Has the Love of her Life Beguiled Her Straight into Death?
Digging into Death
If ever a maiden needed a hero, Isabella did.
Crete was the famed birthplace of Zeus, the god who granted
supplicants’ prayers. Standing on the steps of the Heraklion Hotel, Isabella
hoped her hero appeared before a blood sacrifice was necessary.
She plunked down her suitcase on the hotel steps and fanned
her wide-brimmed straw hat. In ancient
Crete the rulers had offered shelter and protection to strangers. Yet in the closed faces of the passers-by,
intent on their errands, she did not see any hospitality offered to a foreign
woman alone. She needed a recognizable
and friendly face. She didn’t see one.
Men talking, engines sputtering, horns blaring, dogs
barking, donkeys braying: after the
hotel’s quiet, the cacophony assaulted her ears. Men poured past the steps with scarcely a
glance at her. Most wore the dark Cretan
jacket and loose breeches, although a few suits testified to modern Europe’s
inroads on island culture. A few women
in unrelieved black walked along the dusty road, but they ignored the lone
foreigner on the hotel steps.
Isabella saw no one familiar and definitely no one who
looked like the reincarnation of a protective god and certainly no one who
could rescue a stranded governess.
Then a demigod emerged from the hotel. Like Apollo, god of light and knowledge, his
golden hair glinted in the morning light.
And Isabella recognized him:
Nigel Arkwright, one of the English archaeologists.
Prof. Arkwright had dined with her erstwhile employer on
Tuesday night. Last night, in the bar,
she’d seen him order one whiskey after another.
This morning, though, her panic when the hotel manager confronted her
about her bill had cast him from her mind.
But he could give her help.
Although Isabella despised encroachers, she couldn’t let this god-given
opportunity slip away.
As he reached the last step, she dropped her heavy suitcase
in his path. “Prof. Arkwright,
hello. I’m Isabella Newcombe. We met when the Harcourt-Smythes visited your
dig last weekend.”
His mouth compressed, which didn’t bode well for her
start. Last evening’s drinking might
have been too deep for an appeal to his English gentleman’s code. A hangover this morning wouldn’t help her.
He cleared his throat.
“I remember you. You were the
governess.” He looked past her, scanning
the road. “American governess, wasn’t
it?”
“Yes, I was the
governess.” She stressed the past
tense. She hitched her satchel strap
higher on her shoulder. “They discharged
me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Miss, but I’m in a—.”
“No, you’re not sorry.
You do not care. You don’t know
me well enough to care. You don’t know
me at all. And that is the crux of my
problem, Prof. Arkwright. Besides my
former employers, no one knows me here, and no one cares. I am in a foreign country, surrounded by
foreigners, and I do not have enough money for my passage home.”
“Your appeal should go to your employer, not to me.”
“No matter what circumstance, I will not return to
him.” She hoped the bright glare hid her
flaming cheeks. “Two weeks’ wages and a
letter for his bank in Athens were all that Mr. Harcourt-Smythe gave me. I can repay you once I reach Athens. I do have the funds. My problem is here and now.”
“Surely someone—.”
“I am completely alone, and I might as well be
penniless. Then I saw you. I thought Providence had sent you to be my
rescuer.”
“Miss Newcombe,” he settled a pith helmet on his gilded
hair, “I don’t believe I qualify as a rescuer.”
The narrow brim shaded his eyes.
She hated this intruding role she’d been thrust into, but
she played it with the desperate energy that stressed its truth. “Here am I, stranded and virtually
penniless. Here are you, an English
gentleman in the midst of an important dig.
You must have need of a helper.
Someone who can catalog items or type notes or—or do something. Surely an extra pair of hands can be useful
somewhere.”
A horn honked. Prof.
Arkwright looked around. An army truck
jolted along the street. He glanced back
at her as he stepped down to meet it.
“Miss Newcombe, I’m not in charge of this dig. Gawen Tarrant is. I have no power to hire anyone. And he has no liking for tourists who need
their hands held.”
