by Lara Temple
The thought of being able to join Cleo in the warm waters of this hedonistic corner of paradise and then move their exploration to the generously large chaise longue was...
‘Well? Do you like it?’ Cleo prompted, impatient at his silence.
‘Good God, Cleo. Like is a very weak word to describe what I’m feeling at the moment. Full to bursting is closer. Dangerously aroused is even more accurate.’ He slipped his hands into Cleo’s hair, threading through its warm silk. She often wore it down around the Hall, the chestnut waves covering her shoulders. Sometimes he missed her short hair, but playing with the warm tresses more than compensated for his occasional nostalgia. Like now, as he imagined it covering her bare breasts as she slipped into the water. ‘Is the water warm yet? Actually, I don’t care. Lock the door...’
‘Bah!’
They drew apart and Rafe turned to face the wide grey eyes of his niece and the equally wide grey eyes of his sister-in-law and the very amused green-grey eyes of his brother.
‘Bah!’ little Charlotte announced again, waving a glistening fist towards the water. Edge shifted his daughter from one arm to the other, his other hand closing around Sam’s as they entered the hammam.
‘No, Charlie, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait your turn going for a swim. Your uncle and aunt look as though they need a cooling dip first.’
Sam laughed, her eyes taking everything in.
‘This is amazing, Cleo! Oh, Edge, look at the hieroglyphs!’
‘I’ll be damned,’ Edge said, a new light entering his eyes as he strode over to the wall with his daughter.
Rafe sighed with resignation, shelving his fantasies, and followed his brother towards the far wall. As he inspected the carving on the wall the memory returned of an evening two years before in a half-fallen temple in Kharga. There were the Pharaoh and the Queen, arms extended, each standing on a royal cartouches, and surrounded with lotus flowers, palms, and a row of...jackals?
Rafe smiled and laced his fingers through Cleo’s, drawing her against his side, his throat tight.
‘I can’t remember. Are those the symbols from the temple in Kharga?’ he asked Cleo, pointing to the cartouches, but Edge shook his head as he inspected them.
‘Not unless you believe in colossal coincidences. Have you been studying Champollion’s Precis, Cleo?’
She laughed, brushing her cheek against Rafe’s shoulder.
‘Dash is in Paris and sends me all the latest news on the decipherment of the hieroglyphs. But I put this together myself. What do you think?’
‘Do you mean these squiggles actually mean something?’ Rafe demanded. ‘All I can see is snakes, lions and falcons. It looks like a menagerie. Actually that looks more like a slug than a snail.’
‘A slug for a great big lug,’ Edge said. ‘That’s you, Rafe. The empty eye, the slug and the lion. R-F-L.’
‘Huh. And this?’ Rafe asked Cleo.
‘The one with the lion and falcon is my name, Cleopatra. And this...’ she murmured, pulling him to a row of the hieroglyphs between the cartouches showing a crouched figure and a long-tailed snake. ‘This part reads iu-meri-y-chu. Together it says Rafael and Cleopatra love for ever. At least I hope it does. It would be very embarrassing to discover it says Rafael and Cleopatra like snakes.’
‘Rafael and Cleopatra love for ever,’ Rafe repeated, tracing the symbols. ‘Carved in stone.’
‘Greybourne stone. I had this quarried from the same stone they are using to build the new school in the village, which is a rather worthier project than the hammam,’ she added guiltily.
Rafe turned and brushed his fingertips down her cheek, resting for a moment on her dimple.
‘I find this project eminently worthy. At least I think I will if only I am allowed to assess it properly...without an audience.’
Sam laughed and slipped Charlotte from Edge’s arms, pulling her husband away from his inspection of the carvings.
‘Come along, Edge. Charlie is also in need of a bath, though I doubt she will enjoy it quite as much as her uncle.’
‘Finally,’ said Rafe as he locked the door behind them and turned to look at his wife. She wore a low-cut, loose-fitting morning dress gathered below her beautiful breasts, showing the growing bulge of their child. Her head was slightly to one side as she watched him, her smile warm and loving.
‘Come here, Rafe.’
‘You’re looking rather dangerous at the moment, Cleo-Pat. What have you in store for me now?’
‘Another great adventure, Mr Grey.’
* * *
If you enjoyed this book, be sure to read
The Sinful Sinclairs miniseries by Lara Temple
The Earl’s Irresistible Challenge
The Rake’s Enticing Proposal
The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow
Keep reading for an excerpt from Redeeming Her Viking Warrior by Jenni Fletcher.
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Redeeming Her Viking Warrior
by Jenni Fletcher
Prologue
Isle of Skíð (modern-day Scotland)—ad 877
The woman appeared out of nowhere. One moment Danr Sigurdsson was alone, his body cradled amid the tangled roots of an oak tree, the next she was looming above him, the spear in her hand pointing straight at his throat.
