Silence filled her head like water. She was submerged in it, but she wasn’t weightless, she was drowning.
She closed the envelope with numb fingers. “I have properly messed up, haven’t I? I really loved him—I love him, and now it feels as though nothing will ever be good again.”
“Oh, my dear,” Annabelle said with a worried frown, “try to breathe.”
She rose. “He might still be at St. John’s. Perhaps I can still—perhaps he’s still here.”
She hurried from the room, her friends’ voices a distorted echo in her ears.
The door to his flat at St. John’s was locked. She rushed back to the lodge and asked porter Clive for the spare key, desperately trying to suppress her panting. She could not bring herself to ask: Has Mr. Khoury left? A few minutes later, his room spoke for itself. Everything was gone: his shoes, hat, coat. Glaring emptiness on the mantelshelf; he had packed up his jars. She leaned against the doorframe, a hand on her throat, feeling panic surge and drum under her fingers . . . A small figurine on the dining table caught her eye.
A chess piece.
Her heart leapt sharply—he would return. He wouldn’t leave one of his precious chess pieces behind; at the very least she had a reason now to send him a note, and Hattie was right, he was a gentleman, and he would reply. They hadn’t yet exchanged their last word, not yet . . . She went and grabbed the piece, clutched it in her hand.
It dawned on her then that she was holding the white king.
He had surrendered the one piece that had to remain standing for there to be a game.
Checkmate.
A low, keening sound came from her throat, more animal than human.
The abyss of loss inside her cracked open so wide that for a moment, all went black.
Somehow, she was in his bedchamber. She went to the wardrobe and yanked open the doors. Empty. She pulled out drawers, looked under the bed. Empty, empty, empty. Her heart pounded faster than a rushing train, and she stopped whirling and pressed her hands over her ribs. Her gaze jumped around the abandoned room, hunting for any sign of him, any reminder that he had been real. There was something in the bin, next to his desk. Here she was, clawing through his rubbish with a feverish face. It was a telegram, torn in half. She put the torn edges together. . . . let Eli know . . .
“No,” she said out loud.
She was still a ball on the floor when the door opened, hasty footsteps neared, and her friends rushed into the room.
* * *
—
“All right,” Hattie said. “All right, so we have a bit of a boggle-de-botch situation. But! It can be fixed.”
Catriona gave her a red-eyed look. “How.”
The three women were sitting at the long dining table in Elias’s former reception room. Elias was probably on a boat by now, leaving Europe.
“You must be brave and lay yourself bare to him,” Hattie said. “I know it isn’t the proper thing to do, to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve, but this is an emergency. You’ll feel much better, regardless of whether you marry him or forget him or just carry on a torrid, secret affair for decades.”
As if she’d ever forget him. “I think he has been wooing me for weeks.”
Hattie wrinkled her nose. “He probably was. You’re a hard nut to crack.”
“He said marry me, but I thought it was a joke.”
“Oh, Catriona, do be serious,” said Annabelle.
Catriona massaged her throat. “Do you know the saying Beware the fury of a patient man?”
“Oh no,” Annabelle said quickly, “no, you don’t owe a man a yes or even your affection just because he wooed you. Your apprehensions are entirely justified, marriage can make or break a woman. Second, Hattie is right—if you truly love each other, then it can be fixed. Remember, I was in your position just a few years ago over Montgomery.”
Her head heated as the thought carousel spun again. “I should have told him that I love him.”
“Why didn’t you?” asked Hattie, sounding curious rather than judgmental.
“If only I knew,” she said. “Every time the words were forming, I became utterly paralyzed. As if something terrible would happen if I said it out loud.”
She knocked her knuckles against her forehead, and it made a dull sound.
Annabelle grabbed her hand. “Stop that, that’s of no use. Just think of what to do now.”
“If he’s being matched with someone, whatever you do, you have to do it quickly,” Hattie remarked, eyeing the smoothed halves of the telegram.