“Professor, I am desperate.
I will do anything. Please, say
you’ll help me. Please don’t abandon
me.”
The truck jerked to a stop and bounced when the driver
pulled the brake. Leaving the motor
running, he jumped out. The professor
started to the front of the truck.
“Prof. Arkwright?” Isabella pleaded.
He looked back at her as he dropped a baksheesh into the young man’s hand. Then he dug into his pocket for another
coin. “Ari, shove Miss Newcombe’s case
into the back.”
Isabella nearly sank with relief, but Prof. Arkwright had
already reached the driver’s door. Ari
lifted her heavy suitcase and swung it into the back. The professor revved the motor impatiently,
and she clambered gracelessly into the passenger seat. He released the parking brake. The truck jolted off. She looked back.
Ari stood waving on the bottom step. Behind him, the Heraklion Hotel loomed,
substantial but unwelcoming to a single, penniless woman.
She wasn’t sure which appeal to the gentleman’s chivalric
code had changed Prof. Arkwright’s mind, and she wouldn’t ask. As the truck jounced over furrows and eroded
ruts, she worried about her unsecured suitcase bouncing in the back, but she
didn’t ask about that either. The roar
of the engine hid the grumbles from her days-empty stomach.
Close to Heraklion they had smooth driving, yet a few miles
outside the capitol the road had fallen into disrepair, a casualty of the
recent war. It became disreputable as
they rolled the miles around the north of Mount Dikte.
As he drove, Nigel Arkwright’s jaw jutted pugnaciously. When they left the main road, the way
disintegrated into a cart track winding through the eastern foothills of the
mountain that guides still claimed had been the birthplace of Zeus. Snow already frosted its heights.
The professor ground the gears as they halted for herds of
sheep and workers repairing an eroded irrigation ditch and children playing in
the tiny hamlets. The roosters and
chickens scattered ahead of the truck.
Not once did he speak to her.
Isabella clamped her jaw to keep from biting her
tongue. She wanted to ask about the
passing landscape or about the dig at Knossos and why Arkwright’s group wasn’t
working the famous site. A look at his
undimmed frown daunted her.
From the visit last weekend, she knew that Arkwright and his
colleagues worked two obscure sites far from the four better-known digs of
Knossos, Phaestos, Mallia, and Gurnia.
Compared to those, this expedition could hardly carry an official
name. Only Zeus’ own mountain gave grace
to the sites.
Isabella and the Harcourt-Smythes had arrived at the dig
after a pouring rain had collapsed a wall.
Muck the flat color of cement had covered everything and everyone. The artist lurking inside Isabella had taken
the mud and exposed foundations and imagined a country palace, braced against
the bleaching sun and African winds. Her
two charges had distracted her from that past.
The busy archaeologists had barely acknowledged their unexpected
visitors.
As Prof. Arkwright man-handled the truck over the road,
Isabella stared at the craggy rocks of Mt. Dikte, scarred with ravines and
pocked with tumbled boulders. These
English archaeologists might not be the answer to her prayer. Should she have looked for a different
rescuer? Should she have waited? She remembered two married ladies at the dig
but no single ones. The dig would still
be busy, and she was an imposition.
Would they welcome her at all?
Would they give her a chance to earn her passage to England? Or had she only delayed the inevitable?
Last night she had wanted to scream with fear and
frustration. Instead, she paced through
the early hours as she tried to work out a solution to her unexpected
unemployment.
This late in the year, few archaeologists remained on
Crete. She had planned to search each
group out; if they had failed her, she
would approach the English construction crew working on the roads or haunt the
antiquities museum. Yet a search took
money, and she needed to hoard the pittance that was her only protection
against the world until she reached Athens.
And that was before the hotel manager demanded she pay from Tuesday
through Friday.
Nigel Arkwright had seemed a gift from the gods. If he weren’t, she had still gained time to
contrive a less desperate solution.
The god Apollo was steering his sun chariot to its westward
descent when they arrived at the dig.
