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“You’ll find another clue,” he said. “Or you’ll embark on a different quest. Uncover another powerful female’s story. I do have a very interesting Greek urn in my collection that depicts a warrior woman riding a horse and wielding a lasso. Do you think these warrior women really existed? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could prove it to the world?”
She smiled at him and his heart lifted. “Now that’s precisely what’s up my alley.”
“I thought as much. The urn is yours.”
My heart is yours. Just say it. Raven, say it.
“Are you telling me to journey to Greece? What will you do? Will you go back to your... work?”
“Actually, I just submitted my resignation.”
“You what?” Her eyes clouded over. “You can’t do that. I mean, I hope you’re not doing it for me. I would hate to be the cause of you giving up your career, and the job that gives you satisfaction and purpose.”
“I was already losing my edge. There was an incident in Athens. You noticed the bruise on my cheek at Somerset House. I was careless. An agent was murdered. I nearly died.”
“Raven, you never told me that.”
“It’s been on my mind this entire time.”
“Is that how you came by the bullet wound near your heart?”
“I was so close to death. I lay in a church, bleeding my life away and looked up at the stained-glass window and I saw... you. I saw you, Indy. I saw the life I could have had with you. And it shook my conviction. It made me question everything.”
“Oh Raven.” She held his hand. “Tell me what you saw.”
“I saw us grown older. We were sitting by a fireplace. You had faint laugh wrinkles around your eyes. Your hair had one or two streaks of silver. I saw... two children playing at our feet.”
A tear fell down her cheeks. “Children? I don’t know why you saw that. I haven’t a motherly bone in my body.”
“Then perhaps we adopted, because there were two children there. A girl of about four or five, and a younger boy. The girl was playing with blocks, forming words, and the boy kept trying to put the blocks in his mouth, much to his sister’s annoyance.”
She wiped her eye with her sleeve. “Sitting by a fireplace with children at our feet. It’s all so very domestic and conventional. What of my expeditions? What of my work?”
“I don’t know where the fireplace was. It could have been in Greece. It could have been anywhere.”
“Raven. I don’t want you to give up everything for me. You’d never be happy being idle. Strange that I should say that when I believed you were idle for so long.”
“Not idle. Don’t you need an archaeological assistant? Can’t I carry your shovels, or your provisions?”
“Be serious, please.”
“I’m deadly serious.”
“You just said that I dull your edge. You would resent me if you followed me around the world instead of following your own path.”
“That’s not what I said.”
He was cocking this up.Tell her you love her. Tell her you’ll die without her.
“When you’re on an archaeological expedition, and you uncover a vessel with a crack down the side, does that make the bowl worthless?” he asked her.
“Of course not. It means that the vessel was useful. I think the flaw makes it more beautiful.”
“I’m a cracked bowl, Indy. I have this flaw running through me. I can’t express my emotions because I was devastated by my father’s death and then I was trained to hide my feelings. But I’ve been useful, and I want to find new ways of being useful. We both chose solitary roads but I believe that we’re stronger together.”
Indy’s breath caught in her throat.Stronger together.
He was saying all of right things... except for the one thing she needed him to say the most.
