She smiled, rather somberly. “And history becomes a legend.”
“Sach,” he conceded, “the truth.”
It occurred to him that she had observed him throughout the conversation without any great reaction on her face or in her tone, as though information passed into her brain undistorted by the filter of personal emotions most people had installed in their ears. It made him feel as though he could trust her to distill her thoughts on any matter into something close to an objective assessment. He rarely felt this way about someone. Whenever he did, it meant he had found a person whose judgment he truly valued. His eyes were suddenly hurting as if he were angry; it had to be anger because his body was tense and he felt the urge to do something physical to relieve the pressure. He put his hands flat on the scarred table. Years ago, when he had caused a rift in the family thanks to his obsession with an unsuitable woman, Nassim had asked him: Why her? Yes, she’s beautiful and the family is noble, but many other women offer the same? Elias had answered truthfully: Because I want to know her thoughts and I know she wants to hear mine.
You have exchanged three sentences!
It was in her eyes.
Lord. Women are women, they’re not your friend, that’s what men are for.
Elias had disagreed; in marriage, he had wanted something like his parents had shared. Laughter. Companionship. A haven in a stormy sea. Later, when less lovesick, he had decided his memories of his parents’ relationship must have been the figment of a seven-year-old boy’s imagination, embellished in retrospect. Making this decision had put his restlessness at ease. Any woman would do, then, once he was settled enough to marry well. It had eased the pressure off having to find the one. It was pure coincidence that he hadn’t married yet; he was quite rich now, yes, but he was busy.
“I must meet Leighton as soon as possible,” he said in a low voice. “Wester Ross should preside over the meeting.”
She glanced left and right from under her lashes, then she put her teacup down and leaned forward. Her face was close now, her eyes so limpid, she couldn’t have hidden a scrap of insincerity.
“I shall assist you,” she said. “Within my means, I’m at your service.”
A part of him had anticipated it. A part of him knew her. Color had returned to her lips, the pale pinkness of an apricot blossom. If he leaned just a little closer, too, her mouth was almost near enough to kiss. She must have read it on his face, because her expression abruptly shuttered and she rose.
“I shall see you in the Common Room, tomorrow, same time as always,” she said, her posture infused with a determination he hadn’t perceived in her before. Now she seemed a hundred miles out of his reach while standing right in front of him.
Unexpectedly, he met her later in the day when he returned to Leighton’s trove in the Ashmolean. The quiet figure in front of a shelf caught him off guard. She was alone. She did not turn around when he closed the door. Silence cloaked the marble bulls and the dusty air sweltered beneath the skylight, as if the chamber had been placed under a large looking glass.
He joined her in surveying the shelves, standing a little closer than was proper.
“All of this,” she said, still taking in the jumble of statuettes and necklaces, stone fragments, and slabs of mosaic.
“A lot of it,” Elias said. He opened his satchel and pulled out the inventory list, a careworn document of several tightly written pages. “There seem to be about twice as many items here than are on my sponsor’s list. These ones for example, they are not from our shores.”
He pointed at a pair of Sumerian sculptures that stared back at them with frozen indigo eyes.
“Neither is this,” she said, and picked up the fragment of a glazed blue tile with a bright vegetal pattern.
“Persian,” he said.
“Absolutely, Persian,” she agreed.
Briefly, they glanced at each other in inconvenient, mutual appreciation. She returned her attention to the crowded shelves.
“It’s as though he raked a net from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean and took all he happened to catch,” she said. “Without much care, either.”
Her voice was thick. She was running her gloved thumb over the still fresh edge of the broken tile in her hand, carefully as if stroking it better. His head went strangely empty, seeing this. His next coherent thought was that he had forgiven her for snooping through his belongings and for slandering his perfectly sized weapons.
“Oh, don’t,” she said when she noticed he was reaching for the freshly pressed handkerchief in his waistcoat pocket.