“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.
“The trouble is,” Elias said, “she knows I want to take the artifacts, and if I go to her now and say I will not take them so you can be my wife, how does that sound?”
Nassim seemed to give it due consideration even though he was set against the entire idea. “Sounds bad,” he said at last. “Like blackmail.”