Elias’s smirk looked impressed, proud even. “So now you wait?”
“Aye, now it’s out of my power, I have done all I can.”
“Then you have done enough,” he said. His hand slid up her thigh and curved around her hip with sensual intent.
“You went back to that witch house by yourself,” he said.
“I’m afraid I did.”
“Brazen woman,” he said, leaning over her. “What am I to do with you.”
She had a few suggestions.
Chapter 26
Saturday morning. The sky was a mellow blue and a pair of doves cooed in the park across the street. Two empty teacups sat on the round table.
They were expected in the curator’s office at ten o’clock. Mrs. Blackstone would meet them at Trafalgar Square; she was a respectable, married woman, and her company would allow Elias to attend the meeting together with Catriona.
Presently, her dark head was bent over his sleeve, her attention focused on slipping his cuff links through his right cuff. He could do it himself, but he enjoyed watching her fingers tending to him. The tip of her right middle finger seemed permanently dyed blue.
She stepped back and looked him up and down before quickly glancing away.
“What?” he asked, glancing between her and his reflection in the mirror.
She moved her lips nervously. “You look handsome,” she then said, and blushed, as though she had been the one receiving a compliment.
Her shyness stirred desire low in his body. Not the shyness per se, but that what was between them affected her so. Something was softening in her. Perhaps the heat of passion was melting down her walls.
“It’s a good suit,” he said. “From a tailor on Savile Row.”
She touched his sleeve. “Do you miss your Eastern clothes at all?”
“Yes.”
“What do you miss about them?”
“I can wear my boots. The trousers are comfortable. The fabrics are more luxurious, and I can carry my knives in my belt.” He could tell his words were painting an image of him in her mind, and he wondered if she liked it. “I can still appreciate a well-made suit,” he added. “I practically lived in them in France.”
“You wear them well.” She leaned back against the dresser, her hands behind her bustle. “Do you ever feel confused?” she asked. “About what you are?”
Had she pried open his skull and looked into his head lately?
He shrugged. “I’m used to it. I’m used to being in between.”
“How I admire you for it.”
He stepped in front of her and put his hands left and right from her on the dresser. Now she was nicely trapped. The soft smile on her upturned face said she liked it. Her shell-pink lips were still a little swollen from last night’s erotic exploits.
“What do you admire about it?” he asked.
“I don’t have the constitution for it,” she said. “You’ve met my good friend, Annabelle. Sometimes, when I observe her, how she goes about her days, I feel as though I’m a different species from her entirely. She’s a scholar, a wife, a mother, a duchess, a suffragist—everyone wants a slice of her, but she seems to thrive on it. It’s as though she receives more from her responsibilities than they cost her.”
“You’re a scholar, a suffragist, a daughter, a friend.”
His lover. She was very good at that, too, unreservedly passionate. In bed, when he embraced her, she trembled and clung to him as though he held her very life in his palm. It disturbed and aroused him on a visceral level. It made him feel like some demigod. Such feelings would come with a price, he was certain of it, he had heard the sermons about hubris.
“I feel I can’t be too many things at once,” she now said. “It probably means I’m weak, that I can lose myself so easily in the presence of others.”
The look on her face was resigned.
“I think you are strong,” he said after some thought. “You’re from a great, noble clan.”
She tilted her head. “But that’s my clan. Not me.”
“See. You could make the Campbell name your entire identity, but I haven’t seen you do it once. Too many people let their family name tell them who they are and what to do.” He cupped her silky cheek in his hand. “You . . . you are you.”
She focused on his cravat, smoothed it with her fingers. “What about you—is your name telling you how to be?”
“My mother’s name could, or the name of her town,” he said with a low laugh. “But here it is: my family and the people of Ehden, they call me Ajnabi.”