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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.
