Hatshepsut's Collar (The Artifact Hunters #2)

by A. W. Exley

  Natalie’s eyes widened before she leaned forward and kissed Cara on both cheeks. Lavender and warmth washed over Cara from the older woman’s embrace.

  Natalie had large tapered eyes in a pixie shaped face with masses of dark curls falling around her ears. The deep red gown was the perfect foil for her alabaster skin. Her eyes were the darkest brown with amber flecks. “Knowing Nate, there will be a tale surrounding the two of you. I shall drag you away, so you can tell me all the luscious details without them overhearing.”

  “We will be in deep trouble, my friend, if these two put their heads together,” Nate said, running his thumb over Cara’s spine and making her shiver.

  “Oh? Do you not think you’re in enough trouble already, do you require more?” Cara asked, mischief dancing in her eyes.

  “I have my hands full as it is.” He gave her a wink, and then turned his attention to Nikolai. “Can you believe I have been accused of trafficking with Russia?”

  Nikolai gave a deep rumbling laugh. “Almost as though someone suspects you have friends here.”

  “I was curious.” Cara interjected. “That Nate was more surprised about his accuser than the accusation.”

  “How perceptive of you,” the count murmured, intelligence sparkling in the depths of his eyes.

  She returned Nikolai’s smile, then stroked her hand down Nate’s arm. “I’ll leave you two to ponder the details. I need to go freshen up.”

  “I’ll show you to the private saloon,” Natalie offered. “We can discuss our own plots and techniques to manage our husbands.” She gave her husband a deep, sensual smile before linking her arm with Cara.

  The two women made their away across the crowded ballroom, the chandeliers throwing a kaleidoscope of colours over the walls. Steel mechanical waiters, waist high with trays on top of their heads glided amongst the nobles. Natalie pointed out various people as they passed, and murmured scandalous rumours in Cara’s ear.

  “The more I hear, the more I realise one court is much like another, alive with dangerous undercurrents, nobles ever eager to pull each other under the surface.” She observed to her new friend.

  Natalie nodded. “The trick is in knowing where to tread. We have skills that we can ply to our husbands’ advantage. Whether it is listening sympathetically to abused wives with open ears, or allowing a foreign diplomat to stare at our décolleté while we ask innocent questions.”

  They entered the quieter salon and Cara stood in front of the counter running beneath the mirror. She placed her palms down on the cool rose marble and drew a deep breath, centring herself. The Russian court was as fraught with fatal rips as the British ton. The main difference being she didn’t speak Russian, not that many of the Russian nobles did, either. Cara had to rely on her other senses and Natalie’s comments to navigate a course. French dominated as the court language with German and a smattering of English also spoken, but she struggled with the swirling languages, her brain slow to translate back and forth. Nate adapted like a fish to water, switching to whatever language hit his ears as he slapped old comrades on the back and downed vodka. Another layer she never knew now pulled back and revealed.

  Natalie stood next to her and placed her hands on the counter. Cara flicked her gaze down, then back again. She was missing her pinkie finger. It was an old injury, the skin pale silver over the joint. She didn’t realise she was staring until Natalie spoke.

  “Let us do a trade. I will tell you the story of my missing finger if you tell me about your stripes.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”

  She gave Cara a warm smile. “Come.” She took her hand and led her to a sofa in a private corner. “Nate and Nikolai need time to plot, and it will do no harm for them to miss us.”

  Cara sat with a heavy sigh, and took a deep breath. “When I was fourteen-years old, my father traded me to the man who held his gambling chits. The lord concerned thought the lash would make me compliant. He was wrong.” She nudged Natalie with her elbow. “Your turn.”

  “I was fifteen. My father arranged for me to marry a cruel and heartless man. I refused.” She held up the hand with the missing digit. “He thought this would make me obey. He took my finger because he didn’t want to mark my face. Who saved you?”

  “No one.” Cara shook her head. “I had to save myself. You?”

  The smile turned sensual. “Nikolai.” She breathed his name in such a way that chills brushed over Cara’s skin. “He found me in the palace corridor, clutching a blood soaked handkerchief to my hand. He married me the same day to protect me from my father.”

