Page 81 of A Lady’s Guide to Subterfuge and Science

“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.”

Chapter Nineteen

We do work well together.

Kalila spared a quick glance at Oliver as he yawned in boredom. She nudged him in the ribs and was rewarded with a lopsided grin.

“What?”

“Try to be professional,” she admonished. “Comerford will be by at any moment.”

“Please,” Oliver sighed. “He’s been asking Dunn and Jennings questions for the past thirty minutes at least.”

Kalila craned her head to see that Comerford was indeed still interrogating the two men about the intestinal section that, she suspected, Dunn had prepared on his own.

“Poor Dunn,” she murmured.

“Indeed,” Oliver agreed. “And poor us, having to sit here and wait.”

As if deciding to finally take pity on them, Comerford moved to their bench.

“Well, gentlemen? What do we have here?”

“Eggs,” Kalila said, trying very hard to suppress a smile. “From a carp.”

Comerford bent to look through the microscope. “How unique.”

Kalila puffed with pride as Oliver nodded at her in encouragement.

That was Oliver. Always encouraging, always supportive, always—

“How did you come by such an interesting specimen?” Comerford asked with an impressed twinkle in his eye.

“We fished,” Oliver told him. “We fished for hours. Almost a day, really.”

“Pity you only caught the one, then,” Jennings said from across the room.

“You’ve all done well,” Comerford interjected, making his way to the front of the room. “And you’ve all clearly benefited from my instruction,” he added in what Kalila thought a somewhat obnoxious, self-congratulatory nature, “but I must say that Booth and Rafiq have outdone themselves. Their slide is near perfect.”

Kalila held her breath, her hand dropping beneath the bench to wrap around Oliver’s wrist. They’d won. And she’d done it by working with a man she’d been bickering with through the post for years. It seemed a ridiculous turn of events, but now was not the time to dwell on the theatrical bent her life had taken over the past few weeks. Instead, she rather wished she could grab Oliver by the lapels and press a kiss to his handsome face.

It was a shame about the disguise. And the laboratory. And the scientists who were grinning—or glaring, in Jennings’s case—in her general direction.

“But—” Jennings began before Comerford interrupted.

“Space in the journal is yours,” he said, nodding at Kalila and Oliver. “For an article on the slide you’ve just presented, to be clear.”

Kalila bristled. It wasn’t as if she’d thought otherwise. Her paper was a lost cause.

“And I said, however, you’ve all done well,” Comerford said. “As such, I’d like to reward you by extending an invitation to a seminar I’ve organized.”