The butler's expression suggested that fashion and punctuality were mutually exclusive concepts, and that attempting to combine them was symptomatic of larger character flaws. He studied her for a long moment, his gaze traveling from her rain-spotted pelisse to her carefully arranged hair, which was already beginning to rebel against its pins.
"Forgive me, miss, but his Grace is expecting a gentleman."
The words hung in the air between them like a gauntlet thrown, and Eveline felt her spine straighten with the kind of righteous indignation that had gotten her into trouble at more dinner gatherings than she cared to count.
"Then His Grace must content himself with me instead."
"I believe there has been some misunderstanding. The position of cataloguer..."
"Is one for which I am eminently qualified, as His Grace apparently agreed when he granted me this interview." She pulled out the letter with his seal, wielding it like a weapon. "Unless you're suggesting His Grace was mistaken?"
Graves regarded the letter as if it might be an elaborate forgery, though the ducal seal was unmistakably genuine. "His Grace requires a scholar, not..." he paused delicately, somehow managing to convey volumes of disapproval in that brief silence, "a lady."
"How fortunate then that I am both." Eveline's voice had taken on the crisp tone she used when translating particularly difficult passages of Greek—precise, unyielding, and slightly dangerous. "Shall I recite Aristotle in the original to prove the point, or would you prefer Cicero? I'm quite flexible on the matter of dead languages."
A footman had appeared in the hallway behind Graves, ostensibly adjusting a vase but clearly eavesdropping with the kind of focus usually reserved for gossip about employers. A maid peeked around a corner, feather duster in hand but making no attempt at actual dusting. The audience seemed to make Graves even more rigid, if such a thing were possible.
"Miss Whitcombe," he began, in tones that suggested he was reasoning with a particularly obstinate child, "surely you understand the irregularity of your presence here. A young lady, unchaperoned, seeking employment..."
"Seeking to catalogue books, Mr. Graves, not to raid the wine cellar or seduce the footmen." The words were out before she could stop them, and she heard the maid stifle what sounded suspiciously like a giggle. "I have sent references from Professor Blackwood of Oxford. I have samples of my work. What I don't have is infinite patience for being treated like some sort of curiosity simply because I possess both a brain and the apparent misfortune of being female."
Her nerves were screaming at her to stop talking, to apologize, to retreat gracefully before she made things worse. But her pride, that terrible, wonderful pride that had been both her strength and her downfall since childhood, refused to let her back down. She'd come too far, prepared too much, hoped too desperatelyto be dismissed by a butler, no matter how imposing.
Graves looked as if he'd swallowed something particularly unpleasant, possibly his own tongue. "The impropriety..."
"Is entirely in your imagination. I'm here for an interview regarding employment, not a clandestine assignation. Unless you're suggesting His Grace's character is so questionable that he cannot be trusted in the presence of female scholars?"
It was a dangerous gambit, implying criticism of his employer, but it had the desired effect. Graves's expression shifted from dismissive to affronted on his master's behalf.
"His Grace's character is beyond reproach."
"Then there should be no issue with him interviewing a qualified candidate, regardless of that candidate's sex."
They stood locked in a battle of wills, the footman and maid watching with the rapt attention usually reserved for particularly good theater. Finally, Graves's shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch.
"Very well," he said, each word seemingly extracted under torture. "I shall inform His Grace of your... arrival. Wait here."
He disappeared into the depths of the house, leaving Eveline standing in the entrance hall under the watchful eyes of what seemed like seventeen generations of previous Dukes of Everleigh, all painted with expressions suggesting they thoroughly disapproved of bluestockings invading their ancestral home. The footman had given up all pretense of vase-adjusting and was openly staring. The maid had been joined by another maid, both clutching their dusters like spectators clutching programs at a particularly exciting horse race.
Eveline tried to look confident and scholarly rather than like someone whose knees were shaking beneath her skirts. The entrance hall was designed to intimidate, and it was succeeding admirably. Polished floors that reflected her nervous figure back at her, columns that soared to a painted ceiling depicting what appeared to be either the triumph of virtue or the triumph of aristocracy—it was hard to tell with allegorical paintings, and the cherubs weren't providing clarity.
"Miss Whitcombe."
Graves had returned, looking like a man forced to escort a convicted criminal to tea with the Queen. "His Grace will see you."
He led her through corridors that seemed specifically designed to make visitors question their worth as human beings.
But she kept rehearsing her arguments as she walked. She would be professional, composed, scholarly. She would not let nerves destroy her. She would not think about the fact that she'd essentially forced her way into a duke's home under partially false pretenses. She would not...
Graves stopped before a set of double doors that belonged in a cathedral rather than a private home. "The library, miss."
He opened the doors with the solemnity of someone unveiling a sacred relic, and Eveline's first thought was that she'd stepped into paradise. Her secondthought was that paradise needed a thorough dusting and possibly an intervention.
The library stretched impossibly upward, three stories of shelves accessible by narrow galleries and precarious-looking spiral staircases. Books were everywhere—crammed horizontally atop vertical volumes, stacked on tables, teetering in corners and spreading across the floor. Dust motes danced in the light from tall windows, giving the entire room a dreamlike quality. The air smelled of leather, old paper and that particular mixture of neglect and potential that made her fingers itch to start organizing.
She'd been so entranced by the books that she hadn't immediately noticed the desk near the far window, or the figure seated behind it. She expected someone austere, possibly elderly, definitely wearing spectacles and a disapproving expression. What she did not expect was...
Oh no.
