Page 47 of The Soul of a Rogue

She looked over the lip of her champagne flute at him, a grin playing about her lips. Color had warmed her cheeks from the dance, as stilted as it had been. “Why else? It’s always been this way—if you are anyone on this island, you are here at this party.”

“And if not?”

“Then you’re no one.” She motioned her glass to the mass of people. “And there is no truer way to hell on a small island like this than to be no one.”

Rune glanced down at her. As bitter as her words seemed, she said them resigned. Resigned to what was around her. What she was expected to do.

For how she liked to tout her freedom as a widow, she was shackled just the same.

“Eliana—you escaped to the far side of the room.” Lord Kallen’s left elbow jabbed outward, setting into the side of a fop in a bright blue tailcoat as he shoved past the crowd. He inclined his head to Rune. “Mr. Smith.”

Rune replied with only a nod as Elle was already talking. Still not one to trust him with Lord Kallen.

“You know I like to be close to the fresh trays of champagne at this party,” she said with a gleam in her eye and her glass raised.

Lord Kallen chuckled, hearty and full. “That you do, my dear. Come—what was it that you wanted to see? Now is the time to show you as I’m determined to avoid Mrs. Flordin as she wants to corner me about a parsnip harvest she didn’t get in on and I can see her sniffing about for me.” He grabbed Elle’s hand and set it in the crook of his elbow, and the two of them started to maneuver along the edges of the ballroom toward one of the exits Rune had identified earlier as a possible dark corridor he could ravage Elle in.

A plan now in dust. Or merely delayed if luck was on his side.

Swallowing the last of his wine, he set the empty glass on a tray and followed the two of them out of the ballroom.

Through several winding corridors, Lord Kallen brought them into a dimly lit room—large, a library, with countless tomes surrounding them on the walls. In the middle of the room were large tables, four of them, with stacks of atlases and maps, some curled and some flat, sitting atop them. Some of the maps were yellowed with brittle edges, others newly printed by the smell of ink in the room.

“This was what you wanted to see, correct?” Lord Kallen tapped the table closest to him with his cane. “Every map that I have ever collected.”

Elle stepped forward, stripping off her long white kid gloves and running her thumb along the edge of one of the unfurled maps. “This is perfect.”

“And this has something to do with what you found in the baths?”

“Yes—in the lower Bronze Chamber. We think it’s a map. You must see.” She looked to Rune, waving her fingers at him to produce the best map they’d sketched in the baths.

He pulled it from an inner pocket and handed it to her.

She smoothed it out on the table in front of Lord Kallen. “This was what we think the mosaic of the ring held—a map—see how the ring entwines with this shape and then outside that shape were the blue tiles. Oh, the blue tiles.” She stood up straight, waving her fingers at Rune again. “The tile.”

Rune reached into his pocket. He was beginning to feel like a human reticule.

He handed Elle the tile.

She held it up to Lord Kallen, her words fast in excitement. “We wanted to ask you on this as well. This is a tile from the lower section, and look at the mortar on the back. Do you see the red tint to it? It’s not like the mortar in the above chamber. And the sides of the tile—they were cut different. What do you make of it?”

Lord Kallen pulled a gold-rimmed quizzing glass from his breast pocket and set it in front of his right eye, holding the tile up to the light of the closest sconce. He flipped it around, studying it, scraping his nail upon the back of it where the mortar was still attached. “It’s from a different time. The red tinge to the mortar—the color would have been mixed into the lye. Post the Roman baths, most likely. The mortar after the Romans left the area often had more clay in it that would have held the tinge of red mortar for a longer time.” His fingers rubbed along the edge of the tile. “And this is not as regular as the tesserae used in the upper baths. It appears as though you are right about the tool to cut it—it’s not as smooth, so probably a rudimentary chiselcracked it. That would set in somewhere in the post-Roman era as well. People not as skilled.”

“Who would have created a bathing chamber like that after the Romans left the island?”

Lord Kallen dropped the quizzing glass from his eye, tucking it into his pocket and then handing the tile back to Rune. “See to it that piece makes it back into the lower bath. I want everything intact in those chambers.”

Rune nodded, tucking the tile back into his inner pocket.

Lord Kallen turned to Elle. “It is an interesting thing to speculate. Pre-Roman, you had the Celts living on the island, but they weren’t known to create art like this, much less dig out and create a chamber like this. There have been Viking holds and artifacts found about the island, but they are set in a later time than the Romans, though they have always been a seafaring people and the island was believed to be an important outpost for them. They could have very well brought back artisans or slaves with them from their travels into the Mediterranean.”

A frown twisted the direction of the deep wrinkles on the lower half of his face as he looked to Rune then back to Elle. “It will have to take more consideration and more research, though I am afraid I cannot do so at the moment.”

Her hand went to his forearm. “Of course, the ball—we’ve taken too much of your time already. Please, return to it and we will search the maps on our own.”

“Just don’t stay in here too long, Eliana.” Lord Kallen started to shuffle out of the room, then paused and a twinkle brightened up his greying eyes. “The dance floor has been unbearably crowded so the one dance that you got in will have to do. You looked delightful, as always. But you will still need to trounce me in whist this eve.”

She gave him a wide smile. “I look forward to losing an unholy sum to you, per usual.”

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