Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Hazel had intended merely to acquaint herself with the layout of Callbury House, which was an entirely sensible task for a new duchess, or so she had told herself.
Yet as she wandered through corridor after corridor, with her hand brushing polished banisters and passing portraits of Thornhill ancestors who all looked equally stern, equally pale, and equally predisposed to brooding, she felt a faint tightness ease from her shoulders.
This didn’t feel like home. Still, it was not unfriendly, either.
She rounded a corner and paused. Before her stood a pair of tall carved doors, half-opened as though inviting her curiosity.
A faint scent drifted from within: leather bindings, ink, and something warm and old that reminded her of childhood afternoons spent reading while her sisters attempted to set small fires nearby.
The moment she stepped inside, her breath caught.
The library was magnificent. It was a sweeping two-story room, with walls lined from floor to ceiling with endless shelves.
A balcony encircled the upper level, complete with a rolling ladder that glided along the rails like something out of a dream.
Soft rugs muffled her steps. An enormous fireplace stretched along one wall, its mantle crowned with sculptures of classical figures.
It was unexpectedly and achingly lovely.
“Oh,” Hazel whispered, hearing the sound soft and reverent as she drifted further inside. “My goodness.”
She approached the nearest shelf. Her fingers hovered over the spines: history, botany, mathematics, theology, poetry, travel, scientific treatises, fiction, both modern and decades old.
It was as though every scholar in London had contributed a volume in hopes of pleasing the family who lived here.
Hazel tried to pick one. Any one. But the sheer volume of hundreds upon hundreds left her almost dizzy.
“I need to categorize them,” she murmured, narrowing her eyes in instinctive practicality. “Alphabetically? No, by subject. Or perhaps by—”
Then she saw it. It was a book near the top shelf, its spine a deep forest green trimmed with gold filigree, gleaming gently as though it had been waiting for her.
Hazel felt an entirely unreasonable, yet undeniable pull.
“That one,” she said to herself.
It was impossible to reach from the ground. Even standing on tiptoe gained her nothing but a crick in her neck and a firm understanding of her own shortness. That only left the ladder. Hazel eyed it warily.
“I am a duchess now,” she informed the empty room. “Surely I can manage a ladder.”
The ladder, of course, did not disagree.
She grasped the sides, tested her weight, then climbed one rung, then another. It creaked, not dangerously, but enough to make her reconsider all her life choices leading up to this moment.
“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” she muttered to the wood. “I’m absolutely certain you have held far heavier people than me.”
She ascended to the fifth rung. “Perhaps.”
To the seventh. “Hopefully.”
She stretched once more toward the green-and-gold spine, with her fingers trembling just shy of victory.
“Come now,” she muttered to the book, as though it might be persuaded by reason. “You and I both know I am more than capable of—”
“What on earth are you doing up there?”
Hazel yelped, and the ladder wobbled beneath her in a most treacherous fashion.
“Oh heavens!”
Her foot slipped on the rung. The ladder lurched, and Hazel felt herself falling with a breath trapped in her throat. Only, she didn’t land onto the merciless floor, but rather into a pair of strong, steady arms that caught her as though she weighed nothing at all.
She blinked up at Greyson, utterly stunned, with her heart beating so violently that she feared it might leap straight out of her chest.
His silver eyes were wide as he gazed upon her. “Hazel! Good God, are you hurt?”
He was still holding her… quite firmly, in fact. He had one arm beneath her knees, and the other braced around her back. Beneath her palm, his heartbeat was steady and grounding.
Hazel’s breath tangled somewhere in her lungs.
“I…” she tried.
He looked down at her, and his brows were drawn in genuine worry. “Are you all right? Did you hit anything? Twist anything? Sprain anything?”
“No,” she whispered, still breathless. “No, I just…”
He did not lower her. He did not even seem to realize he was still holding her. Hazel became distressingly aware of every detail: the strength in his grip, the warmth of his hands, the faint scent of cedar from his coat, the way one of her curls had fallen against his collar.
Think, Hazel. Say something sensible.
Her mind, utterly useless in this moment, offered the first ridiculous thing it could grasp.
“I have… a splinter.”
Greyson stared at her.
“A splinter,” he repeated slowly.
“Yes,” she said, feeling her cheeks burning. “From the ladder. It is quite painful.”
He looked at her hand, which she presented with great dignity for someone still being held like a fallen heroine in a gothic novel.
Greyson exhaled, something between relief and disbelief, then shifted her gently, lowering her until her feet touched the ground, but he did not step away.
His hand remained at her waist, steadying her.
“Let me see,” he said.
Hazel offered her palm again, mortified and entirely unable to think clearly while he was so close.
He took her wrist lightly, and she was overwhelmed by the sensation of his warm fingers brushing her skin.
He then proceeded to examine her hand with a seriousness utterly disproportionate to the tiny sliver lodged there.
“Ah,” he murmured. “There it is.”
Hazel could barely breathe.
Greyson had removed splinters before, and far too many, given the number of times Jasper had insisted on climbing trees well past an age when any sane man would have stopped. But he had never done it under circumstances half so… distracting.
