The Gentleman's Gambit (A League of Extraordinary Women, #4)

by Evie Dunmore

“The trouble is, Mr. Khoury, that people aren’t interested in either logic or facts, not when it’s at cross-purposes with their convenience and convictions.

“She is my best man.” Oh, but she was a woman, too, Elias thought. And she loathes my very presence.

Here, they would probably call his odd jobs smuggling. Personally, he would call it assisting with repatriation when required.

He tried to keep them separate, the naked goddess and the lady, to behave properly in her company. Now she had blurred the lines.

The gentleman was rather flirtatious.” Catriona’s brows pulled together. “We discussed the effect of international capitalism on women’s position in society.” “That’s right.” MacKenzie nodded gravely. “Sweet music to your ears.”

“When I first saw you,” he said, “I thought you were a goddess. I would have worshipped you, on my knees.”

Why her? Yes, she’s beautiful and the family is noble, but many other women offer the same? Elias had answered truthfully: Because I want to know her thoughts and I know she wants to hear mine. You have exchanged three sentences!

“If I were the only person in the world,” she said to the ceiling, “how would I even know I was a woman? Who would tell me? Who would make me? I would just be me. Why can’t I just be me?”

Blush, he willed her, or say something strange. Say nothing at all, if you must, but act normal.

For a moment, her soul had found a matching power. As his thumbs touched the wet corners of her eyes, she knew he had etched a space for himself into her heart so deeply that the days without him would echo with his absence.

In the lucid moment a man knew after passion, he had rested his head on her soft breasts and felt the rhythm of her heart against his cheek, and a deep sense of peace, as though time itself had stopped, had settled in his body. This was how it felt in his imagination: home.

“You will always have a home here,” she said quietly. “And wherever you go, you carry the mountains with you and will leave an imprint.”

He sheathed the knife and stood up, cradling the cedar sapling to his chest with the care one would afford a newborn. “It’s coming with us,” he said. “The roots are good. They will grow again.”

“This is a new dawn,” she said. “It’s rising over ruins, though,” Hattie murmured. “Yes,” said Annabelle, “but we are looking at the silver lining.”