She touched her lips.
“We must leave now,” Elias said.
He kissed me. We have kissed.
“Yes,” she said, sounding a little faint. “I shall go ahead.”
She was in the corridor when Elias grabbed her by the wrist. His eyes were stark in his face, a turbulent, liquid green-blue, and it looked as though he was on the verge of announcing something of great importance.
He gave a small shake. “I hold you in high regard,” he said, low and urgent, “we can’t—”
She pulled her arm from his clasp. “I understand.” In truth, her head was empty. The familiar lethargy following the explosion of her senses was washing over her, and it would take a day to arrive at a conclusion about what had just happened. “Let’s join the fun and games, shall we.”
In the drawing room, she drank sherry with her friends and paid him no attention, but her carefree performance was for him—Look, I can be fun! And the kiss was nothing! She won the pantomime contest for her group, and when she feigned excitement and cheered, conscious of Elias watching her with hooded eyes, she thought that her immunization experiment had careened out of control like Frankenstein’s monster.
* * *
—
She woke the next morning in one of Blackstone’s guest rooms. The sunlight streaming through the chintz curtains was thick and golden, announcing noon. She sat on the edge of the mattress, her head drooping as if too heavy for the neck while she took stock of last night’s consequences. Belly: queasy. Head: achy. Sensibilities: deceased. At her core hovered a secret glow, a small ball of light where her soul kept his kiss. Oh God, they had kissed. She buried her face in her hands. It would be easy to blame the Scotch for the escapade, but the Scotch only peeled back the thin veneer of civility which normally concealed her darker side. I would have worshipped you, on my knees. Her body turned weak and pink and she sank back into the sheets. She kept touching her mouth. How did one return to normal after such a thing? To date, everyone she had kissed, she had never seen again soon after. But Elias was very much around. What was worse, seeing him again, or not seeing him again?
To her relief and great disappointment, Elias wasn’t among the guests milling around the late breakfast buffet.
“He left after we closed the drawing room,” Hattie told her while Catriona spooned scrambled eggs onto her plate. “He said he had taken a hotel room near Victoria Station to catch the first train back to Oxford.”
“Mr. Khoury is free to go where he pleases.”
“Indeed,” Hattie said, sounding . . . somewhat shifty.
Catriona lowered the spoon warily. “Is anything the matter?”
“Actually.” Hattie leaned closer. “There is something Mr. Blackstone should like to bring to your attention.”
Premonition fell over Catriona like a shadow and took all warmth from her body.
“Is it about Mr. Khoury?”
Hattie nodded.
Last night’s whisky churned in her stomach. She put down her plate. “Take me to Blackstone.”
“I meant to tell you after you had eaten,” Hattie said mournfully.
They should have told her last night before the intoxicating feel of Elias’s body had become irrevocably imprinted on hers.
Blackstone met them in a quaint, linden-green reading parlor. Impossibly, he looked more brooding than usual.
“Last night, I had a cable sent to an old acquaintance in France,” he told her. He pulled a yellow paper slip from his jacket pocket—a telegram. Catriona felt a curdle of fear. Blackstone’s “old acquaintances” were usually synonymous with his unsavory past.
“When Mr. Khoury introduced himself,” Blackstone went on, “I thought I had heard his name once before, in the context of an incident involving some artifacts. It’s unusual to my ears so it’s not a name I’d forget. I sent a note to see if there was anything to my suspicions. An hour ago, I received a reply.”
He held up the telegram.
“What has he done?” she asked quietly.
Hattie took her hand; her soft fingers felt hot against Catriona’s cold skin. “There is no concrete proof,” she said, “but several years ago, a Mr. Khoury was involved in the theft of some antique jewels.”
“Jewels?”
“From a French count’s private collection,” Blackstone added.
“You wrote to the count?”
Blackstone shook his head. “I’m not acquainted with him, and I doubt he’d make the connection between Mr. Khoury and the theft; it was rumors in the, erm, unofficial networks; people had caught wind that there might be a new mole in town, from the east. It was a hefty theft, so the news of it reached London.”