Chapter Eighteen
When Kalila awoke, the sun was peeking over the horizon. She took stock of her surroundings, sluggishly processing the dark-green velvet drapes embroidered with gold thread, the soft coverlet that enveloped her, and the comforting weight of an arm around her waist.
Oliver’s arm.
She snapped her eyes shut. How could she have been so—so—brave?
For the past nine years, she had constructed careful walls around herself while finding comfort in the steadfast nature of research.
She’d relied on having procedures to guide her through most everything she pursued.
Last night, however, had been filled with uncertainty.
Uncertainty and vulnerability and dizzying pleasure.
I thought that bravery had been lost to me, she thought. She had packed it away along with everything else. Anything to avoid being stifled.
But Oliver had seen past all that to the very heart of her last night. She’d given him more than she had offered anybody in a long time.
And no judgment had been passed. No shackles had been placed around her ankles. It had been wonderful, and yet—
You’re going to have to mend more than your pride when you return to Painswick.
Kalila let out a long exhale as the thought settled like a weight in her chest. She would have to tie up her loose ends soon.
Beginning, her mind reminded her, steering her toward safer, less terrifying thoughts, with finding your paper.
“What are you sighing for?” a graveled, sleepy voice murmured behind her. “It’s too early for sighing.”
“I was thinking about my paper,” she lied, the words coming out on another sigh. “I really ought to look for it again.”
Oliver’s thumb made soft strokes under her breast, sending shivers down her spine. Gathering her close and pressing a kiss to her neck, he said, “You sound like you need a distraction.”
She giggled despite herself. “I sound like someone who needs to find her paper.”
Another kiss, this time on her shoulder. “I seem to recall offering to help you rewrite it.”
“You did,” Kalila said, turning toward him. Good God, how does he manage to look perfect even in the morning? “But I really ought to search for it first. It’s—I put a lot of work into it.”
Oliver regarded her for a moment, a lazy smile on his face. “If you want to look for it, then we’ll look for it.”
“We?” Kalila wiggled out of his embrace and sat up. “You don’t—”
“Kalila,” he interrupted, pushing himself up and leaning toward her. “Let me help you.”
Come, Kalila. Be brave.
“Fine.”
“Good.”
They spent the next several moments scanning the floor for their discarded clothing. Kalila caught sight of herself in the mirror once she was fully dressed, hands flying to the wild hair that sat proudly atop her head.
“You should be fine.” Oliver appeared behind her and ruffled her curls. “I’ve been to the university at this hour. I guarantee it’ll be empty.”
“I need to think of something before today’s lecture,” Kalila said, taking the hat he offered her.
“I can also guarantee that Hughes will have you sorted out,” Oliver assured her, steering her out of the room and down the stairs.
“You seem terribly insistent on not having me worry,” Kalila grumbled, shivering as they stepped out into the foggy London morning.
“Very perceptive of you.”
They walked in what Kalila found to be surprisingly comfortable silence. The last time she’d taken a similar walk—one that had had certain activities precede it—she’d felt giddy and awkward.
She thought you were supposed to feel giddy and awkward. But with Oliver, it was gentle. Unassuming.
Her contemplation was halted by the sight of the university. As Oliver had promised, the grounds were completely empty. The entryway and halls were so quiet that she almost felt as though they were breaking some unspoken law by being there.
“After you,” Oliver said, holding the door to 107 open for her. He led her to a shelf that sat collecting dust in a corner. “Loose pieces of paper usually end up here.”
They began to rifle through all they could get their hands on, finding papers dated as early as 1839. Kalila let out a huff of frustration as they reached the end of the pile, wondering why it was her own work was so determined to make her life so difficult.
“Maybe we should—did you hear that?” Oliver asked, cutting himself off.
Kalila placed a book back on the dusty shelf. “Hear what?”
“Footsteps.” Without further elaboration, Oliver grabbed her by the arm and shoved her into the supply closet that sat a few paces away from the door.
“Are you sure?” Kalila whispered, blinking as she became accustomed to the gloom. The supply closet was full of slide boxes, empty glass tanks, and what appeared to be ancient microscopes. Something poked into her back as she tried and failed to avoid pressing her body against Oliver’s.
“I’m—”
“Shh!” she said, straining to hear. “You’re right, I—”
The door to the supply closet remained cracked open, unable to fully contain its two intruders. Kalila leaned over Oliver to peer into the laboratory.
Jennings. The person in 107 was Andrew Jennings.
