His resolute knock at the Campbell door brought him face-to-face with Wester Ross.
“Mr. Khoury.” The professor looked pleasantly surprised to see him. He clearly had no suspicions that Elias had debauched his daughter for days on end.
A spasm of guilt tightened Elias’s chest. The entire affair had begun crooked, so naturally it could only grow more twisted as it went on.
“You are back just in time,” Wester Ross said, and stepped aside as if to usher Elias into the small vestibule. “I had hoped to speak to you, but I was told you were held up in London.”
“My business there took longer than expected,” he replied truthfully.
Catriona’s plain blue hat hung on the garderobe. She was at home.
“I’m meeting a colleague of mine today, Professor Jenkins, Greek antiquity scholar,” the earl said. “I was hoping we could consult your opinion on the ethics of artifact transferals for academic purposes. For obvious reasons, I have decided to propose an investigation into our current practices at Oxford . . . but that’s not why you are here, I assume.” The earl adjusted his glasses, the gesture eerily like his daughter’s. “What can I do for you, Mr. Khoury?”
He put his cards on the table. “I was hoping to take a walk with Lady Catriona.”
Wester Ross’s brow pleated slightly. “It’s a fine day for a walk,” he said. “The summer is curiously mild this year, rainy, but mild. Let me see whether my daughter is at home.”
He disappeared into the room at the end of the short corridor. Muffled voices sounded behind the closed door; the low, soft cadence of Catriona’s voice was unmistakable. Elias kept flexing and unflexing his hand as the minutes drew out. He could tell that his pulse showed in his throat.
The door opened.
She was pale, and her posture oddly still when they looked at each other. Like a rabbit that was trying to go undetected when the fox was near.
“Mr. Khoury.”
His temper simmered. He had been inside her twice a day, rather carelessly, too, toward the end, and she had enjoyed it loud and clear. Now she looked at him as though he were a passing acquaintance.
“Walk with me,” he said, his tone even enough.
“MacKenzie has departed to Applecross,” she replied. “But my father and Professor Jenkins are going to Christ Church at three o’clock. We may walk with them.”
They wouldn’t have one, but two chaperones trailing them. Her lashes lowered at his grim little smile.
At shortly past three, they strolled down bustling Magdalen Street at a deceptively leisurely pace. Wester Ross and Professor Jenkins fell so far behind, deep in conversation, it was as though the earl wanted Elias to have some privacy with his daughter. The daughter was less enamored of the idea. Catriona’s rigid posture radiated cool reserve. Why had she agreed to walk with him, then?
“So,” he said. “Is there any news in your life?”
She feigned a smile. “You make it sound as though we haven’t seen each other in years.”
“The days seem long without you,” he replied.
Her gaze flicked sideways, as if to ascertain that her father was indeed far out of earshot.
“I was preoccupied. It seems my father has sold a good chunk of our lands that border Middleton’s estate.”
An irrational annoyance flashed through him. The land had been her inheritance. He had finished the tome on Scotland; unlike the English, Scottish noble families passed on estates to their daughters.
“I hadn’t expected to feel quite so sad about it,” she continued. “But I do. Most of the older estates in the north grew wealthy by grabbing the monastic lands after the religious wars. Applecross is one of the few that became comfortable thanks to profitable wool production. I thought those were good conditions for maintaining the business, but over time . . .” She shook her head. “It seems to have fallen apart.”
“No business just falls apart,” he said with some impatience. “There are always reasons; what you must do is anticipate them, analyze them, find a solution.”
“Easy to say, for a man of business.”
“A business is in trouble because a change happened to which you couldn’t adjust on time. You pay attention and adapt, or you die—that’s the nature of it.”
Her fingers curled into her shawl. “You’re right,” she said, matter-of-fact. She gave an unexpectedly helpless little shrug.
He felt a low, hard ache in his stomach. Let me do it for you, he thought, let me look after you and your estate, and you can spend your time on books and science. He had already thought about Applecross; had tried to assess its easy strengths and weak spots, challenges and opportunities. He had considered the isles near the estate and the great distances to larger trading hubs, and how to deal with the sparse railway infrastructure. His suggestions were the opposite of selling land: he would buy more land, more sheep, and sell a processed product, not just raw material, as this was the same trap that was threatening silk merchants in the East. He’d organize the crofters on the isles as they once were and contract them, exclusively, to produce tweed with Applecross wool. Make a deal with his family to supply her with silk and create a tweed-silk blend, elegant yet robust, the best of East and West entwined in one fabric . . . Look abroad for sales, to America and the East; weave a romantic story around the crofters and the isles that will appeal to wealthy women who dream of quaint and foreign places. A pressure in his jaw said he was gritting his teeth. He had the ideas as well as the entrepreneurial skills to take care of her, and yet he could do exactly nothing. He was not her husband, and he could hardly offer Wester Ross his services while his own business was lingering unattended in Beirut. No, in his current position as her lover, he shouldn’t exist in her life by any standards of propriety. He felt it acutely now: his bruised pride, his strained morals, the diffuse but constant resentment haunting someone who had lowered themself to live an untenable compromise.