  Such strange parallels of cruelty in their stories. Nate married Cara much later, but he protested he did it to protect her. “What makes one marriage any better than the other?” she pondered; a noose was a noose whether made of rope or silk.

  Natalie took up Cara’s hand and squeezed her fingers. “Women like you and me, we yearn to be treated as equals, not chattels. But all marriages are not alike. Some husbands trap their women in gilded stables like expensive broodmares. Others treat them like spirited Arabian fillies, and let us gallop free. Look to your heart, you know which you have.”

  Cara didn’t want to look to her heart, she knew Nate lingered there, his presence a soft reassuring pulse along their bond.

  Natalie, as though sensing her unease, continued talking of her marriage. “I knew Nikolai was the one for me the moment I laid eyes on him. He is my angel, but, being fifteen years older than me, he treated me like a treasured daughter. I did not want that!” A smile broke which animated her entire face. “The day I turned eighteen I got him drunk, tied him to his bed until he sobered up, and then seduced him.”

  Cara burst out laughing at the courage, determination, and planning Natalie’s scheme must have taken. “So you got your way?”

  Natalie winked. “I have been his wife and his partner in every sense since that day.”

  Other women swirled in and out of the private saloon, a rainbow of colours brushing past in a cloud of laughter. Cara turned her mind to other matters. “Have Nate and Nikolai known each other long?”

  “They are old friends and sometimes opponents. Nate was eighteen when Nikolai first encountered him on a privateer airship. I believe Nikolai kept him imprisoned in the hold until his temper cooled.”

  Cara’s lips quirked. Ah ha! Always knew he started as a pirate.

  “It is only fitting that you and I become friends also. We will show them. Come.”

  She rose and Cara stood with her. They were of a similar height making it easier to bend their heads together to exchange secrets. Natalie tucked Cara’s arm through hers and they left the salon in search of their two spies. They circled the ballroom, arm in arm, exchanging small details of their lives as though they had known each other for years, not hours.

  “You do not sound happy to be married to Nate, do you not love him?”

  Cara shook her head. She never doubted the depth of her feelings for Nate. “I love him so much it hurts,” she whispered as she struggled to articulate the words causing her so much pain. “But he bought me. I was never given a choice.”

  Natalie cocked her head, and made a clicking sound of tongue against teeth as she thought. “So, did he force himself on you?”

  Cara wondered where this conversation was headed. She couldn’t imagine Nate ever forcing himself on a woman, he didn’t need to. “No. Never.”

  Natalie frowned. “Did he demand you obey him?”

  Good luck to him if he ever pulled that line. A smile tickled Cara’s lips. “No.”

  Natalie drew to a halt and faced Cara, a puzzled look on her face. “Then I do not understand. He married you, but did nothing. How do you come to be by his side?”

  Cara shrugged. “I made my own way to him.”

  “Ah,” Natalie exclaimed as though Cara had neatly demonstrated her point. “He left you free to determine you own course.”

  Cara frowned, she missed something in the exchange, an
d it nagged and itched just below her conscience. “I only found out what he did just over a week ago. I’m so angry at him.”

  “You have every reason to be angry. Only you know if this betrayal is so deep it splits you apart or if you can build a bridge and move on.” The women continued their slow circuit of the room. A waiter stopped before them, the silver tray holding crystal glasses of champagne. They took one each and continued on. “There is no time limit on your decision, one week, one month, or one year. Look inside, your instincts and heart know the answer, your mind just needs to recognise it.”

  Cara mulled over the advice. She desperately wanted to talk to Nan and Nessy, but she found Natalie’s words made a certain sense to her churning mind. By the time they skirted the edge of the enormous room and found their husbands, Cara felt she had found a lifelong friend and had much to think over.

  The men exchanged raised eyebrows, watching the two heads bent together before they reclaimed their wives.

  “We are in trouble now, my friend.” Nikolai observed as Natalie gave Cara a wink.

