Cordinas Crown Jewel (12 page)

Maybe he’d see if Camilla could give him a neck and shoulder massage, just to loosen things up. She had small hands, but they were capable. Besides, it was a good way to get them back on him again. She’d taken his orders to back off just a little more seriously than he discovered he’d wanted.

He paused, set down the can with a little thump. God, he was getting used to her, he realized with some horror. Getting used to having her around, and worse to
wanting
her around.

And that, he was sure, was the beginning of the end.

A man started wanting a woman around, then she expected him to be around. No more coming and going as you pleased, no more heading off to some dig for months on end without a concern about what you left back home.

Scowling, he looked around the kitchen again. Bottles of wildflowers, a bowl of fresh fruit, scrubbed counters and cookies in a glass jar.

The woman had snuck around and made the cabin a home instead of a place. You left a place whenever the hell you wanted. But home—when you left home it was always with a wrench.

When you left a woman, it was with a careless kiss and a wave. When you left
the
woman, he suspected it would rip you to pieces.

She came out of the woods as he thought of her, her face glowing, white wildflowers in her hand. How the devil had she come so close to becoming
the
woman? he asked himself with a spurt of panic.

They hadn’t known each other for long. Had they? He ran a hand through his hair as he realized he’d lost
track of time. What the hell day was it? How long had she been there? What in God’s name was he going to do with himself when she left?

She came in, full of smiles. Well, he could fix that.

“You’re late,” he snapped at her.

Calmly she glanced at her watch. “No, I’m not. I am, in fact, two minutes early. I had a lovely walk, and fed the ducks who live on the pond.” She moved over to the bottle, working her new flowers in with the old. “But it’s clouding up. I think it’s going to rain.”

“I want to finish the section on brain tissue. I can’t do that if you’re out feeding a bunch of ducks.”

“Then we’ll get started as soon as I pour us some lemonade.”

“Don’t placate me, sister.”

“That would be beyond even my masterly capabilities. What’s wrong, Del? Are you hurting?” She turned, the pitcher in her hand, and nearly bobbled it when she focused on him. “Your arm. You’ve taken off the sling.” Quickly she set the pitcher aside and went to him, to run a hand along his arm.

He said nothing because, God help him, he wanted her to touch him.

“I suppose I expected it to be thin and wan. It’s not.” Her lips pursed as she tested the muscle. “A bit paler than the rest of you, and I imagine it feels odd and weak.”

“It’s all right. It just needs—ow!” The jolt made his eyes water when she pressed down firmly on his shoulder. “Hey, watch it, Miss de Sade.”

“I’m sorry. Still tender?” More gently, she kneaded it. “You’re all knotted up.”

“So would you be if you’d had one arm strapped against you for the best part of two weeks.”

“You’re right, of course. Maybe some linament,” she considered. “My mother would rub some on my father when he overdid. And I’ve helped treat some of the horses that way. I saw some witch hazel upstairs. After dinner, I can put some on your shoulder. Then you’ll get a good night’s sleep.”

He had a feeling having her rub him—anywhere—wasn’t going to ensure quiet dreams. But he figured it was a good trade-off.

*  *  *

“Laboratory tests proved that the substance found inside the recovered skull was, indeed, human brain tissue. In total, during the three six-month field studies, preserved brain tissue was found in ninety-five of the recovered skulls. Twenty-eight contained complete brains, albeit shrunken to approximately a third of their normal size. The find is completely unique, with significant scientific impact and potential. This will give scientists a never-before-possible opportunity to study brain matter which is more than seven thousand years old, with its hemispheres and convolutions intact. The DNA, the basic human building block, can be cloned from tissue older than any previously available.”

“Cloned.” Camilla’s fingers stopped. “You want to clone one of the tribe.”

“We can get into a debate on cloning later. But no, the purpose would be to study—disease, life expectancy, physical and intellectual potential. You can go back to your science fiction novel after we’re done.”

“They’ve cloned sheep,” Camilla muttered.

