Chapter 11
Gwen
“I’ve been studying photographs of this place since yesterday morning.” I stood just inside the wrought-iron fence, at the top of the path to the church. “I can’t believe I’m already here.”
Lance stood beside me, hands in his pockets. “Thank the man with the jet.”
The man with the jet was inside, checking the building.
He’d made waffles before we left, drenched in maple syrup, which he’d heated in a saucepan.
The scent had lingered all morning, up until when we’d walked out to the car.
But somewhere between the cottage and the Land Rover, he’d started talking rotation schedules, and the man who’d stood at the stove last night, tasting bread with his eyes closed, might as well have stayed in Michigan.
Arthur appeared from the side of the building where the main door was. As he climbed the narrow path alongside the graveyard, he said, “All clear. There’s four people inside.”
“Exits?” asked Lance.
“Just the one door.”
Lance nodded and handed him the sword case. He glanced at the couple chatting by an ancient Celtic cross nearby. “I’ll maintain the perimeter, but I doubt it’ll be active out here.”
I adjusted the messenger bag on my shoulder as Arthur and I started down together. “I know it’s a cliché, but I thought the church would be bigger.”
Up close, it was barely the size of my apartment.
It was little more than stone walls, a slate roof, and a squat crenelated tower.
The small graveyard sat on a hill by the road, full of stone crosses standing in grass that had gone to seed.
The bushes lining the far side of the property were a mix of greens and oranges, several of them having dropped their leaves in the crisp autumn air.
“It’s even smaller inside.” Arthur pushed the wooden door open for me.
“I emailed my neighbor—the one who opened the cottage for us—with some questions about the place. He said the tower section is the best-preserved, and the font might be the oldest thing in the building. Everything else was rebuilt in the 1880s.”
I stepped through the doorway and stopped.
The nave was tiny, crowded with wooden chairs instead of pews, arranged in loose rows.
It had whitewashed walls, exposed timbers overhead, and to our left, the tower arch, which was made of the original stone.
Dark and rough, nothing like the smooth plaster of the nave.
A small stained glass window glowed through the archway.
An older couple studied the window over the altar, a young woman sat in one of the chairs sketching, and a middle-aged man in a light jacket flipped through a book in the side chapel.
“Where do you want the sword?” asked Arthur.
“I’ll be starting with the tower, so I’ll set up at the back.” I sat on a chair in the last row and unpacked the laptop Sam had loaned me, while Arthur turned another chair around to face me and placed the sword case on it. “Thanks.”
He positioned himself near the entrance. The church was small enough that he could see me, the door, and everyone inside.
Which meant I could also see him, no matter where I went. How did famous people handle having a bodyguard standing by, watching them all the time? Let alone a sexy, rich chef bodyguard?
Go and examine the tower, Gwen. That’s why you’re here.
I stood, intentionally not looking at Arthur, who was most definitely tracking every move I made.
The carvings I’d identified in the photographs were higher than I’d judged from the images—around nine feet up. The circle with the cross inside sat to the left of the letter forms. The markings were faint, so I turned on my phone’s flashlight. They were visible, but out of reach.
The chair I’d sat on was sturdy. I could stand on it. None of the people inside the small church appeared to be staff who’d chase me off. So I carried one of the wooden chairs from my workspace into the tower area.
The woman who was sketching turned around to look at me.
“I want a better view of the stained glass.” I pointed toward the small window in the arch. “Trying to find the right angle.”
She smiled and went back to her sketchbook.
I set the chair beside the wall and went back for my camera. When I returned to the little tower, Arthur was waiting for me. He’d moved the chair slightly, squaring it on the uneven floor, and he stood beside it with one hand on its back.
“It’s not the sturdiest thing.” He offered his other hand to me.
I slid my hand into his. His big, solid hand enveloped mine, so much like the morning we’d met, but today—
You’re here to search for evidence.
He supported me as I stepped up onto the seat. But the chair shifted, and his grip tightened.
Then his other hand left the chair back and found my waist.
Everything inside me froze. His hand spanned from one side of my back to the other, and the power of it traveled through my body. Heat started where his hand rested and spread outward until my skin was on fire, and I may have forgotten how to breathe for a moment.
