Eros Element (26 page)

Time to celebrate another bloody brilliant Edward Bailey discovery.

He had a small sample size, but it was large enough for definitive conclusion: women were not to be trusted. He poured himself a half cup of wine and downed the sour liquid in one gulp.

It's interesting how something can be cold and hot at the same time.

He poured and drank another one.

“Edward,” Iris pleaded. “Edward, please look at me.”

He blinked and saw she seemed blurry at the edges but still attractive. That wouldn't do. He reached for the wine carafe again, but she stopped him.

“Let him drown his sorrows,” Scott said. “It's about time he found out your true nature. Thankfully I'm willing to rescue him from you.”

Iris withdrew her hand. “What do you mean?”

“If you want access to the site, you need to do one simple thing for me.”

“And what is that?”

“Agree to marry me. I have the contract with me now.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Hotel Segreto, Rome, 16 June 1870

“You don't need me to marry you if you have the rights to the site,” Iris told him. “I am willing to trade my cooperation and help with the excavation and cataloging since I know you don't have the knowledge to make sense of what's in there.”

Lord Jeremy smiled at her, but no amount of wrinkling at the corners of his squinty eyes could make him look warm or generous. “Even so, you need access to it. And I want your father's notes, particularly on discoveries he hadn't published yet. His acquired knowledge will become the property of the University since there is no male heir, and we will both lose access to it.”

Iris saw the logic in his statement, but her father had not wanted her to marry Lord Jeremy, and she recalled the vision of him from Irvin's things. She knew humiliating him in front of the others wouldn't help her case, so she stood and gestured for Jeremy Scott to follow her. They walked into the hotel lobby, where she found a quiet corner.

“This is more than about his notes, isn't it?” she asked. “You want revenge on him for something.”

Now all pretense of joviality dropped from Scott's features. “Your father thought I cheated in his class and kicked me out.”

“Did you cheat?” Iris crossed her arms and scowled at him.

“Don't give me that school marm look, Miss McTavish. I didn't cheat, I delegated.”

“You had someone write a paper for you.” She knew from his expression she hit home. “Why would I want to marry a cheater?”

“Why would anyone but me want to marry a liar? You said yourself you're not the type for marriage, but you don't have a home to go to since I hold the deed to your house. Do you really think you'll be able to survive on your own, especially if you turn back from your quest now? I can't imagine your patron will take kindly to your willfulness.”

“Willful child, you'll never find a man to put up with you.”
Iris's mother's voice came into her mind, and her father's chimed in with,
“You have to look at all the evidence and see what makes the most sense. Even if it's a conclusion you don't want to be true, you have to accept it and move forward without bias.”

She had to try one more thing. “What if I give you access to his notes before the university gets to them? Then will you allow me to assist with the excavations without having to marry you?”

“There's no guarantee you'll be able to do that.” He put his hand on her waist and drew her to him. His breath smelled of garlic, and she turned her head away. “Marry me, Iris. It's the only way you'll get what you want.”

She drew away from him and walked into the sunlight, which now seemed mocking in its cheery brightness. She gazed across the square at the arched remnants of a civilization long dead and felt the eighteen hundred years that separated her from its builders and the designers of the space below. What was one lifetime of misery in the context of history? How could she deny the good this discovery could bring, a power source that would lift the poor from slavery to coal? She'd lectured Edward on the need to remain practical in his science. Perhaps her mother was right—as a woman, it was her lot to sacrifice herself, and at least she could to pursue her intellectual hobbies. At least as much as Lord Jeremy—Jeremy now—would allow it.

Don't be foolish, of course he'll allow it. He can't do it without help.

That felt like a hollow victory compared to what she was giving up, most of all Edward. But she knew that was futile from the beginning. He valued honesty above all else, and she'd lied to him. The Maestro was right—she should have left well enough alone.

