Lady Catriona was seated opposite Elias, cloaked in an old plaid and stoic silence, her pale face tinted golden by the evening light. It wasn’t overly surprising that she had joined them instead of feigning an indisposition. At the lake, she had faced him with the fatalistic courage of a queen on the brink of a battle.
“How are you enjoying Scotland thus far, Mr. Khoury?” asked the earl. He sat at the head of the table to Elias’s left and was eating the first-course soup with a hearty appetite.
“I enjoy it very well,” Elias replied. “In my homeland, I can see the sea from the mountains—just like here, on Applecross.”
“Mm.” The earl nodded with his mouth full. “You ought to feel right at home here, then.”
He wouldn’t go as far as that.
“Was that a Jacobite flag I saw on my way to the dining hall?” he asked instead. “It was in a frame above the main staircase.”
“Ha!” Wester Ross looked pleased. “Well spotted. Don’t let the English know. Or our fellow Campbells.”
“I have limited knowledge about Scottish history,” Elias said. All he knew came from a book he had hastily acquired in Marseille while on his way here. Had he skipped the chapter on sea lore and selkies, he might not have stood and stared at the earl’s well-formed daughter like a pervert. He cleared his throat. “I thought the Campbells famously supported the government against the Jacobite rebellions.”
“Indeed,” said the earl. “However, two Campbell leaders joined the Jacobites, and my family descended from one of them. I reckon that’s why we call this windy peninsula our home, rather than a grand place in Argyll.” He chuckled. “Now, the flag is from the first rising, nearly 170 years old. We keep it; it’s an archaeologist’s innate affection for bygone things, I suppose—and”—he looked at Elias over the rim of his spectacles—“a reminder of the troubles between the Highland people. Turning on one another when a greater enemy was always right at the gates? Don’t repeat foolish mistakes, says that flag.”
Elias wondered whether the earl and his daughter were Catholics, like the Jacobites. He sensed cautious blue eyes on him then, stealthy as kitten paws. His skin warmed all over with awareness. He glanced at her, his gaze brushing hers as carefully as fingertips would test the heat of a stove top.
Lady Catriona pulled her plaid more tightly around her shoulders. “Where in Mount Lebanon are you from, Mr. Khoury?” she asked.
She had mastered the art of looking at a person while avoiding their eyes by a hair.
“From Zgharta,” he replied. “A mountain village two hours from the coast, from Tripoli.”
She nodded as if familiar with the geography. “Did you leave from Tripoli?”
“No. From Beirut to Marseille. From there, railroads, carriages, then a ferry to Dover.”
“Was your journey affected by the aggression in Egyptian waters?”
He wasn’t often uncertain what to say, but he was now.
“The British navy began shelling Alexandria last week,” she added, misreading his silence when he had understood her very well.
“My journey was not affected,” he said at last.
Discussing politics at the table of strangers was a taboo and it was surprising that she had broken it. What made a British lady if not her flawless mastery of etiquette? She actually seemed disappointed for a moment, as though she had wished for him to engage. She picked up her spoon and turned to her soup. He drank some wine so he wouldn’t say something reckless to regain her attention.
“I’m delighted that you brought a whole crate of this vintage,” remarked the professor. “A most excellent red.” He raised his glass toward Elias. In the old crystal goblet, the wine glowed like liquid rubies. “What winery was it, you said?”
“Ch?teau Ksara. From the Bekaa.”
Lady Catriona had not yet touched her glass.
“Catriona, have you heard,” the earl said, “they found an industrial-sized wine press near Sidon, in Tell el-Burak. Phoenician. Almost three thousand years old.”
She glanced up. “Aye, I’ve read the article.”
“Nothing escapes her attention,” the earl told Elias, his eyes shiny with pride. “She never forgets a thing, either.”
Clearly, appreciating the daughter’s bookishness would flatter the earl. Elias took the opportunity to look at her with impunity. “Ma’am, earlier today you mentioned that you are working on a book.”