Chapter Eighteen #3
His thoughts were dashed away by the motion of the door opening before him. Caroline Southcott stood on the threshold, her violet eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“It’s you.” She nodded at the small boxes he held in his hands. “What have you brought?”
“Supplies for our project,” he replied, hoping she didn’t mean to leave him out in the rain. “Miss Southcott—”
“I know you know,” she interrupted, stepping out of the way. “She’s in the attic. Upset, but I know you know that, too.”
Oliver stepped in, sensing that Caroline was not particularly interested in his input on the subject.
Giving her a polite tip of the head, he made his way up two flights of stairs before reaching the very top of the townhouse.
Holding the boxes in one hand, he used the other to knock at the only door available to him.
“Dameer, I told you, I—” Kalila began, nearly pulling the door off its hinges. Her words died in her throat, her shoulders slumping. “It’s you.”
“Miss Southcott said very much the same thing,” Oliver said, offering her a smile. “Warm welcomes all around, really.”
Kalila sighed, the sound soft and melancholic. “I should have sent word to Rosewood. I’m sorry.”
I should be apologizing to you.
“I’d have come anyway,” he assured her.
She raised her eyebrows at that, and he wondered if she could truly be surprised after all they had experienced together. Moving aside, she gestured for him to enter. “What did you bring?”
“Everything we need to get this slide over and done with.”
At that, Kalila grinned at him. “Charming.”
“That’s me,” he said, placing the icebox on a nearby desk and shedding his overcoat.
Trying his hardest not to be too obvious about it, he cast his gaze around the room.
Kalila had clearly made this attic her home in the short time she’d been in London.
Small and cozy, it presented like an altar to her undying love for science.
Papers and slide boxes dotted every available surface, and a scuffed brass microscope sat proudly in the middle of the desk.
Absentmindedly, he thought about what it would be like to be one of Kalila’s objects of affection. To feel the depth of her devotion and the wholeness of her love.
Jealous of a microscope, he thought with wry amusement. A new low.
Behind him, Kalila opened a box and began to pull out the supplies he had thrown together, placing them on the desk.
“Kalila,” he said, watching her work, “about Jennings—”
“It’s fine,” she interrupted, examining the carp eggs.
“I just need a bit of time,” he told her. “I’ll think of something.”
“I wonder if any of this was worth it,” she said. “I can’t help but ask myself if I should have stayed in Painswick.”
Oliver handed her a glass slide. “We might not have met then.”
“You would have just kept writing me in the margins of my papers.”
He leaned in close. “You’re worth far more than notes in margins.”
She didn’t respond, far too absorbed in the construction of their slide. They worked in near silence, communicating easily through nods and glances. He dyed the specimen, she mounted the coverslip. He etched their initials into the glass, she wrapped it in gilt paper.
Oliver had always been under the impression that being in love was like being continuously struck by lightning.
And although he had been stunned when he’d first laid eyes on her the day he’d dropped by unannounced, he realized now just how gentle and quiet loving Kalila was.
A still, calm lake instead of a tempestuous storm.
Finally, long after they’d lit the candles scattered about the attic, Kalila peered through the microscope to examine their work.
“Well?”
“The dye is so clean, Oliver,” she said, pride coming off her in waves. “Well done. You’re very clever at it.”
He chuckled as she allowed him his turn at the eyepiece. “Not a compliment I hear too often, I assure you.”
“If I am worth more than notes in margins,” she said, “then you are worth more than the way your father has made you feel about yourself. You are clever, whether he thinks so or not.”
In that moment, it seemed impossible to do anything but love her. Oliver blinked, unable to respond, unable to tell her that he still owed her an apology and that perhaps he really wasn’t as clever as she believed him to be. He hadn’t, for example, come up with a solution to the issue of her paper.
“Do you want to draw the diagram, or shall I?” she asked, turning to pull out a clean piece of paper.
“I’ll do it,” he said hoarsely. “You should rest.”
“If you do the drawing, I’ll do the labeling,” she offered, as if she hadn’t shot yet another arrow straight into his heart mere seconds ago. “How does that sound?”
“Fine,” he said, overcome with a sudden, deep-rooted need to make her stay. Stay in London, stay with him, just stay. “That sounds fine.”
She plopped down on the edge of her bed and beamed at him. “We make a good team.”
“Yes,” he said, feeling as though he were moments from falling to bits and wishing he knew what was going on behind that composed facade of hers, “we do.”