Iris walked back to the table at the cafe. She felt the other men's eyes on her, but she gazed at Edward. He stared into the bottom of his wine cup. She so badly wanted to take him aside, to make him believe she'd done what she had to do to survive, but a little voice said she should have trusted him all along. Maybe it was for the best. A deeper attachment would have hurt him more. As for Marie, the expression on her face was unreadable aside from a hint of sympathetic pity. Now Iris's stomach flipped with shame at having judged Marie for whatever had happened with Cobb. Perhaps he'd put her in a similar situation, given her an impossible choice. Iris wanted to hate all men, but that wasn't reasonable, either.

“I have an announcement,” she said. “I have consented to marry Lord Jeremy Scott. Excavations at the site will begin as soon as we can gather and organize the crew.”

She turned and fled into the hotel before she had to face their halfhearted congratulations or Jeremy's smug smirk.

The following Monday, Iris stood at the edge of a ramp that led down into the gloom. Lord Jeremy Scott stood beside her, and on the other side, Marie, who had proved adept at getting the Italian workers to move in a less chaotic and more efficient way. Consequently, they broke ground the Friday after Iris agreed to marry Scott, and rather than having to dig, they had to remove rubble that had been put into the space, which ended up being some sort of underground chapel with a skylight on one end, and settled enough to create the chamber the echo-worm detected. Patrick O'Connell had rigged a pulley system to clear the rubble quickly. Now Iris and Lord Jeremy—she couldn't think of him as simply Jeremy—were to lead the others into the space for the first time to discover what had been left behind and see what condition any decoration might be in.

Iris couldn't help but check behind her to see where Edward stood. As usual, he didn't meet her gaze, just stared straight ahead. While she, Marie and Lord Jeremy oversaw the work, the others had hired an academic translator and gone around to the libraries in Rome to see if they could find any mentions in old manuscripts as to what the space might have been. So far vague clues hinted that this might have been some sort of neo-Pythagorean gathering space, but as they were persecuted at the time it was built in the first century AD, secrecy surrounded it. If it indeed had been used by the cult, this discovery would make Iris's—no, Lord Jeremy Scott's—name in the field.

It's worth it for the discovery,
Iris reminded herself, but she resented the situation.

“Are you ready?” her fiancé asked.

“Yes.”

One of the workers handed him a torch, and he reached for her hand, but she folded her arms. “After you,” she said. “It's too narrow for both of us.”
But Edward and I could have fit.

She followed him into the space, which smelled of stone dust and now the sulfur of the torch. It brought back memories of the visions she'd had, and something told her this was the right place.

The flickering torch and the light from the skylight opening revealed a room that would be considered small by Roman basilica standards, but the structure reminded Iris of the large chapels with a central aisle and another on either side. The sun illuminated an altar, on which a box lay on its side. Lord Jeremy started toward it, but Iris held him back.

“Remember, we have to look first, catalog second, and then we can pick them up and take them apart.” She kept her voice low in respect for the sacred space. People had died there.

“Right.” He squeezed her hand. “I lost my head with the excitement.”

Or you never bothered to learn how you're supposed to do this.
But she gave him enough of a smile to placate him.

As they walked through, the torchlight illuminated scenes in stucco. Iris itched to stop and sketch them, but she reminded herself to get the overall impression of the place, and she could study the details later. She glanced back to the others and saw her own sense of wonder reflected on their faces. Even Edward dropped his stone-faced sneer, which she had to admit was a slight improvement over the pout he often sported at the beginning of the trip, and gazed at the stuccoes and columns with awe and respect for the long-dead architects and artists. She paused so he moved closer to her before he realized where he stood and moved back a step. Iris sighed, but when she looked up, she found the angle of the light to be familiar and maneuvered so the vision of the past and perception of the present merged.

When Iris stepped on the spot where the slave girl had stood, probably as the finishing touches were put on the chapel, a shiver ran from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head, and she couldn't stifle her gasp.

“What is it?” Edward asked. “Are you all right?”

Another layer of the past, this one from the previous week, superimposed itself, and Iris blinked to bring herself back into the moment. “This looks familiar.”

“How?” He frowned. “You've never been here.”

