another blasted woman at my blighted coming-out ball!”
“Oh.” Mari started. “I . . . well that does rather change things.”
“It changed everything.” Her life had been torn asunder. She didn’t even like thinking about that night. It was still such a tormented memory.
He’d looked so handsome in his formal attire. He’d grown so tall and broad shouldered. Black coat and white linen and those amber eyes she hadn’t seen in so long. He’d avoided her gaze.
Why? She’d wondered. Why won’t he ask me to dance?
“I was a pathetic, stupid little partridge, standing there, waiting for the fox to ask me to dance when he was out in the gardens devouring a very merry widow,” said Indy. “Kissing her for all the world to see.”
His gaze meeting hers, almost as if he’d been watching for her.
She’d never been able to shake the feeling that he had planned the whole thing.
To be rid of her.
“The bloody fool,” exploded Mari, her expression severe. “No wonder you don’t trust the man. No wonder he’s your enemy.”
“Mother had planned a grand affair, she was hoping our storybook engagement might distract society from . . . the other scandals plaguing our family. Edgar wasn’t in London at the time.”
“Yes,” Mari said softly. “I heard about what happened between Edgar and your father.”
“When I caught Daniel—Ravenwood—kissing Mrs. Cavinder in the gardens I exploded with rage. I called off the engagement then and there.”
Her mother had branded her a fool. Her father had descended too far into ruin and drink to have any opinion on the matter.
The sight of Daniel kissing another woman had ripped her heart from her body and from that day forward she’d become a rebel against society’s dictates.
Love was for fools. Marriage was only a way for a man to claim ownership of a woman’s person and propert
y.
He’d betrayed her, and that was that.
When next she saw him, they’d both worn well-practiced masks. He was London’s favorite rogue. She’d become a scandalously unconventional adventuress who was barely tolerated in society, and that only because her brother was a duke.
Ravenwood had shaped her life before, but now she was the one in control of her destiny. He’d been her best friend, and then he’d humiliated her and shut himself off from her. If she couldn’t have the life they’d planned together, she’d be a success on her own terms.
She’d become a successful archaeologist and a world-renowned antiquities expert, and she’d do it alone. She didn’t need anyone at her side. She could trust no one.
She used to love him; she didn’t love him now, and that was that.
Life went on. She achieved things. She dug through layers and layers of sand, or dirt, baking in the hot sun for months at a time without finding anything, and then . . . the rapturous moment when a relic of history, long buried, emerged.
Another puzzle piece to fit into the story of another powerful woman from history.
She felt more connected to history than to her own life sometimes.
There was far less risk in studying the lives of people long buried. They offered up their secrets and they never hurt her.
She couldn’t speak any of this aloud.
As Mari had said, words held power, and admitting how much she used to care about Ravenwood might give him more sway over her than he already possessed.
There was a knock at the library door. Indy was relieved. She could leave now and stop reliving these bitter memories.
Robertson appeared, an apologetic expression on his normally impassive face. “Your Grace, Lady India,” he nodded at them in turn. “I have the honor of announcing His Grace, the Duke of Ravenwood, who would not be so kind as to wait downstairs and instead insisted on being shown to you directly.”
Relief took flight and was replaced by the nearly unbearable mélange of dread and excitement Ravenwood’s presence always provoked.
He entered the library with his signature stride, the one she’d tried to copy when she infiltrated Somerset House yesterday.
Hear ye, hear ye, I command this room and everything in it, his entrance blared, as if he were a medieval king preceded by a ceremonial trumpeter.
There was no way to stop her physical response. Her heart always beat faster when he walked into a room.
He bowed over Mari’s hand, brushing his lips over her knuckles. “You’re looking blooming as always, Duchess. Marriage agrees with you, I do believe.”
Despite what Indy had just told her about Ravenwood’s character, Mari had the temerity to blush fetchingly, color washing across her freckled cheeks.
Ravenwood, thought Indy. Transforming otherwise sensible females into blithering ninnies since . . . forever.
“Were your ears burning, Your Grace?” asked Mari. “We were just speaking of you.”
“All bad, I trust?” That devilish grin, the one that used to make Indy’s heart melt.
Heart, she reminded it sternly, you are under my command, not his.
“Yes, actually,” said Mari, seeming to recall finally that she was angry with him for hurting Indy. “Very bad indeed.” She frowned at him sternly.
“Ravenwood.” Indy inclined her head, unwilling to give more than an inch of acknowledgement. “You must be here to see my brother.”
“Actually I came to see you. I visited your house and a maidservant informed me that you were here.”
Taken aback, Indy’s mind floundered between potential retorts. “You know where I live?” was all that emerged.
She knew where he lived. Her daily constitutional walks often took her past one of his residences.
He kept several homes in London but favored the one in Mayfair. When he kept a mistress, he installed her in the house in Covent Garden, the better to display her at the nearby Royal Opera House. He had no mistress at the moment. She knew because the gossips would have delighted in informing her if he did.
Which was neither here nor there. Whether he had a mistress was none of her concern.
