"Eveline..."
"No." She bent to gather her fallen portfolio, papers scattering across the landing in her haste. "Don't you see? We can't think clearly when we're together. One touch and I forget every sensible resolution. One kiss and I'm ready to throwaway whatever remains of my reputation. You make me reckless, Adrian, and I cannot afford recklessness."
He knelt to help her gather the scattered papers, his hands still not quite steady. Translation samples, he saw Ovid and Catullus and Theocritus, all rendered in her neat hand with marginal notes that showed the depth of her scholarship. Without quite planning to, he palmed several of the folded sheets, slipping them into his coat pocket while she focused on retying the portfolio's ribbon.
"Then think as you will," he said quietly, rising and offering his hand to help her up. She ignored it, standing on her own with that stubborn independence that both maddened and enchanted him. "But I am not done. Whatever you might believe about my lack of planning, I am not done."
"Your Grace..."
"Adrian," he corrected. "In private, at least, let me be Adrian."
She looked at him then, really looked, and he saw beneath her careful control to the exhaustion and hurt and terrible hope she was trying so hard to hide. "Adrian," she whispered, and the sound of his name in her voice was almost his undoing. "Please. Let me go. Let me find some measure of peace in obscurity."
"I can't." The admission was torn from somewhere deep in his chest. "Heaven help me, I can't. The thought of you in Manchester, wasting your brilliance on ungrateful children, dying by degrees in some merchant's household...I can't bear it."
"Then offer me an alternative," she challenged, her chin lifting again in that gesture he'd come to love and dread in equal measure. "Not grand gestures or stolen kisses or public displays that only deepen my ruin. Offer me something real, something that acknowledges who I am rather than who you think I should be."
He wanted to speak then, wanted to pour out every plan and hope and dream he'd been harboring. But the words tangled on his tongue, too large and unwieldy for the narrow stairwell with Harriet undoubtedly listening from the parlor below. This wasn't the place for declarations, not with her dressed for interview, not with the shadow of Manchester hanging between them like a sword.
"Go to your interview," he said finally. "Meet your merchant family and their Latin-deficient daughters. But know this; I am not finished. I will never be finished when it comes to you."
She studied his face for a long moment, and he wondered what she saw there. The duke who'd failed her? The man who'd kissed her senseless against a wall? Or something else entirely, something that gave her pause despite her determination to leave?
"I have to go," she said finally. "They're expecting me at eleven, and it won't do to be late. Even fallen women must maintain some standards."
She descended the stairs without looking back, her spine straight and her step steady despite everything. Adrian remained on the landing, listening to the murmur of voices below as Harriet presumably offered last-minute encouragement or warnings. The front door opened and closed with decisive finality, and still he stood there, feeling the echo of her presence like a physical ache.
Slowly, he drew the purloined translation samples from his pocket. Her handwriting covered the pages in neat rows, Latin giving way to English with marginal notes that showed her thought process, the careful decisions that went into each word choice. At the bottom of one page, she'd written a personal observation:
"N.B. - Ovid understands that love transforms not just the lover but the very language of love. Each word must carry both meaning and music. How does one translate feeling itself?"
Adrian folded the papers carefully and returned them to his pocket. She was wrong about him having no plan. He'd been formulating one since the moment she'd refused his proposal, refining it with each sleepless night in his library. But she was right that he'd been going about things wrong, trying to force his protection on her rather than offering what she truly needed.
He descended the stairs to find Harriet waiting in the small parlor, her expression a mixture of sympathy and censure that suggested she'd heard enough to draw her own conclusions.
"I suppose you're proud of yourself," she said without preamble. "Kissing her senseless just when she'd managed to gather her courage for this interview."
"Is that what I did?"
"Among other things." Harriet studied him with those sharp eyes that missed nothing. "She's right, you know. Gestures like that won't save this situation. She needs more than dramatic declarations and stolen moments in stairwells."
"I know." Adrian moved to the window, watching the street below as if he might catch one last glimpse of Eveline's determined figure. "That's why I took these." He showed her the translation samples briefly before returning them to his pocket.
Harriet's eyebrows rose. "You stole her work?"
"Borrowed," he corrected. "I have... plans for them."
"Plans." She said the word as though it might bite. "Your last plan resulted in her complete social ruin."
"My last plan was no plan at all," Adrian admitted. "This time will be different."
"Why should I believe that?"
He turned from the window to face her fully. "Because this time, I'm not trying to save her. I'm trying to prove she doesn't need saving, not from me, not from society, not from anyone. She wants to be valued for her mind, her work, her worth beyond the scandal. I intend to ensure that happens."
Harriet was quiet for a long moment, clearly weighing his words against his past actions. "And if she accepts the Manchester position?"
"Then I'll have to work quickly." He moved toward the door, then paused. "Tell me, Miss Fairweather. Do you think she loves me?"