“Come,” he said, with his pocket knife already in hand. “Sit. It will be easier.”
Hazel allowed him to lead her toward a chaise lounge near the fireplace.
Her cheeks were still flushed from the fall and from being caught in his arms, though he dared not dwell on that for too long.
She lowered herself onto the cushion, holding out her hand with a seriousness that would have amused him at any other time.
Greyson sat beside her, not close enough to be improper, but close enough to make coherent thought a challenge.
Her proximity was… hazardous. Her scent wrapped around him the moment he settled.
When she turned her head slightly toward him, a rebellious curl fell free from her chignon, slipping across her cheek.
He noticed everything: the small, delicate freckle on her right cheekbone, near the ear; the faint dimple that appeared only when she pressed her lips together; the way her fingers trembled ever so slightly, not from fear or apprehension, but from awareness.
He forced his attention to the task.
The splinter. Nothing else.
“Try to relax your hand,” he murmured, opening the blade with a soft click. “It will not hurt.”
Hazel attempted a very stiff, very unconvincing relaxation. “I am perfectly calm.” Her voice was pitched higher than usual.
Greyson bit back a smile. “Of course.”
To distract her and perhaps himself, he asked. “What book was so important that you nearly fell to your death for it?”
She huffed. “I was not near death.”
“You screamed.”
“It was a startled sound.”
“It was quite… notable.”
Hazel narrowed her eyes at him, but her palm stayed obediently in place. “I simply thought the book looked intriguing.”
“You don’t know what it is?”
“No,” she admitted. “I only saw the binding. Dark green, with gold filigree. It caught my eye.”
He worked the splinter gently to the surface, forcing himself not to linger over the softness of her skin beneath his fingertips. “Green and gold,” he echoed. “Top shelf, far right?”
“Yes.” Her eyes brightened. “Do you know it?”
Greyson inclined his head slightly. “Travels in the Northern Provinces. An older edition. Heavy on landscape descriptions, and lighter on accuracy.”
Hazel’s lips parted in surprise. “You’ve read it?”
He paused. “Once.”
She smiled in a small, pleased curl of her lips that made his chest tighten. “You have read more things than you pretend.”
“I do not pretend,” he said, carefully sliding the splinter free.
She winced, then relaxed. “You do.”
“I present only what is relevant.”
“You present only what you find useful,” she corrected.
Greyson glanced up at her, meeting her eyes briefly. “Is there a difference?”
Hazel tilted her head thoughtfully. “Yes. I think so.”
He looked back down at her hand before she could see too much in his expression. “There,” he said. “It’s out.”
That was when he should have stood up. He should have stepped back the moment the splinter was removed, folded away his knife, offered some polite remark and restored the safe, proper distance between them.
But he did none of those things.
Instead, before he could recall all the reasons restraint mattered, he lifted Hazel’s hand again and, without thinking, pressed his lips to the spot where the splinter had been.
The kiss was brief and soft, barely more than a breath on her skin. But the instant he did it, he knew he had gone too far.
Hazel inhaled sharply, just loud enough for him to feel the tremble through her fingers. He lifted his head slowly, his mouth still inches from her skin, and their eyes met. She didn’t move away, and neither did he.
Her lips parted in the smallest, softest sound of surprise.
Her pulse fluttered at her throat, quick and delicate.
That rebellious curl had fallen entirely free now, brushing the edge of her cheek.
He desperately wanted to tuck it behind her ear.
He wanted even more desperately to kiss her properly, fully, with every ounce of longing that rose unbidden in him since their first dance.
He could feel her breath on his jaw. He could feel his control slipping, dissolving under the weight of her nearness.
“Hazel…” he murmured in a half warning, half plea.
Her eyes widened, but she did not pull back. Instead, she leaned in almost imperceptibly, but enough that he felt the warmth of her breath mingling with his. His hand rose to her cheek.
Just one touch. One moment. One—
A sudden knock shattered the air.
“Your Grace?” A servant’s voice came muffled through the door. “Forgive the intrusion, but you are needed.”
Greyson froze. Hazel jerked back as though waking from a dream, and color flooded her face. She straightened on the chaise, smoothing her skirts with frantic precision. He stood too quickly, forcing distance between them.
“One moment,” Greyson called.
Silence fell again, but it was no longer soft.
It crackled now, taut and trembling with everything they had not done.
Hazel stared at her lap, unable to meet his eyes.
He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, captured by the way she bit her lip as if trying to subdue the memory of what almost happened.
He swallowed hard.
“Hazel,” he said quietly.
She looked up, and he saw the confusion, the longing, the fear of her own reaction. He felt all of it, too. But the moment had broken, and he could not rebuild it with a servant waiting beyond the door, no matter how desperately he wanted to.
“I… must go,” he said, forcing the words out evenly.
She nodded once, quickly. “Of course.”
But when he turned toward the door, he hesitated. He turned around only to see her lift her fingers to her wrists, to the place he had kissed. It nearly undid him.
He swallowed heavily, then turned around and stepped through the door, aware that little by little, they were changing, finding their way toward each other.
Would either of them be prepared for what they would find?