  In the early hours of the morning, they returned to their suite. Cara possessed a restless energy. She seemed reluctant to join him in the large bed, instead she stalked their rooms. He watched her prowl, back and forth, until she stopped by the window. She leaned against the side of the frame, her cheek pressed to the cool pane, lost in her thoughts as she stared out into the darkness. Moonlight cut through the glass and danced over her body, setting fire to the deep auburn in her hair. The cream silk robe fell down her arm, revealing a slender neck, the line of her shoulder, the gentle rise of one breast. Her skin glowed like alabaster, but he knew she was warm velvet beneath his hands, beneath him.

  He bit back the groan rising in his throat. He tossed the blankets from his body, the soft cotton rough comfort when he wanted to feel the glide of silk over his skin. His balls ached, and a throbbing pulse from his cock heated his entire body.

  She was his life, his breath. He had fought to keep her free, untethered, for more years than she would ever know. The idea of her slipping from beside him was a knife in his gut. It fought with the pain lower down in his groin. Seeing her, without touching her, was a torture far worse than he ever imagined. Fire burned through his limbs; he needed to quench himself in her before it consumed him and drove him insane.

  St. Petersburg slept, or at least the parts around the hotel. Loki and Miguel plied the dockside taverns searching for Sergei. The city contained more contrasts than Cara ever saw in London. The glittering excess of the nobles took her breath away while elsewhere on their vast estates, they maintained peasants like feudal lords. Alexander had emancipated the serfs, but freedom didn’t put bread in the stomach of a starving child. The situation reminded her of Louis XVI’s France and she wondered if Russia would face a similar uprising in her future.

  Shaking thoughts of revolution from her head, she pondered the new friend she discovered in the ballroom of the Winter Palace. She recognised something in Natalie, a similar thread twined through both their lives, pulling them together at this particular moment in time. When Cara most needed someone to talk to and had no opportunity to reach her grandmother, Natalie appeared. Now her words swirled in her head.

  Did he force himself on you? No.

  Did he demand you obey him? No.

  How did you come to be by his side? I made my own way to him.

  What if Natalie was right? What if Nate’s actions in marrying her, made her free, not chained? Perhaps she needed to look at the issue from another angle. She turned her gaze from the window, back inside the luxurious suite, and toward the bed large enough to contain a hungry man and his harem of companions.

  Her breath hitched in her throat.

  There’s another angle to things.

  Nate lay naked, the blankets tossed aside. One hand wrapped around the thick length of his cock as he gave lazy strokes up and down the shaft. On the upstroke his thumb worked over the tip, spreading the glistening pre-cum on the down-stroke.

  She tipped her head back against the window frame. Her gaze roamed up the hard abdominal muscles over his chest to a sharp, chiselled face. Blue eyes held molten heat when she met his gaze.

  “Really, Nate?” she murmured.

  His hand never ceased moving. “What is a man to do, cara mia? You won’t play, and I am no celibate monk.” Stroke up, stroke down. Her gaze held hostage by his. “You are the most beautiful, spirited, and fierce creature I have ever laid eyes on.”

  She parted her lips in a sigh as a wave of desire and love washed over her. Lust and longing heated the room and enveloped her, the air heavy and sultry like before the rains hit in India. What was she to do? He dared marry her, and not tell her, but left her free to find her own way to him. She loved him to the depths of her core and desired him with a heat as consuming as the sun.

  Call me Icarus, for it’s time to embrace the flames.

  Her fingers went to the tie of her robe, loosening the knot so the two sides fell free. She allowed the fabric to drop from her shoulders. Leaving the pool of silk by the window, she walked naked to the bed as a primal growl ripped from Nate’s throat.

  ara stretched her body alongside Nate’s larger one. Her muscles ached and lassitude flowed from every pore. He had loved her hard and furious. He took all she offered and demanded more, stroking her hotter than ever before she fractured under him. In the early hours of the morning he brought tears to her eyes when he took her with a gentle reverence. He worshipped her body with his lips and tongue until she thought she would rupture from the longing. A shiver of pleasured remembrance ran through her body.

