“That I join you?” Her heart raced a little faster at her own bold decision. “Of course I do.”
He frowned and opened his mouth, but she began speaking again before he could protest.
“I have read the journals, Charles. And in them I found a taste of a life I’ve never known. Excitement and adventure unlike anything London can provide. I confess I loathed the idea of being here by myself while you traveled, but I realized that was because I envied you the opportunity to see the world.”
Charles leaned closer and the bed creaked beneath them. “It isn’t always safe, Eleanor, nor clean or hospitable.”
“I’m a Murray who has married a Pemberton.” She lifted her head with pride. “Adventure surely runs in my veins.”
“You certainly can hold your own. You never told me you were an accomplished bruiser.”
He smiled and his eyes crinkled at the corners in that way she loved.
His gaze flicked toward her bandaged arm. “Will you agree to wait until your arm is healed?”
“Of course.”
She kept her voice even, but her pulse thrummed wildly in her veins at the prospect. Imagine! Witnessing the world herself, sampling its cuisines, meeting its people. And, though she knew she shouldn’t care, she couldn’t help but wonder if her father would have been proud.
“Though I will demand a higher moral integrity than our fathers had,” she said resolutely.
Charles nodded. “I would never do anything to compromise us the way our fathers did. Even for the stone.” He searched her face with his beautiful blue gaze. “I’ve learned there is so much more to life than treasure.”
Tears tingled in Eleanor’s eyes. He truly did love her. She blinked her emotion away. “We cannot go anywhere if we do not know where we’re going.” She grinned up at him.
“Shall we examine the journals with the key?” Charles asked with a twinkle in his eye.
“Yes!” It came out far louder than she’d anticipated.
“It’s driving you mad, is it?” He laughed, the rapscallion, and then called for Thomas to bring them the journals and key. “I confess I’m eager to know as well.”
Eleanor wriggled in her bed to sit higher up, for a better position to view the journals, and tried to ignore the sharpness of discomfort in her arm.
Thomas did not leave them waiting long, and brought the three remaining battered books to the bedside. He passed them crisply to Charles and left them alone in the room once more.
Charles took the flat piece of metal and opened the first page of the first journal. It held no information. The second journal, however, revealed squares that fit neatly in spaces with no writing. This appeared several times until about the seventh page, when the holes matched perfectly over a series of letters.
Eleanor held her breath and tensed. Those letters formed words.
DECCAN PLATEAU CLIFFSIDE ON R
Charles drew the key up and turned the page.
“Do you know where that is?” Eleanor asked.
“I do. It’s in India. I’ve even been there once.” He put the key to the second page.
IVER WAGHUR WHERE THERE IS A U
Charles shifted the key to the opposing page. Again and again he did this, until the entire message had been spelled out.
Deccan Plateau cliffside on River Waghur
Where there is a U-shaped gorge
A door will open to a large room
Seek the hollow stone
Eleanor’s heart raced faster and pulsed in the injury of her arm. “Charles, this is it.”
“It might be. There has been much speculation for years on what became of the stone. This is one of many assumptions.”
But even as he spoke with such skepticism, his eyes were alight with the joy of their discovery.
“We’ve deciphered the code! Charles, we did it.” She flushed with their accomplishment.
“Indeed we have.” He folded the key into the journal. “And it couldn’t have been done without us working together. I think we make a fine Adventure Club on our own.”
A pleased blush warmed Eleanor’s cheeks at his praise. “That we do. Do we leave soon?”
His brows rose. “When you’re well.”
“I could heal on the boat while we journey.” She beamed up at him in the way she knew he liked.
He chuckled and shook his head. “You truly were born an adventurer, my Duchess.”
Epilogue
Deccan Plateau, ten months later
A trickle of sweat ran down Eleanor’s back and the heavy fabric of her skirt continued to catch at the brush. The oppressive heat was ubiquitous, pressing and suffocating. Loose tendrils slipped from the knot of her hair and were left to curl about her damp face.
Mad though it might seem, never had Eleanor been happier than when she was hiking through the wilds of India with Charles at her side while they followed their guide. The young boy was named Sahil, and he had a mop of dark hair perpetually falling into his soulful brown eyes.
Every day took them on a new adventure. Even if they had not yet discovered the Coeur de Feu, she was happy to continue to search every inch of India to find it.
At present they were staying in the opulent rooms of an Indian inn decorated with lights that shone through cut sheets of fashioned metal. They ate food spiced with flavors that tingled on Eleanor’s tongue, and they slept and loved on a bed heaped with pillows and felt decadently colored silks against their bare skin.
Charles’s hand found hers and he threaded his fingers between her own. He moved through the mass of twisting vines and overgrown trees without pause, his confidence evident in the ease of his stride. This was the element in which her husband thrived.
He smiled at her, his teeth a flash of white against his tanned skin, which had become all the more golden in these past two months of their searching.