Kalila’s eyes met Oliver’s in the weak light.
A frown played at his lips, which told her that he, too, had spotted Jennings through the partially open door.
Jennings milled around the laboratory, seeming to search for something.
Finally, he produced a length of string and seated himself at the bench closest to the supply closet.
Kalila gave Oliver a questioning look, receiving only a shrug in return. For a moment, she was intensely aware of just how tangled in one another they were. How his hard body radiated heat against hers, how his hands seemed to find her waist so as to steady her, how—
It was then that she saw it.
As Jennings rifled through the papers he’d brought with him, she caught sight of an all too familiar diagram.
Her diagram.
Andrew Jennings was tying up her paper, the rat.
Kalila was overcome with the instant, urgent need to burst out of the supply closet and snatch her work away from him.
Oliver held her back, his grip firm as they watched Jennings fold her paper, tie it up, and leave the room.
Kalila gave up her struggling, and she and Oliver stood in silence, their labored breathing the only sound reaching her ears.
Finally, Oliver pushed the door open and stepped out into the laboratory. He turned to her. “You can come out now.”
Kalila remained rooted in place, her blood cold in her veins. “Why did you do that?”
He frowned. “Do what?”
“That was my paper, Oliver.”
“I know it was.”
“Why didn’t you let me out?”
An uncertain expression crossed his features. “Because you’d have been found out. And ruined.”
“Ruined for being a woman in men’s clothing?”
“Ruined for being a woman in men’s clothing holed up with a man inside of a supply closet,” he corrected.
He was right. She knew he was right, and still she was furious. Furious that Jennings had his hands on her work, furious that she had no idea what he intended to do with it, and furious that—that—
“I shouldn’t have come here,” she ground out, exiting the supply closet and marching out of the room.
Oliver trailed behind her. “Whatever Jennings intends to do—”
“What does he intend to do?” Kalila burst out, leaving the building and leading them back toward Rosewood. She needed to fetch her wig or at least figure out how to solve the issue of her hair before the day began.
“I don’t know,” Oliver said, scrambling to keep up with her. “But I promise you that—”
“Don’t,” she snapped, whirling around to face him. “Do not make promises you can’t keep. That paper was—is everything to me. It’s my life’s work.”
And I abandoned it.
“I know,” he said. “I know it is. But we don’t know what Jennings intends to do with it.”
“No,” she said, trying to calm herself, “I suppose not.”
“There’s really only so much he can do,” Oliver continued, taking her by the elbow and leading her to Rosewood.
Kalila wracked her brain in an attempt to run through every possibility. What could he do with a paper that was so obviously hers?
She let out a long breath. “Still, he was being very suspicious about it.”
“Jennings is always like that,” Oliver told her, leading her into the house. “I’ve never seen him behave otherwise. But the paper is yours, Kalila. Everyone knows it. The worst he could do is destroy it.”
“But you’ll help me rewrite it.”
He smiled then, dazzling and comforting all at once. “There you go. Everything you wrote is still in that head of yours, my clever girl.”
There was that endearment again. As before, it caused her heart to skip a beat.
Well, two. But she’d never admit to that.
“There you are.”
Hughes approached them with a perfect bundle of blond curls in his hands.
“Is that—?” Kalila gasped, reaching out to take the wig from his hands. It looked as if it hadn’t been sopping wet only a day ago. She tugged it over her curls and said, “You are a marvel, Mr. Hughes.”
“Well done, Hughes,” Oliver said. “Saving the day, as always.”
A charming blush came over Hughes’s face. “It was nothing. Will you be taking breakfast?”
“There’s no time.” Kalila fussed with her wig, tucking her stray curls beneath it. “We can’t be late.”
“As the lady commands,” Oliver said, once again following her out of the house and down the road back to the university. The sun was high in the sky now, and the streets were bustling with people.
“I wish I knew what to expect,” Kalila murmured as Oliver opened the door to 107 for the second time that day.
“Indeed,” Oliver said, joining her at a bench, “but I very much doubt we’ll hear more of it tod—”
“Gentlemen,” Comerford barked.
“Someone’s energetic,” Oliver remarked.
“He’s been like this since I got here,” Dunn confided from a nearby bench.
Young spoke next. “He was muttering something about a rev—”
“A revelation!” Comerford exploded in glee. “I have been presented with a scientific revelation.”
Oliver chuckled and raised an eyebrow in Kalila’s direction. “This ought to be good.”