Yes, yes, apparently that was what he wanted, if that was what it took to have her. Her cold demeanor suggested that she didn’t share the sentiment. She seemed afraid, reluctant. In fact . . . if she weren’t trapped with him, alone and at his mercy, she might be making a proper scene. The realization sank into his consciousness like a toxic cloud, withering any youthful delusions and virginal idealism to a husk. He released her abruptly. She rubbed her wrist with some exaggeration, but the look in her eyes changed from fearful to sad. “Elias,” she said. He walked out the side entrance without a backward glance.
He left Beirut for the village to lick his wounds, but everyone at the mountain mansion was up in his business: the cousins, his aunt, the cats. His grandmother noticed something was wrong, so she personally brought him plates with cut-up fruit, but the sweet slices had an aftertaste of onion because someone hadn’t changed the knife. He was packing a bag to go and find some peace when Khalo Jabbar returned—unsurprisingly, the news of Elias’s doomed proposal had reached Jabbar through the grapevine on his way home. Instead of brooding undisturbed in a hermit cave, Elias saw his dignity flayed in his uncle’s study.
“You want to marry, you come to me. Make any decision? You come to me—I am calm, rational,” Jabbar shouted, his hands chopping air in every direction, “you, what are you? A heavy idiot! Your brain is an ornament! This is my life, I’m surrounded by donkeys.” He stuck his head out of the study door and yelled for his sons, and when one of them dared to venture forth, Jabbar skewered him, too: “Damn your father, could you not take him to someone?” He pointed at Elias. “Here, I present you Majnoun Nayla, making us look stupid just because he glimpsed a woman.”
His own temper boiling, Elias decided to become an émigré there and then. Anticipating this, Jabbar sent for him half an hour later and revealed that he was putting him and Nassim in charge of running their fledgling British outpost in Manchester. “Nassim’s English is bad, and he is only eighteen,” he said to Elias, “you should go with him and protect him from himself and the British.”
His hand forced because he loved his cousin, Elias was on a boat to England a few days later, too far from the mountain to cause further furor but still bound to the family business. Clever Jabbar. In truth, he was clever; it took Elias a few more years to appreciate the blood, sweat, and cunning politicking Jabbar provided to make his clan untouchable in a place of revolving conquests, but, young and heartbroken at the time, that day he began to plan his exit.
“All great love stories are unrequited,” Nassim told him on his first day of staring at the horizon from the steamer railing, “that’s the hallmark of true love, the unrequitedness.”
Elias, suffering from seasickness for the first time he could remember, told him to go away.
“Life is full of misery, and most is caused by women,” Nassim offered the next morning.
On the third day, he arrived with a bottle of arak. Elias refused to drink it; the way past pain was right through the hot hell of it. Later, he learned that Nayla had been married to an Italian count soon after he had gone. To he who has enough money, a princess is his bride.
* * *
—
Elias entered the residential part of Oxford that bordered the meadow, a brooding expression on his face. These days, he possessed the means to woo the daughter of an earl, certainly one whose estate was in such pecuniary decline. He had worked hard for this position; he had put off finding a wife and focused on expanding, amassing, investing, driven in part by a fiery determination that he would not be denied again over his status. His hand clenched around the hilt of his walking stick. In an ironic twist, his wealth was rather low on the list of obstacles now. She was a British aristocrat while he wasn’t even from her world; he would become persona non grata in Britain the moment he succeeded at taking the artifacts. She was also keenly aware that she wasn’t free. Most women of his acquaintance, East or West, were kept in luxury and ruled their homes, which seemed to sufficiently dull the sting of any restrictions placed upon them, but Catriona was an activist and gilded bars probably still looked like bars to her. Was he equipped to manage with such an unconventional wife? Whichever road they could choose to finish what they had started, it led to chaos.
Once he reached the main street, he walked straight to Oxford’s telegraph office and sent a message to Nassim. He would go to London on Monday to meet Nassim’s contact. He would set a plan in motion that would bring home the loot. A few days away from St. John’s might help quell the mad want ticking in his veins.
Chapter 20
Monday morning, clouds rushed across the sky and the wind tugged on Catriona’s skirts from all directions while she walked to the Randolph Hotel. Her hairdo was loose by the time she arrived in Hattie’s drawing room. She brushed the locks away from her face, annoyed by the untidy sensation. She watched Hattie and Lucie put the plates from the tea cart onto the table and felt a pang of dread. Her friends were quite observant, and she currently seemed to carry a massive sign above her head: I have done very naughty things with a man!
She had dreamt about doing it again, too, had taken everything to its conclusion in her sleep. In reality, he had said, We will not do this again . . .
“Catriona, why are you lurking? Join us,” Hattie called, and waved her closer.
Nobody will know.
She entered with a stiff smile.
“Annabelle can’t attend today because baby Jamie has the sniffles,” Hattie related while she handed out cups of tea. “The poor mite.”
Lucie and Catriona made commiserative sounds. Underneath her skirts, Catriona’s left leg was bouncing. She couldn’t seem to breathe properly. This wasn’t just owed to her situation with Elias. She had been around too many people for too long, taking in too many stories. If there weren’t so many layers to her feelings lately, she would have recognized her exhaustion sooner.
“We don’t have much to discuss anyway,” Lucie said. She glanced over the documents she was balancing on her knees. “We are still advancing on the Property Act front—we’ve converted three more to vote in our favor last week. I suspect they sense a sea change and prefer to not be on the losing side. Only a few of the usual suspects will cause us trouble.”
“Who,” Catriona asked.
Lucie checked her notes. “Most notably, Sir George Campbell, and our old pal Mr. Warton. They are actively running a countercampaign.”
“Sir George,” Catriona muttered. “Ghastly creature.”
The man was loud and uncompromising at the Campbell clan meetings. She would never forget his thinly veiled criticism that Wester Ross seemed content with having a daughter for an heiress rather than taking a new wife and thus another chance at producing a son.
Hattie put down her biscuit. “Could they truly stop the bill again at the last moment?”
“They could delay it severely,” Lucie said, “or weaken the wording, if they garner enough support for their proposals on the day of the decision.”
Hattie made to pick up her biscuit again, then just left it on the plate.
“I’m so sick of them,” she said softly. “I’m tired of them.”
She reclined on the sofa and picked up her fan from the side table to cool her face.