Elias could picture it vividly, almost taste it, the garlic paste slathered onto freshly grilled, thinly sliced, well-seasoned chicken, wrapped in hot, soft bread with a tangy pickle . . .
“You look hungry,” Nassim said, smiling. “Come home with me. We get a ticket for you at the docks, there’s always someone peddling a last-minute ticket.”
Tempting. “I have business here.”
Nassim made an unwilling sound. “You have business in Beirut, too—if the bulls move at the end of September, what will you do here for another six weeks?”
“Incredible,” Elias said. “The operation doesn’t happen on its own. I have to practice the moves with the men. The crew needs every detail of the schedule. I haven’t yet secured passage on a boat for the pieces because the man I hired to forge the export papers will need at least another week to finish.”
And he couldn’t leave without having seen her again and making things right—properly.
“All right.” Nassim shrugged. “I think it would be a good idea if you came, but it’s your decision. You were right about them finding me a wife, by the way. Apparently, Jabbar was busy.”
Elias paused. “Is that what you want?”
Another shrug. “Sure. Let’s wait and see what he proposes.”
Elias looked at him askance. His cousin’s face was oddly unreadable, a mix of pleased and yet wary.
“What is it?” Elias asked, because he had known Nassim long enough to know that face. His cousin was keeping something from him. Something other than the prototype.
“Let’s eat first,” Nassim said.
“Why?”
“You’re already in a bad mood, over the steam box.”
Elias came to his feet. “Nassim, I swear if you don’t tell me, I’ll—”
“All right. He’s finding you a wife, too.”
Chapter 33
Apressure built behind Elias’s eyes. “You are mistaken,” he said.
Nassim hunched his shoulders in a disarming manner. “I’m just telling you what I heard.”
“What?” Elias ground out. “What did you hear? How?”
“Layal.”
“Why is she telling you, not me?”
“She doesn’t have your address here. Look.” Nassim went to the garderobe, reached inside his jacket pocket, and took out a wad of pound notes and paper slips, among them a telegram.
Elias was next to him with two strides and snatched the telegram from his hand. His brows formed a harsh V while his gaze flew over the lines. At some point, his cousin Layal had had the news dictated to a telegraph officer in Beirut. Black on white, it said prospective brides . . . let Eli know . . .
Elias ripped the telegram in half.
“What the hell,” said Nassim.
Elias crumpled the bits in his fist and tossed the paper ball onto the table. Shaking from suppressing a great rage, he turned to Nassim.
“Are you not tired of others dictating your life?”
Nassim’s eyes were big. “You’re angry.”
He was incensed. “What are we? Are we eighteen-year-old peasants, having to take the girl our parents pick?”
“Eighteen? No, we’re not eighteen,” Nassim said, his hands moving, his voice rising. “We’re old, you especially, you will be thirty in a few years—what did you expect?”
“To choose my own wife. Jabbar can stay out of it.”
“Honestly?” Nassim shot back. “If he finds me a nice woman? I won’t cry about it—”
Elias gestured disbelief. “I don’t believe that you don’t have a preference.”
“Damn”—Nassim kept touching Elias’s arm now—“damn, I live abroad ten months of the year. How will I find a good wife while I work, work, work, in damn Manchester? Let Jabbar trouble himself with it; if I don’t like her, I’ll refuse. It’s a suggestion, not an order.”
Elias stared at his cousin as though he had sprouted a second head. “Refuse? Because it wouldn’t cause bad blood at all if Jabbar indicated an interest to a family, and then we decide we don’t like the girl. What will they say we said about her—that she’s ugly? Has a reputation? Not good enough?”
His very skin burned from the blaze of his temper. Because he had to pack. He had to leave here as soon as possible after all, to stop the unthinkable. It was the one thing he did not want to do, though, leaving her.
“It might be Layal, for you,” Nassim said, shaking Elias by the shoulder, as if that would dislodge the fury. “You like each other, it’s obvious, so what is your problem?”
“I have someone,” Elias said. “That is the problem.”
His blood was still pumping behind his eyes, but Nassim’s face was in clear view, freezing over with shock.
“You’re . . . married?”
“Not yet.”
“Who?” cried Nassim. “Who is it?”
Elias clucked his tongue and moved away.
Nassim followed him. “Who? Do we know her?”
“You know nothing about her.”
“But—” Nassim stopped, as if hit in the chest. “No,” he drawled. “It’s the lady, isn’t it—the Lady Catriona.” When Elias remained quiet, he groaned. “No, you misunderstood the assignment—you were to seduce her, only slightly, not be seduced and marry her!”
“Life does not care about our plans.”
“She is English!”
“Scottish.”
“British, then.”
Elias inhaled sharply. “She’s from an honorable family. She is highly educated. She speaks our language. She is kind, and wealthy, and she likes our food.”
And he loved her, and for none of those things.
Nassim was profoundly disturbed. “She’s an outsider.”
“Come on, anyone farther than a fifteen-minute walk from the town is an outsider, and you know it.”
His cousin locked his gaze to his. “So, she wants to raise her children as Maronites? Her father wouldn’t object?”
“A technicality for a Catholic, but let me be very clear,” Elias said. “I don’t care whether she is from the depths of the sea, or the surface of the moon. It’s her, or no one.”
“All right, all right.” Nassim moved his hands up and down. “Things are changing, we are modern men, we cast a wide net . . . but, my dear, blood of my blood . . . if you must look around abroad, why not pick an Italian. We make decent families with Italians—fine.” He threw up his arms. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. People will think you’ve lost your mind—again.”
“At first, they will think that.”
Nassim was moving around the room erratically. “Has she agreed to have you, even though you are taking these pieces from her museum? Will you go on the run with the daughter of a British earl?”
At that, Elias pressed his lips together, as if trying to stay silent through physical pain.
“Damn,” said Nassim. “You aren’t taking them, are you. You are thinking of giving them up. I can see you thinking it.”
“Taking them as planned would make a proposal rather impossible.”
His cousin was cussing under his breath. “See,” he said, “see. This is only the beginning.”
“You carry on as though we have never married outside our province.”
“It happens, yes, of course.” Nassim sat down heavily on a chair and rubbed his eyes.