Chapter 10
Retrieve for me the Malia Pendant. Prove your worth, and perhaps I will let you wear it.
Your Devoted Servant
Andromena waited only a short time for her blackmailers’ orders before she was back to work for him—and her uncle.
The demand was clear: she had to steal the Gold Bee Pendant of Malia, a treasure, unearthed almost two decades ago off the north coast of the Isle of Crete and just six hundred paces from the Minoan Palace of Malia.
Though the honeybee represented a female-centered community, where the Queen guided the colony’s survival, men—artists, kings, and artisans—had, in the way of civilizations since the beginning of time, centered fertility around themselves.
In the bees, men saw what mattered most all came down to what it still came down to, the patriarchal passing of lines. Titles. Wealth.
For its time, the design was a masterpiece.
Even now, a work of such fierce precision should have stolen Andromena’s breath.
Identical in image and placement, two bees touched heads, as they did with the tips of their stingers.
Atop their heads, they supported a pair of matching cages, each holding a solid gold bead.
From their legs hung a circular disc that dangled a delicate honeycomb.
As if the elaborate work were not reason enough to inspire awe, this superb craftsmanship measured two inches by two inches.
In terms of gold, it weighed five and a half grams and was worth thirteen shillings and nine pence—a paltry sum to noblemen.
It would provide more than a dozen pound-loaves of wheat bread. Three pounds of salt and four pounds of sugar. Four pounds of beef—five gallons of ale.
With that money, one could afford fuel and heat a small room for at least a month—perhaps more.
Andromena knew all this because she asked Cook and other servants—who were like family.
If stealing could lessen someone’s burden, feed families, and keep them warm in the cold months, she would have felt at least a sense of justice. Her family certainly did not need the coin the piece would fetch.
Her uncle didn’t care about the gasps of the treasure seekers crowding the table.
This wondrous piece of precious metal predated Athens by thirteen hundred years—shredding the sacred timeline of Homer’s war long before the dust of Greece even settled.
For two decades, pale scholars had bent over their lamplight, losing sleep over the ghost of an empire that history had no name for.
Andromena realized the truth: her uncle was—and because of him, her entire family were—pillagers. Their urge to preserve the necklace’s history did not give them the right to steal or own it.
None of this lessened her guilt—that heavy sense of remorse for lying, deceiving, and taking what did not belong to her. Her uncle’s museum-quality collection proved he was quite comfortable with stealing, but she herself was not, and never would be.
“Never tell me you’re looking to abscond with it?”
Andromena jolted, her book sliding from her lap to the rug with a dull thud.
Edgar filled the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame with an infuriating, crooked grin. And damn him—he was entirely too handsome in his fitted fawn breeches and dark bottle green morning coat.
Then, what he had said sank into her head.
“Of course not,” she said, her voice pitched. “I would never—”
“I am joking, darling.”
The tenderness in his words threatened to crush her under a weight of guilt.
The click of the door closing was soft, erasing yesterday’s anger, as he closed the distance between them with slow, deliberate steps.
Andromena pinned her hands behind her back, her fingers locking until the trembling stopped. “What are you doing here?”
He gave a slight smile. “You wound me, darling. I might start to think you don’t want me around.”
Andromena stood; her skirts swishing softly about them. “And if you aren’t careful, I might start to think you do.”
I would rather dash my eyes out.
I prefer a face-to-face with Medusa.
These were the expected Edgar-responses, followed by her own sharp retorts. But when he dropped to one knee, her breath caught. He wasn’t reaching for a witty comeback; he was picking up her dropped sketchpad. As she stared at the open page, she tensed, knowing what was coming next.
As he stared at her rendering of the honeybee, she tensed and relaxed her fists at her sides, grinding her teeth as she waited for his inevitable mockery and patronage.
What was worse…
He would lift his thick, dark hair with a careless grace, flashing that same wicked half-smile that always rendered her breathless. It pulled her mind right back to a distant Christmas, when she first fell secretly in love with him.
Still, nothing prepared her for the breathtaking gravity of his gaze when he finally did.
“You did this?” he asked.
Her breath stopped.
He did not touch her, but the raw adoration in his dark eyes stripped away every defense, creating an intimacy deeper than the embrace that had upended her world.
