"Of a twenty-two-year-old with spots on his collar who addresses me as 'Miss Whitcombe, ma'am' every third sentence?" She raised an eyebrow. "Hardly."
"He's young, enthusiastic about your work, appropriately respectful." Adrian's voice was too casual. "Everything a scholarly assistant should be."
"He's also desperately infatuated with a young woman, as he told me at length over luncheon. Apparently she has 'eyes like summer skies' and 'a laugh like silver bells.'"
"Ah." The relief on his face was almost comical. "Well. Good for Morrison."
"Adrian..."
"I know." He ran a hand through his hair, disturbing its careful arrangement. "I know I have no right to jealousy. No claim on your attention beyond what your position requires. It's just... seeing him lean over your shoulder, watching you teach him..." He laughed, short and self-deprecating. "I'm acting like a fool."
"We're both acting like fools." She rose, moving to stand by the windowwhere late afternoon light painted everything golden. "This isn't working, is it? The careful boundaries, the professional distance. We're making ourselves miserable trying to pretend we don't..."
"Don't what?" He'd moved closer without her noticing, stopping just outside arm's reach. "Don't think about Friday? Don't remember how perfectly you fit in my arms? Don't lie awake wondering what would happen if we stopped fighting this?"
"Yes," she whispered. "All of that."
They stood there in the golden light, the air between them charged with possibility and impossibility in equal measure. One step forward from either of them would shatter their carefully maintained distance. One step back would preserve it.
Neither moved.
"What do you want, Eveline?" His voice was rough. "Not what you think you should want, not what's practical or proper or professional. What do you actually want?"
"I want impossible things," she admitted. "I want my work recognized on its own merits. I want to build a reputation as a scholar without whispers about how I earned it. I want to publish translations that will outlive me." She paused, meeting his eyes. "And I want you. I want to kiss you without calculating the cost. I want to work beside you without pretending indifference. I want to love you without losing myself."
"Those aren't impossible things." He moved closer, just slightly, the space between them vibrating with tension. "Difficult, perhaps. Unconventional, certainly. But not impossible."
"Aren't they? How can I have both my independence and..." She gestured helplessly at the charged air between them. "This?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "But I know that pretending we don't feel this is killing us both. There has to be another way. A better way."
"What are you suggesting?"
He was quiet for a long moment, and she could see him weighing words, calculating risks. "What if we stopped pretending? Not... not publicly. But here, between us. What if we acknowledged what this is instead of constantly fighting it?"
"And what is it?" she asked, though she knew the answer.
"Love," he said simply. "Complicated, inconvenient, potentially destructive love. But love nonetheless."
The word hung between them, too large for the space, too honest for comfort. Eveline felt her careful defenses crumbling, all the logical arguments about professionalism and independence wavering in the face of that simple truth.
"I can't be your mistress," she said quietly. "I won't be a kept woman, no matter how well-disguised."
"I'm not asking you to be." He moved closer still, close enough that she could see the flecks of darker gray in his eyes. "I'm asking you to stop pretending. To workwith me instead of despite me. To let whatever this becomes develop naturally instead of strangling it with propriety."
"And if what it becomes threatens everything I've worked for?"
"Then we deal with that when it happens. But Eveline..." He lifted his hand, not quite touching her cheek, the phantom caress almost more intimate than actual contact. "What if it doesn't? What if loving me makes you stronger, not weaker? What if having a partner who understands your work, values your mind, supports your ambitions...what if that enhances your scholarship rather than diminishing it?"
"You're asking me to take an enormous risk."
"I'm asking you to stop living in fear." His hand finally made contact, fingertips barely brushing her cheek. "You've been so focused on what you might lose that you can't see what you might gain."
She leaned into his touch involuntarily, her eyes closing as his palm curved around her cheek. "This is madness."
"Complete madness," he agreed, his other hand coming up to frame her face. "But perhaps it's time for a little madness."
When he kissed her this time, it was different again. Not the desperate hunger of Friday or the angry passion of their earlier encounters, but something deeper, more certain. This was acknowledgment, acceptance, a mutual surrender to the truth they'd been fighting.