“Why are you grinning at me like that?” she asked, smiling in return in spite of herself.
“Because you’re lovely.”
Eleanor self-consciously brushed at the sweat-slick curls plastered to her face. She was quite sure she was not lovely, with her cheeks flushed beneath a new smattering of freckles and spots of perspiration darkening her dress.
“I fear you may have touched some poisonous plant.” She slid him a glance. “You’re delusional.”
Charles chuckled. “It’s no poison, my Duchess. You are the most beautiful woman in this entire jungle.”
Eleanor laughed at that—a clear, bright sound that carried unabashedly around them. And she didn’t give a fig that it wasn’t a bit ladylike. “I believe I am the only woman in this jungle at present.”
“Yes, but you’re the loveliest woman no matter where we go.” He stopped and gave her an appreciative glance over. “By God, you make me a happy man, Eleanor.”
Sahil appeared behind them suddenly and began speaking rapidly. Eleanor had only just begun to learn the exotic language but managed to recognize the words for cave and near.
He pulled at Charles’s sleeve and then ran forward into a deeper portion of the jungle.
Charles glanced back at Eleanor and his blue eyes flashed. “I think this is it.”
Together they followed the boy, their pace fast despite the thickness of growth.
Sahil gave an excited squeal and leapt into the air. “Yahaan.” He pointed vigorously. “Yahaan.”
Here.
Charles moved forward and pulled at the vines covering the bulk in front of them. They fell away to reveal a wall of rough-hewn stone. Eleanor’s pulse quickened. Perhaps this truly was it.
Charles pulled a flat metal bar from his pack, slid it into a crack at the side of the stone and pulled with all his strength. It gave with a grinding, popping sound and slowly slid open. The sound echoed within, indicating a large, empty depth.
“It’s a chamber,” Charles said excitedly, and stuck his head inside. The air whooshed out from his lungs as he pulled Eleanor to his side.
She stared into the vast darkness with awe. There, lit by a sliver of sunlight, was a vast room lined with columns along either side and a massive structure toward the back. Clumps of color showed on the columns.
“Go in,” Charles encouraged. “I’ll ready the torch.”
Eleanor shook her head. “We go in together.”
He smiled proudly at her and captured her hand in his. “I’ve never been so eager to see a discovery in all my life.”
“It is the Coeur de Feu,” Eleanor said with a lift of her brows.
He shook his head and stared down at her in wonder. “No, it’s you. It’s us. I’ve never had someone to share this with before. You give this experience a power and excitement it never before possessed.”
Eleanor found herself blushing “Shall we?” she asked.
Together they entered, and bore witness to the remnants of colorful paintings along the columns, where colors were still recognizable as gold and russet and white and blue. The ceiling arched high overhead and echoed their scraping footsteps back at them.
An intense feeling of reverence fell over Eleanor. For what care must have been placed in creating such a structure, what love and time spent on each carefully sculptured and painted bit of wall.
Charles gazed at the splendor before them. “Our fathers would have wanted to break this room into pieces and transport it back to London.”
Eleanor regarded him and his thoughtful expression. “And what will we do?”
“My father wanted the stone, not the chamber.” Charles took her hand in his and kissed her knuckles. “And I believe this is where true adventure lies. To know of its existence, to experience it, and to leave it for future generations to enjoy in its entirety. I think our fathers never understood as much.”
“I am grateful that we do.”
“As am I, my love. As am I.”
He tilted her head upward for a kiss. His lips were salty and warm and completely enjoyable. A low pulse of longing hummed between her legs and she found herself looking forward to their return to their room.
He must have been of the same mind, for his tongue dipped into her mouth and brushed hers.
Eleanor pulled away slightly. “If you continue to kiss me thus I do not know that I can wait for our return to the hotel,” she whispered, even though she knew Sahil did not speak English.
“That may result in bug bites in unfortunate locations.” Charles grimaced comically and began rapping on the stone, in search of the Coeur de Feu’s hidden location.
Eleanor chuckled and knocked on a piece of stonework herself. They all worked thus, including Sahil, gently thumping at every sound piece within the room. Until at long last Eleanor’s raw knuckles struck against a particular square of stone behind one of the many columns. Its hollow sound echoed within and rang out against the high ceiling.
“Charles.” Before she had even completely got his name out he was beside her, kneeling and studying the piece. “Do you think this is it?” she breathed.
Sahil appeared with the torch, his large dark eyes fixed with fascinated wonder on the square.
“We can but hope.”
He put the edge of a pick to the stone and gently tapped it with the hammer. A crack showed immediately. He hit it a second time and a corner crumbled inward. A third careful blow created a fist-sized hole.
Charles lowered the tools and reached in, his eyes narrowed in concentration. His face cleared, and a smile stretched over his mouth. He drew his dusty hand from the hole, revealing a massive red stone clutched between his fingers.
