The curator agreed enthusiastically. Catriona and Mrs. Blackstone shared a look.
As they took their leave, they made a detour to see the Parthenon marbles. The frieze and statues were on display in a vast hall on the ground floor where every step echoed on the polished tiles. Two clerks stood guard; voices were hushed. The once brilliant colors of the frieze surrounding them had long faded; the story of gods and humans was told in uniform pale marble now. As for the statues, most had lost a limb, a nose, even a head, under the rough treatment of the Ottomans, or later, when they had been torn from their home in Athens and shipped across a sea. Some had gone down with their ship and the salt had eaten at them before they had been recovered. The broken parts only seemed to edify the bits that had survived the millennia intact, and the battered bodies still told a tale: that people had always been people, that then as now, they had been compelled by valor, worship, and wine-fueled debauchery, and that they had forever felt a keen interest to preserve their stories.
“Have you seen them before?” Catriona was next to him, a little closer than was proper in a public space.
He nodded. “I was here two days ago.”
She stilled. “Oh.”
He had come here after meeting the next man in the chain of command, this time in East London. An understanding had been reached, about the type of crew Elias required, which skills, what it would cost him in coin. On his way back to Cadogan Place, he had stopped at the museum. He had craved a reminder why he was doing it, something to substantiate his self-imposed duty to bring home the bulls at all cost. It hadn’t helped. Looking at the stories of people who had turned to dust thousands of years ago, only to catch glimpses of familiar needs, brought home the timelessness of the human condition. All lives had been lived before; no triumph or defeat was new. A man might as well make his own choices.
Catriona stood with her head angled back, seemingly absorbed by the display. Her subtle scent still reached him, teased him, made him want to reach out and touch her. Ridiculous, that any one part of her had once seemed plain to him.
Mrs. Blackstone was alternately taking notes in her little book and scrutinizing the marbles. “Does it even have meaning?” she asked as she scribbled. “Displaying them here, with the other half still back at the Acropolis? From an artist’s perspective, I daresay it doesn’t.”
“I imagine seeing them in their original context is a different experience,” Catriona replied in a low voice. “Certainly for the visitors whose story they tell.”
“The last argument I heard was that the ancient Greeks have little connection to the current Greek people, and if something doesn’t clearly belong to one nation, it belongs to anyone,” Mrs. Blackstone replied. “What do you say to that, Mr. Khoury? Is it nonsense?”
He exhaled audibly through his nose. “I’d say it’s a convenient argument made by nations that managed to formalize their nationhood on time.” Which was a bloody enough endeavor without several imperial powers meddling in one’s affairs. Just ask Youssef Bek Karam, now in exile as a thanks for his efforts.
The trio eventually parted at the museum’s main entrance.
Mrs. Blackstone put her hand on Catriona’s sleeve. “I shall see you on Wednesday, then. Suffrage business,” she explained to Elias. If it struck her as improper that he and Catriona were leaving the museum together, she didn’t let it show.
After the quiet of the museum, London was loud. The sun glared, pedestrians were streaming at them. They shouldn’t walk to the underground stop together in such a central place. Catriona moved quickly; the set of her shoulders was rigid.
“Very clever of you to send the curator photographs of the pieces,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Now I would like it if you didn’t burden yourself with my business any longer,” he went on. “You have much to do for your own cause. Your willingness to assist a stranger will not be forgotten.”
Her gaze flicked to him from the corner of her eye. “A stranger,” she said in an odd voice, and the impression struck him that he had offended her. After a pause, she added: “I’m not doing nearly enough.”
Below the brim of her hat, her profile appeared drawn and pale.
“Psst,” he said.
She glanced at him again, and her somber expression turned wary.
“You’re about to make a joke,” she said, “aren’t you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Do you know why the Egyptian pyramids are in Egypt?”
“Oh, this is silly.”
“Come on, take a guess.”
“Pfff.” She nestled at her hat. “I suppose you could look at the local availability of—”
“It’s because they are too big to fit into the British Museum.”
She gasped, then yelped a shocked laugh before she slapped a hand over her mouth.
“What’s this,” he said, mock amazed, “she’s having fun.”
She glanced left and right at the people passing them by. “Your sense of humor is awfully dark.”
He smiled. “Not as dark as my anger. You laughed, didn’t you.”
“All right, I did—I’m just as bad.”
Looking at each other’s grinning faces, they nearly walked into a newspaper cart, which Elias avoided by pulling her with him on a last-second swerve. For a moment, their bodies pressed together, and his hand was on her waist. He released her quickly. Catriona looked up at him, no longer smiling. Her lips had parted, and a loose strand of dark hair clung to her cheek. He focused on the crossing ahead so he would not grip her chin and kiss her in full sight of the world’s largest city, in front of the pedestrians and the carriage drivers, the shopkeepers and the flower girl and the policeman at the corner. His chest hurt with the urge to whisk her to the secluded privacy of his home, away from prying eyes and unwanted opinions, to keep her as his well-protected treasure.
“You’re staying in town until Wednesday, then,” he said, the full heat of his emotions in his voice.
“Aye.” She sounded out of breath.
He looked straight ahead at the looming underground sign. “You have any plans?”
Apart from being naked in his arms, under him, on her knees, perhaps on top of him.
Her reply was soft, but it struck through the hum of London clear like a bell.
“You,” he heard her say. “You are in my plans.”
Chapter 27