“I have trouble believing it,” he said, smiling faintly. “You think hard about everything.”
She was struggling to contain a riot, raging right behind her breastbone. Sometimes, she suspected that her rejection of a romantic companion wasn’t her actual battle, but only the first line of defense, and that deep down, she wanted love rather too much, with a desperate, grasping passion that scared her witless. When she was under him, open and receptive, the defenses broke down and hope rushed in. But why would she be the exception? Why would it go differently for her, but not the countless others who had dared and failed?
She eyed her empty glass. “Did you know that they give champagne to the debutantes during the London season?” she asked. “As a stimulant?”
“Is that so?” His tone had, thank goodness, returned to conversational.
She nodded. “I had one season. We were expected to socialize five days a week from three o’clock until three in the morning. It’s a Darwinian struggle to secure the best mate. They want us to sparkle like a Veuve Clicquot while we do it, and so the glass is never empty. By autumn, I couldn’t stand the smell of it.”
Elias’s eyes were cool. “You could have told me. I’ll order something else.”
“I’m glad you didn’t know.” She smiled. “I enjoyed this very much. From now on, champagne shall remind me of our lunch in the oyster bar.”
Chapter 25
It was the nights that allowed hidden thoughts to reach the surface. Entwined and drowsy in liminal spaces, they gave voice to the things they usually kept to themselves, until their eyes fell shut or the room filled with light. They drifted over the loss of their mothers, his father’s fatal accident at sea; and smaller things, memories of their childhood that somehow seemed relevant again or some wish for the future that sounded too bombastic during the day.
This night was no different, though it was close to the darkest hour and Elias’s breathing sounded as if he was already asleep. His head was a dark shape on the pillow, save a thin strip of blue starlight that fell across his face.
“I keep thinking about something Mrs. Weldon said,” she whispered.
He gave a sleepy grunt, but he opened an eye.
“She said it wasn’t the actual noise that sets me on edge around people, but everything they bring with them. As though we’re all surrounded by invisible nuisances.”
As though they all had their ghosts trailing along.
He was so silent, she thought he had fallen asleep after all. “It’s no trouble for me to stay at the Oxbridge Club,” he said at last.
Her heart gave an anxious leap. “Why?”
He rolled onto his back. “We have spent a lot of time together,” he said.
“No,” she said, quickly. “You don’t tire me.” She realized this now, as she consciously took stock.
“That’s a shame,” he said, “because I tried.”
Heat suffused her. He did keep her well up at night. “It’s just that your presence doesn’t seem to count.”
He made a low sound of comic exasperation.
She hid her face under the cover. “That came out wrong. You seem to give me more than you take, that’s what I mean.”
“Ya albi,” he said, a cruel note in his tender voice. “My heart. Most would say that I have taken everything.”
Most people would say that, she supposed. He had taken her virginity, which greatly reduced her worth on the marriage mart. For a lady, given she cared, it was indeed everything.
She couldn’t see the ceiling in the dark, just a faint shimmer of chandelier crystal, and a glimmer of gold from the plaster.
“My husband,” she said, “he would have to leave me be, and he must never confine me to the home.”
She could sense him smirk. “He wouldn’t have to. You are, by nature, a housecat.”
“What if I wanted to be outside,” she said with some heat. “For my cause. For anything.”
He trailed a finger down her cheek. “Do you know why I enjoy watching birds of prey?”
“Tell me?”
“Because they thrill me. How they soar, and swoop at great speed. They are pure freedom. On my life, I would never clip the wings of a falcon.”
“A wife is not a bird.”
“Indeed,” he said. “So imagine how much more I would care for her happiness.”
Words, words come easy, she thought, though he sounded rather convincing. There was, of course, the matter of the artifacts between them, which they had managed to ignore in plain sight thus far, such was the power of crazed passion. She would never expect him to give the pieces up, on the contrary, but the situation was the pin waiting to strike their soap bubble. Perhaps she was already dreaming when she had an idea of how to solve that situation. The next morning, the fuzzy plan that had seemed quite brilliant just hours earlier struck her as completely unhinged. By noon, she thought that the line between madness and genius was a fine one, and that she was, possibly, on to something.
During daytime, they played chess, a feeble attempt at maintaining some civility in Cadogan House. For this purpose, they had dragged the round side table from the bedchamber’s fainting couch to the middle of the room. Today, the players were in a state of undress, Elias bare-chested and in Ottoman pajama trousers, Catriona in a plain white cotton robe that was missing its cord. Behind them, the bed was rumpled.
I’m not certain I would make that move, Catriona thought as she watched Elias’s knight advance.
He looked up with hooded eyes. “If you covered up,” he said, “I might be able to hold a thought.”
She flushed and made to gather the robe over her exposed breast.
He grabbed her knee below the table. “Don’t,” he said, and she laughed.
After the lunch at Acton’s oyster bar, they had stayed on the District Railway until Charing Cross, which was close to the British Museum. The curator for the Department of Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor had been away, but his assistant had given Catriona the earliest available appointment for discussing the special exhibition—Saturday morning. In the likely case they secured a transfer date during the meeting, Catriona’s official missions in London would be completed.
She let go of the lapels of her robe, and Elias’s gaze dropped to her breasts.
“Why did you do this?” he asked, nodding at her piercing while he touched his own chest.
She glanced down. He seemed to like the small barbell well enough; he would gently tug and tongue at it when they were together. This was the first time he asked about it.
“I think at the time, I wanted to impress a German princess,” she said.
Elias was quiet. His face underwent various subtle transformations as he processed her statement. Her ears were red, she could feel the tips glow. There had been no need for such honesty, and it was not immediately clear to her why it had been important for her to tell him.
“The chess player,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
His gaze was very direct. “Do you still want to impress her?”
She did not think so.
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”