This morning had begun like all the others, with Graves greeting her at the servants' entrance with his customary expression of dignified suffering, as if her very presence caused him physical pain. She'd climbed the back stairs, already mentally cataloguing the section of German philosophy she planned to manage, when she pushed open the library door and froze.
The Duke was there, seated in the wingback chair by the fire with a stack of correspondence balanced on the arm, his long fingers holding a letter that he appeared to be reading with the kind of focus usually reserved for death warrants. Morning light from the tall windows caught the sharp angles of his face, making him look like a portrait of aristocratic concentration, if portraits could radiate barely contained irritation.
"Your Grace," she managed after a moment of simply staring. "I didn't realise you would be using the library today."
He looked up slowly, his grey eyes conducting a survey of her that lasted perhaps three seconds too long for comfort, taking in her practical wool dress, the leather portfolio clutched in her arms, and the pencil she'd already tucked behind her ear in preparation for the morning's work. His gaze lingered on a curl that had already escaped her careful morning arrangement, and something shifted in his expression that she couldn't quite identify.
"You look at me as though I were a puzzle written in Greek," she blurted, immediately wishing she could stuff the words back into her mouth where they belonged.
The corner of his mouth twitched in what might have been amusement or annoyance; with him, the distinction was often academic. "Better that than a bookI have no wish to open."
The words hung between them like a challenge, and Eveline felt heat rise to her cheeks that had nothing to do with the fire crackling in the hearth. She turned to her work with perhaps more enthusiasm than strictly necessary, pulling out her notebooks and arranging her supplies with the kind of precision that suggested the fate of nations depended on the exact placement of her pencils.
The truth was, she'd heard things about the Duke that morning that made his unexpected presence feel weighted with new meaning. She'd arrived early, a habit born of her disastrous first day, and had overheard two maids gossiping in the hallway with the kind of breathless excitement usually reserved for particularly good scandals.
"Three years next month since Lady Juliette's defection," one had whispered while pretending to dust a portrait. "The Cook says His Grace always turns black as thunder around the anniversary."
"Can you blame him?" the other had replied, glancing around nervously as if the Duke might materialize from the wallpaper. "Leaving him practically at the altar for that Earl, and now the papers say she's increasing again, another child with the man she chose over our duke."
"They say he truly loved her," the first maid had sighed with the romanticism of someone who'd never experienced heartbreak firsthand. "That he's never recovered from the betrayal."
Eveline had known about the broken betrothal, of course, but hearing it discussed by his own servants, learning that this week marked some sort of terrible anniversary, gave it a weight she hadn't expected. It made her wonder if his presence in the library wasn't coincidence but rather escape from whatever demons the date conjured.
She set to work organizing the philosophy section, deliberately keeping her back to him, though every nerve seemed attuned to his presence. The scratch of his quill pen across paper, the occasional rustle as he set aside one letter and picked up another, the way he shifted in his chair with a soft creak of leather...all of it created a symphony of distraction that made her work seem even more impenetrable than usual.
He's just a man reading his correspondence,she told herself firmly while trying to decipher a particularly damaged spine.A man who happens to be a duke, who happens to employ you, who happens to look like Byron's more attractive older brother when the firelight catches his profile just so...
"You're muttering again," his voice cut through her thoughts like a blade through silk.
"I'm translating," she corrected without turning around, though she could feel his gaze on her back like a physical touch. "This edition of Descartes has margin notes in Latin, French, and what appears to be someone's attempt at German, though I use the term loosely."
"My grandfather," he said after a pause that suggested he was debating whether to share the information. "He fancied himself a polyglot but never quitemastered German grammar."
"That's rather evident from his attempts to conjugate certain words" she replied, finally turning to face him with the book in question. "He seems to have invented at least three new tenses that don't exist in any language I'm familiar with."
Adrian had abandoned all pretense of reading his letters and was watching her with an expression she couldn't quite decipher.
She has brought order to these shelves,Adrian thought, watching her clutch the philosophy text like a shield,yet disorder to my peace.
"Perhaps linguistic innovation runs in the family," she continued, needing to fill the silence that stretched between them like a taut wire. "After all, you've managed to turn sarcasm into an entirely new dialect."
"Have I?" He set aside his correspondence entirely, giving her his full attention in a way that made her wish she'd kept her observations to herself. "And what would you call this dialect of mine?"
"Defensive Latin," she said before her better judgment could intervene. "All classical structure and emotional distance, designed to keep the barbarians at the gates."
"The barbarians being?"
"Anyone who might actually want to know you rather than just Your Grace, the Duke of Everleigh, seventh of his name, master of all he surveys, friend to none."
The silence that followed her pronouncement was profound enough that she could hear the library clock ticking from two rooms away. She turned back to the shelves, her face burning with the knowledge that she'd overstepped rather spectacularly, when she realized she needed the large folio of Aristotle's complete works that sat on the highest shelf—directly behind his chair.
The sensible thing would be to ask him to move, but sensibility had apparently fled along with her employment prospects, so instead she approached with what she hoped was professional determination. "I need to retrieve something," she said, gesturing vaguely at the shelf behind him.
He didn't move, just watched as she attempted to reach around him, which proved impossible given the chair's position and her unfortunate lack of height. She tried standing on tiptoe, stretching until her bodice pulled taut against her chest and her hem brushed against his boot with a whisper of fabric against leather.
Without warning, he rose from the chair in one fluid movement, suddenly far too close in the small space between furniture and shelves. She could smell his cologne and feel the warmth radiating from his body as he reached above her for the folio.
Their hands met on the spine of the book, his fingers covering hers with unexpected heat that sent a jolt through her entire arm. She looked up to find him looking down at her, his grey eyes darker than usual, his face mere inches from hers in the shadowed space between shelf and sunlight. She could see the faint line of a scar near his left eyebrow that she'd never noticed before, could count hisindividual eyelashes if she were so inclined, could feel his breath ghosting across her cheek.
