Page 47 of A Lady’s Guide to Subterfuge and Science

“Comerford said no, I assume.”

Kalila saw Oliver leaning against the far wall. The pity on his face made her want to kick him.

“Indeed,” she said, tone emotionless as she began to walk down the hall. She needed to leave, had to return to the townhouse to her own space, to the altar she had built to the pursuit that seemed to hate her so.

Oliver pushed himself off the wall and made quick work of catching up to her. “Where are you going? I want to apologize.”

Kalila stopped dead in her tracks and, this time, it was Oliver’s turn to almost crash into her. “I’m going home. Apologize for what?”

“When you asked me about letting women in, I—” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “You caught me off guard, is all. I thought—”

Goodness, but she was tired of men today. “What did you think?”

Oliver went silent then, his manner uncharacteristically unreadable. “I can’t say.”

“I see,” Kalila grumbled. She began to move again, the sound of Oliver’s footsteps echoing behind her.

“I am sorry, though,” he said, coming up beside her once more. “And why are you going home, anyway? Lecture starts in five minutes.”

“I’m feeling a bit ill.” She made a sharp turn toward the exit. “Give my excuses to Comerford, won’t you?”

“Come now, Rafiq,” he said, wrapping his hand around her arm and bringing her to a standstill, “you can’t have thought—”

Of course he would think so, with how unbelievably stupid her plan had been. This would never have succeeded. It wasn’t just that it had been ill-conceived, it was about her being in the wrong time, the wrong place, surrounded by the wrong people. She was far ahead of the whole lot of them, and it had been silly of her to expect them to understand.

“It’s about being open-minded,” she said, annoyed at the thrill that shot through her stomach at his grip on her arm. “How shall we ever move forward?”

“We’ll need more than four members to start,” Oliver muttered.

“Tell me—what do you think the others would have said about my idea?”

Oliver released her arm. “Jennings would have been against it.”

“Obviously,” Kalila said with a roll of her eyes. She wanted to know if any of it had ever held any promise at all. “And the rest of them?”

“I imagine they might have reacted the very same way I did.” Oliver’s tone was tinged with what sounded like guilt. “Not quite against it, but—”

“Not enough to bring it to Comerford.”

He clenched his jaw. “No. Not enough to bring it to Comerford.”

She shifted her attention to the empty hall, still desperate to leave. “Will you make my excuses?”

“You really won’t stay?” he asked, concern evident on his sinfully handsome face.

“Not today,” she said. She would allow herself a day’s rest, a moment to recuperate and recover from her own foolishness. “Will you make my excuses or not?”

“I’ll always make your excuses, Rafiq.”

She wondered at his choice of words, then remembered how little all of this had mattered.

How much she had failed by being so ignorant of her own impulsive nature and by being so intoxicated with the freedom her disguise had offered her.

So she thanked him, turned on her heel, and left.

Chapter Twelve

“Won’t you sit down?”