"Perfectly adequate?" He looked genuinely offended. "You just made Cicero sound like he was speaking through a mouthful of porridge."
"Perhaps Cicero enjoyed porridge. Have you considered that?"
"Cicero was Roman. They didn't have porridge."
"They had puls, which is essentially the same thing."
"It is not remotely the same thing."
"It's grain boiled in liquid until it forms a paste-like consistency. That's porridge by any definition."
"Are we truly arguing about ancient Roman breakfast foods?"
"You started it with your pronouncement about my pronunciation."
"That's a terrible way of playing on words."
"That's not it at all, it's merely unfortunate word repetition."
They stared at each other for a moment before Adrian's lips twitched, and then he was laughing, actually laughing, not the sardonic chuckle she'd grown accustomed to but genuine, warm laughter that transformed his entire face. The sound was so unexpected and so delightful that Eveline found herself laughing too, the absurdity of their argument suddenly apparent.
"We're debating Roman porridge," he said between breaths, shaking his head in amazement. "In my library, in the middle of the afternoon, we're having a heated discussion about whether Cicero ate porridge."
"To be fair, you started it by criticizing my Latin," Eveline pointed out, though she was still giggling in a most undignified manner.
"You were torturing one of Rome's greatest orators."
"He's been dead for nearly two thousand years. I doubt he minds."
"His ghost is probably haunting this library as we speak, appalled by your pronunciation and your theories about his breakfast preferences."
"If Cicero's ghost has nothing better to do than haunt your library and criticize my Latin, then death must be frightfully boring."
This set them both off again, and for a moment the great library felt less like a monument to knowledge and more like a private space where two people could simply be themselves, without titles or positions or the weight of society's expectations.
But then the laughter faded, leaving them standing closer than they'd realized, faces flushed with mirth, breathing slightly unsteady. The air between them seemed to thicken, charged with something that had nothing to do with Latin pronunciation or Roman breakfast foods.
Adrian's gaze dropped to her lips, and Eveline found herself unable to look away from his face, from the way his expression had shifted from amusement to something far more dangerous. Her heart was beating so loudly she was certain he would be able to hear it, a thunderous rhythm that seemed to echo through the silent library.
His hand moved to the table, coming to rest near hers on the parchment, close enough that she could feel the heat from his skin but not quite touching. The almost-contact was somehow more intimate than if he'd actually taken her hand, the potential of it making her breath catch in her throat.
"Eveline," he said quietly, and her name on his lips sounded like both a question and an answer.
"You shouldn't call me that," she whispered, though she made no move to pull away, to establish proper distance between them.
"No, I shouldn't." He leaned closer, moving with deliberate slowness that gave her every opportunity to retreat, to remember propriety and position and all the reasons this was a terrible idea. "Just as I shouldn't be standing this close to you. Just as I shouldn't be thinking the thoughts I'm thinking."
"What thoughts?" The question slipped out before she could stop it, breathy and wanting and completely inappropriate.
"Thoughts about how your eyes have gold flecks in them when you laugh. About how you bite your lower lip when you're concentrating on a translation. About how you smell like ink and lavender and something uniquely you that drives me to absolute distraction."
"Adrian..." His name felt foreign and familiar on her tongue, a boundary crossed that couldn't be uncrossed.
"Tell me to stop," he said, his hand finally covering hers on the parchment, the contact sending sparks racing up her arm. "Tell me this is madness, that I'm your employer and you're a respectable woman and this cannot happen."
"This is madness," she agreed, but she turned her hand palm up beneath his, their fingers intertwining with a naturalness that made her chest ache. "You're my employer, I'm a respectable woman and this absolutely cannot happen."
"Then why aren't you pulling away?"
