“And here I thought you might have a taste for the macabre.”
“Possibly,” she shot back, “but not for sensationalism at the expense of piety.”
“A very modern attitude,” he conceded, but then she was a modern woman. “As for the count: the Egyptians who wanted the pieces back said he had removed them without license. They approached me after all attempts at negotiation had failed; they knew that I had associated with his lordship over silk business. I returned to his house for another dinner, scouted the location of the pieces, and handed someone a precise map of the place. Perhaps I told them the time when the guards on his property were changed, too.”
He had shared far more with her than she needed to know, it felt like bludgeoning her with the truth. She processed it all with a blank expression but her shoulders were hunched, in the way a falcon tightly folded up its wings against a storm. It cooled the heat in his head. Wounding her was the last thing he had wanted. She was a woman he had kissed and wanted to kiss again, and his protective instincts seemed flagrantly unconcerned with the more adversarial parts of her position.
“What have you come to take from here?” she finally asked.
“Everything,” he said gently.
She sucked in a breath. “Leighton stole all of these pieces?”
He twisted his hand, like a shrug. “My sponsors say he didn’t have permission, and some of the pieces have been taken off their land. There are many more artifacts on these shelves than on my inventory list, though, and I don’t know their history.”
“My father would never permit work on stolen artifacts,” she said, and her nostrils flared in a sudden show of emotions. “He requires proof of license for everything.”
“I know. He has a reputation for being an honorable man, which is why I thought he was the right man to give me an introduction.”
She raised a hand to her face and rubbed her left temple. “You became acquainted with my father because you want him to preside over your negotiation with Leighton?”
“Yes. I require a patron and a meeting with Leighton.”
“The professor who recommended you to my father, did he know?”
“Professor Pappas,” he said. “No, he didn’t know the details of my cause.”
She again crossed her arms over her chest, but now it looked as though she was hugging herself. “Are you . . . a scholar at all?”
“I’m a man of business.”
“I see.” A lump was visibly moving down her throat. “And what if my father introduced you, and your negotiations turned out to be unsuccessful?”
“Inshallah, they will be successful,” he replied.
She smiled, a sad, knowing smile.
They took stock of each other. Officially, until last night, they had owed each other nothing. No words had given shape to whatever feelings they might have harbored. And yet, everything felt different now, as if the ground was splitting between them, and against all better judgment it made him want to grab her and hold on tight.
“I should like to continue this conversation over a cup of tea,” she said, her tone all business now. “Would you join me at the Eagle and Child in an hour?”
Her request caught him off guard, but it sounded like an honest invitation, not a trap. She wouldn’t await him at the pub with Scotland Yard, ready to remove him from British soil. On instinct, he said yes, he would meet her.
An hour later, she arrived in the tearoom of the old pub on St. Giles, accompanied by Mrs. MacKenzie instead of the protection officer. She had changed into a new dress—muted green taffeta silk with a velvet collar and black buttons. It occurred to Elias that she had still worn her gray travel attire earlier, so she must have hurried from Blackstone’s house straight to his bedroom to spy on him. With hooded eyes, he ordered her a tea tray, thinking that only an idiot would make an enemy of this woman. Reversely, she could make a formidable ally, just as Nassim had predicted. Nassim, however, had counted on her to be weak-minded, when it was her strength that would make her an asset.
Mrs. MacKenzie was seated at a table right next to theirs, focused on her knitting. Catriona vigorously stirred sugar cubes into her tea.
“I just had a wee chat with Professor Jenkins, one of the dons at St. John’s,” she told him as she caused a maelstrom in her cup. “In the abstract only, of course. As I suspected, the charge of plundering doesn’t apply in your case because Leighton hasn’t taken the artifacts as spoils of war.”
He took one of the thin cucumber sandwiches that had been served with the tea.
“Legal route would be a waste of time and money,” he said. “I studied the precedents.”
She glanced up at him with the teacup at her bottom lip. “Precedents such as?”
“Such as the Parthenon marbles Lord Elgin took. A fellow Scotsman.”
“I’m not certain how that compares.”
“Are you familiar with the case?”
“I’m not an archaeologist, Mr. Khoury. I’m a historical linguist who occasionally uses her language skills outside of the theory.”
“Eighty years ago, Elgin chiseled off half the frieze of the Parthenon in Athens,” he explained. “The Ottomans allowed it because the British had helped them beat back Napoleon. Now, since the moment the Ottomans relinquished control over Athens, the Greek government has been asking London to return the pieces. How many years is that?”
“Fifty years,” she said easily.
“Eh, almost fifty years of asking for their things back. The Greek have a case: no one can produce the original firman that would prove Elgin had special permission to chisel stones off the walls. They argue that the Ottomans hadn’t had the right to give away Greek heritage in any case, license or no license—they say it’s theirs.”
“I can see why they would.”
“Many people said it. The British Parliament wasn’t impressed with Elgin. Your Lord Byron called it an act of ‘poor plunder’ at the time. The Greeks had local advocates here, yet where are the marbles today?”
Catriona gave a grave nod. “Still in London.”
He opened his hands. “See. This case now, is weak in comparison. The bulls are from a coastal city, which is under Ottoman administration. Leighton might have a permit from an official, and the British government obviously recognizes Ottoman rule. Legally, I see no case here. Our options are money, or perhaps, honor.”
A pensive expression passed over Catriona’s face. “The Ottomans have ruled over your region for three hundred years,” she said.
He scoffed softly. “Nominally, yes.”
“I’m just wondering,” she said, her eyes narrowing, “after how many centuries does the occupier become the people of a land?”
He leaned back. “Is that a serious question?”
“I always feel serious about my questions.”
Of course she did. “I understand that Scotland fell under English rule two hundred years ago.”
“Not quite two hundred,” she corrected. “It happened in 1707. Through a treaty, the Treaty of Union.”