He stared up at her, absently wondering who she was and where she’d come from, then gave up the effort and closed his eyes. His head and chest were throbbing. So, too, was his pulse, so hard and fast it felt as though his heart were trying to force its way through his ribcage.
Considering how much blood he’d lost over the past few hours he was surprised it could still summon the strength to beat at all, but at least the pain in his arm was fading to numbness now. If he kept still, he could almost forget the angry, red gouge where the blade had caught him, slicing through skin and muscle and tendon. If he didn’t move at all, scarcely allowing himself to breathe, in fact, he could forget almost everything.
The rustle of leaves overhead had already faded to a dull murmur and the light behind his eyelids was dimming, narrowing around the edges like a tunnel collapsing in on itself, enveloping him in darkness.
Something prodded his neck and he prised his eyelids open again. It was the woman, the blunt edge of her spear nudging lightly against his skin. What did she want? Was she threatening him? If she was, then she didn’t need to. At that moment he couldn’t have put up a fight with a kitten.
The very air felt heavy, pinning him to the ground as if there were a fallen tree lying across his chest. He was going to die whether she impaled him or not and he wasn’t going to protest either way. Perhaps it was best that she went ahead and put him out of his misery quickly. He would have failed his brothers—again—but at least it would have been while trying to fulfil his oath.
He curled the fingers of his good arm around the hilt of his sword, Bitterblade, determined to die like a warrior even if he couldn’t fight back, but the woman didn’t move as much as a muscle. As far as he could tell, she didn’t even blink. He felt a flicker of unease, wondering if she were some figment of his imagination or apparition. She looked like one, her narrow, expressionless face streaked with grey smudges while her hair tumbled in such wild, half-braided, half-loose disarray that it resembled a cloak of golden hay around her shoulders. She was a lot like a spear herself, he thought, sleek and slender with a flat chest and shoulders the same width as her hips, though he hated himself for noticing. Apparently it was true what Rurik had always said: Danr would still be looking at women on his deathbed... Well, here he was on it now, though perhaps it was only fitting. A woman had brought him into th
e world, albeit reluctantly, and now a woman was going to take him out of it. It would be a fitting revenge for all the ones he’d known and discarded in between.
He waited, feeling increasingly uneasy beneath her silent scrutiny. Even from where he lay on the ground he could see that her eyes were pale and striking, like oyster pearls, mirroring the sky behind her head, an iridescent grey speckled with flakes of silver that looked a lot like...snow?
Somehow he dragged a laugh up out of his chest. This was truly the end, then. He hadn’t even realised that it was cold enough—or late enough in the year—for snow, though now he thought about it he could see whispery coils of air emerging from his mouth. From hers, too, which at least proved she was a real flesh-and-blood woman, no matter how spectral she seemed. Snow was filling the air all around them, covering his broken and bloodied body in a gauzy white layer. After everything that he and his brothers had gone through, after they’d travelled so far and fought so many enemies from Maerr to Eireann to Constantinople to Alba, now he was going to die here in a forest all on his own and be buried in snow. His body would probably lie where it was for months, encased in ice, refusing to rot away until spring. Maybe Hilda would be the one to eventually find him and know that she’d won.
He gave a grunt of disgust and then froze, the hairs on the back of his neck rising at the sound of an answering growl. With an effort he lifted his head, his already pounding heartbeat redoubling in speed at the sight of a wolf—no, two wolves—stalking through the undergrowth towards him, their teeth bared in twin snarls, no doubt drawn by the scent of his blood.
Quickly, he shifted his gaze back to the woman, trying to convey a warning with his eyes since his throat was too dry to speak, but she appeared not to notice, her expression unreadable as the wolves came to stand on either side of her like a pair of dark sentinels. Maybe she really was an apparition after all, Danr thought with a shudder, an unforgiving ice maiden like the ones of which his mother had told him and Rurik as boys, a supernatural force able to control the animals of the forest as well as the elements. If she were, then he was entirely at her mercy. She could do whatever she wanted and there was nothing he could do to stop her.
He swallowed, waiting for her to decide his fate. At least a spear would be quick, whereas being torn apart by wolves... Surely not even he deserved that?
Did he?
He dropped his head back to the ground and closed his eyes for a few seconds, feeling the kiss of cold flakes on his lids and lashes, but when he opened them again she was gone and the wolves were nowhere to be seen. All he could see was snow.
Copyright © 2020 by Jenni Fletcher
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ISBN-13: 9781488065903
The Return of the Disappearing Duke
Copyright © 2020 by Ilana Treston
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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