Arkwright jolted his mundane chariot to a stop. The professor set the hand brake but left the
motor running. As she reached for the
door handle, he said, “At least you can be silent. After this morning’s deluge, I wasn’t
certain.”
“I was desperate, Professor.
If I had not convinced you, I don’t know what I would have done. The hotel manager had decided I was a
disreputable nuisance once he learned that Mr. Harcourt-Smythe had discharged
me. I must thank you once again, Prof.
Arkwright.”
“I haven’t helped yet.
That’s not in my power. As I
said, I’m not in charge here.”
“Yes, you mentioned Professor Tarrant. He wasn’t here last weekend.”
“Gawen Tarrant was at Knossos on a shared week, our fourth
this season. You may have seen his
brother, although he tried to avoid your party.
Tourists are a nuisance who interrupt our work. Your arrival will interrupt us again.”
She sucked in a breath.
“Thank you for the warning.”
“Our work requires training and education, Miss Newcombe, so
you will not waltz into a position. My
wife sorts and catalogs the daily finds at the palace site. Prof. Standings is in charge of the temple
site; his wife assists him there. Tarrant handles his own notes, as do I. I don’t know what Standings does. The students will not need a secretary. Unless you can contrive a job before you meet
Tarrant, you will soon return to Heraklion.
All the chatter in the world won’t change his mind. Indeed, you will find it decides him more
quickly. That, too, is a warning.”
Speech delivered, he shoved open the truck door and strode
away, shouting to a worker to drive it up to the house.
Isabella slid out as the worker slid behind the wheel. He flashed a grin as she snatched her
hat. The truck jerked. She grabbed her satchel and slammed the door,
and the truck rattled off. She watched
it wind around the cedars on the curving climb to the village. Only when it vanished behind the trees did
she remember her suitcase. Yet her
possessions were a minor worry. Clothes
and a few trinkets would not give her a job on this dig. With her lack of experience, any work she
found would likely be at their leased house.
Her cooking could not rival the savory dinners a village woman had
prepared on Saturday and Sunday. Two
other village women took care of cleaning and laundry. Isabella’s prospects looked worse and worse.
Her spirits wilting, she trudged after Nigel Arkwright. Then she reached the dig.
The lower site was the ancient palace. From the earlier tour she remembered that the
archaeologists had excavated a complex foundation, a well, and a refuse tip,
buried for centuries by a mudslide.
Farther up the hillside was the second site, a temple tumbled into
ruined blocks.
Her employers had not wanted to climb up to the temple and
had loitered around the palace site.
When Mrs. Harcourt-Smythe complained that it did not look like a grand
palace to her, let alone a country manor, Prof. Arkwright had launched into a
description of primitive life.
Isabella’s charges, the two girls, had immediately lost interest. The entire family had had glazed expressions
when the lecture had concluded.
Smiling in
remembrance, Isabella meandered around the excavation. This time, no whining twosome distracted
her. Each separate chore fascinated
her. Diggers cleared out the mud from
the earlier wall collapse. Pickmen used
their tools to distinguish a wall from centuries of mud. Two English students dropped a plumb line to
measure the wall’s height.
Her fingers itched to record the scene. She rummaged in her satchel for sketchbook
and pencil. For several breaths she
merely watched, then she tried to transfer the energy to the page: the pickmen,
the two students, Arkwright gesturing to a worker carrying a brace.
“Well done.” The
woman at her shoulder startled Isabella.
“In a few minutes you’ve reproduced our dig.”
A wide-brimmed hat preserved the woman’s creamy skin from
the intense sun. It also framed the
angular bones that gave her a singular beauty.
Dust and sweat had not touched her starched blouse and trim tan
skirt. With a yellow scarf tied in an
ascot, she looked like an advertisement for the chic sporting woman.
Isabella offered a brighter smile than she felt. “Thank you, Mrs. Arkwright. The dig is fascinating. History brought into the present.”
“Say that to Gawen Tarrant, and he may let you stay. Come into the shade, Miss Newcombe, before
this sun melts you.”
