Above her prim lace collar, her throat moved visibly. “That was a compliment,” she said. “I’m . . . enjoying myself.”
It was his task to provide the compliments. She turned everything upside down.
“You enjoy being educated?” he probed.
Her lashes quivered. “Learning is my passion.”
“I have many interests,” he said. “It would be my pleasure to share knowledge with you, though I wonder what there is left to teach a polymath such as yourself.”
“Plenty, I assure you.”
“Such as?”
“Birding?” she suggested.
His muscles tensed as if hit by an electric current. A vision of wet skin and untamed hair flashed before his eyes and superimposed on the woman in front of him. Unwanted desire stirred in his groin. He tried to keep them separate, the naked goddess and the lady, to behave properly in her company. Now she had blurred the lines. Perhaps not consciously. Her soft lips had parted in shocked surprise, as if “birding” had grown wings and simply flown out of her mouth.
He tutted. “You don’t need a chess clock to fairly keep to the time,” he said, “but your other tactics are . . . questionable.”
Her cheeks positively glowed with mortification. “What I meant is,” she tried, in her cultured voice, “I understood you are an expert at it and I’m not . . .”
“I didn’t think you were,” he said soothingly.
Red-faced, she fussed with her pen.
“Perhaps milady would like to take a break,” MacKenzie said in a marked Scottish brogue. “Take some fresh air.”
The chaperone was looking from one to the other with her knitting needles angled menacingly toward Elias. She clearly wouldn’t hesitate to make shish taouk, a kebab, out of him, right here in the Common Room.
“Fresh air is an excellent idea,” Lady Catriona said. “It’s a wee bit hot in here.”
She grabbed her gloves, then searched the table for something until she remembered that her glasses were on top of her head. She put them back on her nose and stood, so he rose, too. She kept her eyes on his cravat.
“We should continue this game,” she said, “another time. Good day, sir.”
“Allah ma’ik,” he said, gentle sarcasm in his smile. God be with you. He had never seen anyone look so stiff and yet so flustered at the same time.
She left with a very straight back and the plaid taut across her shoulders, leaving him standing there with his diffuse arousal. The other men in the room were glancing up from their books and card games when she passed, but there was little male appreciation in their eyes. Partly, this was understandable. A woman’s allure was made of more than her feminine form and the silkiness of her skin; it came from her softer, coyer, more playful way of moving, speaking, and glancing, which conveyed a liquid adaptability to circumstance. The women who turned heads exuded these qualities like a scent, and it was obvious that none of the fellows here could smell it on Catriona. She didn’t reflexively bend to please; that instinct seemed lost on her. A sudden swell of proprietary satisfaction heated Elias’s chest from the inside. Poor fools, these men, they would never know. She was a vision under her clothes. Her blood ran fast beneath her skin. Playful eyes had their charm, but the full attention of her serious, intelligent gaze could give him the illusion of being the only man in existence. He had to be greedy or vain to like this as much as he did, feeling seen, having her to himself, but so everyone had their Achilles heel.
A few of the chaps who had played cards at the bar came over to study the chessboard.
“Catalan opening?” a young blond man with whiskers asked, steepling his fingers as he surveyed the field. He had tried to play with Elias the day before, but he had declined and played against himself—in case she showed up.
“Yes, Catalan opening,” he confirmed.
“She countered well.”
“Mm.”
He recorded the few moves they had managed in his notebook. He had too many pawns at the front. He should launch his first knight next, putting pressure on her advancing knight and indirectly, her queen. If she was clever, she’d move her bishop, Bb4. Then what? A pawn, a3? In which case she could claim the first kill: his attacking knight with her bishop . . . he scratched the back of his head. He couldn’t have beaten her in five moves, he realized, not while explaining the Levant’s political economy. Not even had you been fully focused, whispered a little voice. He laughed under his breath. He rarely had to work for a win at chess these days. Seduce her. Seduce her without honorable intentions, without buying her gifts or using his body for her pleasure and protection . . . All he could use was his wit, and here it was, in black and white, that she wouldn’t be easily impressed. She might, in fact, turn the table on him. The fiery energy of a challenge surged through him, compelling him to move his body. He packed up quickly. This game had only just begun. Something fundamental seemed to depend on him winning it now.
* * *
Birding. There was no rational explanation why she should have said that. It had just happened. Her darker side must have taken over and made choices.
“What’s the haste,” complained MacKenzie, who was huffing after her as she strode toward the arcade.
Remembering MacKenzie’s limp the other day, Catriona immediately slowed—an effort, as she’d rather put distance between herself and the scene of her crime.
“Apologies,” she said, and looked her companion up and down with some concern.
MacKenzie’s frown eased. She smoothed the front of her jacket. “Milady,” she said, and halted entirely.
Oh dear. That was her chaperone face. And tone.
“I’ll say it here and now,” MacKenzie began. “I feel it’s not appropriate for you to play chess with the young man.”
She balked. “It’s chess. In a public place, and chaperoned.”
“It’s not the chess,” MacKenzie said with a speaking glance. “It’s whatever else is being played. The gentleman was rather flirtatious.”
Catriona’s brows pulled together. “We discussed the effect of international capitalism on women’s position in society.”
“That’s right.” MacKenzie nodded gravely. “Sweet music to your ears.”
Her first instinct was to protest some more, but a lady must not protest too much. Birding. The simmering heat in Elias’s eyes still warmed her face. It had sparked a tingling sensation in her lips, too, as if they had been keen on more scandal right away. She dropped her fingers from her mouth.
“I appreciate your counsel,” she said to MacKenzie. “But there’s nothing to worry about.”