“I recall.”
“We don’t work the land, why would we need so many sons?” His eyebrows were still touching his hairline. “I’ve heard enough to know that a man who loves his wife wouldn’t do that to her.”
“I thought you would decide we didn’t suit at all, and that you would leave me, forever.”
He blinked. “So you said nothing—which made me leave.”
“Quite.”
“Ya salame.” He massaged his forehead, looking incredulous even with his eyes closed.
“Is it the number of children?” he asked after a pause. “Or do you want none at all? You don’t want them on principle?”
The look on his face was serious, bone-deep apprehension.
A curly head, leaned against his shoulder, a small starfish hand on his chest.
She scoffed with mild self-deprecation. “It’s become clear to me rather recently that I wouldn’t mind one. I don’t object on principle. I object to this notion that it would be my highest purpose, or my only purpose. Because I don’t think it is. I think that I . . . I matter. A woman matters, married or not, children or no children. I matter, just as I am, right now. I’m a whole human being.”
He smiled; relieved but bemused. “Of course you matter.”
Her heart was heated and drumming too quickly, like pistons in an out-of-control machine. The words had poured out; outrageous, frightful words, and yet here he was, smiling.
“I still need my brain for thinking coherent thoughts, at least until I have made a proper name for myself,” she said. “I don’t want my mind crammed with worries over someone else’s teething. I don’t want to feel guilt-ridden, either, if I don’t worry about their teeth as much as we are told we should.”
“Who,” he asked, spinning his hand, “who is telling you that?”
She opened her mouth, then she frowned. “Everyone?”
“Twelve babies.” He was laughing, very softly. “You know, I thought, perhaps you ran away from us because we are from different families, different cultures.”
“What?”
He nodded.
“Goodness. I don’t care about that,” she said with a dismissive grimace. “Society will, for a bit, but I’m rarely out in society anyway.”
He tsked. “Then why do you care about the other things they say?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“I tell you why, habibti, it’s because you are very soft inside. You are caring, always doing things for your friends, for other women, even for strangers who show up at your castle. It’s easy to make you give too much.”
He sighed and put his hand over his nape. A sleek, small gull swooped past, and he watched the bird, followed it as it balanced in the air with its yellow feet neatly tucked back against its belly.
“It appears we have much to discuss,” he finally said. “Can you ride astride?”
She shook herself out of her little daze. “Aye, though I haven’t in a while.”
“We ride slowly. I’d like you to come on an excursion with me. We leave tomorrow morning.”
“All right?”
“Good. Where is your shawl? The old one?”
She raised her shoulders, reflexively searching for the weight of the protective covering.
“I forgot it at home; I packed rather hastily.”
He made to take off his scarf, loosely slung, airy cotton with white and blue stripes.
“Thank you,” she said. “But I think I’m fine.”
His Beiruti lodgings were in another district, and he did not invite her to join him. At night, she tossed around alone in the pillows, in turns overwhelmed and ecstatic from the ebbs and flows of pure emotions, and the entire time she was missing his warm, supple body next to her in the foreign bed.
The pale-yellow gleam of the morning sun spread east over the sea when she took breakfast, a small cup of syrupy Turkish coffee. A sleepy-looking Peregrin joined her at the table. He set down a tray in front of her, small plates with olives, slices of grilled white cheese, yogurt garnished with swirls of oil, and some of the local bread, soft and thin as a crêpe.
“Trust me,” he said, his eyebrows moving meaningfully. “You will need the sustenance.”
He would know, her itinerary was the reverse of his tour de force earlier: first, a sailboat journey to the old port town Chekka, where Elias had left his horses, then a ride up into the mountains, beyond Ehden to Bsharri, a Maronite town which seemed of importance to Elias.
“It will be fine,” she said, trying to force a slice of cheese down her nervous throat.
“I hope so,” Peregrin said, his gaze narrowing. “Otherwise, Montgomery and Annabelle will take turns to end me.”
The three met at Beirut Port, where the boat was readying for departure, sails clanging against the mast. Elias’s lean figure slipped through the crowd toward them, his hand outstretched to Peregrin. The white scarf was twisted round his cap in a neat coil. His boots were freshly polished, and he wore a crisp new shirt under his buttoned velvet vest. A shiver went through Catriona when he dipped his head to her, so formal, but she knew the look in his eyes, languid and full of indecent promises. She could smell him, summer and salt. She wanted to press up against his chest and lick his neck. A heavy, damning heat sank through her belly. Would they be alone together sometime soon? Would they be alone at all?
On the deck, he kept an appropriate distance from her, but their bodies kept angling toward each other, drawn by the same center of gravity between them that had inexorably pulled them into bed together before. They stood at the bow now where the turquoise waves parted into foaming trails, and she turned her face into the headwind to let the cool sea spray hit her face. The ride would take five hours. Five hours of Elias with no touching.
He purchased drinking water from the boat vendor and handed her a bottle. His fingertips brushed against hers, his bare, hers gloved, and the fleeting contact prickled through far more delicate places.
Elias watched her raise the trembling bottle to her lips with hooded eyes.
“It is clear, then,” he said. “We love each other.”
She swallowed her drink without choking. “Indeed.”
“And we have forgiven each other.”
“Have you?” she asked, carefully.
He did not reply immediately. “I wanted to stay angry with you,” he then said. A shrug. “I couldn’t. You weren’t in front of my eyes, but you were the only thing I could see all week. I still don’t like being made a fool of, my dear. You may keep secrets; however, if you were mine, you couldn’t keep secrets that involve me. I would need you to be honest. I need to be able to trust you. If I don’t know something, I can’t fix it.”
If you were mine.
A wedding was not a foregone conclusion, then. She clasped the water bottle, nodding. “What else?” she asked. “What else do you need in a wife?”
That earned her a lazy grin. They both remembered cold champagne in Acton Town.
“Go look into a mirror,” he said. “And you will see.”
She flushed with pleasure. “I found your telegram, in St. John’s,” she blurted. “I thought perhaps, you are engaged by the time I arrive here.”