Isabella stowed her sketchbook then followed Cecilia
Arkwright beneath a long tarp.
The woman walked around rough tables covered with sorting
trays and settled onto a campstool. She
idly fingered the potsherds in the nearest tray. “My husband told me of your straits. What will you do, Miss Newcombe?”
Isabella fanned her hat.
“Wilt even more until I collapse under this sun. Mrs. Arkwright, when I saw your husband this
morning, I thought I had a brilliant solution.
I fear the gods may have blinded me instead of granting my plea.”
“Did you pray for guidance?
Well, we shall see if your solution was divinely inspired or not. Bring over a stool, and help me sort these.”
Isabella spilled the story of her dismissal as she sorted
broken potsherds from a basket into trays.
By the time the sun sank toward the horizon, her gloves were soiled by
centuries’ old clay and she’d learned that pottery revealed its age as
distinctly as sculpture did.
“It’s like a puzzle, isn’t it? Sorting by the color marks and the thickness
and the slip. Are the pieces ever
re-assembled? I think that would be
incredibly frustrating. A puzzle with no
clues as to size or shape, and most of the pieces missing.”
“Hunting a job, Miss Newcombe?”
She stiffened at the unfamiliar voice. Wilted she may have felt, but steel
straightened her spine as she stood to confront her next challenge. “Professor Tarrant, I presume?”
The oblique allusion to the great African adventurer earned
his grin, a white flash in a face tanned by the fierce sun. Beneath the wide brim of his hat, his
startlingly green eyes were a brilliant shock.
A tall man, with arms obstinately folded, he loomed over her. “Archaeology is not a treasure hunt but an
exploration into our origins.”
“Gawen, Miss Newcombe has had a few difficult days. You shouldn’t bombard her with your favorite
lecture.”
“We have all had difficult days, Cecilia. I’ve wasted a week at Knossos, and I return
to days lost due to a mudslip and tourists, one of whom won’t leave. Walk with me, Miss Newcombe. Leave that,” he ordered when she lifted her
satchel.
“I won’t, Professor.
I can’t. My money’s in it.”
“Fool woman. You
should have the money on you, not in a bag for any street urchin to wrench
away. Hand it over.” He unbuckled his belt. When she stood disbelieving, he snapped, “I
won’t steal your money. I’ll keep it
safely until you leave tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” She had
hoped for a week or more, not just one night.
“Tomorrow unless you convince me otherwise. Now, your money.”
To refuse would further blacken her chances. She handed over her purse. He snapped it open and extracted the folded
pound notes. “How much?”
She named her woefully small sum as she returned her purse
to the satchel.
His eyebrows lifted then dropped back to a scowl. She was relieved his perpetual frown could
break, albeit briefly. “That’s all the
Harcourt-Smythes paid for keeping their two screeching girls in line?” He stuffed her folded bills into his money
belt.
“You saw us? When?”
“At Knossos on Monday.
How often did you want to strangle your charges?”
Isabella primmed her mouth.
“Not once, sir. A governess
inculcates good behavior as well as knowledge.
However much I deplored their shrill voices and reprehensible conduct, I
could do no more than remonstrate with them to behave better. My personal preferences as to strangulation
remained but a dream.”
Cecilia Arkwright applauded.
“Well said. I hear my own
governess.”
Tarrant snorted. “If
you talked that way, no wonder they misbehaved.” He finished buckling his belt then swept an
arm to have her precede him. “Is that a
week’s wage? Where are your other
wages?”
“Two weeks’ wages. I
had other money with me, but I had to pay my hotel bill, an expense I did not
expect. Mr. Harcourt-Smythe banked the
rest of my salary. In with those bills
is a letter from him to his Athens banker, explaining the transfer of my
remaining wages.”
“Useless here, isn’t it?
Why didn’t you protest? Throw a
schoolgirl’s tantrum and let those brats taste their own behavior?” Although he limped, Gawen Tarrant set a rapid
pace. “Or are you too much the pattern
of propriety? And if you are that
proper, why were you dismissed?”