The ruby glinted in the torchlight, despite the coating of dust atop it, and sent sparks of color dancing around the walls of the cave.
They had found it. Together. The Coeur de Feu.
“Be careful, Eleanor. Nothing will melt an Ice Queen like the heart of a fire.” Charles winked at her.
She closed her hand over his and kissed him. “I think you mean the heart of a duke.”
* * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Contracted as His Countess by Louise Allen.
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Contracted as His Countess
by Louise Allen
Chapter One
Castle Beaupierre, the Kent countryside
—10th July, 1816
Jack Ransome reined in his horse on the crest of the rise and looked down at a vision of the fourteenth century transported to the age of the Hanoverians. England was still littered with castles, large and small. Some were ruins, some were converted long ago into more or less comfortable houses, but none still fulfilled the function for which they had been built. Except, apparently, this one.
It helped, of course, if you were wealthy and more than slightly eccentric as the late Peregrine Aylmer had been. Then you could pour thousands of pounds and a lifetime of scholarship into creating your fantasy world.
Castle Beaupierre seemed to bask as it lay in the sunshine that reflected off the polished slate of the roofs, the walls of creamy, perfect stone. Jack tried to estimate the cost and time involved in cleaning and repairing those walls and roofs and failed utterly.
From the centre tower a great black flag stirred and lighter pennants fluttered, red and blue and gold, around it. The encircling moat, full of water, was home to perhaps a dozen swans gliding in pristine white formation past the drawbridge. Which was raised.
‘She invited me, Altair,’ Jack observed. The big black gelding flicked one ear and then cocked a hoof comfortably, settling down to wait. ‘The least she could do is lower the drawbridge. Perhaps I am supposed to send a page over in a rowing boat or have a herald trumpet my arrival. What is the etiquette for calling on people deluded enough to live in the Middle Ages?’
He gathered up the reins and sent the horse on at a walk down the slope towards the fairy-tale building. When they were halfway there the drawbridge began to creak slowly downwards until it reached his side of the moat with a dull thud. Someone was watching.
‘Which leaves me faced with a portcullis,’ Jack muttered. ‘What is the matter with the woman? Her father was the lunatic who wanted to play knights in armour and he’s been dead for almost a year.’ Hence, he supposed, the black flag. As he spoke there was a rattle of chains from inside the walls and the wood and iron grid creaked upwards.
Now, faced with vast double oak doors studded with sufficient metal knobs to repel a charging elephant, Jack felt both amusement and patience slide away. ‘I should have brought siege engines, obviously. If Mistress—Mistress, if you please!—Madelyn Aylmer wants me then she can open her confounded gates because I am not going to knock. I did not drag down to Kent in the middle of the Newmarket July race meeting to play games.’ He clicked his tongue at Altair, who stepped on to the bridge, pecked at the sudden hollow note under his hooves, then walked on. Finally, the great doors opened.
The shadows were deep as Jack rode through the high archway, the sunlight blinding in the courtyard beyond a second opening. Here he was in the killing ground, where attackers could be penned in and assaulted on all sides from above, and h
e felt a prickle of awareness run down his spine as he rode towards the light. Someone was watching him. Jack circled the horse and looked up and back to a window high in the wall, making no attempt to disguise his scrutiny. A flicker of white, the pale oval of a face, the flash of spun gold and the watcher was gone.
Serve her right if I keep going right back where I came from.
But this was a commission, which meant money, and at least Mistress Aylmer hadn’t expected him to dress up in medieval clothes for this meeting. Pride was all very well, but it was a hollow coin that bought neither bread nor horseshoes. Jack turned Altair back and rode into the courtyard where, finally, someone had come out to meet him.
It was a surprise that the servants were not dressed in tights and tabards, although the leather jerkin and breeches of the groom who took Altair’s reins and led him away had a timeless look to them and the black-coated individual who came forward could have come from any period in the past hundred years.
‘My—’
‘Mr Jack Ransome to see Miss Aylmer, by appointment.’
‘Mistress Madelyn will receive you in the Great Hall,’ the man responded with the same emphasis Jack had used and without a flicker of either amusement or annoyance. ‘This way, sir.’
Jack followed up stone steps, along passages hung with tapestries that glowed as bright, surely, as the day they had been made. Which was probably within the last twenty years, he reminded himself with a flash of cynicism. He suspected that appearances were all in this fantasy world.
The butler, if that was who he was, threw open double doors—more studded oak, of course—and stood aside for Jack to enter. They closed behind him with a dull thud.
The Great Hall was well named. Walter Scott would love it, Jack reflected. All it needed was a bearded bard in one corner reciting The Lay of the Last Minstrel. He preferred something with fewer draughts and more soft furnishings himself. The roof was a hammer-beam construction and he counted two, no, three fireplaces of the ox-roasting variety, sighed at the sight of a number of suits of armour and walked on past more tapestries.
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