Elias’s gaze tracked the expressions on her face, and briefly, a cold emotion hardened his eyes. “I won’t kiss you under your father’s roof again,” he said.
She exhaled. Found her way back into his mother tongue. “What does that mean?”
“I respect the earl.” Said as though he implied that she did not.
He hadn’t kissed her more in the Blackstone library, because he “held her in high regard.” Her consternation showed in her prickly undertone. “Does that mean that when you kiss me, you disrespect me?”
“Some would see it that way.”
“How do you see it?”
His face was inscrutable. “Does it matter, as long as those around us think like this?”
Yes, it did. She would like it confirmed that in his heart of hearts, he found their kisses above reproach and understood that she was her own woman. She glanced away, aware that she had already said and done too much. She had thrown herself at Charlie before, and she had all but propositioned Elias in the Blackstone library, then let him have his way with her on a commode. In the moment, it hadn’t felt like self-degradation because the sincerity and depths of her feelings constituted their own virtue, but he was right, no one else would see it that way.
She emptied her sherry glass.
“This is not my father’s roof,” she said. “It’s university property.”
He smiled at that, softly, as if he understood her pain.
* * *
—
She returned to the Campbell lodgings with her focus shot to pieces. In the study, traces of Wester Ross’s pipe tobacco still lingered in the air. He wasn’t a habitual smoker, but the situation with Leighton had troubled him enough to light up last night. What would you have me do, he had asked her, puffing and raking his fingers through his hair. I saw the firmans, the licenses, with my own eyes before I accepted work on the pieces, and the Ottomans are the official government of Sidon.
It hadn’t satisfied her. You are one of Britain’s leading scholars in archaeology. If you can’t think of how to make this right, who can? She hadn’t told him that she’d set about fixing this particular case herself if he didn’t. Wester Ross had asked her to be patient, at least until he had completed his deal with Middleton. Before he left, he had promised to present the idea to the curator in charge during his remaining days in London.
Behind her, MacKenzie entered the study with a tea tray.
“There’s mail for you,” she announced. Next to the sturdy teapot was an envelope. Catriona took the entire tray from MacKenzie. She carried it to her desk, then poured the tea so it could cool while she read. The letter turned out to be a reply to her writ campaign, not a note from Elias. Good. Excellent. She had a cause to support, and she owed it her full attention.
The letter’s sender was an MP she had never met in person, but his profile was in her folder where she filed all relevant men of influence, and he had struck her as a promising candidate. His note, however, was not promising at all:
It appears that you have misunderstood how the writ is used in practice. The Writ for Restitution of Conjugal Rights is commonly taken out by females, as it statutorily entitles them to interim alimony from their husbands in the case of a de facto separation. It may be filed in the same way as a separation petition, but may be filed more speedily, namely the moment a roguish husband has left the marital home. To put it simply for you, this law benefits your sex. I advise you to not become distracted by whichever sensationalist stories you may have heard and put your considerable time and effort toward alleviating the truly vile conditions that plague our society.
Sensationalist stories. She placed the letter flat onto her desk and rested her eyes on the lovely, blooming garden outside the window. Very carefully, she sipped some tea. Her research in the Bodleian had suggested that at least one woman had perished in prison, and some women had left the country to avoid incarceration. It was enough to merit her efforts, thank you very much. Today was Friday. On Monday, she would report her abysmal record to the others and ask Lucie for help. Under the desk, her legs were restless. The ghastly note in front of her should cure any sensible woman of the desire to kiss any man ever again, and yet an urge stirred, to see Elias and read the letter to him. He’d probably say something terribly astute that made her want to take her clothes off again. She shifted around on the chair in some luxurious physical discomfort and berated herself for her stupidity. What if Elias had gone to Wester Ross? She had played with dynamite when she had stayed in his bedchamber. She smoothed her hand, warm from the teacup, over her forehead. Ridiculous, that she had ever thought one could immunize against the effects of attraction with low doses of exposure—an attraction was not a virus, it was a spark. One spark was enough to set off an explosion. One spark could light an inferno.
* * *
A cool wind brushed over Port Meadow, carrying the dampness of the river. Elias lowered his binoculars and inhaled. He was sitting on the trunk of a fallen willow between a narrow footpath and the banks, his back turned to the leafy woods behind him. The Thames flowed past his feet with barely perceptible surface movement. On the other side of the water, the green blanket of the meadow stretched toward Oxford’s spires and steeples. Cattle egrets dotted the plain with plumages as soft and white as cotton fluff. He had also noted several species of duck, a brown-breasted stonechat, and a bird he had had to look up in his English ornithology guide. It gave him no pleasure. Birding, like chess, required the concentration and attention to detail that muted and cleared the mind. Not today.
Catriona’s face kept flashing before his eyes, how it had frozen when he had mentioned her father in the Common Room earlier. The bent of her thoughts had been obvious, possibly because one track of his mind, the hidden one that operated outside the realm of etiquette and reason, was preoccupied with asking Wester Ross permission to court her. It hadn’t been a serious plan as much as a manifestation of his desire to have her, to finish what they had started with the kiss in the Blackstone library. And yet, her reaction had felt as sobering as walking into a wall.
He soon tucked his bird guide back into his pocket and jumped off the tree trunk. As he strode along the path at a punishing pace, he couldn’t ignore how closely the situation mirrored his predicament eight years ago: an overwhelming desire for a woman, and all circumstances stacked against him.
* * *