Isabella stumbled on the path he’d chosen away from the
site. He steadied her. She forced herself to meet those hard green
eyes, even as color flooded her cheeks.
“Perhaps I am too much a pattern of propriety, sir. I have several times found it necessary to
rebuff Mr. Harcourt-Smythe. I found it
necessary to refuse him more vigorously both before and after his wife
discovered him in my bedchamber Tuesday night.”
The path angled up the hillside. Spreading oaks gave partial shade. “Before and after, Miss Newcombe? Did his wife not dismiss you on the spot?”
“Mr. Harcourt-Smythe offered a different employment after
she dismissed me.”
Gawen Tarrant stopped under an oak’s partial shade. Her severe gray suit offered no armor against
his scathing glare. “I trust he offered
you considerably more money.”
“I did not give him an opportunity to name a sum, sir.”
“You should ask much, much more.”
The blush burned her cheeks.
“I do not know what opinion you have of American women, Prof. Tarrant,
but I do not seek that employment. I
have never—.”
“You did tell Arkwright that you were desperate enough to do
anything.”
“I’m not that desperate,” she spat.
As if her vehemence confirmed a silent question, he nodded
and resumed walking. “You are not that
desperate yet, Miss Newcombe. You will be if you do not quickly find
employment. You are far from your
passage back to England.”
“Yes, I know. I hoped
to find work here. I can read ancient
Greek and Latin.”
“We are digging earlier than the glorious Greeks. We’ve excavated below the Minoan culture that
Arthur Evans uncovered at Knossos.
Arkwright’s in his realm. We will
soon dig deeper.” At her blank look, he
shook his head. “You do not even know
what that means.”
“I can learn.”
“We operate on a lean budget, Miss Newcombe, unlike some
archaeologists who spend their personal fortunes on a dig. The treasure-hunters focus on Egypt, lusting
for a find like Schliemann’s at Troy.
Standings and Arkwright won’t fund your salary. Any money you would earn here must come from
the Tarrant account, and that is not a rich one. So in the morning you will return to
Heraklion. I will ensure your return to
the mainland. That expense I can
shoulder for you. Then you must seize on
some other English gentleman for charity;
the British School at Athens is flush with them. Or you may return to Harcourt-Smythe.”
“Never.”
“Never to him? Or to
that employment? How many times did he
come to your room? How many times did he
force himself on you?”
“My father was a fan of American football, Professor. Perhaps you know the game? That taught me all the protection I
needed. As for the rest, it is none of
your business.” She stalked ahead.
Even with the limp, he quickly caught up to her. Those green eyes blazed, like Zeus preparing
a thunderbolt to blast an impertinent mortal.
“It’s my business if I make it so.
I run a respectable dig, Miss Newcombe.”
“Yet you dare accuse me—.”
“Do I believe you or Harcourt-Smythe, a wealthy
businessman?”
“A predator on defenseless women!”
“According to Arkwright, Harcourt-Smythe wants to discuss an
antiquities deal with me. He proposed it
Tuesday evening, when Arkwright dined with him.
He will return soon.” She gaped
at him. He prodded. “And find you here.”
“Do you doubt me, Prof. Tarrant? I do not lie.”
“You misread me, Miss Newcombe. Through the business he wants to contract, I
can have a leverage on him. I can force
him to re-hire you.”
“Only to have his advances foisted on me again? No.
Besides, he would abandon me, perhaps in much more dire circumstances,
as soon as he is beyond your sphere.
That service from you I will not request, Prof. Tarrant. I and my propriety will find another way
home.” She whirled away.
He caught up at the last incline to the village. “My apologies, Miss Newcombe. I did not intend to offend you.”
“That is a lie.” Even
though her energy was flagging, she didn’t slow down. “You designed every word to provoke me.”
“Guilty as charged.”
That stopped her.
He grinned, like a little boy who had tricked her. His stern expression melted away, and he
looked as young as the apprentice archaeologists. “The house with the blue doors, Miss
Newcombe. Tell our housekeeper Dorcas
that I sent you, and she will make you welcome.” Then he headed back, skidding a little on the
slope before it leveled off.