I promised myself I would be honest with him, and I have nothing to lose by telling him at this point.
“Objects tell me things. It's like they give me their memories. One of the statues in the Louvre was of a person who had been here. A
kore
, or female
kouros
, which were sometimes made to commemorate someone. She must have been a beloved slave girl.”

“You don't expect me to believe that, do you?” Edward asked, but his frown deepened. “But my brother said your father had an uncanny ability to make conclusions about finds that were borne out by evidence later.”

“I suspect he had a similar gift,” Iris said. “He hinted, but we never talked about it directly.”

Lord Jeremy approached them, and Iris moved to a spot that didn't call to her as much. Before she did, she noted which of the stuccoes were best seen from that location. Perhaps they were the key to what they sought?

“Have you noticed anything interesting, my love?” Scott asked.

Iris kept her expression neutral. “Not yet. You?”

“I want to see what that box on the altar is. It's in a unique enough place that surely we can move it and open it.”

“Wait a moment.” Iris sent one of the workmen for the sketch pad and tools she'd acquired and measured exactly how the box sat on the altar and where with details down to the exact angle it lay at. Then she nodded to Lord Jeremy. “Now you can open it.”

The box proved to be a small trunk, and it contained a device with, of all things, gears.

“What is it?” Bledsoe asked.

“It looks like some sort of calculating device,” Edward said. “But I'll need more light to look at it. Miss McTavish, if you would care to assist me?”

“Very well.” Was he interested in her archaeological knowledge, or was this a peace overture? Not that it would help her situation, but perhaps he would move more quickly toward healing if he wasn't furious with her.

“I'll come as well,” Lord Jeremy said.

Of course Iris didn't want him along, particularly as they had only shared the broadest details of what their patron had hired them to do, so she suggested, “Why don't you see if you can find any other interesting objects? You can catalog them like I did the device and bring them up. The credit for those finds would go to you.”

“A brilliant idea, my dear. But do bring Marie to chaperone you with the professor.”

As they ascended the ramp into the sunlight, Edward reminded himself he didn't want to have anything to do with Iris. She had lied to him, and he felt more heartbroken than he had with Lily, whom he never respected as an intellectual. But throwing himself into the work of investigating the underground chapel as well as indulging in replacing his aether isolating rig through the excellent Italian craftsmen put him in a more reasonable frame of mind. He hadn't forgiven Iris for lying to him, but he could somewhat see why she had. Now if only he could sleep again, as emotional pain had replaced physical discomfort.

They covered the short distance from the ramp to the small building they'd rented as a place to store and organize the finds, but not before some of the Italian children who had been on the square the day of their initial discovery saw them. They ran over, and Marie had to tell them to back away.

“This won't stay secret for long,” Iris murmured once they entered the building and placed the box with the device in it on an empty table.

“Nothing ever does,” Edward replied. “We better figure out what this does quickly in case the church decides to take it.”

“Right.” Iris wrote the necessary details on a card and tied it to a splinter protruding from the box. “Go ahead, Professor.”

Edward removed the device, which looked like a clock but with dials on the outside instead of a face, from the box and set it on the table. Greek writing, which hadn't been evident in the dim light of the chapel, was inlaid in some sort of metal around the dials.

“I don't suppose you know how to read Greek,” Iris said to Marie.

“No, don't you? I would think it's required for archaeologists.”

“If I were to go to school, I'd learn.”

“Perhaps I could help.” Doctor Radcliffe entered the room. “I had to study both Greek and Latin in medical school.”

“Please.” Edward gestured to the device. “I've seen plenty of clockworks, but none like this.”

The doctor squinted at the writing. “May I have a piece of paper? I need to transcribe the words as I read them so I can translate them all together.”

Iris provided a pen and paper to the doctor, who mouthed the Greek words and phrases, as he wrote them down. “It may take me some time to figure this out.”

“Please hurry. Once word of this gets to the church, there's no way to know whether they'll want to requisition it.”

“Give me an hour. Oh, and Professor? You may want to get your aether rig set up. This might be the clue we're looking for.”