“I told myself I wouldn’t do this again unless you were mine,” he said darkly. “Properly mine.”
The muscled curve of his shoulder looked smooth like marble in the moonlight. She wanted to press her mouth to it, bite it, claim it, with a visceral urgency.
“I am yours,” she whispered.
He rose. The sheet was drawn away from her. She shivered under his perusal, felt his attention linger on the dips and valleys of her body beneath the gauzy nightgown. His strong hand pushed down his trousers, exposing him. He stood proud and ready for her, and her knees fell apart in response. He made a soft sound of approval and came over her while drawing her nightgown up to her waist. Already her breathing came in little gasps. The heat of his bare skin scorched her to the core, softened and readied her for him. Above her, the left side of his face was cast in light; something like pain twisted his features when he settled against her.
“It seems I’m still weak for you,” he murmured. “Whatever is beating inside my chest is not my heart, because you have taken it from me.”
His lips brushed her mouth in the dark, opening her, finding her tongue. Below, he slipped in slowly, with an exquisite care that said he was savoring every yielding inch. Her last conscious thought was Thank you, a powerful, humbling swell of gratitude that they had been granted a second chance, that she was back in his arms, that she could feel him again, and again.
Ghosts could be laid to rest. Patterns could be reversed. One could cross out The End and add another paragraph. And occasionally, one had to let go of a good thing to make room for a potentially better thing. It was a risk. But life, just by way of passing, eventually caused a change of circumstances anyway, so a woman might as well make the decision to be brave, and trust in her ability to navigate the unknown.
She slept through the sunrise. When she woke, she was alone in a warm circle of morning light, but the sound of a pitcher pouring water suggested that Elias was in the washroom. She slipped into her nightgown and went out onto the balcony. The sea was a hazy blue shimmer on the horizon, the sun diffuse like gold dust in the air. She stretched, arms open wide. The gentle summer wind brushing up the mountain felt like uplift for her new wings.
A pair of strong hands slid around her middle from behind, then spun her around for a kiss.
Elias was in a playful mood this morning, exuding a bouncing energy, like he was moving in a shower of sparks.
“Katinka,” he crooned, and grabbed at her. “Cattoush, my little falcon.”
He twirled her back to the view.
“Are you happy?” He held her from behind, his hands wrapped over her belly.
“Very happy.”
“You know what would make me happy?”
She nestled more snugly against his chest. “Tell me.”
His cheek grazed against hers, pleasantly, because his beard was already turning silky. “Let me learn your heart,” he said. “Let me woo you when I’m in London. Let me show you that I want to love you right. If you need time for your thoughts, I’ll let you stay in your tower of ivory every winter.” He nuzzled her ear, teasingly, softly. “Let me court you, ya roohi,” he whispered, “and if you’re not convinced, I will leave you be and you can keep my heart as a memory.”
Ya roohi. My soul. She turned in his arms and took his face in her hands. She had never said yes faster.
When she detangled herself, she was dizzy and breathless from kissing too hard and she laughed for no particular reason.
“I should like to go for a swim,” she said, pointing to where the sky blended into the sea.
Elias kissed the top of her head. “We shall do that,” he said. “Later.”
* * *
—
Half a day’s ride was left to Bsharri. At this altitude, the wind was lovely and cool, taking the sting out of the sun. The horses moved carefully on the uneven dirt road, the repetitive sway of their warm big bodies could put a rider into a meditative state. With her heart and mind appeased, Catriona’s eyes were wide open to the landscape this time. The cragged rock faces of the gorge plunged hundreds of feet into the Kadisha Valley. Elias claimed that miracles happened here, but to her, it seemed like a stronghold created by nature herself, seemingly hostile to life. Eventually, little by little, the marks humans had left on the steep slopes over the millennia became visible to the naked eye. Monasteries clung to vertical rock like beehives to the walls of a giant porch, blending into the pale stone to the point of near invisibility. Crosses were chiseled into rocks to indicate the dwellings of hermits and entries to monastic caves. It suddenly struck her as absurd that she hadn’t spent more time tracing her beloved languages in the wild instead of dissecting them in her study.
It turned out that Elias hadn’t been as interested in the town of Bsharri—they don’t much like us here—as much as in an ancient cedar forest that covered the nearby slope.
He eventually halted their little convoy to point out the sprawling canopies.
“Arz al-Rabb,” he said. “The Cedars of God.”
Already the warm air was pungent with the fragrance of cedar wood. They rode closer until the man-high drystone wall snaking around the grove stopped their advance.
Elias unmounted and patted the neck of his horse. He handed the reins to the guard, then came to Catriona and lifted her from the saddle.
“Guess who paid for this wall,” he asked, steering her toward it with his hand on the small of her back. She wondered how much he was paying the guard to keep their secrets.
“I haven’t a clue,” she said, eyeing the lichen-covered stones.
He tipped his head to the side. “Your Queen Victoria.”
“How curious.”
“It’s true,” he said earnestly. “She heard that the trees that built the temple of Solomon were dying out because the Turks cut the timber, and the goats eat the saplings. It offended her, that goats should be the reason for the demise of biblical trees. Her wall protects a hundred hectares.” Now he cracked a grin. “Bsharri rifles protect the wall.”
The wall posed no obstacle to him. He helped her climb it, her foot on his thigh, and then he scaled it by himself, smoothly like a mountain lion, to assist her down on the other side.
For a while, she wandered among the trees in silence. They were not particularly tall, but remarkably wide, the branches spreading horizontally as though they grew with providing shade in mind. The powerful trunks seemed to emanate a calm warmth.
“They don’t rot,” Elias said. “They don’t burn. They need little. Unless you cut them down, they grow for thousands of years.”
He surprised her by stepping off the path and kneeling in the dirt, next to a sapling, perhaps ten inches tall.
He looked up at her with an apologetic shrug. “Now I do something forbidden.”