He closed the left latch, then the right.
Behind her spectacles, her eyes looked vacant. She had already gone somewhere; there was no point in staying and prolonging the torture.
“Here, allow me.” He lifted the valise off the bed. “Where do you want it?”
“In the corridor,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
She followed him to the door. When he put down the valise and turned back round to her, she stood at a little distance, misery dripping off her hunched form.
“I’m leaving, too,” he said. “I’m urgently needed back home.” He cocked his head. “You’re quite safe from the awkwardness of tiptoeing around our situation, whenever you return from Scotland.”
She tensed around her mouth at hearing her own words repeated back at her. The day in the sheep stable seemed a lifetime ago.
“It’s nothing serious, I hope,” she said. “Back home.”
His smile was faintly ironic. “I believe some would call it a joyful occasion.”
A last glance at her lovely, deceiving, shuttered face.
“May God keep you,” he said, and here his voice turned scratchy. “May you have a long life in good health.”
He didn’t permit himself to look at her any longer and left.
Chapter 37
Instead of going to the railway station, Catriona found that she had walked back to the Randolph Hotel. Hattie, Annabelle, and Aoife were still in the drawing room, finishing up a pot of tea amid the debris of the victory party for the Oxford chapter.
They fell silent when she appeared in the doorframe.
Annabelle took a closer look at her and quickly rose. “What happened?”
“Mr. Khoury is gone.”
Hattie’s eyes were wide. “What? Why?”
Catriona swallowed hard. “He’s gone home.”
“Are you certain?”
She nodded.
Annabelle was next to her. “Here, sit down.”
She seemed to stand and watch from outside her body while the others moved around her: Aoife softly excused herself and left, Annabelle ushered her into an armchair, and then Hattie was smoothing her plaid over her shoulders.
“Why did he leave?” Hattie asked. “It seems so hasty.”
“He found out about the artifacts, and he was rather angry. He had to go home anyway—he said it was urgent.”
Annabelle took her cold hand in hers. “You were fond of him, weren’t you?”
She made to say something, and then she just slightly shook her head. Paused. Shook her head again. “It’s for the best,” she said thinly. “Nothing could have come from it, right?”
“Did he not say anything to you?” Hattie demanded, indignation reddening her face. “Nothing at all? He just”—she flicked her hand—“walked away, after everything?”
“After everything?” Annabelle asked, her tone suspicious.
Catriona looked away.
“Oh,” Annabelle breathed. Her hand went slack around Catriona’s. Then she gripped it more tightly than before.
“I should have told him,” Catriona whispered. Sweat stood hot on her brow. “I should have told him everything. I hadn’t thought it through from a manly perspective. I hurt his pride.”
“You did whatever was necessary to give him what he really wanted—the artifacts—and at the lowest possible risk to him.”
Only that it was more complicated. He had wanted something more and now he felt fooled. She should have told him that he had managed to make her dream of a forever. Words, letters, scraps of sentences flew at her from every direction, a mass of sounds; her head was imploding.
She pressed her hands to the sides of her face. “He’s not coming back, is he.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” said Hattie. She rushed into the side chamber that led to her bedroom, and when she returned, she held a large envelope in her hand. “I had meant to give him these for a while,” she said. “My brain is much more scrambled than usual these days, so I kept forgetting to give them to him.”
She handed Catriona the envelope. It contained a set of photography plates, and there was Elias, cast in matte sepia. A scalding devastation spread through her chest.
“These are from the fire drill.”
Hattie nodded. “Post them to him—he was quite keen on having the ones with the equipment. It’s innocent enough, and any gentleman would feel compelled to reply, regardless of how you parted.”
Elias, with his hand on the water wagon. Elias, standing a head taller than the proud fire brigades in front of the dorm. Elias in portrait. He held his head at a proud angle and wore a serious expression for a sharp image, but he seemed distracted, with his eyes privately smiling at something or someone beyond the camera lens.