by Lenora Bell
Dreams so far beyond the pale that when she woke, panting and soaked with sweat, she was certain that she’d been marked somehow and that the world would be able to see her forbidden longings written across her skin.
They weren’t your garden-variety dreams.
Her wicked imagination invented things she was fairly sure she’d never even heard of.
The dreams could take any form, fantastical or mundane, but they always involved carnal pleasure. Probably because their rivalry was all about control and power, the dreams were about that as well.
One night she’d be on top, riding him, and the next time he’d have her down on her belly and he’d take her from behind.
Dream-Indy seemed to think she was far more sophisticated and worldly than she actually was. Sometimes she even experienced a pleasure spasm in her sleep and awoke with a sweet throbbing between her legs.
Even thinking about it made her feel a little tingly.
She’d taken a lover once, a fellow archaeologist from Sweden, and it had been . . . nice enough. Safe and . . . rather boring, if the truth be told. She hadn’t understood what all the fuss was about.
All that heaving and awkwardness.
There’d been no sparks flying, no racing heart and damp palms.
Since then she’d never even considered taking another lover.
She wasn’t saving herself—she was devoted to her dream of becoming a world-renowned archaeologist. Which was the entire point of going to Paris to find the stone.
She spread the map out on a table.
Where are you sleeping, Cleopatra? Beneath a temple, in a stone chamber, with a mask of gold . . . she was somewhere. And Indy was going to find her.
She thought of Shakespeare’s description from Antony and Cleopatra: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed: but she makes hungry where most she satisfies . . .”
Revered or reviled, Cleopatra had been without doubt one of the world’s most powerful women. A fascinating character who educated herself in a time when women were kept ignorant, and overcame great adversity in her quest for power.
She’d also possessed a grand theatrical streak and hadn’t been inclined to modesty. Her love affair with Antony was purported to have been both passionate and volatile.
Had Cleopatra and Antony kissed like Indy and Ravenwood had kissed today? She’d called it an act of war, and it had been. He’d advanced and she hadn’t been intelligent enough to retreat. She’d launched her own offensive without any strategy and with no thought to the long-term consequences of her actions.
And now she was paying the price.
You can’t be trusted to keep your hands to yourself.
You must remain in control of your body and your emotions.
Focus on the larger goal. Find the stone, finish her translation, and leave England.
Their journey was only a new branch of their deep-rooted rivalry.
The rules of engagement remained the same.
Never reveal her true thoughts. Never ask him searching questions. Never let him see her buried pain.
Guard against attraction. Parry with jokes and insults.
And, above all, guard what was left of her heart.
He’d wounded her once.
She would never allow him to wound her again.
Chapter 8
“A few inches to the left and the bullet would have pierced your heart.”
Tell me something I don’t know.
Dr. Ackerman probed the scar tissue on his chest, checking to make sure there was no metal left under the skin.
There wasn’t. Raven had used his own knife to extract the bullet and other fragments of metal.
If only he could extract Indy from his heart so easily. Take a swig of whisky, grit his teeth, heat his knife in the fire, and thrust it deep enough to cut out all the fragments of her that lived beneath his skin.
All through the brief carriage ride to Sir Malcolm’s estate just outside of London, his thoughts had circled like buzzards.
He’d known there would be a confrontation—nothing could ever be peaceful or calm with Indy—but a passionate kiss, a counterfeit engagement, a knife fight in an alleyway . . . It wasn’t like him to become embroiled in scandals he didn’t expressly create for his own purposes.
Only one person in the entire world held the power to push his control so far off its axis: Indy.
When they were children hunting for buried treasure in fields, he’d dreamed of traveling the world and discovering new antiquities with her by his side—his fearless companion.
He’d also believed that fathers could never be murdered, that life was filled with hope, and that good always triumphed over evil in the end.
Once upon a time he’d even believed in love. And love had seemed so simple to describe—a pair of light grayish-purple eyes, a quick smile, and an even quicker wit.
Now she’d sharpened that intellect of hers to a dangerous weapon.
If he weren’t careful, she’d slice right through the veil separating his two lives.
He’d suggested she teach him how to use a knife so that he could assess her current skill level. She’d been extremely adept, with quick reflexes and a sophisticated understanding of how to best someone of superior strength.
Pretending to be inept with a dagger had proven surprisingly difficult for him, though. When she lunged for his chest every instinct he’d honed to deadly precision had leapt to the fore and it had taken every ounce of his control to feign a clumsy defense.
He’d been trained in the art of knife fighting on these very grounds, as well as the arts of fencing, bare-knuckle boxing, and other hand-to-hand combat styles.
He could have had Indy on the ground in three seconds flat.
Stretched beneath him, soft curves and muffled curses.
Arms pinned above her head. Entirely at his mercy.
You’d like that, wouldn’t you?
Gods, he was a fool. He never should have gone to Banksford’s house looking for her. He’d only wanted to protect her.
Wrong.
If he were tied to a chair and his interrogator were torturing him and he supplied an answer as flimsy as that, he’d receive a lash across his back or his chest . . . or some other more sensitive area.
