“You’re sad,” he said. “About the tile.”
She carefully placed the fragment back onto the shelf. “Ashamed, rather. It might seem laughable to you.”
“I’m not laughing, am I.”
“It’s just that this tile was intact for a thousand years until a random human came along,” she said. “Imagine lasting a millennium only to be broken after all. By someone to whom you are entirely exchangeable.”
He couldn’t say that he had ever thought this way, but whatever she read in his face encouraged her to keep talking.
“There’s a belief among the Celts, that the ruins of a house still home the spirits of those who once lived there.” She angled her head as though she were asking someone a question. “Perhaps I believe it still,” she said. “Perhaps that’s what makes me feel sad, because my father presides over this mess, when he should innately be mindful about it. And I paid no attention, either.”
Habibti, he thought.
He raised his hand to touch her pale cheek. “I’m lucky to have met a daughter of Celts, then.”
Her breathing hitched. She took a small step back.
“Sir,” she said in a low tone. “I must ask you to stop this.”
He lowered his hand and curled his fingers. “Stop what.”
“Your flirtations. They are not necessary.” Her jaw set at a hard angle. “I would have assisted you anyway. You obviously have a righteous cause.”
His face heated. He felt both caught and falsely accused. “I require no particular reason to flirt with you.”
“I’m well aware that I was your pawn sacrifice,” she continued, calmly, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Ensorcel the earl’s daughter to secure her cooperation, wasn’t it? Her feelings are a small price for retrieving stolen artifacts. And you know, I do agree with that.” She nodded. “I would have done the same, in your place.”
Pressure built behind his eyes. She was misconstruing last night so terribly that he had a physical reaction to it, but yes, there had been a ploy to seduce her, too.
He gestured, impatiently. “Believe me that kissing you—”
“Please,” she said, cutting him off. “Pretend that never happened.”
She missed his stare by a hair: the stubborn, avoidant look of an animal that tried to defuse aggression by avoiding direct eye contact. He shook his head, as if that would clear his mind. It had been muddled since last night, since trying to figure out how to finish what they had started in the library. The decent way to do it involved asking the earl for his daughter’s hand; but, given the circumstances, it was also the most outlandish way, and so he was still in a state of nonconclusion.
“Tayyeb, tayyeb, habibti,” he finally said. “As you wish.”
He would still be in the Common Room every day at one o’clock with a chess game they had yet to finish.
Chapter 14
Saturday afternoon, Catriona wrote an urgent note to Wester Ross to see her in Oxford in case he happened to be in London the coming week. The sooner justice was done, the better. As an added benefit, she would never have to see Elias again. I require no particular reason to flirt with you. Her smile was so dry, her lips might crack. He wasn’t the first to use her for her brains or connections; everyone she had fancied before him had done it and patterns were nothing if not consistent. There was a cruel irony in finding herself reduced to the very thing she had worked so hard to cultivate, her academic position. It was as though a woman could have either a brain or a heart, and whichever way, she was allowed only half a life.
She spent another hour copying her letter of appeal about the writ for restitution for a fresh batch of men of influence. This, at least, was time and effort well spent on worthy work, and her moving pen kept the ghosts at bay. Unfortunately, her first wave of correspondence had elicited only two kinds of responses so far: silence, and utter nonsense. After signing the last letter, she tapped her pen against the rim of the ink bottle and put the cap back on. She sat in her chair and stared into the walled fellows’ garden outside the window behind her desk. Her breathing was slow and careful. With her hands idle, her ghosts drifted closer. She could make out Charlie. Charlie had been the first to hurt her the way she had just been hurt again.
Charles, son of neighboring Baron Middleton, had called on the Campbells to see the hieroglyph stone. She had been ten, he had been twelve, with a slim build and silky blond hair that framed his finely drawn face in perfect waves. She had seen him on occasion since nursery days, but that day, when he stood in the library waiting in vain for Wester Ross, she had really seen him. A sensation had fluttered low in her belly. It had been a familiar feeling but only from reading about particularly beautiful, valiant characters in one of her novels. It had made her want to hide from him, but when it became obvious that her father had forgotten about his visitor, she had crept from her reading place and offered to take him to see the hieroglyphs.