AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When all was arranged to his satisfaction, he handed her into the coach. “Where’s your maidservant?” he asked. “We should be off immediately.”
“I never travel with my maid. I’m accustomed to doing for myself. While Fern’s a dear, she’s forever scorching my hair with heated tongs, or attempting to wrestle me into fashionable gowns. I find her more of an encumbrance than an aid on archaeological expeditions.”
His face registered shock and then censure. “Indy, I had assumed you would at the very least bring a maidservant with you on our journey. It would be prudent.”
“Why, are you planning to ravish me?”
He frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Why would that be ridiculous? Of course she didn’twanthim to ravish her. But she didn’t think it was so very strange to arrive at the conclusion that the lusty thoughts she had about him might be reciprocal, given the kiss they’d shared.
The kiss that could never have an encore performance.
“Well I’m not planning to ravish you,” she assured him, “so you may as well climb into this carriage so that our quest may begin.”
His eyes darkened to flat brown. “Are you certain you want to go through with this? Why don’t you travel to Egypt as you had planned? It’s not too late to change your mind.”
“Good try,” she muttered.
“I wonder, if I had begged you to come with me, would you have stayed home out of principle?”
“Nothing could keep me from the relic we seek. Not even the prospect of your irritating company on the journey.”
There went that sardonic brow of his, lifting over a mocking expression. “That’s what I thought you’d say, my super-dainty Indy, who sings as sweetly as a nightingale.”
Now he was quoting Shakespeare? “You must be hard of hearing, my ruffian rogue,” she rejoined. “Now if you don’t mind I had hoped to reach Dover early tomorrow morning.” She patted the seat cushion. “Don’t worry, I won’t bite.”
A fleeting expression of something like panic crossed his face. He doffed his hat and made a slight bow. “I’ll do anything for a woman with a knife.”
He climbed into the coach and a groom closed the door.
The carriage left the yard.
The traveling coach he’d hired was by no means as luxurious as one of her brother’s carriages. The interior was commodious, built for six or more passengers, and the seats were covered in faded and cracked leather. There was a decidedly unromantic lingering odor of snuff and moldy cheese.
Which was perfect.
Stale snuff and lumpy leather upholstery was far preferable to sandalwood and soft, plush velvet.
Otherwise, this might be too much like the beginning of one of her bawdy dreams. Alone in a carriage with Ravenwood... on an overnight journey to Dover.
In one of her dreams, all manner of depraved and degenerate things would be bound to happen.
She was determined that nothing worse than a little ribald repartee was going to occur in this carriage tonight.
The best way to safeguard her heart was to pretend that she didn’t own one. She was fully capable of out-maneuvering Ravenwood at his own game.
He drank like a fish? She’d guzzle him under the table—or under the carriage bench.
He was calm, cold, and collected? She’d be an iceberg with a side of frost.
Everything was a bawdy joke to him? She had dozens of off-color jests at the ready, learned from the sailors on her voyages.
And the number-one way she was going to win was this: she would never lose her temper. Not once. No matter what asinine things he did or said.
She unlocked her handsome mahogany traveling kit to reveal silver flasks, cups, and table settings gleaming against red velvet.
The carriage jostled but she expertly extracted two silver cups with handles shaped like sinuous dragons.
