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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 fromAntony 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.
