“Yes, and it delights me to no end.”
The mock efforts to push him away were unsuccessful; he just grinned and leaned closer. She let him because he delighted her, too. He had taken London Print to new heights with good decision making. He was making good decisions in the House of Lords, too. And he loved her and the cat so very well. She pressed back into the upholstery. “I want it to be perfect,” she blurted. “This will be the only wedding I’ll ever have . . . I want us to remain perfect afterward, too.”
Tristan’s expression became intent. He cupped her face in his big hand. “I want to take another twenty minutes out of your schedule.”
“Oh.”
He lowered his head and his lips brushed against her cheek.
“I want to do a sinful thing with you in this office flat,” he whispered, close to her ear. His other hand was under her skirt, palming up her silk stocking to the sensitive spot at the back of her knee. “I want to subject you to a few carnal indecencies in this chair.”
“But—”
His fingers circled over the soft inside of her thigh.
“But the cat . . . oh . . .”
A while later, they were on the sofa, she stretched out on top of him, her cheek against his bare chest.
“It’s never just twenty minutes,” she said, her sated voice discrediting the complaint.
He caressed her neck, touching lightly with his fingertips. “I love you,” he said.
The corners of her eyes were damp with sudden emotion. She kissed the hard ridge of his collarbone. “And I love you. So very much.”
“That’s settled, then.” His stomach growled. “Let’s not cancel the dinner,” he added.
“We can’t,” she agreed. “Hattie would be so cross.” She raised her head. “Before I forget: she has invited a gentleman from abroad. He has no connections here, so she asked us to be nice and make conversation with him.”
“I can be nice,” Tristan said, and he surveyed her flushed face and rumpled hair.
“Hattie has designs on him,” Lucie said. “I think she’d like to match him with Catriona.”
Tristan made an amused sound. “That’s silly. Lady Catriona doesn’t want a man.”
“Neither did I, yet look at us now.”
He looked, very thoroughly, so she leapt off him as if he were an electric wire. She collected her clothes, aware of his eyes on her behind whenever she bent over.
“Lord and Lady Lech, that’s what I shall put on the wedding invitations,” she muttered, while he lay there looking smug and Boudicca came back out from under the desk.
Chapter 11
Elias spent the hours before the Belgravia dinner on his stone balcony in St. John’s. A breeze carried the smoke of his cigarette away. To the sounds of the lawn croquet below, he read a letter from Nassim. His cousin was still offended about the vagueness of Elias’s heist plans and had put himself to work on the matter while in London:
I learned the name of a man here who knows people, he wrote. Should the cattle thief prove incorrigible, tell me. Once we have extracted the oxen, we use our cargo route from the port here to return them to their proper stable. Of course, it will cost a lot but do not worry, we’ll negotiate.
Reckless Nassim. Enough scholars here at Oxford could read Arabic, and his attempt at an encryption was awful.
As for the tartan blankets you have gifted me, they are fine for me but don’t give them to the girls and Tayta unless you want them to throw a shoe at you. The colors are nice and bright but the fabric, this wool, is “ruff as a badger’s arse” as the British would say, rather harsh on the skin. I suggest you take a day and go to London’s Savile Row and spend a lot of money on cashmere for the women. Also, stock up on shortbread in these pretty tin boxes—purchase them at Liberty, not Harrods. It pains and surprises me but I’m beginning to think you know nothing about women at all . . .
Elias exhaled smoke from his nose. Nassim meant well but had no clue. He had acquired the woolly blankets in the Shieldaig village because cousin Layal would find them quaint. She liked quaint and he knew she liked tartan because she had told him so. She’d like these blankets because they said he had paid attention to her preferences. He had learned this art of mindful gift-giving from Francine, who might or might not be still in Lyon. He held the corner of Nassim’s letter against the glowing tip of his cigarette and wondered what type of gift Lady Catriona would enjoy. He had spent the day at the Ashmolean, trying to match the jumbled pieces in the bull room to his inventory list, but his mind had kept straying. Catriona. In the span of a week, he had seen her brave like a goddess, blush like a wallflower, leap from a carriage like a mindless rabbit, and play chess rather too well. What gifts would suit such a woman? The letter in his hand curled and went up in a single flame. He watched the potentially incriminating lines singe away until they were safe, black flakes of ash.
A diffuse restlessness hummed in his body as he dressed himself for the Blackstone dinner. He couldn’t shake a sense of caution about accepting the invitation. There were good reasons for attending: one, to advance the charm offensive on Lady Catriona, and two, every dinner was a potential gold mine for new business acquaintances. What gave him pause was that according to his wife, Mr. Blackstone had once dealt in antiques, and the circle of such dealers in Europe was small enough for people to know of one another. Elias had never heard the name Blackstone during his involvements, and since he was at best an incidental actor in the dark web on the continent, there was no pressing reason to avoid the man. And yet, some instinct warned him to step carefully tonight.
* * *
—
He should have listened to his gut feeling. Too late now; he was already in Blackstone’s richly decorated reception room, shaking hands with the man. While the name Blackstone had never come to his attention in artifact circles, there had been talk of “the scarred Scotsman.” His host had greeted him with a faint but undeniable Scottish accent. A scar bisected Blackstone’s upper lip and his nose had been broken at some point. Elias stared at the bump on the man’s nasal bridge a bit too intently while memory fragments, deemed irrelevant at the time, resurfaced and clicked into place.
The Scotsman’s dark brow rose. “Would you care for some refreshments, Mr. Khoury?”
He motioned a waiter with a champagne tray closer and picked up two glasses. “Mrs. Blackstone is sorting out some issue with the cook,” he told Elias. “She’s very pleased that you are joining us at such short notice.”