“Chances are he won’t. They’ll be awfully busy in London. English dukes are very important, and he has his duties to Parliament. And now his wife is a duchess, and she’ll have many parties and other functions to be involved with. Not to mention the children they’ll have. Scotland is…” he let his words trail off.
“Dirty,” Dougal supplied, his jaw set at a tense angle, resentment simmering just below the surface.
The Raven shrugged. “I would never be so unkind. But it is rougher than London. Not the place for genteel ladies. It is unlikely he’ll leave her in London and travel up here. So it is quite probable that this is his last trip.”
The Raven barely suppressed his smile of satisfaction. Resentment, he could use. Resentment was as familiar and comfortable as an old friend.
“You know, I am a second son as well,” The Raven told him. “My older brother was the heir and didn’t appreciate any aspect of it. He was given every opportunity, and instead of seizing them, he simply whiled away his life, content to dangle from his wife’s apron strings.” The Raven took a sip of his tea. “Of course, I’m certain your brother is quite different from that.”
Dougal made a noncommittal sound, so The Raven continued. “Second sons never have an easy path. We aren’t given anything; nothing is handed to us. We have to create our own destiny. Have to work and scrape for the things we want. And sometimes, we have to make tough choices. Make sacrifices for the greater good.”
Dougal nodded, and then was quiet for several moments before admitting, “I wish he wouldn’t have married her.”
“Indeed. Not much you can do about her. Unless,” The Raven said, then shook his head. “No.”
“What?”
“If they weren’t married any longer, but you can’t very well do away with her, now can you?” He laughed a casual laugh to plant the seed, but not allow Dougal to know he was quite serious.
For several moments, Dougal was quiet, his mind obviously running with ideas. The Raven watched the boy intently. He couldn’t risk saying too much and having the boy run off to Graeme. The last thing The Raven needed was for the men of Solomon’s to descend upon Scotland in search of him.
The following afternoon Graeme found Vanessa in the study poring over the notes that Jensen had given him. She was clearly unrepentant about sneaking in here the other night. She glanced up, then went back to her reading, but at least she was doing so without hiding it from him.
“What did you say to him?” Vanessa asked.
Graeme crossed the room to where she sat at a reading table. He leaned against it. “To whom?”
She smiled up at him. “Your cousin.” She marked her place in the notes with her hand. “I assumed you went to confront Niall on his reckless behavior.”
“Indeed?” Graeme felt his brow rise with his surprise.
“It seemed a logical conclusion.” She shrugged. “Did you convince him he’s behaving the fool?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“I do hope he’ll be more careful. He could destroy countless fossils with his haphazard explosions.”
“Or get someone killed.” Graeme paused while she considered his words. He nodded to the notes. “Find anything of interest?”
“Not particularly. I was reading through the information on the Kingmaker again. To refresh my memory. More important, though, I was waiting for you to arrive back home so we could put that decoder to use.”
That simple word seemed to stand out among all the rest. A stab to his gut. Home. He’d always considered this house as his home, this country, these people. The pull to his Scottish heritage had always been greater, yet he spent so much more of his time in London. Vanessa, though, seemed quite comfortable no matter where she was.
He mentally shook himself. The decoder, the Stone of Destiny: that was his focus. But the business with Niall and the dynamite and then Braden and his men had pulled his attention away. He withdrew the metal decoder from his coat pocket.
The Magi’s Book of Wisdom lay on the table with the rest of the materials Vanessa had been perusing. She reached over and pulled it to her. Gently she opened the book to the inscription that required the decoder. He’d looked at the message hundreds of times. At first glance the writing appeared to be nonsensical, random letters, both Roman and Greek.
“Ready?” she asked with a smile. The enthusiasm in her expression tugged at him, drew him in. What other woman of his acquaintance would express such joy at deciphering an encoded message from a dusty old tome?
Graeme leaned over her, medallion in hand. “Hell, I’ve tried to decipher that damned message for years now.” The decoder was a metal disc comprising of three smaller discs soldered to it. Letters were engraved on each disc. All they had to do was figure out where to start it, then spin the dials until they lined up. That would reveal the code.
“It’s a basic coded inscription,” he said, “and I tried every combination of letters I could think of. But without knowing which letter corresponded with what, it was impossible to figure out.”
“It certainly didn’t help that there was a page that had been forcibly removed from the book,” she added. She stood to pace the room, her tall, willowy figure walking back and forth past him. Her wool skirt billowed as she moved, flaring slightly at her rounded hips. She was lovely.
Graeme examined the decoder once more. A symbol of a lion hovered between two of the Greek letters. They could try every possible formation with this and see if together they could decipher the message. He tried to turn the wheel, but it would not budge. “This should be able to move,” he said.
She smiled. “I thought the same thing earlier when I’d examined the thing. The wheels should spin, and once you know your starting point, you should line up the letters to reveal the code.”