Isabella watched his hike back, a smooth gait even with a
limp. He had accused her twice, to
satisfy an inner test she couldn’t divine.
He said that she would leave tomorrow and offered the means, then he
hinted that she might stay longer. She
didn’t understand him. As fickle as
Zeus, he flashed punishment then seemed willing to protect a stranger seeking
the dig’s hospitality—however briefly he extended the obligatory welcome.
She didn’t dare toss his assistance back, as much as she
wanted to. His “guilty as charged” had
sapped her anger at his offensive questions.
She didn’t know what to do.
The wind picked up.
She held her hat in place and surveyed the dig. Not a large excavation, like the one Arthur
Evans had conducted at Knossos or Schliemann’s extensive digging at Troy. The quartering ropes in carefully measured
sections looked scientific, as had the sorting of potsherds: dark glaze to this tray, earth-red in the
other, unmarked bits in the third. A
logical method to uncover the site’s secrets.
As Gawen Tarrant’s well-chosen shafts had uncovered her secrets.
The professor had reached the dig. He spoke to a dark-haired man she hadn’t
met. The other man turned, giving orders
to the workmen. They began to stack
their tools. Several unrolled a covering
for the roped excavation. Gawen Tarrant
spoke next to Arkwright and the two younger men before ducking beneath the tarp.
Isabella remembered her money. She would have to speak to Prof. Tarrant to
retrieve her wages, but she would refuse to play “Miss Gratitude”.
She resumed her climb to the village.
The path plunged through a stand of cedars before it gained
the hill, then it skirted an olive grove as it worked around a large
house. From the size and the terra cotta
roof tiles, she guessed it was the one leased for the dig. The blue doors confirmed it. She smiled at those doors as she had last
Saturday noon as she walked with the Harcourt-Smythes from their camp beyond
the village. Blue was an
understatement; the paint was a bright
Egyptian lapis. The blue was repeated in
the tilework of a sparkling pool that centered the inner courtyard. Like an ancient Roman villa, the house
surrounded the courtyard. She had wanted
to explore, but their visit was confined to the entrance, the courtyard, and a
long room that combined the sitting and dining areas. Now she was to have her chance.
She rang the bell. As
she waited, she glanced at the village that straggled along the hillside. A half-dozen families could have lived in
this house.
The housekeeper Dorcas did not seem surprised at her
re-appearance. She left Isabella in the
courtyard then bustled away along a covered hallway to the kitchen.
Sinking into a chair near the pool, Isabella trembled as
much as the breeze-stirred leaves and water.
She had used her last energy of the day.
The spurt of anger and frustration that had buttressed her from the dig
to the house evanesced. The drone of
bees increased. The sun on the
white-washed wall looked bright and brighter, then it blackened, and she melted
like wax.
Chapter 2 :: Saturday, October 4
A cool cloth covered Isabella’s eyes. Distant voices echoed but not clearly enough
to distinguish the one she dreaded. A
bird trilled. A gentle breeze
cooled. She wanted to lie quietly in
this peace but dared not. Holding the
cloth, she sat up and swayed.
“Careful. Don’t move
too quickly.” The man’s voice, deeper
than Gawen Tarrant’s, yet with the same lilt of Welsh beneath the public school
accent. The mattress sank, and a strong
arm bolstered her. “Drink this.”
She removed the cloth to see an enameled cup advancing. She barely caught her breath before the cup
touched her lips, and she had to drink.
The whiskey burned its way down her throat. When her coughing subsided, the man leaned
her back onto the bed. She blinked at
this rougher version of a Tarrant and remembered that the professor’s brother
was on this dig.
“What happened?” she whispered.
He set the cup on a side table. In the time he gave himself before answering,
she noted several differences to Gawen Tarrant.
This rugged version had a tanned face marred by a stubbly beard. Dark hair curled over his opened collar. And bright blue eyes framed by thick lashes
every girl would envy.