Wrong. Try again. Why did you go to see her today?
Because I wanted to talk to her. Because sometimes I go for years only catching brief glimpses of her and I wanted more.
Better. But what did you want exactly?
I wanted . . . I want . . . her.
In his arms, his bed, by his side . . . he’d always wanted her.
“The scar appears to be healing nicely and the bullet was removed cleanly,” said the doctor. “You’re a very lucky man.”
“I don’t believe in luck.”
“Then believe that the Almighty has a purpose left for you, for he surely saved you from bleeding to death on the streets of Athens.”
“In a church,” said Raven.
“Pardon?”
“I nearly bled to death in a church. The brethren ministered to my wounds.”
Everything had been going well until the night he met Jones in the public plaza. The ambush had taken them completely by surprise.
It had been a sunny afternoon. A public square.
Yet four of Le Triton’s trained assassins had attacked with knives and pistols.
Kill or be killed.
Jones was dead.
Raven had been left for dead. He’d lain there with flies buzzing around his ears and people shouting at him. He’d played dead until he was sure his attackers were gone. Then he’d staggered into a nearby church, faint with blood loss, the sound of death ringing in his ears.
As the priests bathed his wounds, he watched his blood mix with water on the stone floor and run in rivulets across the stone floor.
Perhaps it had been the loss of blood, or the sun shining through the staine
d-glass window depicting a female saint with piercing eyes.
Faced with death, he’d questioned the choices he’d made. At thirteen, he’d been so certain of his destiny. Become a spy for the Crown, as his father had been before him. Become an agent and clear his father’s name.
But he’d been so young when he made the choice and Sir Malcolm sent him away to the brutal, grueling secret training school in Scotland.
When Indy had made the quip about a thrilling assignment for the Crown he’d wanted to grip her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. There was nothing glamorous or exciting about his work.
Long periods of tracking and surveillance, waiting for someone to make a mistake, to show their hand, followed by intense bouts of intrigue and combat.
Stop a war. Topple a despot.
The physician dug his thumb into a sore place on his back.
Raven made no sound, though it hurt like the blazes.
He avoided his reflection in the large glass mounted on the wall. He knew what he would see; a map of scars detailing every battle he’d fought.
The wounds belied his reputation as someone who hired others to do his dirty work.
Indy could never see him less than fully clothed. Not that she would ever have cause to see him unclothed. Just as he’d never see her less than fully clothed.
Or gloriously naked.
Tangled in his sheets and purring with pleasure.
His cock stirred. Dr. Ackerman glanced at him.
Let the man think that pain gave Raven pleasure.
There were brothels catering to that—men who wanted to be whipped with riding crops or even beaten with fists. He’d never understood the reasoning behind the fixation.
He absorbed too many beatings during the daylight to want one at night.
Thinking of Indy always stirred his blood, but it wasn’t only erotic imaginings that captured his mind. What sometimes stirred him the most were far more objectionable thoughts.
What his life might have been like if he’d followed a different path. Married Indy and gained a partner in adventure . . . traveling, living, discovering together.
His hands never bloodied . . . his body never battered.
Sometimes, in the quiet moments between awareness and his fitful version of sleep, he pictured them standing before an altar. He painted their wedding night in vivid color and detail.
And then sometimes, when he wasn’t being vigilant enough, a fantasy rose in his mind. The same fantasy that had filled his mind while he lay in that church, not knowing whether he would live or die.
Sitting with Indy in comfortable chairs in front of a fireplace in a house somewhere. He never knew where they were, and never cared, because she was there with him and that was all he’d ever wanted.
They were older. When she smiled there were faint wrinkles around her lovely eyes. He loved the way the firelight caught and held the first strands of silver threading her black hair.
They weren’t alone.
There were two children at their feet. A girl of about four or five, playing with alphabet blocks, forming words already because she was clever like her mother, and a younger boy, who kept trying to steal his sister’s blocks and put them into his mouth.
It was the worst sentimental claptrap.
Imagining that he and Indy were married and had children. An alternate path. The path that could have been.
“You must sleep more,” said Dr. Ackerman. “Lack of rest can impair your judgment and dexterity.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
“You’ll die sooner than not if you don’t sleep.”
Raven grunted. One day he wouldn’t pass his physical and they’d put him out to pasture with the other retired agents. If he was lucky.
Or he could die with a knife in his gut or a bullet in his heart on a sunlit street in a public square.
Either way, there would be no warm smiles and peaceful family moments in his future. His brother Colin would inherit the dukedom when he was gone. Colin was an honorable, conventional man and he’d married a timid, conventional girl and they were already expecting their first child. Raven had received a letter from Colin inviting him to attend the christening, when it happened.
Raven never accepted Colin’s invitations. It was better this way. Better to maintain the distance between them.
“You may garb yourself,” the doctor said, gathering his instruments into a leather bag.
Raven dressed and headed for the shooting range.
His hands had been shaking badly since Athens.
He must stop thinking about anything other than the task ahead.
