A scholar who moved like a soldier at the sign of trouble. It rankled.
“My money would be on Mr. Khoury,” she said softly. “He’s certainly the most unscholarly scholar I have ever encountered. Something odd about him there.”
“Don’t study him too closely,” said MacKenzie after a pause.
“Good night, MacKenzie.”
Her cheek was warm against the pillow. She had pictured him on the other side of the thin wall. Would he undress for bed and lie on his back in just a clinging cotton shirt? Did he keep his shoes on like an actual soldier? Her body was tense while she tried to blot out the forbidden images. She rarely had the impulse to touch people and she preferred to not be touched, but with those sparkling few it was different. Between waking and dreaming, her fingertips were curious about him, about the feel of his soft-looking lips, his lashes, the texture of his hair. She ought to be politer to him, more mindful of her behavior. She was a lady, after all, and he had never set out to embarrass her. Tomorrow, she would try again.
She dreamt he stood outside the door, arms crossed over his chest, boot heels planted into the ground as he searched the surrounding vastness with his narrowed gaze, and it was not clear whether he was keeping her safe or keeping her captive.
Chapter 4
The next morning, the southbound trains were delayed, and the platforms of Glasgow Railway Station were crowding with waiting passengers. Elias glanced at his watch, and when he tucked it back into his waistcoat pocket, Lady Catriona looked up from the watch she wore pinned to her bodice.
He said: “I have to send a telegram,” just as she announced: “I’m going to the telegraph office.”
The transparent mesh of Catriona’s travel veil couldn’t hide her flash of dismay. Her chaperone, Mrs. MacKenzie, lowered her brows at him, as if he had done it on purpose.
He gestured in the direction of the telegraph office. “Please. You go, ma’am.”
Lady Catriona laced her gloved fingers into a knot. “Our train might not be delayed long enough for us to take turns. The office is at the other end of the station.”
“It is, yes.” During his stop in Glasgow on his way up, he had sent a telegram to Nassim in Manchester, to inform his cousin that all was proceeding smoothly and that he’d be at Oxford in ten days’ time. Well, plans changed.
The lady straightened her shoulders. “Shall we go, then,” she said, surprising him. “MacKenzie, would you mind watching the luggage cart? We shall be right back.”
MacKenzie’s mouth turned downward, rightly so. This wasn’t proper. Normally, Elias would have insisted the lady take her turn as good manners dictated, and his telegram wasn’t truly urgent. However, last night, he had also decided to keep close to her during this journey, to hell with their agreement to stay apart. Damn her father. What man sent his daughter across the length of a country with no one to protect her but an older woman? A country where people had made a sport of not holding their drink? It went beyond eccentric, it was negligent.
“Very well,” he said. “We go.”
He heeded a respectable distance between them as they crossed the station, but he was precisely aware where her body was in relation to his. He smelled her, too; she wore lavender, a disappointingly plain scent, but the clean fragrance filtered through the mist of soot and brake oil like a fresh breeze on a sweltering day. It carried the subtle note of her skin, which he shouldn’t notice, nor enjoy.
They joined the neat queue for the telegraph clerk desk. The lady shifted on her feet and surveyed the room with hunched shoulders.
“It’s rather noisy, isn’t it,” she said, pulling at her shawl.
His brow furrowed. People were coming and going, and there were the taps on the telegraph keys, but it all seemed quiet and orderly to him.
“I shall notify St. John’s College,” she went on, “so your lodgings should be prepared when we arrive. And I’ll send word to the curator of the Ashmolean—is there a particular day when you should like to meet him?”
“As soon as possible,” he replied. “Thank you.”
“Not at all. I suggest I introduce you to the dons tonight at the college dinner.”
Her tone was polite but distant, and her eyes met his only sporadically from behind her veil. She had sealed herself off from him very effectively while she was standing right by his side. A gentleman would have left her alone in her fortress, yet here he was, his muscles humming with the desire to scale the walls.
He made an advance. “What is your position with the university? Are you a tutor?”
She moved her head between a shake and a nod. “I’m faculty, by way of being my father’s assistant. Sometimes, I teach classes for the female students.”
“In archaeology?”
“Rarely. I’m a linguist.”
“Your Arabic is very good,” he said, a fact that had preoccupied him since their chat in the stable. “Why did you learn?”
They moved forward in the queue, and she glanced left and right, as if to ascertain that no one took notice of them conversing.
“When I was a girl, I saw a print with Arabic calligraphy in my father’s study,” she said with some reluctance. “It was intrigue at first sight.”
He was intrigued, too. “Who taught you? Wester Ross?”
“Books.”
“Books?”
She pushed her glasses back up with the tip of her index finger. “At first, yes. Wester Ross eventually hired a tutor so I could apply what I had learned. I spent a few months in Egypt with my father in the seventies, too. You seem amused, Mr. Khoury—I assure you I took learning the language quite seriously.”
His smile widened. “I just wondered,” he said, “is it very lonely, being so clever?”
She had sounded neither proud nor coy, as though she didn’t consider it a notable accomplishment that she had taught herself a complex language that was completely different from her native tongue. It was just something she had done. She looked at him wide-eyed now; his comment seemed to have startled her.
“That was a joke,” he clarified.
Her fingers plucked at a fold in her skirt. “I reckon I sound terribly formal when I speak it.”
“You do. Like a newspaper article. Do you understand my dialect well?”
“I do. It’s lovely. Your pronunciation, too.”
“Is it?” he asked idly.
The blush on her throat was instant. “I mean the echoes of the Aramaic substratum. What I mean is, from a linguist’s point of view, it’s interesting.” She lifted a hand to her cheek. “I also noticed some French underlying your English.”
He would have preferred to hear more about how lovely she found his dialect.