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“Yeah,” he answered, but that was it.
And of course, I had to keep going, because god forbid I knew where to stop. “I don’t like that line though. Once I found the shard, with the illustration of Hector and his son, I started to believe he never would have cared about glory.”
I studied Hector as I spoke, watching him for any change in his demeanor. Maybe I hoped by talking about the story, he would relax, but it seemed to do the opposite.
“I’m sorry.” I faced forward and gazed at the town as we wound through the streets. “I’m not great at knowing when to shut up.”
“Don’t do that.” His words snapped like a rubber band. “Don’t apologize. You’ve done nothing wrong. I asked.” He scratched his cheek, fingers rasping against his dark beard. “I asked.”
I didn’t want to continue, though, and there were signs that the station was right ahead. He pulled into the drop-off lane, and slowed as he reached the glass doors to the station. I reached for my bag, pulling it onto my lap. In the distance, I could hear the horn of the train, and a shiver ran through my body.
“Am I going to get thrown off this one?” I asked, utterly serious. “Is that why you’re not fighting me?”
Turning to face me, he shook his head. He draped one arm on the steering wheel and studied me with a blue-eyed gaze I couldn’t break. God, this man was beautiful. Rugged, cold, serious, but beautiful. His complete and total attention was on me, but only because he was working out what to say. I knew what I looked like. What I sounded like. I wasn’t some girl who got attention with my looks or said sparkling witty things.
And I was okay with that most of the time. I worked for years reframing the insults my parents had heaped on me. But there were times, like right now, staring at a man so far out of my league, it wasn’t funny, that I wished I was a little more than what I was.
“You don’t have to worry about Achilles. Not anymore.”
“Are you sure?”
He lifted his eyebrows, and I got the sense that if he issued a directive, it was followed. I hoped in this case he was right.
“Why?” I asked. “What’s changed?”
A horn honked behind us, the driver irritated I was taking too long to exit. He swallowed hard. “I trust you.” Then he smiled, just a flash of white teeth in his dark beard. “A little.”
* * *
Hector’s words haunted me as I took the train away from Whitby. It was part of my plan. Appear to go back to Oxford before doing a little spy switcheroo and then go to Whitby.
There was a knot in my stomach that didn’t go away as the miles grew between me and the guys who were taking up way too much brain space.
He trusted me.A little.And what was I doing? Lying.
But I didn’t owe him anything. They—Pollux, Hector, Orestes, and to a lesser degree Paris, and certainly not Achilles—hadn’t done anything to proveIcould trustthem.All I had was the feeling in my gut that they weren’t bad.
Not even Achilles.
My laptop sat like a rock in my bag. I wanted to open it up, change all my passwords, and start sending out emails of accusation all of which would center around the theme:who the fuck shared my research with Diana Regan?
Everyone was a suspect. From Dr. St. John, to Dr. Merton, to Mrs. Whitmore at the library. Anyone could be bought off. And it was possible—more than possible—that the relationships my colleagues had with Diana went further back than I realized. They could be loyal to her in that way people who have worked together for decades were.
I faced the window. In the daylight, I could see all the things the dark had hidden. The green roll of the moors, the miles upon miles of stone walls.Castles.It was the most American thing in the world for me to be beguiled by a castle.
They rivaled even my discovery. Internally, I scoffed.Yeah.Not quite. But close.
I got off at the next station, looking over my shoulder the entire time. Now that I knew who I was looking for—unless there was some other friend in that group I hadn’t been introduced to—I was on guard.
There was no six and a half foot beast of a man trailing me to the window as I bought a one-way ticket to Whitby. And as I found a seat with my back against the wall to wait for my train, no one else appeared skittering behind poles or ducking into restrooms when I met their eyes.
They really had trusted me when I said I was going back to Oxford.
Guilt threatened to swamp me, but I couldn’t go back yet. There was a third piece of the shard, and I was going to find it before Dr. Diana Regan, the only person in the world I could say was a true enemy, got to it.
I got on the train to Whitby without seeing any other strapping male-model lookalikes, and got off the train alive, so I counted that as a tiny success. I should probably count it as a big success, since I’d nearly met my maker yesterday.
With my bag on my back, I hiked through the station and into Whitby proper. A weird urgency overcame me. My plan had been to check into a hotel and go to Whitby Abbey, but I didn’t want to stop. With the map app on my phone, I walked through the center of town, past the seawalls and the angry, inky blue ocean, up the hill toward the Abbey.