He must prove himself today.
Raven cocked his brass percussion pistol and aimed at the row of small glass bottles arranged on the faraway brick wall.
His Grace has just made me the happiest lady on earth . . . by finally agreeing to set a date for our wedding.
Indy’s words kept floating to the top of his mind.
He fired, but none of the bottles danced and shattered.
Not even close.
His concentration was the thing that had shattered.
No doubt Malcolm was watching from the house. Raven must banish all thoughts of Indy.
There were no servants here to reload a man’s gun. This was a training ground for agents who must fend for themselves while in the field.
Here was the clandestine society Indy had imagined. Inside the house, there was a staircase concealed by a bookshelf, leading to a secret subterranean espionage training facility where he was only a number, not a duke.
Dukedoms didn’t matter inside these walls. The petty quibbling of the aristocracy over precedence and patrimonies—none of it mattered.
He reloaded and placed his forearm on the low brick wall, steadying his pistol.
The taste of her lips, her tongue. The softness of her breasts crushed against his chest. Her perfume overwhelming his senses.
You know you’d do it all again. You’d risk everything for another taste.
He fired, but the raw emotion of the memory skewed his bullet away from the target.
A spy must remain emotionless. Detached.
Integrity. Intelligence. Courage. Selflessness. Resilience.
These were the values at the core of his training. From the age of thirteen he’d been indoctrinated by his instructors, taught to separate his heart from his mind.
Love had no place on the path he’d chosen.
He was a soldier. A warrior. He knew his duty and nothing could distract him from it.
This was a mission, just like any other mission.
If Indy must go to Paris, he’d be there to protect her. It was the next best thing to her not going at all.
Finally, he hit a bottle, then another, until the entire row of bottles lay in pieces on the ground and the acrid scent of smoke filled his nostrils.
Miss Mina Penny, Sir Malcolm’s niece, approached him from across the lawn. She was a pretty thing with pale blonde hair and a sweet, delicate-featured face that betrayed her every emotion.
Raven had known her since she was a child, come to live with Malcolm after both of her parents died in a carriage accident. Now she served as Sir Malcom’s secretary. She was also a crack shot.
“Good day, Your Grace,” she said when she reached him. “Uncle Malcolm is ready for you now in the library.”
“Thank you, Miss Mina. Lovely day for shooting, though there’s quite a chill in the air.”
She was wrapped in a gray fur-lined cloak. She set down the case she carried and opened it to reveal a gleaming brass sporting pistol.
“Is that one new?” he asked.
“It’s the new Greener muzzleloader. I’m to test it for Uncle.” She tapped the barrel. “There’s a nice hardness to it.”
Was that a naughty gleam in her eye? Time for Raven to leave. Flirtatious young girls were not his cup of tea. He preferred stronger stuff.
“Why have you never married,
Your Grace?” Miss Mina asked abruptly, leveling the pistol at him.
It wasn’t loaded, at least. “I’m not the marrying kind. My younger brother will inherit the dukedom and he’s already working on producing an heir.”
“I might not be the marrying kind, either, but I want to have a Season, nonetheless. I want to live in London proper instead of moldering away out here in the countryside. I want to visit the London Tavern and debate with all the radicals and poets and musicians. I want to . . . I want to do something besides stay cooped up here my whole life.”
She led a sheltered existence, which was ironic, given that she was living in a hotbed of espionage. He’d often wondered if she’d guessed what really went on around here.
She pouted. “Uncle M never lets me go anywhere.”
“He’s protective of you.”
“I’m nineteen—a woman grown. I know what happens around here, don’t think that I don’t.”
She fixed him with an unnerving stare, still holding the pistol aimed at his heart. Surely she didn’t know everything.
“A great lot of shooting and fencing,” he said, “and—”
“I may be female but I’m not a dullard.” She lowered the pistol.
He kept his expression bland. “You serve as Sir Malcolm’s secretary, do you not?”
“Tedious paperwork; estate sales, antiquities behests and the like. I’ve been working on . . . other things.” She leaned toward him. “I wonder if you might test something for me?”
She lifted a concealed compartment at the bottom of her pistol case and handed him a gold pocket watch. “This is something new,” she whispered, glancing back toward the house. “If you’re in a tight spot and you’ve no other way out, you open it here,” she demonstrated. “And then you turn the face one half turn. No! Don’t do it now—unless you want to fall unconscious.”
Raven paused. He’d been given concealed weaponry before, ingenious devices such as knives hidden in walking sticks, and pistols small enough to tuck into the back of his trousers. But this was something new. And he’d certainly had no idea that Mina might have an interest or knowledge in the weapons of his trade.
“I’m not sure I should be encouraging you,” he said.
“No,” she said with a pert smile. “You should be thanking me. Because there may come a time when this watch will save your life. After you turn it, you press down. Then you’ll hold your breath and fling it at the person you wish to incapacitate. It won’t harm them, only tranquilize them, send them into Morpheus’s arms for a good many hours. It’s my latest invention. But don’t tell Uncle. I’m still in the development stages.”