The chair stopped moving. He released my palm and held me steady with both hands. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I reached slowly for the grooves, trying to calm the energy collecting between my thighs. The chair could have vanished, and he would have just held me there without breaking a sweat.
God, he was strong. And in control. He barged into situations and took control like… Memories of another deep voice and strong arms washed over me. A man holding me steady on the rolling ladder against his office bookshelves.
The English air is messing with your head, Gwen. That’s all it is. That’s all it ever was.
Focus.
The cuts in the stone were deeper than I’d expected, their edges smooth but still distinct.
I photographed from three angles, maneuvering my phone’s flashlight to throw shadows across the carvings so my camera picked them up.
I made out individual letter forms, but not enough to read the full inscription by eye.
“I’ve got the photos I need for round one, but I need to enhance them on the laptop.” I looked down at Arthur. “The carving’s too worn to read from here.”
He didn’t budge. He held me in place, his brown eyes almost black in the dim light of the tower. The man may well have been made of stone. He was motionless, other than a muscle ticking in his jaw.
I couldn’t have gotten down by myself if I’d tried; his grip was so firm. “Can you help me down?”
He blinked rapidly, like he was waking up from a dream, and let go of me. One hand landed on the back of the chair, while he held the other out for me. “Of course.”
I took his hand, and he braced me until both my feet were on the stone floor. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll be at my post.”
At my impromptu workstation, I tethered the camera to my phone’s data signal and started an upload to my cloud server.
The process crawled. I needed high-resolution images, so they were large, but my internet connection was tenuous.
While it transferred, I sketched in my notebook.
The circle-cross symbol. The letters and how they broke across stones.
I pulled them up on the camera’s preview screen and added some small details.
Minutes passed, and the upload felt like it was operating in reverse. I returned to the tower and jotted measurements in my notebook. Sat in my chair. Opened the sword’s case. Cross-referenced the photographs I’d taken of the pommel at Caine-Ferraro’s.
Still. Crawling. I should have packed a cable to do a direct transfer.
“How’s it going?”
I startled.
Arthur stood beside my chair. Behind him, the chair I’d used in the tower was back in its row.
“The internet’s slow.”
“It is.” He glanced at his phone. “I’m going to switch off with Lance. He’ll be inside in a minute.”
“Has it already been half an hour?”
“Thirty-two minutes, to be precise.” He smiled, and it hit me low in my stomach, layering on top of the warmth from last night, from the waffles, and from when he’d held me on the rickety chair.
Good heavens, he was—
Shut up, Gwen.
He walked to the door and vanished through it.
I turned back to the laptop. The images had finished uploading while I was fawning over Arthur, so I opened the photo-editing software. Contrast up. Brightness adjusted. Color spectrum inverted to pull the faded carving out of the surrounding stone.
The letters emerged from the dark surface: PORTA NOVAE AVALLONIS.
It can’t be.
I stared at the screen. Reverted the changes, tweaked the color balance more, kept adjusting until every last ghost of texture emerged from the image.
The same words. No extra letters.
Porta Novae Avallonis.
The Door of New Avalon.
I opened the pommel photographs on my cloud drive, unable to calm my shaking hands. I pulled up the highest-resolution shot of the gold inscription. The words were worn, but enough of the shapes were distinguishable.
There were two Vs, separated by other letters.
There was a double L.
An S at the end.
I pressed my hands flat on the laptop to stop the trembling.
Clavis Novae Avallonis. The Key of New Avalon.
The sword said key. The church said door.
And they both referenced New Avalon.
This was it. This was the kind of discovery that could make a career.
Or break one, Gwen. Be careful.
The last time I’d been this excited about a discovery—this sure I’d found something no one else had—I’d been terrified I was misinterpreting things.
I’d only been twenty-eight at the time, working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Marlcombe Collection.
I’d brought my research to Lionel, who’d poked so many holes in my theories that I’d cried for all the time I’d wasted.
But I’d stayed over at his place despite it all. And he’d gone through my laptop while I slept, downloaded it all, and published it under his name a month later. I lost everything the day I found out. My research position, my boyfriend, my career…
This isn’t the same situation.