Elias cupped the curve of her heated cheek in his hand.
“We will not do this again,” he said.
They took measure of each other’s damp faces and turbulent eyes, and without any more words being exchanged they both knew that they would absolutely do this again.
Chapter 19
The following day, she entered the Common Room at one o’clock, and the flicker of surprise in Elias’s eyes said that he had not expected her to show. The urge to hide had been strong indeed, but the dice had rolled, the cards were on the table—they desired each other. At least that part was clear, and a clearly laid-out situation, no matter how outrageous, was always preferable over the agony of vague anticipation.
She did order a sherry today and sipped on it immediately. MacKenzie had seated herself extra close to the small table, and the determined click of her needles punctuated the tense silence. Elias’s fiery anger seemed to have defused, but his hair flopped low across his brow and a broody resolve edged his mouth as he moved his army across the board. A pawn, f4, en route to box in her king, prompting her to position her bishop to prepare a countermove.
“I understand you no longer want my father to approach Leighton,” she said. Elias and Wester Ross had met over an early breakfast before the earl had returned to London.
“Yes,” Elias said. “This is correct.”
His voice was bland. He would not reveal his next steps, that much was clear.
“Do you think it’s pointless?” she asked nevertheless.
“Eh.” Yes.
He launched his remaining knight, and she had no clue where he was planning to go with that move, either. She moved her rook from file a to b. She kept her gaze on the black and white squares so that only Elias’s fingers moved in and out of her field of vision when it was his turn. She couldn’t look him in the face without seeing his body arch with erotic abandon. She kept wondering how it would feel if he did this while she was straddling him, which was strange because it was not a position she imagined enjoying very much. Her brain often betrayed her like this, conjuring up comical or tawdry scenarios in moments when it was highly inappropriate. At boarding school, during the required attendance at mass, she had compulsively thought about kissing her crush, when she should have contemplated her mortal coil. Perhaps there was a connection, an unconscious attempt to counterweigh the scepter of mortality with another, tangible, life-bringing force. The schism between Elias and her after the dinner had felt like a death of sorts, too, like the loss of something rare before it had been given the chance to unfold. They didn’t have the power to change the circumstances that made it so; they both were particles in grand churning systems that touched every facet of their lives and were slower to change off course than an ocean liner. What they had done on the commode struck her as rebellious now; while man-made rules budged even into those most intimate spaces, deciding who could legitimately mate with whom, at the end of the day the act was as old as time, universal across all living creatures, and defied regulation once the door was closed.
“It’s bizarre, isn’t it,” Elias said, “how the world hangs together.” He was surveying the positions on the chessboard, but his fingers drummed rapidly on the table, sounding like the hoofbeat of a tiny horse in full gallop. “Thousands of miles from Vienna and Paris and London, a small region in West Asia goes through a feudal revolution. Every day, such a thing takes place somewhere on the globe, and no one takes note. But when it happens within the borders of an empire Europe wants to maintain at all costs . . . it’s no longer simply a local conflict. It becomes a crack that reveals that the Ottomans are losing their grip. And this can’t be. France and Britain don’t want to go to war outright over the Ottoman carcass, and they don’t want Russia to have it, either. Austria-Hungary has no interest in a tipping balance unless it’s in their favor. So the House of Osman must not fall, and the five greatest powers in the world gather round a shiny table to squash a local struggle. They sit in plush chairs in Versailles or Downing Street and meddle in a faraway strip of land where people don’t even read the clock.”
“It is bizarre,” she agreed. “And overwhelming.”
He did a castling, switching his king and kingside rook, which effectively put His Majesty on the presently safest spot on the battlefield.
She glanced at him.
He caught her gaze, and a crackling arc of tension sprang up between them. Oh, he was still angry. His eyes were an iridescent riot that could well tip over into revolution. A nervous heat spread from her chest all the way to her hairline.
Unexpectedly, he grinned, a rather mean grin. “Leighton mentioned Bek Karam,” he said. “Do you know who betrayed Bek Karam in the end, after he beat the Ottoman army?”
“I don’t, no.”
He leaned forward. “Fellow Maronites.”
“I see.”
“As your friend said, it’s all about power—all are scrambling for a slice, to the detriment of the whole. Bek Karam is in exile now. I doubt he will see the mountain again.”
She couldn’t think of anything appropriately profound to say. He probably thought her awfully cold.
On the chessboard, the situation looked like a text in a language she didn’t speak.
“If we continue to play now,” she said, “you will win. I can’t seem to focus.”
His mouth softened. “Are you asking for mercy?”
“I suppose. I’m aware it defeats the objective of this game.”
He made a soothing motion with his hand. “I won’t deny a lady. We reconvene, as you wish.”
Don’t deny me, she thought stupidly. Kiss me again. For a moment, neither seemed to know what to say. Last evening, her numbness after an overwhelm had proven useful: she had fixed her hair in front of Elias’s mirror, and she had returned to Hall in time for pudding. She had reinstated a cordial relationship with Leighton and Miss Regina, and they had furthered their plans to put the Ashmolean pieces into the British Museum. All throughout, she had seen Elias’s face, taut with dark desire as he rocked against her.
Elias’s eyelids lowered. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said in Arabic.
She pressed her lips together, feeling caught. “Like what.”
“Like you did last evening, in my room.”
“I wasn’t,” she said, her tone convincingly prim.
MacKenzie’s needles clanged like foils coming together. MacKenzie, who always seemed to be with her these days, always watching from under critical brows.
Elias made a cynical sound. “Your father was just here, at St. John’s.”
“Indeed.” It came out in English. Did he mean to tell Wester Ross? Her heartbeat turned painfully unsteady; it felt as though a creature tried to butt its way out of her chest. Did he mean to go to her father . . . to do the honorable thing and ask for her?