Epilogue
Gwen
Two months later…
I sat at my desk in the early-morning quiet, yesterday’s coffee reheated in yesterday’s mug.
I’d hurried downstairs after my shower without drying off completely, because I’d had an idea while I was under the water.
Arthur was moving around in the kitchen within earshot, which meant I had maybe ten minutes before he came in and reminded me Caine-Ferraro expected me by eight-thirty.
The map of Western Europe was spread across the desk, pinned down at the corners by an empty mug, a paperweight, and two books I’d been studying.
I’d marked the countries in three colors: red for eliminated, yellow for possible, green for the two I considered most likely.
Germany had gone red last night, after I’d tracked down a fourteenth-century property record that broke the chain of custody I’d been following.
Five countries left in the green-and-yellow group. I’d started with forty-four.
Progress.
My notebook was open beside the map, filled with the notes I’d rushed down to write. Arrows connected dates to locations. Question marks in the margins. A rough sketch of the symbol with its circle, cross, and wavy line.
I highlighted a passage I’d rewritten from one of the books, about a Hospitaller property transfer in 1307, that mentioned a “seat of witness” in language unlike any of the standard administrative terminology. It could be nothing. It could be the thread that unraveled everything.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, Gwen.
But that was exactly what I did now. I got ahead of myself, followed hunches, trusted my read of the evidence. Nobody was grading me. Nobody was going to steal this research. Nobody was going to tell me I was wrong or publish my conclusions under their name.
This was mine, no matter what I promised those assholes in Cornwall.
“You’re not dressed.” Arthur appeared in the doorway with two travel mugs. He’d pulled on jeans and a gray sweater, and he looked annoyingly good for so little effort.
“I got distracted.” I took the mug he offered and sipped. Fresh, hot, and significantly better than my reheated version. “Germany’s out.”
“When did you figure that?” He set his own mug on the corner of the desk and studied the map over my shoulder.
“After you fell asleep last night, I found a property record that was two hundred years too late.” I tapped the red-marked section. “Which means I’m getting close.”
He rubbed my back. “You know what I love about when you get deep into your research?”
“What?”
“Your whole body leans toward the desk like you’re trying to climb inside whatever you’re reading. You did it at St. Catherine’s, you did it in the cave, and you’re doing it right now.” His hand moved lower. “It’s incredibly sexy.”
I raised the mug and fluttered my eyelashes at him. “You think everything I do is sexy.”
“Not when you reorganize my kitchen drawers and put the tongs where the spatulas go.”
I’d moved from New York into his house in Brenton two months ago. The decision had been made before we were halfway across the Atlantic. “That was a more logical arrangement.”
“It was chaos.” He kissed my cheek, a quick, easy part of our routine now. His lips moved to my ear, and he whispered, “You are wearing the earrings, though.”
“They’re beautiful.”
The police hadn’t found whoever broke into my hotel room or recovered anything stolen the day Arthur and I met.
But last night, he’d given me a pair of diamond studs.
He’d said they were supposed to be a Christmas gift, but he couldn’t wait two more weeks.
He didn’t try to replace my grandmother’s pearls or the bracelet from my mother, because those were about the women in my life.
But the earrings I’d bought myself? Those, he wanted to replace to give us a memory of our own.
I set the coffee down and slid my hands to the nape of his neck. His mouth was warm against my skin, and when his teeth grazed the base of my neck, my eyes closed. He reached beneath the collar of my bathrobe and cupped my breast. His thumb circled my nipple, and I arched into his palm.
“I was thinking,” I managed, “about the conversation we had last night.”
He paused mid-kiss against my neck. “The one before you eliminated Germany?”
“I’ve been on an IUD for years.” My fingers tightened in his hair. “We don’t need the condoms anymore.”
He lifted his head and smiled at me. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He kissed me. Not the cheek kiss, not the neck kiss.
A real kiss, with his tongue probing my mouth and his thumb tracing my cheekbone—the spot where Rick had split my face open.
Arthur always touched me there, and I’d never asked him to stop, because I understood what it meant.
He was promising no one would ever hurt me again.
“We’ve got at least an hour before I need to leave,” I said against his mouth.
He picked me up off the chair and set me on the desk.
The map crumpled under me. I reached for his belt while he caught the tie of my bathrobe.
He loosened the knot, and the robe fell open. His palms traveled up my thighs.
I was going to be late. I had an hour, minus the time it would take to put on my makeup, do my hair, and get dressed.
It would be worth the rush.
I unzipped his jeans and pushed them down with his boxer briefs. He was rock hard. I gripped his cock and stroked him, and he let out a sharp breath. I braced my foot on the office chair behind him and tilted my hips toward him.
He pressed his forehead against mine and slid inside me.
No barrier. Just him.
We both sighed, and his mouth curved in a way I recognized so well now. Bliss. He pulled back and drove in, harder, sending a pencil rolling off the edge of the desk to the hardwood floor.
Then another.
The desk rattled against the wall with every thrust, and his travel mug crashed to the floor. His hands clamped around my hips, holding me in place as we destroyed my map. Who cares? I just held on.
He shifted his angle.
The new position made me drop my head back and moan, “Oh, yeah.”
“There?” he murmured against my neck.
“There. God, that’s it.”
He lifted my leg higher. The desk groaned louder than I did, and sheets of paper fluttered to the floor. I turned my head to check the mess and spotted my laptop heading for the edge. I pinned it to the desk before it went over.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” he said, without breaking rhythm.
