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She would always remember the way his eyes opened and his gaze held hers, afterward, as they lay entwined.
He was her charming, carefree Daniel, the one with the devilish grin.
And he was Raven, the spy who loved her but hadn’t found a way to tell her yet.
Chapter 23
They must have dozed off. The next thing Raven knew, Indy was shaking him by the shoulders.
“Do you hear that, Raven?” she asked.
“What, what is it? What time is it?” he replied, disoriented by the unfamiliar surroundings and the light stealing in from behind the curtains.
“I heard a woman scream. There it is again.” This time Raven heard it as well. A high-pitched wailing.
“Let’s investigate,” said Indy, leaping out of bed.
Good lord. Would she always leap out of bed in that sprightly manner at such an ungodly hour? Though when she leapt about quite naked it was a hell of a way to wake up.
She was so beautiful with those long limbs and full breasts and her hair wild about her shoulders.
He stretched and yawned.
“Raven. Wake up. I think Lady Catherine is in trouble. I have this terrible feeling that something is very wrong here.”
Half awake, he fumbled into his clothing. What was wrong was cutting short the first night of peaceful sleep he’d had in ages. He’d slept like a baby, dreamless and deep. Sated and satisfied by the best sex he’d ever had in his life.
He’d always known it would be the best with Indy. She was good at everything she put her mind to.
He needed some coffee.
“The noise is faint but it was almost as if it were emanating from the walls,” she said. She walked the perimeter of the room, leaning her ear to the wall at intervals. She stopped by a large relief of a lion carved into the stone walls. “Here. It’s coming from below.”
The hairline crack around the lion’s head would have been easy to miss unless one was looking for it. He pushed on the lion’s head and a doorway opened in the wall.
“A secret passageway! We have to follow it,” cried Indy.
The high-pitched moaning sounded again. Now the eerie noise was accompanied by a thumping drumbeat.
“Something’s happening below the castle, in the dungeons, perhaps. My dagger is lost. Do you have your pistol?”
“No.” He’d been too concerned about taking Indy to safety to retrieve his pistol. “I do have this, though.” He held up the timepiece.
“A pocket watch?”
“Not just any pocket watch. It contains a powder that I’ve been assured will send even a very large man into a sound slumber for several hours.”
“Well, it’s better than nothing. Hopefully we won’t require weapons. Perhaps it’s only a friendly ghost haunting the castle.”
She grabbed a lamp and disappeared into a narrow stone passageway sloping downward.
Slithering sound of insects scurrying out of their path. The moaning and the drumbeat grew louder as they descended into the bowels of the castle.
The passageway descended more steeply now. They emerged onto a balcony overlooking a dank, cavernous space fitted with rusted iron hoops embedded in the walls. “The old dungeons,” Raven whispered.
“Look,” whispered Indy, her eyes widening.
Standing by a fire pit in the center of the room, Dr. Lowe raised his hands and began to chant what sounded like gibberish to Raven.