He gave her a mild look behind the lenses of his reading glasses. “That’s not my field. DNA research isn’t my area. I’m just outlining the potential and import of the find. We have intact human brains, seven millenniums old. People thought with them, reacted with them. Developed language and motor skills. They used those brains to build their village, to hunt their food and prepare it. They used these minds to interact, to raise their children, to find a mate and for survival.”

“What about their hearts?”

“What about them?”

“Didn’t their hearts tell them how to tend their children—how to make those children in the first place?”

“One doesn’t happen without the other, does it?” He took off the dark-framed glasses and tossed them aside. “These people cared for their young and had interpersonal relationships. But procreation is also an instinct—one of the most basic. Without young, there would be no one to care for the old, no replacement for the dead. There’d be no tribe. Man mates for the same reason he eats. He has to.”

“That certainly takes the romance out of it.”

“Romance is an invention, a tool, like …” He picked up the scarred head of an old, crudely fashioned hammer. “Like this.”

“Romance is a human need, like companionship, like music.”

“Those are luxuries. To survive we need food, water, shelter. And to ensure continued survival, we need to procreate. Man—being man—came up with tools and means to make meeting those needs easier. And often more pleasant. And being man, he devised ways to make a profit from those needs, to compete for them, to steal for them. Even to kill for them.”

She enjoyed him like this—enjoyed the casually lecturing mode when he discussed ideas with her as he might with a bright student. Or perhaps an associate. “That doesn’t say much about man,” she commented.

“On the contrary.” He touched the jaw of an old, bleached-out skull. “It says man himself is a complex, ingenious and constantly evolving invention. He builds and destroys with nearly the same skill and enthusiasm. And is constantly remaking himself.”

“So what have you made yourself?” she asked him.

He turned the hammer head over in his hand, then set it down again. “Hungry. When are we going to eat?”

*  *  *

She wasn’t giving up on the discussion, but she didn’t mind taking the time to think about it while she finished fixing dinner. She slid pasta into boiling water, tossed the salad. Sprinkled herbs on oil for the thick slices of bread.

She poured wine. Lighted candles.

And looking at the cozy kitchen, hearing the rain patter gently on the roof, she realized she had—unwittingly—employed a tool tonight. The scene she’d created was, unquestionably, a romantic one. She’d simply intended to make it attractive and comfortable. Instinct must have kicked in, she decided. Maybe for a
certain type of person, particularly when that person was sexually attracted to another—creating romance was instinctive.

She found she liked knowing that about herself. Romance—to her thinking—was warm and generous. It took the other party’s comfort and pleasure into account.

It was not, she decided as she drained the pasta, a damn hammer.

“A hammer,” she declared to Del when he stepped in, “implies force or a threat.”

“What?”

“A hammer,” she said again, testily now. “Romance is not a hammer.”

“Okay.” He reached for a piece of bread and had his hand slapped aside for his trouble.

“Sit down first. Prove you’ve evolved into a civilized human being. And don’t say okay just because you’re bored with the subject and want to stuff your face.”

“Getting pretty strict around here,” he muttered.

“I’m saying that your tribe demonstrated human emotions. Compassion, love—hate certainly, as you did find remains that showed evidence of violent injury or death. Emotions make us human, don’t they?” she demanded as she served the salad. “If it was only instinct that drove us, we wouldn’t have art, music, even science. We wouldn’t have progressed far enough that we’d build a village near a pond, create rituals to share and love enough that we’d bury our child with her toys.”

“Okay. I mean okay,” he insisted when she narrowed her eyes. He wanted the food in his belly and not dumped on his head. “It’s a good point—and you could do an interesting paper on it, I imagine.”

She blinked at him. “Really?”

“The field isn’t cut-and-dried. It isn’t only about facts and artifacts. There has to be room for speculations, for theory. For wonder. Edge over into anthropology and you’re dealing with cultures. Out of cultures you get traditions. Traditions stem from necessity, superstition or some facet of emotion.”

“Take our tribe.” Mollified, she offered him the basket of bread. “How do you know a man didn’t woo a woman by bringing her wildflowers, or a cup of fresh elderberries?”

“I don’t. But I don’t know that he did, either. No evidence either way.”

