“Thank you,” she said. “But I think I’m fine.”
His Beiruti lodgings were in another district, and he did not invite her to join him. At night, she tossed around alone in the pillows, in turns overwhelmed and ecstatic from the ebbs and flows of pure emotions, and the entire time she was missing his warm, supple body next to her in the foreign bed.
The pale-yellow gleam of the morning sun spread east over the sea when she took breakfast, a small cup of syrupy Turkish coffee. A sleepy-looking Peregrin joined her at the table. He set down a tray in front of her, small plates with olives, slices of grilled white cheese, yogurt garnished with swirls of oil, and some of the local bread, soft and thin as a crêpe.
“Trust me,” he said, his eyebrows moving meaningfully. “You will need the sustenance.”
He would know, her itinerary was the reverse of his tour de force earlier: first, a sailboat journey to the old port town Chekka, where Elias had left his horses, then a ride up into the mountains, beyond Ehden to Bsharri, a Maronite town which seemed of importance to Elias.
“It will be fine,” she said, trying to force a slice of cheese down her nervous throat.
“I hope so,” Peregrin said, his gaze narrowing. “Otherwise, Montgomery and Annabelle will take turns to end me.”
The three met at Beirut Port, where the boat was readying for departure, sails clanging against the mast. Elias’s lean figure slipped through the crowd toward them, his hand outstretched to Peregrin. The white scarf was twisted round his cap in a neat coil. His boots were freshly polished, and he wore a crisp new shirt under his buttoned velvet vest. A shiver went through Catriona when he dipped his head to her, so formal, but she knew the look in his eyes, languid and full of indecent promises. She could smell him, summer and salt. She wanted to press up against his chest and lick his neck. A heavy, damning heat sank through her belly. Would they be alone together sometime soon? Would they be alone at all?
On the deck, he kept an appropriate distance from her, but their bodies kept angling toward each other, drawn by the same center of gravity between them that had inexorably pulled them into bed together before. They stood at the bow now where the turquoise waves parted into foaming trails, and she turned her face into the headwind to let the cool sea spray hit her face. The ride would take five hours. Five hours of Elias with no touching.
He purchased drinking water from the boat vendor and handed her a bottle. His fingertips brushed against hers, his bare, hers gloved, and the fleeting contact prickled through far more delicate places.
Elias watched her raise the trembling bottle to her lips with hooded eyes.
“It is clear, then,” he said. “We love each other.”
She swallowed her drink without choking. “Indeed.”
“And we have forgiven each other.”
“Have you?” she asked, carefully.
He did not reply immediately. “I wanted to stay angry with you,” he then said. A shrug. “I couldn’t. You weren’t in front of my eyes, but you were the only thing I could see all week. I still don’t like being made a fool of, my dear. You may keep secrets; however, if you were mine, you couldn’t keep secrets that involve me. I would need you to be honest. I need to be able to trust you. If I don’t know something, I can’t fix it.”
If you were mine.
A wedding was not a foregone conclusion, then. She clasped the water bottle, nodding. “What else?” she asked. “What else do you need in a wife?”
That earned her a lazy grin. They both remembered cold champagne in Acton Town.
“Go look into a mirror,” he said. “And you will see.”
She flushed with pleasure. “I found your telegram, in St. John’s,” she blurted. “I thought perhaps, you are engaged by the time I arrive here.”
“Ah.”
A lock of her hair, tugged loose by gusts of wind, glued itself to her lips. Elias looked at it keenly for a moment, but he closed his fingers over the strap of his knapsack instead of brushing it away.
“I’m not engaged,” he replied. “But I am leaving the family business.” He hesitated. “And I’m leaving Mount Lebanon.”
Perceiving her shocked silence, he gave her a moment to recover, idly leaning against the railing, his eyes half-closed against the mist and sunshine.
“What happened?” she dared to ask. And what does it mean for us?
A muscle worked in his jaw. “Wallahi, I love my family, but there’s not enough room for both my uncle and me in the business,” he said. “And outside of that, I have a feeling the Ottomans will make it rough for us. Their control over this region is slipping, there’s something in the air in the cities on the coast. They can’t really fight us in the mountains, but they can cut us off, the supply routes . . .” With a glance at her perturbed face, his voice trailed off. “If there’s a war, I will come back here to fight with Zgharta,” he said brusquely, “but as long as all remains as it is, quite stable, quite good, I’ll just start building my business elsewhere.”