She had to look away before
he captured her heart. Lamplight left
much of the room in shadow, but she spotted her satchel on a low chest behind
him.
“Better now? Or is
the room still spinning?”
She blinked, trying to marshal her scattered thoughts. “No, no, it’s—. I’m sorry to have caused more trouble.” She liked his blue eyes. The lamplight gave them a mesmerizing
brilliance. By contrast, his brother’s
vivid green eyes had seemed cold, indifferent to her plight.
“You came the other day with the Harcourt-Smythes. Don’t tell me they’re back.”
“No. No, just me.”
“And have you abandoned the terrors?”
At the apt naming, she responded to his smile before her
spirits sank again. “I no longer work
for them. I was dismissed Tuesday
night. They left the hotel the next
morning.”
“Have you eaten since then?
No? Well, that explains your
faint.”
“I fainted?” Disgust
at her weakness flattened her voice.
“Call it a swoon. The
heat and the climb uphill combined with three days without substantial
food. You were bound to swoon. Why didn’t you eat at the hotel?”
“I need every pound to pay my passage home.”
“Yet you spent more days at the hotel.”
“Mr. Harcourt-Smythe said that he had paid my room through
last night. The hotel manager told me
this morning that he had not paid it. I
thought myself blessed when I managed to coerce Prof. Arkwright into bringing
me here.”
“I see. You twisted
his arm and marched him to the lorry.”
The sally won him another smile. Isabella’s affinity for this Tarrant
grew. He was passing from stranger to
friend, and she still didn’t know his name.
That thought woke her caution. His touch to the damp curls around her face
jangled an alarm bell. He might scowl
and inspect her like a specimen on a pin, but she knew her pulse fluttered in
her throat and her cheeks burned at the hint of intimacy.
“I want to sit up.”
“Not yet. You may be
dizzy.”
She wriggled. “I
don’t know you. Not your name or who you
are—.”
“And you have recovered enough to remember propriety. I see I made no impression at our first
introduction. I’m Madoc Tarrant, Gawen’s
brother.” Spying her puzzled frown, he
added, “I was covered with mud the first time.”
She remembered then, despite the two terrors’
distraction. During their tour they had
watched workers digging out a wall half-covered by the recent mudslip. Arkwright had called a man’s name, and he had
straightened to acknowledge them. Taller
than the other workers, the mud had given him anonymity. His eyes had flashed white in his muddy face,
then he’d bent back to work, giving them his broad shoulders. Muscles had rippled under his mud-slick
shirt. Mud had plastered his trousers to
his legs. Artist she might pretend to
be, but then and now embarrassment colored her face. Isabella wriggled again.
“Lie still, Isabella.”
Her name on his well-shaped mouth did not help her
composure. “How did I get—? Where am—?
I was on the terrace. What
happened?”
“Our housekeeper Dorcas found you, and I was first back,
luckily for you. I carried you here, to
my room. It’s the quietest in the
house. Dorcas did the rest, not me. Your modesty remains untouched.” His flashing grin reassured her. “Dorcas would still be hovering if the others
hadn’t returned, demanding dinner.”
“I must thank her.
And you.”
“No thanks are necessary, Miss Newcombe.”
“Please, I must sit up.”
He helped her, tucking a pillow behind her. Then he walked around the bed to the window,
open to the night air. The bird trilled
again. A dog yapped unceasingly. Madoc Tarrant’s profile was sharply defined
against the darkness. High brow and
straight nose, square chin bristly with the day’s whiskers. The only trait he didn’t share with his
brother were those blue eyes, but no one would ever confuse the two men. Tall, dark and handsome. If Nigel Arkwright were Apollo, which god was
he? Hades? Then which god was his brother?
“What brings you to the dig, Miss Newcombe?”
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Read more in the novel Digging
into Death by M.A. Lee, at these links.
Ebook and Paperback at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXPRKHM
Ebook only at Worldwide Distributors
https://books2read.com/u/bzdM72
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