“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” he answered through gritted teeth. “It will only be a few more moments before everyone leaves for the night and we’ll be able to get out of this tomb.”
“You smell rather nice,” she said.
They needed to get out of this bloody box. There was only so much temptation a man could take.
She nuzzled against him.
Desire shot through him. Damnation. There was no way to reach her mouth for a kiss; there simply wasn’t enough room. So he did the next best thing. He brought her hand to his mouth and laved her wrist and fingers with kisses. Bloody hell, he’d never craved a woman the way he craved her.
She’d finally felt his arousal pressed against her and had tentatively brushed her hand across the front of his breeches. They needed to get out of this box. Now.
He reached around her, pushing at the lid. The lid scraped against the stone as he tried to shove it to the side. “Can you squeeze out?” he asked once he had managed to create a small opening.
She tried to ease out of the sarcophagus sideways, rubbing her hip against his groin in the process.
“If we don’t get out of here soon, I’m going to take you on the museum floor,” he said.
“Open it a little more,” she said.
He complied, although it was much more difficult to move the lid from inside the sarcophagus.
She wiggled herself out, then stepped aside for him to step through. “As it turns out, not a terrible place to hide, but I don’t suppose I ever want to do that again,” Esme said brightly.
As soon as he stood next to her, she grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him to her. “But I have no objections to your proposed plan for the floor, by the by.” She kissed him firmly.
Fielding kissed her in return. It occurred to him it would be impossible not to. He gently pushed her away to end the kiss before he did toss her skirts up right there and then. A cold wooden floor was no place for a seduction.
He moved the lid back into place, then took a cleansing breath and shook his arms at his sides. “We need to find that diary,” he whispered. He gave her a quick kiss on the nose before her pulled her to the door.
“I suspect we should start in the curator’s office. It might not be in there, but we should find cataloging records regarding where the diary is,” she said.
Finding the curator’s office proved more difficult than Fielding had hoped. They made their way through the Egyptian room and on to the Grecian room, past the Roman room and the special exhibit on prehistoric animals, then the newspaper library in addition to two other offices before finally locating the correct one.
The curator evidently wasn’t a very tidy man, as his office was practically dangerous to walk through with all the boxes and books on the floor. Likewise, the man’s desk was completely covered so that you could not even determine what type of wood it was made from.
“We should make quick work of this,” Fielding said. “The evening guards will be here in less than thirty minutes.”
Esme glanced at the large grandfather clock in the corner.
“I’ll look for documentation of Biedermann’s donation,” he said. “That should indicate where his papers are housed in the museum. You could look for the diary itself, on the off chance that it’s still in here.”
She made her way across the room and began going through the boxes stacked in the corner. “I still cannot believe I am doing this.”
“Remember, it was your scholar friend who suggested it,” Fielding said. “And it is for a good cause.”
She nodded and went back to digging through the boxes.
Several minutes later Fielding asked, “How well do you read ancient Greek?”
She looked up from the pile of books she was flipping through. “Fair at best. Why?”
“I found the Greek text Biedermann was translating.” He held up the book. “The diary has got to be in here. There’s a note attached about a translator coming in next week.”
Esme checked the clock again. “Fielding, we have less than ten minutes.”
“We’ll find it.”