Panic spiked sharp and icy beneath her ribs.
This was too much, too naked. Her heart beat a frantic warning against her chest. It was just another one of his games.
She held her hand out, palm up, bracing for a trick. “You know I did,” she said, her voice biting with a sudden, unwanted edge.
Andromena stared at the space between them, her own hand still frozen.
Edgar didn’t look up; his eyes fastened on her drawing.
She let her arm drop.
No one had paid her drawings much attention. None, to be exact.
Over the years, people praised Cassia and the other McQuoid lasses who tried sketching, no matter how poorly they did it.
That by the time all their parents got to the youngest, herself, no one had really looked.
The pages she turned had received only a cursory look and automatic praise—praise so haphazardly given that she finally understood why: there was nothing special about what she did.
But Edgar lingered. His attention, the way he so softly turned the page as if the actual treasure lay in the parchment itself rather than the physical item on the table that inspired her art, changed everything.
Maybe she was silly. No, she was definitely silly. He had only spoken a handful of words, a question. Andromena read something into nothing. But it was the way in which he spoke them.
A faint swish of the page pierced the awkward silence.
Filled with panic, she spoke fast.
“It is wrong, is it not?”
She succeeded in seizing his attention.
“To remove something from its natural resting place,” Andromena said. Had it never been unearthed, she’d never be put in the position of betraying her uncle; hers was undoubtedly a selfish thought.
“One might argue there are far more benefits in doing so.”
Andromena blinked gently. “Hmm?”
“From those artifacts, we learn about past civilizations and hist—”
“Will you stop defending him!” she exploded.
“It doesn’t belong to him. Or, it shouldn’t.
What right does he or any other English gentleman have to a Greek masterpiece?
None. The methods used to create the piece are ones Mr. Storr, Master Rundell, Mr. Rundell, and Mr. Bridge cannot even replicate.
Why should it not be returned to the people of Greece?
An awkward silence blanketed the room.
“You are passionate about the topic,” Edgar said.
Since she committed herself to thieving, she had put a lot of thought into many things she never considered before. Then she realized…
Embarrassment heated her face. “You’re making fun of me.”
“No.” Edgar grimaced. “Not this time.”
His kneeling at her feet gave her the control she desperately craved. When tears pricked her eyes, she quickly turned her face away, knowing how much he hated her crying.
“Don’t you have staff to interview?” she asked thickly.
“I’ve spoken to several. They urged me to question the footmen in this hall and servants who tend this room.”
“There aren’t any servants…” She went cold.
My God, did the staff know? Surely…
Edgar turned the pages of her sketch book. “These are quite good.”
“…These are quite good, Andy, dear…now run along and draw some more…”
“Thank you,” she muttered.
The longer he examined her renderings, the more evident it became that he had no intention of abandoning his study and rushing off.
Which meant she had to sit. Because she couldn’t very well stand here over him, while he remained on his knees; that would only lend further awkwardness to all of this.
Feeling exposed and vulnerable, she gave thanks when he cast a sober look up.
Finally!
Only, he didn’t leave. He stayed. His intense gaze shifted from the drawing to the honeybee pendant and back again.
His stone-cold face did not move, but a note of awe rang through what he said. “I have not seen anyone else capture shadows like this.”
Her heart blossomed.
He ruined it in his next breath. “These should be studied by Oxford scholars and used in museums.”
Now she knew he was joking.
Andromena laughed. She couldn’t even be mad at him; finding the idea of her quick rendering entering the world’s most illustrious institutions utterly preposterous—as if being a woman didn’t already bar her from those venerable halls, let alone merit acceptance for her little sketches among the antiquities community.
Edgar’s countenance remained solemn.
Andromena frowned. “They’re just drawings. Doodles.” She reached for her drawing pad.
He retained his grip.
“Edgar, give me my book.”
“These aren’t doodles.”
Her breathing grew shallow in her ears.
He sounded enraged on her behalf, and also at her.
A single look from him set her adrift, but his support of her work threatened her heart.
“Stop it.”
His brow creased.
“You know,” she said, her temperature rising. “You’re making fun of me. You always do.”
“No…” He grimaced. “Not always. Not this time.”
The raw intensity of his russet eyes filtered with a swirl of emotions.