Page 63 of A Lady’s Guide to Subterfuge and Science

“I don’t know!” she burst out. “I have no idea where I’m going, Oliver. What I want to do is go home and never show my face in London again.”

“Come now, Kalila, you can’t—”

“Kalila!” she repeated. Her own name seemed to mock her.

“That is your name, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, all the fight in her disappearing in a sudden puff of smoke. “Kalila Darwish.”

He smiled. “A pleasure to meet you again.”

She continued to walk, going nowhere in particular. “Must you follow me? I need to—”

Before she could finish her sentence, the heavens burst open. Rain began to fall in freezing sheets, leaving Oliver almost as drenched as she was.

“You were right,” he said, having the nerve to sound unruffled. “It does look like rain after all.”

*

She was angry. Angry and expressive in a way he had never seen her before.

The anger made perfect sense. Her cover had been blown by a creature with a pea-sized brain. He couldn’t help but be grateful to that fish, abandoned on the edge of the lake as it was, for doing its part.

Not that he could say as much to Kalila, given that she was currently rooted in place as the rain continued to fall.

Oliver pushed his hair back from his forehead. “Come on.”

Sighing, she followed him to the rickety old shed. He yanked the door open and waited.

“What?” she demanded.

“After you.”

She stormed in, grumbling the entire way. Oliver followed to see that the shed was empty save for a rusty pile of gardening tools, a small table and single chair, and a sliver of a bed piled with dusty blankets.

It would have to do.

Kalila sat on the chair and buried her head in her hands. Oliver retrieved a blanket from the bed, shook it out, and offered it to her.

It was then that he noticed that she was sniffling.

He knelt before her. “I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

Hazel eyes glossy with tears met his. “You weren’t supposed to have noticed.”

Gently, he took her delicate hands in his and smiled at her. “How could I have not?” He reached up and tapped the dent in the skin on her nose. “I remembered this.” He let his touch trace her damp cheek. “All this lovely skin, and—” His eyes met hers again. “How could I forget these eyes?”

She sniffed, her gaze breaking from his. “Because you’re a good microscopist.”

“Maybe,” he said, knowing that that wasn’t the reason at all. It was because he hadn’t been able to look away the first day they’d met.

“Why did you say you wanted to see me again?” she croaked. “At Willow House, I mean. You knew you’d see me the next day.”

Oliver shrugged. “I didn’t want to see Dameer Rafiq. I wanted to see you. Entirely different, you see.”

“I don’t see,” she said, water dripping down her face. “I don’t understand at all.”

“What don’t you understand?”