  “I want to stay here all day,” she murmured, relishing the feel of pressing bare skin against him.

  He rolled over, covering her, his arms resting either side of her head. “I take it last night means I am forgiven for secretly marrying you?”

  She frowned up at him. “No. Last night means I am no celibate nun.”

  Nate dropped his head kissing the column of her throat. “Shame, I thought you were a devoted supplicant to our worship last night.”

  She arched her back under his caress, an ache building inside as she struggled to remember his question, her brain too lazy to function.

  Watching her drift off, he paused in his attentions. “Loki and Miguel are due this morning. Do you want Loki to find you like this?”

  A slow, sensuous smile spread across her face. She was still curious about Loki’s many piercings. “It would be one way to pass the day.”

  Nate growled. “You can get dressed. If he so much as looks at your naked body, I will be forced to kill my oldest friend.” His lips settled over her pulse and he bit gently before laving the delicate skin with his tongue.

  Cara moaned, moving her hips and trying to inch him lower to the centre of her growing need.

  A knock sounded at the bedroom door and Nate barked out for them to enter, but he held his place. He rocked his body, gently stroking the entire length of her, causing her to bite her lip to suppress her groan.

  The maid picked up Cara’s robe from by the window and, with averted eyes, stood by her side of the bed. She held up the robe, and gave a discrete cough.

  Nate’s gaze burned. “We’ll continue this later.” He dropped his head to deliver a swift, fierce kiss before rolling off her. Rising, he walked naked across the room to where the valet waited with a dressing gown and the necessary shaving supplies.

  Cara stifled her laugh at the wide eyed expression on the maid’s face, a unique mix of horror mingled with fascination. Not only was Nate naked, but fully aroused and a startling sight to those unaccustomed to such endowments. It wasn’t until his robe went over his broad shoulders and he pulled the tie tight did the woman’s attention return to Cara.

  An hour later, they were both dressed and had a light breakfast involving kippers at the long table flooded with morning sunlight. A stack of coded messages awaited Nate, and having read the secret missives, he fed th
em into a small personal incinerator. Shaped like a dragon head, he closed the jaw and pressed a side lever. A puff of smoke rose from the dragon’s deep set nostrils as it consumed the paper offerings.

  Cara savoured the last of her coffee as the suite doors slid open to admit Miguel and Loki.

  “Any sign of Sergei?” Nate asked.

  “No, and we’re attracting a fair bit of attention by asking. And this one”―Loki gestured his thumb in Miguel’s direction―”is proving popular with the ladies.”

  Loki sounded jealous and colour rose up Miguel’s neck.

  “Keep asking, just try and avoid any fights. Sergei will find you once he knows you ask on my behalf.” Nate crossed the room to the shiny brass aethergraph, which burst into life and shot forth several inches of tape. Nate ripped it free and glanced at the contents.

  “For you, from Fraser,” he said as he took the message to Cara.

  She glanced down. He had used a simple transposed letter code, basic to interpret and kept the message safe from only the briefest glimpse.

  Much is said of the accuser, little of the accusation. Be on your guard, you are pursued. HF.

  She raised her eyes to Nate’s piercing gaze. “I can feel his disappointment at not finding any truth in the charge yet. He says we are being pursued. Not unexpected, I suppose?”

  “No. There is little they can do here; we have powerful friends to protect us while we dig after Nolton.”

  “We need to decide what to do about Hatshepsut’s Collar too. I’ve found the passages in my books. I just need to make sense of them.” She gave a sigh at being pulled in so many different directions. Wadding up the message, she pushed the paper into the dragon head. Rising, she patted its jaw shut and left the beast to toast the paper while she fetched her parasol. The slim handle concealed a long and deadly stiletto, a gift from Nate. She lived in hope for the opportunity to test the blade.

  Miguel’s awkward movement attracted Cara’s attention. He kept tugging on his shirt and lifting the fabric away from his chest. Turning, she used her parasol like a sword, pinning the tip to the middle of Loki’s chest and halting his attempt to slip past her. “What did you do to Miguel?”