"The monster." Harriet's lips twitched with barely suppressed amusement. "What did he look like, this beast of yours?"
"He's not mine, and I barely noticed."
"Of course not."
"He was tall-ish, with dark hair that looked like he'd been running his fingers through it while contemplating his own magnificence, and grey eyes that managed to look both bored and amused, as if the entire world existed solely for his entertainment."
"You barely noticed quite a lot of detail."
"It was difficult not to notice when he took up so much space with his presence." Eveline stirred her ice with perhaps more vigor than necessary, remembering the way he'd stood there, all languid aristocratic grace and casual authority, clearly a man who'd never been told 'no' in his life and wouldn't recognize the word if it bit him. "We ended up discussing different political and philosophical matters."
Harriet blinked slowly, as if processing this information required considerable effort. "You discussed such matters with a strange man in a bookshop?"
"And other theories in general, which was unexpected because he actually knew about them rather than just memorizing a few quotes to impress people at dinner like most gentlemen do."
"But not this gentleman?"
“No, he was genuinely educated, which made his condescension all the more insufferable. He even asked if I was buying books to display them, as if I'd waste good money on books I didn't intend to read,” she said while she could still hear his cultured voice in her mind.
"Perish the thought, though you must admit that half of Mayfair does exactly that."
"Which is precisely why I refuse to be the same as them." Eveline pulled out a folded newspaper cutting from her reticule with the air of someone producing evidence in a trial. "Which brings me to my revolution."
Harriet took the paper, reading aloud with increasing alarm: "'Sought: Learned individual to catalogue and organise private library. Must possess fluency in Latin, Greek, French, and Italian. Knowledge of ancient and modern history essential. Apply by written correspondence to...'" Her voice rose to a pitch that caused several nearby patrons to turn with expressions of polite disapproval. "The Duke of Everleigh?"
"Keep your voice down!"
"The Duke of Everleigh," Harriet repeated in a horrified whisper that was somehow more dramatic than her shriek. "The one who was jilted by Lady Juliette in the most public humiliation of the decade? The one who supposedly turned so cold after the broken betrothal that frost forms when he enters a room?"
"I hardly think meteorological phenomena..."
"Eveline, you cannot be serious about applying for this."
"I'm not thinking of applying, I am applying."
"For a position as an employee in the home of an unmarried duke."
"As a cataloguer in his library, not a visitor in his bedroom."
"Eveline!"
"What? It's true that I'd be working with books, not engaging in whatever scandalous activities you're imagining." Though even as she said it, her mind unhelpfully supplied an image of her mysterious bookshop adversary in shirtsleeves, surrounded by ancient texts, which she immediately banished. "I have all the qualifications they're seeking."
"You have something else too...a reputation to maintain."
"What reputation would that be? I'm already three-and-twenty, firmly on the shelf, and known throughout the ton as that peculiar Whitcombe girl who reads too much and quotes dead languages at inappropriate moments. At least this way, my peculiarity would have purpose."
Harriet reached across the table to grasp her hand with the urgency of someone trying to pull a friend back from a cliff's edge. "Evie, think about this, really think about what you're suggesting. If you take employment—any employment, but especially this—you'll be ruined completely. No respectable family will receive you, no gentleman will court you."
"What gentleman courts me now?" The words came out sharper than intended, carrying years of accumulated disappointment that she usually kept carefully locked away. "Should I wait for Mr. Harland to compare me to more farmyard animals? Hope that Lord Witherly's ancient bones hold together long enough for a proposal? Accept it, Harriet...I'm already invisible to eligible men, so at least this way I'd be invisible while doing something meaningful."
"You're not invisible, you're selective."
"I'm selected against, which is quite a different thing entirely."
They sat in silence for a moment, the cheerful chatter of the tea shop flowing around them like water around stones, before Harriet sighed with the resignation of someone who knew a lost cause when she saw one.
"You're going to do this regardless of what I say."