“But don’t you think there was a ritual of some sort? Isn’t there always? Even with animals there’s a mating dance,
oui?
So surely there had to be some courtship procedure.”

“Sure.” He dipped the bread, grinned at her. “Sometimes it just meant picking up a really big rock and beating some other sap over the head with it. Loser gets the concussion. Winner gets the girl.”

“Only because she either had no choice, or more likely, she understood that the man strong enough, passionate enough to smash his rival over the head to win her would protect her and the children they made together from harm.”

“Exactly.” Pleased with the tidy logic of her mind, he wagged a chunk of bread at her. “Sexual urge to procreation. Procreation to survival.”

“In its own very primitive way, that’s romantic. However, the remains you’ve studied to date don’t show a high enough percentage of violent injury to support the theory that head bashing was this tribe’s usual courtship ritual.”

“That’s good.” Admiring the way she’d spun his example back to prove her point, he gestured with his fork. “And you’re right.”

“Del, do you think, eventually, there might be a way for me to visit the site?”

He frowned, thoughtfully now, as she served the pasta. “Why?”

“I’d like to see it firsthand.”

“Well, you’ve got six months.”

“What do you mean?”

“In six months if the articles and reports I’m putting together don’t beat the right drum and shake out a couple million in grants, the site closes.”

“Closes? You mean you’d be finished with the dig?”

“Finished?” He scooped up pasta. “Not by a long shot. But the state can’t—or won’t—allocate more funds. Bureaucrats,” he muttered. “Not enough media attention after three seasons to keep them smiling for the
cameras and handing over grants. The university’s tapped out. There’s enough private money for another six months. After that, we’re shut down and that’s it.”

The idea of the site closing was so appalling she couldn’t get her mind around it. “That can’t be it if you’re not done.”

“Money talks, sister.” And he’d sunk all he could afford of his own into that dark peat.

“Then you’ll get more. Anyone who reads your work will want to keep the project going. If not from the incredible archaeological significance of such amazingly rich findings, then for the completely unique scientific opportunities. I could—” She broke off. She was an expert fund-raiser. People paid, and dearly, to see Princess Camilla at a charity function.

Media attention? That was never a problem.

More, she had connections. Her thoughts went instantly to her godmother, the former Christine Hamilton, now the wife of a United States senator from Texas. Both were avid supporters of arts and science.

“You got an extra million or so weighing you down, just pass it my way.” Del reached for the wine bottle, stretching his healing shoulder a little too far, a little too fast. And cursed.

She snapped back to the moment. “Be careful, you don’t want to overtax yourself. I’m afraid I don’t have a million on me.” She smiled as she topped off his wineglass. “But I have ideas. I’m very good with ideas. I’ll think of something.”

“You do that.”

She let it go, and he forgot about it.

*  *  *

When dinner was finished, he vanished. It was a talent of his to disappear when dishes were involved. Camilla was forced to admire it. She couldn’t claim the washing up pleased her nearly so much as making the mess in the first place.

Cooking was a kind of art. Washing dishes a mindless chore she’d have been happy to pass along to someone else.

In the cabin, however, she was the someone else.

In any case, she knew he wouldn’t come near the back of the house until they were done. It gave her the opportunity to call home.

She kept one eye and one ear on the doorway while the connection to Virginia went through. Her youngest brother, Dorian, answered, and though normally she’d have been delighted to chat, to catch up on family news, to just hear his voice, she was pressed for time.

“I really need to talk to Mama.”

“You take off like a gypsy, and now you can’t give me the time of day.”

“When I get back, I’ll bore your ears off with everything I’ve done. I miss you, Dorian.” She laughed quietly. “I never thought I’d actually say that, but I do. I miss all of you.”

“But you’re having a great time. I can hear it in your voice.”

“I am.”

“So you’re not pining away for the French guy.”

She huffed out a breath. Dorian considered teasing a royal duty. “I take back that I miss you. Where’s Mama?”

“I’ll get her. But I’d better warn you, she’s got her hands full keeping Dad from sending out a search-and-rescue. You’re going to have to dance double-time to smooth things out with him.”