“It is bizarre,” she agreed. “And overwhelming.”
He did a castling, switching his king and kingside rook, which effectively put His Majesty on the presently safest spot on the battlefield.
She glanced at him.
He caught her gaze, and a crackling arc of tension sprang up between them. Oh, he was still angry. His eyes were an iridescent riot that could well tip over into revolution. A nervous heat spread from her chest all the way to her hairline.
Unexpectedly, he grinned, a rather mean grin. “Leighton mentioned Bek Karam,” he said. “Do you know who betrayed Bek Karam in the end, after he beat the Ottoman army?”
“I don’t, no.”
He leaned forward. “Fellow Maronites.”
“I see.”
“As your friend said, it’s all about power—all are scrambling for a slice, to the detriment of the whole. Bek Karam is in exile now. I doubt he will see the mountain again.”
She couldn’t think of anything appropriately profound to say. He probably thought her awfully cold.
On the chessboard, the situation looked like a text in a language she didn’t speak.
“If we continue to play now,” she said, “you will win. I can’t seem to focus.”
His mouth softened. “Are you asking for mercy?”
“I suppose. I’m aware it defeats the objective of this game.”
He made a soothing motion with his hand. “I won’t deny a lady. We reconvene, as you wish.”
Don’t deny me, she thought stupidly. Kiss me again. For a moment, neither seemed to know what to say. Last evening, her numbness after an overwhelm had proven useful: she had fixed her hair in front of Elias’s mirror, and she had returned to Hall in time for pudding. She had reinstated a cordial relationship with Leighton and Miss Regina, and they had furthered their plans to put the Ashmolean pieces into the British Museum. All throughout, she had seen Elias’s face, taut with dark desire as he rocked against her.
Elias’s eyelids lowered. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said in Arabic.
She pressed her lips together, feeling caught. “Like what.”
“Like you did last evening, in my room.”
“I wasn’t,” she said, her tone convincingly prim.
MacKenzie’s needles clanged like foils coming together. MacKenzie, who always seemed to be with her these days, always watching from under critical brows.
Elias made a cynical sound. “Your father was just here, at St. John’s.”
“Indeed.” It came out in English. Did he mean to tell Wester Ross? Her heartbeat turned painfully unsteady; it felt as though a creature tried to butt its way out of her chest. Did he mean to go to her father . . . to do the honorable thing and ask for her?
Elias’s gaze tracked the expressions on her face, and briefly, a cold emotion hardened his eyes. “I won’t kiss you under your father’s roof again,” he said.
She exhaled. Found her way back into his mother tongue. “What does that mean?”
“I respect the earl.” Said as though he implied that she did not.
He hadn’t kissed her more in the Blackstone library, because he “held her in high regard.” Her consternation showed in her prickly undertone. “Does that mean that when you kiss me, you disrespect me?”
“Some would see it that way.”
“How do you see it?”
His face was inscrutable. “Does it matter, as long as those around us think like this?”
Yes, it did. She would like it confirmed that in his heart of hearts, he found their kisses above reproach and understood that she was her own woman. She glanced away, aware that she had already said and done too much. She had thrown herself at Charlie before, and she had all but propositioned Elias in the Blackstone library, then let him have his way with her on a commode. In the moment, it hadn’t felt like self-degradation because the sincerity and depths of her feelings constituted their own virtue, but he was right, no one else would see it that way.
She emptied her sherry glass.
“This is not my father’s roof,” she said. “It’s university property.”
He smiled at that, softly, as if he understood her pain.
* * *
—
She returned to the Campbell lodgings with her focus shot to pieces. In the study, traces of Wester Ross’s pipe tobacco still lingered in the air. He wasn’t a habitual smoker, but the situation with Leighton had troubled him enough to light up last night. What would you have me do, he had asked her, puffing and raking his fingers through his hair. I saw the firmans, the licenses, with my own eyes before I accepted work on the pieces, and the Ottomans are the official government of Sidon.