His body had gone still. “So am I,” he said. “Going to London.”
There was, in fact, a large valise behind him, still on the porter’s handcart.
“I left a note for you, too,” he added.
It was true, an envelope was sitting in the Campbell pigeonhole.
Her poor heart was torn between sinking and somersaulting.
She turned back to Elias. “Are you taking the next train, by any chance?”
His colorful eyes flashed, confirming her suspicion.
A high-pitched noise rang in her ears. Was it destiny, laughing at her? Judging by the resigned look on his face, he was hearing it, too.
Fifteen minutes after the train had left Oxford’s railway station, Catriona was ready to jump from the small compartment to escape the chaos radiating off Hattie. Her friend was sighing, fidgeting, placing her hands on her rosy cheeks.
Finally, Catriona fixed Hattie with a dark eye. “Go on. Out with it.”
The freckled face was pure innocence. “Out with what.”
“Whatever it is that is trying to burst out of your mouth about Mr. Khoury.”
They were alone in the coach, which seated six, their travel veils thrown back. Elias was in the next coach, safely out of earshot. Still his presence was so present, he might as well have been seated right next to her. Had she really thought she could escape him by changing location? While he was so snugly ensconced under her skin? Hattie’s eyes had near popped out of her head upon spotting him in their platform section. He had patiently answered all her questions—Where are you staying? The Oxbridge Club in St. James’s . . . For very long? Not too long, I should think . . . Oh, you must come to dinner! I would be delighted, ma’am . . . He even had put his old smile back into place and it had felt glorious, like the sun breaking through November clouds.
“I have nothing at all to say about him,” Hattie said.
“Clearly you do.”
Hattie shook her head. “My body wants to chatter. I don’t.”
A relatable conundrum—Catriona’s muscles were trembling from holding in all the turmoil. Part of her wanted to drag it into the open and rake it over with Hattie until the pressure in her body eased, but since it wouldn’t lead to any conclusion, she kept choking it back down. She put a hand over her stomach and turned her attention to the landscape outside the window. She was seated with her back to the direction of travel, and the gentle summer-green hills of Oxfordshire were flying past as if in retrospect. Hattie took a novel from her pocket, a penny dreadful that probably had a happy ending.
“Hattie,” Catriona finally said, her eyes on the green. “What do you do when something is pointless and yet you still can’t seem to put it aside?”
Hattie lowered the novel, looking alarmed. “I think,” she said after some contemplation, “if it keeps popping up, perhaps it isn’t all that pointless.”
Catriona scoffed, clearly in contempt of herself.
Hattie’s gaze weighed on her. “You really like him, don’t you.”
The gentle, knowing tone loosened the knot blocking her throat.
She blinked rapidly. Next to the railway tracks, the shrubbery was a blur.
For a long stretch, the squeak and rattle of the train wheels filled the silence between them.
“Aye,” she whispered at last. “I really, really like him.”
For once, Hattie’s impish face was somber. “Catriona, what will you do?”
Catriona shook her head. “I don’t know. What do you do when your feelings don’t match your options?”
Hattie made a self-deprecating sound. “You try to not go mad,” she said.
The frenzied encounter on the commode flashed before Catriona’s eyes. She was quite past the point of sanity. She rubbed her thumb over her index finger in a repetitive, soothing motion. She had had a clear plan in place for her life: Become a professor. Help fellow women realize their aspirations. Live in peace. Emotional turmoil was but a blip; every woman knew longing, and most learned to live with it. The misery of an unrequited crush had long been a familiar constant for her and in a way, it had been better than feeling nothing at all. Look here, I do have a heart, said that pain. But now . . .
“It’s funny, isn’t it,” she said, “how we feel rather certain about something, and then it turns out we simply lacked a piece of crucial information that changes everything.”
Such as finding out that unicorns like Elias existed, and that they might desire her, even if they felt that way despite themselves.