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“Or she could have been holding an apple, the symbol of her victory in a beauty contest presided over by Paris before the Trojan War began.”
“I see a warrior, you see a beauty contestant. There’s the difference between us in a neat encapsulation.”
“Or she could be both,” said Raven. “A great warrior and a great beauty. Like you.”
His mask had slipped and he was being nice to her again. “I’m not a classical beauty like my mother. I have too much of my father in my face.”
“No one can look away when you’re in the room. You’ve a strength and beauty to you. And so does she.” He gazed at the statue. “What separates the great works of art? An artist who has a story to tell. Every brushstroke or chisel mark has an urgency to it as if the artist knew his own mortality and was trying to create something to outlast himself.”
And now he was inside her head.Bollocks. Why couldn’t he be despicable 100 percent of the time, like he used to be?
“I agree. The great works of art tell the story of the artist. The sculptor long dead, the hand that created this crumbled to dust, but the stone endures. And inside the stone, a song to be heard.”
Her two worlds were colliding.
Her safe, peaceful place invaded by the man who made all of her lonely, hermetic choices feel like they had been made not out of any grand or higher purpose, but out of fear.
The man beside her was sculpted not from stone but from flesh and blood and bone, and there was a heart beating beneath his ribs, a body she wanted to run her hands over to learn his shape. To find his story. Listen to his song.
She could see that he was hiding something from her.
She caught glimpses of another man behind his eyes.
She wanted to know why he donned the mantle of the unprincipled rogue. Was he hiding something painful? She thought of what Mari had said. An anger so strong can only be born of pain.
If she chiseled away at him would she find something new underneath?
She could spend her entire life researching the past and ignoring the present. But would she wake up one day and already be old and frail, with only her books and memories to keep her company?
Would she look back on her life and regret the risks not taken, the kisses not kissed?
The anger she’d nursed for so long. Would she regret that as well?
“What are you thinking of?” he asked. “You have a thoughtful expression, as though you’re working out mathematical equations in your head.”
“I was wondering what I might find if I chiseled away at your disguise.”
Alarm flitted across his face. “I told you I had no deeper layers. I’m all surface. We should go and find Beauchamp.”
“We should,” Indy agreed.
A man’s voice startled her. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
They both turned around to find Beauchamp had entered the room while they were speaking.
Beauchamp was staring at Indy instead of the Venus when he spoke of beauty.
There’d never been any love lost between Raven and Beauchamp. If the man didn’t take his eyes off of Indy and move them to the statue soon, there could be bloodshed.
“Lady India, what a surprise.” Beauchamp bowed over Indy’s hand, giving her a limpid, admiring gaze.
Indy smiled widely. “Victor, it’s delightful to see you.”
She called him Victor? Raven barely restrained himself from ripping the man’s throat out with his bare hands.
“It is an unexpected pleasure to see you, my lady.” He inclined his head in Raven’s direction. “Your Grace.”
“Monsieur Beauchamp,” Raven growled.
