“Like a satyr.”
She led him away without a backward glance at Conall. “My heart, Desdemona,” he called after her.
“My empty purse, my lord,” she called back. Archimedes joined them.
“Fais ce que tu voudras,”Fairweather stepped up beside him. His hair looked gold in the half-light. The dancing women tracked him hungrily. “Do what thou wilt,” he explained. “The motto for the original Hellfire Club. These aren’t quite as distinguished as Dashwood’s caves in Buckinghamshire, of course.” He offered Conall a bottle. “Drink?”
Conall accepted and took a swig that looked far more impressive than it was. “My thanks. You were saying?”
“Oh, only that these are actual Roman ruins,” Fairweather replied. “Better preserved than most but not extensive enough to claim our own river Styx such as Dashwood’s. It does well enough for a little country diversion though.”
The wine continued to flow and platters of food, more aphrodisiac than historical, circled. There were oysters, strawberries, chocolate. Smoke hazed the air, lending a picturesque quality to what was essentially a tawdry tableau. Conall found a seat and leaned back, keeping his expression faintly bored and his eyes half-slitted so no one could see him cataloguing everything he saw. Men laughed together, gloating. Between the liquor stains on the makeshift table, they used charcoal to sketch out artifacts they claimed to have discovered: scarab beetles, an Isis statue with gold wings, an unhealthy number of mummified corpses.
That the traitor might be here even now, laughing, kindled a cold rage inside of Conall. That a man could pass information such as troop locations and possible ambush plans to the French army in exchange for access to Egypt’s artifacts was unconscionable. It wasn’t words on paper or clever codes cracked over coffee cups. It was the two dozen men he had seen, strewn about where they had fallen, like discarded paper wrappings. Blood and feral dogs and crows. The butchery. The unnecessary, unexpected butchery of it.
His hand tightened around his goblet. He’d find the bastard. He’d made a promise that day, with blood on his boots and soldiers weeping and retching around him.
But it wasn’t a matter of who the traitor might be.
It was a matter of too many possibilities to choose from.
At least he was in the right place.
As Persephone approachedthe barrow the next morning, she felt a happy thrum, even with the light rain pattering down on her. Maybe especially because of the rain, as it meant she would have the site to herself for an hour or two. Shovels and buckets of dirt lay in the cheerful clutter of open dig sites. Thick strips of peeled grass scattered like giant dragon bones around the openings, lantern glass gleaming like eggs. She wondered what Conall thought of it.
She should scold herself for thinking about him. It wouldn’t do her any good. But it wouldn’t do her harm either, if she remembered that he wasn’t for the likes of her. He was singular for an earl, and it had nothing to do with his chiseled jaw hair and lean muscles. He’d stood up for her and she couldn’t remember the last time anyone had done so. And he didn’t have the affectation of ennui she was so accustomed to; instead, he had a dark kind of energy, a singular focus and a confidence she found entirely too appealing under those knowing smiles.
Appealing enough that she was standing inside a centuries-old grave daydreaming about the shape of his mouth.
Really, that was too much.
Her cheeks burned even though there was no one to know she’d been wondering what he could do with that mouth.
She hurried to the steadying work of digging out a new trench. Better that she spend her time with the bones of the dead than wonder too deeply about Conall. As ever, the work of brushing dirt away from buried secrets had her cheeks cooling and her breath steadying.
The antiquarians had damaged the toes when they stampeded through her site and dislodged the ankle bone. She fumed over it. Her grandmother always said her passions ran too high, along with her morbid curiosity. She couldn’t seem to care about the things other people cared about and couldn’t pretend not to love what she loved. And Henry’s grandfather deserved better.
She was letting herself get turned about. None of this was new, she was well accustomed to it, but Conall had somehow turned everything foreign inside her own mind. History, trowels, dirt. They mattered. They didn’t care about her lack of fortune or her past.
She tossed dirt back onto the earl’s leg bone. It was then that she noticed the fine crystal decanter, worth as much as a village pony, was missing. Not that he would miss it. But it was the principle of the thing.
Someone had bloody well stolen her find.
Fury prickled through her like a sudden fever. She brushed harder, digging her fingers under the shin bone, in case the jar had been loosened by the rain and merely sank down further. She found pebbles, a startled earthworm, and nothing else. She pushed to her feet, grinding her jaw so tightly pain shot through her back teeth.
Perhaps someone had moved it to the items taken out of the barrow. A quick look doused that hope before it truly kindled. It might have rolled away and into the barrow. Faint hope was still hope.
She tied her long skirt into a knot between her knees. She had a fleeting wish for the breeches she wore in her backyard digs, but it would be beyond the pale at Lady Culpepper’s house, even for her. Anticipation sparked through the anger. She hadn’t actually managed to explore the barrow yet. The servants were charged with the heavy digging, and keeping the ladies out, for fear of collapse. She’d reminded them there would be no danger if they did their digging properly, which in hindsight, was not the best way to charm her way past them. They’d closed ranks and bowed and called her ‘my lady’ and refused to budge. She really had to learn softer manners when it came to archaeology.
That day was not today.
She lowered an oil lamp down on a rope until it sat in the bottom of the barrow, climbing after it carefully. The tunnel was narrow and crooked, dirt raining down the sides when she stepped further inside for a better look. There was a discarded finger bone on the left, no doubt from a skeleton they’d found earlier. They’d tossed the bones out, mostly to give the ladies a shiver. Persephone was entirely certain she herself had shivered for the wrong reason: the blatant disregard for the dig site.
And the tiniest flash of jealousy. She only had a single leg bone, after all.
She crept deeper, smelling the faintly mushroom scent of moist soil. She crouched to examine the imprint of the dagger already removed by Lord Fairweather. There was a curve of darker soil that might hint at a chariot wheel, but it was too hard to tell by weak lantern light. Her pulse danced a happy reel in her chest. She loved this moment; the anticipation, the wonder, the cold damp air last exposed by some ancient Briton over two thousand years ago. She might find anything: a crown, a sword, the chariot of a fallen princess. Her stolen decanter (though she couldn’t think why).
Or a gentleman.