"Of course." His formal mask was sliding back into place, she noticed with regret. "Forgive me for keeping you so long with my conversation."
"You didn't keep me," Eveline said quickly. "I chose to stay. The conversation was... illuminating."
"Was it?" There was that hint of amusement again, warming his grey eyes. "I'm gratified to have provided illumination."
She had to leave now, while she still could. She should purchase her books, make some polite farewell, and walk out of Hatchard's back into the world where ladies didn't engage in philosophical debates with mysterious strangers or read love poetry aloud in bookshops.
Instead, she found herself lingering, reluctant to break whatever spell had woven itself around them during their verbal sparring. "Will you... that is, do you often frequent Hatchard's? For your reading material, I mean?"
The question was barely proper, skating the very edge of what a lady might ask a gentleman she'd just met. But she had to know if there was any possibility of encountering him again, she had to leave herself that small hope even as she told herself she was being ridiculous.
His smile was slow and knowing, as though he understood exactly what she was really asking. "On occasion. When the weather drives me to seek shelter, or when I'm in need of... intellectual stimulation."
Heat flooded her cheeks at his tone, which somehow managed to make "intellectual stimulation" sound distinctly improper. "How practical of you."
"I'm a very practical man, Miss Eveline." The way he said her name sent shivers down her spine that had nothing to do with the dampness of her clothes. "Though I confess today's encounter has been anything but practical."
"No," she agreed. "It hasn't."
They stood there for another moment, the air between them charged with possibilities neither was quite bold enough to voice. Then the shop bell chimed again, admitting a group of chattering ladies who brought with them the uncomfortable reminder that they were in a public place, engaging in the sort of intimate conversation that would fuel weeks of gossip if observed by the wrong people.
"I fear I must take my leave," Eveline said, stepping back with visible effort.
"Yes," Adrian agreed, but his eyes followed her movement withunmistakable regret. "You must."
She turned toward the front of the shop, then paused and looked back. "The Herodotus," she said, holding up the volume she'd selected. "Do you think it will prove as illuminating as our conversation?"
His smile was enigmatic. "I suspect, Miss Eveline, that you'll find illumination wherever you choose to look for it."
Chapter 2
"If I am to be dismissed as a bluestocking, I may as well make something of it."
Harriet Fairweather paused mid-sip of her tea, her delicate china cup suspended halfway to her lips as the afternoon sun streaming through Gunter's Tea Shop windows caught the horror dawning across her features in rather spectacular detail.
"Oh dear," she said, setting down the cup with the sort of care one might reserve for handling explosives. "That's your revolutionary voice."
"I don't have a revolutionary voice."
"You absolutely do, and it's the same voice you used before informing the Vicar that his translation of Corinthians was theologically suspect."
"Well, it was! He'd turned 'faith, hope, and love' into something about duty, obligation, and knowing one's place, practically rewriting Saint Paul."
"And you felt compelled to explain this during his sermon, from the pews, in front of the entire congregation."
Eveline took a defiant bite of her lavender ice. "Someone had to."
"That someone didn't have to be you, loudly, at the precise moment he was attempting to make his theological point." Harriet leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that suggested she was rather enjoying the prospect of scandal. "Now tell me what has prompted this particular revolution. Have you been arguing with clergymen again?"
"Not clergymen, just one insufferable gentleman at Hatchard's yesterday."
"Oh?" Harriet's eyes lit with the particular gleam that meant she scented romantic possibility, the same look she got whenever an unmarried man under sixty wandered into their general vicinity. "Do tell."
"There's nothing to tell, really. He was blocking the entire Roman history section, standing there like some sort of particularly well-dressed monster, and when I politely suggested he might move..."
"Politely?"
"...relatively politely suggested he might move, he had the audacity to imply I was only buying books to appear intellectual at dinner parties."