“Shut up and keep going.”
Every nerve ending was keener without the condom between us.
“Gwen.” His voice cracked.
“Arthur! Fuck!” I tightened around him and his rhythm stuttered. I slid two fingers between us and clamped them around his shaft. “Yes! Yes!”
While the climax rolled through me, he drove deeper and deeper, until he finally held steady. He gripped the back of my head and brought my face to his, holding my gaze as he finished inside me for the first time. It was warm and real and close in a way nothing else had ever been.
His arms shook under his sexy gray sweater. We stayed close, breathing each other’s air. His forehead found mine, and for long minutes, neither of us moved. He stayed inside me, wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me.
Eventually, he said, “I interrupted your research.”
“You did.”
“You seemed very focused.”
“I was.” I kissed the tip of his nose. “You ambushed me.”
“You were in your bathrobe.” He tugged the open collar. “So it’s your fault.”
“Everything is my fault, apparently.”
He kissed the corner of my mouth. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No, I’m not.” He pulled out of me and grabbed a tissue from the fallen box on the floor. After cleaning me, he asked, “If Germany’s out, what’s left?”
“Spain, France, Italy, Norway, and Wales.” I stood and smoothed the map out, while he threaded an arm around my waist. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I actually find it.”
“Stay quiet?” He pulled his jeans up, but left the button undone.
“The agreement covers publicizing the truth about the sword, the inscription, and the cave. But this is independent research.” I tapped Spain on the map. “If I find the Seat, is that covered by the agreement or not?”
“You don’t even know if it’s a place,” Arthur said. “But either way, they’ll expect you to stay quiet about it.”
“Yeah.” I had deleted the timer on the email I’d threatened them with. But I hadn’t deleted the email itself. No, I kept it in my draft folder and added everything I’d learned from their Charter, in case I ever needed to deploy it. “I like having a puzzle to keep my brain busy, though.”
“Working with Sam isn’t keeping your brain busy enough?”
“I love working there.” I’d handed over my report to her two weeks after we’d returned from Cornwall.
Most of the cuts and bruises had faded by the time I saw her, and I’d kept out of sight while they healed.
She’d accepted what I’d written, but her questions made it clear she suspected a deeper story.
Somehow, that suspicion had led to a job offer.
“She’s talking about a trip to Brazil next month.
There’s a collection she wants to evaluate in person. ”
“Brazil? I haven’t been to South America in a while. Need a bodyguard?”
“Hopefully not.” I ran my fingers along the scar on his forearm. The thin white line from the archive knife wound. I traced it down toward his wrist. “But the Seat is different. It’s mine. Nobody asked me to look for it, nobody’s funding it, nobody’s going to publish it. It’s my own little puzzle.”
He watched my fingers on his scar. “Will you be happy with that?”
I looked up at him. Two months ago, I’d been grabbed from a cave on the Cornish coast. Two months earlier, I’d been lamenting my career choices and my piss-poor choices in men.
Now I was working at my desk in our house in Brenton, Michigan.
I had a great job with a woman who believed in me, amazing research to work on, and I was in love with the best man in the world.
“I’m not sure happy’s a strong enough word. ”
He turned me toward him and cupped my face. “My offer to fly you back to Europe for your research stands.”
“I have a job. I can’t drop everything and leave.”
His eyes searched mine. “And so does the offer to buy the Marlcombe Collection or the Walmere Sword and fix—”
I touched his arm, stopping him before he finished his offer.
He’d brought it up twice before I turned the report in to Samantha.
And again before Thanksgiving dinner. It ranged from firing Lionel to forcing him to retract the paper he’d stolen from me to making his professional life hell.
His concern was sweet, but he didn’t get it.
“Arthur, the best revenge is a life well led. I don’t need anyone to suffer to prove how wonderful my life is now.” Because it was perfect. Everything.
“Then marry me.”
I took hold of his other arm and blinked, as though that would change what he’d said.
His brows drew down, as though he hadn’t expected the words, either. But he laughed and slowly sank onto one knee. “Marry me, Dr. Gwen Lyons, so we can prove how wonderful our life is.”
We’d only known each other for two months.
It was too soon. It was ridiculous. Of course, that’s what I’d thought when he’d told me he loved me the first time.
And when he’d asked me to move in. But both times, the shock wore off quickly, because I had no doubt this was the life I was meant to lead.
“I don’t have a ring to offer you, but—”
I put a finger over his mouth. “Yes.”
“Yes!” He shot to his feet and gathered me in his arms, lifting me in the biggest hug he’d ever given me. When he put me down, he said, “I should call in sick today.”
“To celebrate?”
“We haven’t christened your office couch.” He cocked one eyebrow at me. “Or we could pick up a tree and decorate the place the right way. Or maybe ring shopping?”
I ran my palms under his sweater, up his stomach and over his ribs. I knew every inch of this body now, including every scar, although he hadn’t shared a few of their origin stories with me yet. “Don’t you have a meeting with that prospect who keeps bringing up the Crécy article?”
“Lance is better at that shit.” His gaze moved from the leather couch against the far wall to me. “You should call in sick, too.”
“We can go shopping later.” I stepped into him, my hands still under his sweater. “And I have about half an hour before I need to leave.”
His eyes darkened. He hauled the sweater over his head and tossed it onto my desk. “Then we’d better get started, sweetheart.”
“Fiancée, you mean.”
“Fiancée.” He scooped me up and carried me across the room. “I love the sound of that.”
THE END OF BOOK 2