“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?” He smiled blandly, as if this were a polite social call instead of what she knew it must be—he was here to convince her not to go to Paris.
“Would you care for some tea, Your Grace?” asked Mari, always one to iron over awkward situations.
“Thank you, no,” he replied. “I’m only here for a brief conversation with Lady Indy and then I shall trouble you no further.”
“If you’re here to order me to be a good girl and stay home, you can save your breath,” said Indy.
“We’re not in a competition, not on this matter,” he replied, his tone pitched low and even. “You mustn’t make a rash decision. Allow me to elaborate upon the particulars of the situation more fully.”
Robertson appeared in the doorway again. “The children have returned, Your Grace,” he intoned.
Mari rose from her chair. “Would you like me to stay, Indy?”
“No need. This will be the briefest of conversations.”
“Should I have the servants remove the breakables?” asked Mari. “I hear vases and such have a tendency to be broken when you two share a room.”
“I’ll behave if the lady will,” said Ravenwood. “We won’t have to argue if she’ll listen to reason.”
Indy pointed at the library door. “We won’t have to argue if you turn around and walk back the way you came.”
“I’ll just be in the nursery if you need me,” Mari said with a smile, leaving the door wedged open as she departed.
Ravenwood stalked toward her. “Don’t be so stubborn, Indy, we want the same thing.”
“Yes, to find the stone before it’s either lost forever to a private collection or becomes an international incident. You have your methods and I have mine. We’ll see which one is more effective. You can search the demimonde and the underworld and I’ll use more orthodox methods.”
“Will you please just listen for a moment?” He began pacing up and down the library, much as she’d been doing earlier. “I can’t seem to make you understand that I’ve no interest in besting you in this matter. It’s strictly concern for your safety motivating my advice for you to remain in London.”
“Hogwash!” Indy declared. “Do you expect me to believe such a preposterous notion? You haven’t cared for my welfare since we were children.”
“Whether you choose to believe it, or not, your welfare is important to me. That’s why I’m here. Will you set aside that prickly pride of yours for one moment?”
“You’re lecturing me on pride?” Indy laughed sharply. That was the second time she’d been accused of being prideful today. “That’s rich indeed.” She lifted a brass paperweight shaped like a globe from her brother’s desk and hefted it between her hands.
“Are you going to throw that at me?” asked Ravenwood with a wary glance.
Indy regarded the brass globe. “I’m going to tell you precisely how this conversation will go, to spare us both the pain of having to carry it out. Now listen carefully. You’re going to tell me this mission is too dangerous for a lady, and then I’ll tell you to go straight to the devil, and then—”
“I’ll threaten to have you kidnapped and bodily restrained from traveling to Paris.”
“And I’ll say try it and you’ll face a sharp blade.”
“And then I’ll say that sometimes I swear I want to . . .” His voice trailed away but his gloved fists clenched.
“What, Ravenwood? What?” She relinquished the paperweight and stalked toward him. “You want to kill me? My, what touching concern for my welfare that displays.”
She was tall for a woman but he was tall for a man. He glared ferociously, his eyes heating with molten copper.
“I want to . . .” He jerked off one of his gloves and then the other.
“Strangle me?” she asked, her mou
th suddenly gone dry.
He balled the gloves inside his fist. “I swear I want to . . .”
Chapter 5
I want to kiss you, you maddening, mule-headed woman.
Maybe Raven could kiss her into agreeing to stay in London.
He rejected the idea. That’s not why he wanted to kiss her.
He wanted to kiss her because that’s what he always wanted.
He’d been denying his obsession for so long that when he finally allowed himself to think the thought, it refused to leave, sinking its teeth into his mind like a mastiff snaring a hare.
Gods, he wanted to kiss her so badly. He wanted to press his lips to hers when he glimpsed her statuesque curves across a crowded avenue. He’d wanted to kiss her last night when she’d cleverly detected that the stone was a forgery.
Most of all, he wanted to claim her lips right now, as she provoked him with her stubbornness; as she lashed out and accused him of being the worst kind of scoundrel.
He was the worst kind of scoundrel.
And that’s why he could almost taste the heaven that would be her tart tongue. The bliss that would be the softness of her lips.
That’s why his thoughts spiraled far beyond a kiss to Indy laid across that convenient mahogany desk with her drab cotton skirts hiked to her waist, panting as he pleasured her.
These were the times when it was the most difficult to remember why they couldn’t be lovers instead of enemies. When she was out of his dreams and standing in front of him, warm and real, her chest rising and falling with emotion, the skin of her throat flushed, her eyes sparkling like the rare purple Wish Diamond, the centerpiece of the priceless necklace he’d discovered.
She’d accused him of keeping the necklace for his mistresses to model.
He’d kept the Wish Diamond because it was the exact same shade as Indy’s eyes. It flashed with the same pale fire.
And he’d always pictured her wearing it.
No one else would do.
He slapped his gloves against his thigh. “Damn it all, Indy. Stolen antiquities are my specialty.”