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Hearts of Stone
by Taylor Manning
Category: Science Fiction/Romance
Description: Graff and Graff had trumped her every effort to beat them to the treasures of the past, but Elizabeth meant to beat them at their game. Whatever she had to do, she meant to mark the treasure of Basing Castle for herself--even if it meant seducing the unnervingly irresistible Captain Peregrine Dalton to get to the treasure first and mark it. She had a heart of stone. She hadn't counted on lust and she certainly hadn't counted on losing her heart to one of the defenders who'd died when Cromwell crushed the Loyalist defenders of Basing Castle. Rating: Spicy.
eBook Publisher: New Concepts Publishing, 2008
eBookwise Release Date: September 2008
 
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Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [268 KB]
Words: 58698
Reading time: 167-234 min.
Prologue Basing House, England, 1645 The roborat poked its nose from a crevice in the priest's hole. From this dark hiding place, the rat's chrysillium eyes began searching the tower room for motion--left to right, up and down, grid by grid. A nanosecond later the rat's voice recognition module detected a sound--three-point-two meters away--and identified it as human communication. The automatic focus mechanism took over and all sensors became operational. The rat began recording. During the next twenty-four hours the rat collected as much data as possible on the everyday life of seventeenth-century Basing Castle. Had it been spotted by any of the soldiers or Royalists in the castle, it would appear no different from any of the hundreds of other rats running through Basing's walls and sewers. Its on-site mission accomplished, the rat's impervium microchips switched to Base Instinct Mode. Now all it had to do was survive to return to its home base in the twenty-first century. Tactile whisker sensors twitching, it slunk cautiously forward, intent on reaching its original transmission location in the priest's hole without detection. Once there, as programmed, the rat positioned itself and waited with the patience of the machine it was. Three minutes, eight-point-one-six seconds later, re-transmission began. Three. Two. One. Zap. The rat disappeared from Basing castle and materialized on the far side of the pale green rilisium plastic of the Chronoarchaeological Society's Time Travel Transmission Chamber. Within minutes the rat was sequestered in decontamination and connected for download. "Good boy, Ratsputin." Dr. Bess Blackwell grinned as the status bar on her palm set surged forward. Ratsputin had collected even more information than she had hoped. Somewhere in it she would find what she was looking for--the treasure of Basing. It was as good as hers. And she would recover it. "You won't beat me this time, Graffe and Graffe," she whispered.
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