She nodded, a smile struggling through as if despite herself, and an echo of their intimacy whispered between them.
“She said she will do it,” she said, softer now. “It will take months to see a result, but we have a chance now.”
He was proud of her, the clever idea and her tenacity, but less than a week ago, they would have celebrated together. “Meet me,” he repeated. “There must be a place where we can see each other.”
“I’m going to London tomorrow,” she replied, back to looking vaguely in pain.
“Again?”
“The final debate on the MWPA bill is on Tuesday. I’m staying with the Blackstones,” she added, as if she had known that he’d go to London, too, to catch her alone.
He didn’t ask when she would be back. In the end, it was her prerogative to abandon an ill-advised liaison without an explanation. If that made him feel crazy, then he had himself to blame for taking her to bed without any commitment. One could not force affection from a woman. He couldn’t ask her to keep breaking all the rules with him, either; the world had no pity and a man’s devotion wasn’t enough to compensate a woman for her fall from grace. This was what he had told himself during the year after Nayla, anyway, whenever the infuriating thought had reared its head that he should have just thrown the girl over his shoulder and walked out onto a boat with her. He would speak to Catriona again when she returned from London. Perhaps their backward laws would be changed on Tuesday. Perhaps that would work a change on her.
“Eli, you look thin,” Nassim observed. “Like this.” He sucked in his cheeks, making the hollow beneath his strong cheekbones more pronounced. Next to them, a railway station clerk blew a whistle, and the shrill sound cut right into Elias’s brain.
“I fucked too much and ate too little,” he said to Nassim.
Nassim’s brows flew up and he barked a laugh in shocked surprise. “Well done,” he said, and slapped Elias’s shoulder. “Much better than the other way around.”
Their exuberance attracted covert glances from fellow travelers.
Elias grabbed Nassim’s hand. “Come.”
They made their way out of Oxford’s railway station, followed by a clerk who pushed Nassim’s groaning luggage cart. The small carriage yard was busy and owing to the number of Nassim’s suitcases, they would queue awhile for a large enough vehicle.
“What are you taking home?” Elias asked. “Half the port?”
Nassim tilted his head, his expression turning vague. “Gifts.” After a pause. “Some pieces for the factory.”
“Pieces?”
“A prototype with some of our specifications,” Nassim said with a shrug.
“Nassim.”
“Fine. A modified steam box that can both steam and then hot-air-dry cocoons. It could save us up to three days in the drying process per batch and raise profits by a few percent.”
“By four percent.” Elias glared at the luggage cart. “That was my calculation—that box was my suggestion. And it isn’t just days saved, it’s the improved quality of the cocoon if we dry them that way.”
Nassim nodded. “I thought so; it sounded like something you would think about.”
Elias’s head felt hot. “Yet he wrote to you to bring the prototype. I heard nothing.”
Him being Khalo Jabbar.
A four-wheeled carriage with a closed roof pulled up, and Nassim waved at the driver.
“He’ll never hear some of us as clearly as he hears some of the others,” he said while the luggage was hoisted up onto the carriage roof. “It doesn’t mean he doesn’t hear you.”
Elias shot him a sardonic glance. “He hears me, Nassim. He hears me, and then he uses my suggestions and makes profit with hardly an acknowledgment of my contribution.”
Nassim squinted. “But if it’s good for the family, isn’t it good for you, too?”
It was true, it was why he tolerated it. He didn’t like it, though, and it didn’t work the other way around, either—when he took a misstep, the shame was squarely his. It wasn’t the first time Jabbar had done it, either. A few years ago, Elias had calculated that their competitiveness was hampered by time and quality lost from manually twining ripped silk threads together, and he had suggested an alteration to their reeling technology that had greatly improved their statistics. The alteration had been dismissed at first, then been quietly made after all, months later.
“It won’t make a difference, in the end,” Elias said after the carriage had pulled away from the station. “We are merely buying time. In ten years, Europe will purchase only Chinese silk, not ours.”
“I’ve heard you say this before,” Nassim remarked, and the set of his mouth said he wasn’t keen on it.
“Have you seen our forests?” Elias asked.
“No.”
“Exactly. Because they are disappearing. They’ll be gone. We don’t have coal to fuel the boilers. Now make a profit calculation with imported coal, brother, and tell me what you see.”
Nassim’s hazel eyes sobered. Whatever was on the balance sheet before his mind’s eye made him go quiet. “Since when have you known?” he asked.
“A while.”
Nassim tutted. “Always three moves ahead, aren’t you, Eli. What is your recommendation?”
The carriage parked. Elias looked outside at the ancient wooden doors of St. John’s. A group of young women walked past below the carriage window, their heels clacking, their laughter floating in.
“Eli?”
“New horizons.”
They stored half of the suitcases behind the desk at the porter’s lodge, a favor that porter Clive afforded the foreign visitor as a special courtesy. Elias promised they would be gone on Monday. On the way out, he stole a glance at the Campbell pigeonhole. Empty.
Nassim took a while to refresh himself and change into a day suit. When he emerged from Elias’s bedroom, freshly groomed, he drummed a quick rhythm on his stomach with his hands.
“Where are we going for lunch?” He looked at Elias, who lounged on a dining table chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “The Lamb and Flag was decent, but perhaps we should try something new, the Eagle and Child, across the road?”
Elias nodded. “We could do that, if you want it.”
“Why, what was your plan?”
“I thought we could eat here. Undisturbed.”
Nassim glanced at the long dining table. Tested the sturdiness of an ornately carved chair. “All right. Where shall we fetch the food?”
“I befriended the college cook and I gave him some of the jars.” Elias pointed at the diminished selection on the mantelpiece. “They’ll serve us our plates here.”
Nassim’s teeth gleamed in a wide smile. “Nice. I like it.”
He sat down in a chair and leaned back with a sigh. His hair was cut, no longer overlong like during his last visit. He looked ready to go home.
“You know I am a man of culture,” he said to Elias, “but the first thing I will do at home is eat toum with a spoon. Rich, creamy, fluffy toum.” He put his fingertips together and kissed them.