Chapter 1 #2
"I can imagine." He shifted slightly, and she realized he'd moved closer during their conversation, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.
The bookshop, with its narrow aisles and towering shelves, suddenly felt considerably smaller.
"And what else does your talent tell you about me? "
This was dangerous territory, the sort of charged conversation that her mother would have whisked her away from with horrified efficiency.
A proper young lady didn't engage in such intimate discourse with strange gentlemen, didn't allow herself to be drawn into the sort of verbal sparring that made her pulse quicken and her cheeks flush.
She should make some polite excuse and retreat to a safer section of the shop, perhaps browsing the poetry until the rain subsided and she could make her escape.
Instead, she found herself stepping closer, drawn by the challenge in his voice and the way his attention felt like sunlight after years of being treated as a potted plant; decorative but essentially silent.
"You're someone accustomed to command," she said, her voice dropping to match his intimate tone.
"Your posture, your manner of speaking, the way you expect others to yield space to you.
..it all suggests authority. Military, perhaps, or political.
But there's something else..." She paused, studying the fine lines around his eyes, the slight tension in his jaw that spoke of carefully controlled emotion.
"You're disappointed in something. Or someone.
It's made you cynical, I think, though you wear it well. "
The silence that followed her assessment stretched between them like a taut wire, filled with the sound of rain against glass and the distant murmur of other patrons browsing the shop's offerings.
She'd overstepped, she realized with a mixture of horror and defiance.
Ladies didn't make such personal observations about gentlemen they'd just met, didn't peer beneath polite facades to the shadows beneath.
But she'd always been terrible at being a proper lady.
"Remarkable," he said finally, and there was something in his voice she couldn't identify. Surprise, certainly, but something else as well. Something that made her breath catch despite her determination to remain unaffected by grey eyes and expensive cologne. "Quite remarkable indeed."
Before she could respond, the shop bell chimed with the arrival of another customer, and the spell was broken.
The newcomer brought with him a gust of cold air and the scent of wet wool, reminding Eveline rather forcefully that she was lingering in a bookshop with a stranger while a storm raged outside.
"I should..." she began, then stopped, unsure what exactly she should do. Purchase her book and leave? Continue this increasingly fraught conversation? Demand his name and direction so she might torment herself with wondering about him for weeks to come?
"Yes," he agreed, though his tone suggested he was no more certain than she was, about what course of action propriety demanded. "You should."
But neither of them moved.
The rain seemed to intensify, touching the ground with renewed vigor, and Eveline found herself grateful for the excuse to remain.
Not because she was enjoying their conversation, she told herself firmly.
Certainly not because there was something compelling about the way he looked at her as though she were a puzzle he was genuinely interested in solving, or because his smile transformed his rather austere features in ways that made her pulse skip in the most unseemly manner.
No, she was simply being practical. Only a fool would venture out in such weather.
"The storm shows no signs of abating," she observed, as though this were a perfectly reasonable explanation for continuing to stand mere inches away from a man whose name she didn't even know.
"None whatsoever," he agreed gravely. "Most inconvenient."
"Terribly so." She shifted her weight, acutely aware of his proximity and the way the narrow aisle seemed to contract around them. "Though I suppose it provides an excellent opportunity to browse more thoroughly. I'm told Mr. Hatchard has acquired some fascinating new titles recently."
"Indeed? And what sort of titles capture your interest, Miss...?" He let the question hang between them, clearly hoping she might finally provide her name.
Eveline hesitated. Once she gave him her name, their encounter would shift from anonymous flirtation to something more concrete, more real.
She would become Miss Eveline Whitcombe, a bluestocking spinster and social curiosity, rather than simply a sharp-tongued woman who read Greek and had opinions about parliamentary legislation.
The prospect was both thrilling and terrifying.
"Eveline," she said finally, offering only her Christian name as a compromise between propriety and the strange intimacy that had developed between them. "And you are?"
For a moment, something flickered across his features which seemed like surprise again, or perhaps calculation. When he spoke, his voice carried an oddly formal note that hadn't been there before. "Adrian."
Just Adrian, then. They were to remain on equal footing in their semi-anonymity, it seemed.
"Well then, Adrian," she said, testing the name and finding it suited him, as it sounded solid and aristocratic, with just enough edge to suggest hidden depths.
"Since we appear to be trapped together by the vagaries of London weather, perhaps you might recommend something from your extensive reading?
I confess myself curious about what captures the attention of such a discerning gentleman. "
His smile was slow and distinctly predatory, transforming his face in ways that made her stomach flutter with something that was definitely not ladylike interest. "How dangerous a question. What if my recommendations prove entirely unsuitable for a lady of refined sensibilities?"
"Then I shall have to trust in my corruption to see me through," Eveline replied sweetly. "As I mentioned, I am quite beyond redemption."
"In that case..." He moved past her, his sleeve brushing against hers again in that maddening way, and selected a volume from a higher shelf.
When he turned back to her, she saw it was a collection of Byron's poetry.
Not the man's latest work, which had been banned from most respectable drawing rooms, but still far more provocative than most ladies were expected to appreciate.
"Byron?" she asked, accepting the book with raised eyebrows. "How shocking of you to recommend such scandalous material to a respectable lady."
"I thought we had established that you were nothing of the sort," Adrian said, that hint of amusement back in his voice. "Besides, if you truly have opinions on the Corn Laws, I suspect you can handle a bit of romantic poetry without suffering permanent damage to your moral character."
Eveline opened the volume at random and found herself looking at "She Walks in Beauty." The irony was not lost on her—here she stood, windswept and damp, being handed poetry about feminine grace by a man whose own dark beauty would have made Byron himself weep with envy.
"'She walks in beauty, like the night,'" she read aloud, then glanced up to find Adrian watching her with an intensity that made her breath catch. "'Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes.'"
The words seemed to hang between them, charged with meaning neither had intended but both felt.
Heat rose in her cheeks as she realized what she'd done.
Standing there in a bookshop, reading love poetry aloud to a stranger as though she were some Gothic heroine rather than a sensible woman of three-and-twenty.
"Beautiful words," she managed, closing the book with perhaps more force than necessary.
"Indeed." His voice was rougher than it had been, and when she looked up, she found his gaze fixed on her face with an expression she couldn't quite decipher.
"Though I suspect Byron himself would have been inspired by the sight of a lady defending her right to read Tacitus in a bookshop on a rainy afternoon. "
Now she was definitely blushing. "You flatter me, sir."
"I merely observe." He took a half-step closer, and she caught that intriguing scent again of bergamot and sandalwood and something uniquely him.
"And I find myself wondering what other unconventional opinions you might hold, Miss Eveline.
Do you perhaps believe women should be allowed to attend university?
Vote in parliamentary elections? Inherit property in their own right? "
Each question was more radical than the last, and she should have been shocked by his assumption that she might hold such dangerous views.
Instead, she found herself warming to the subject with the sort of enthusiasm that usually cleared drawing rooms and sent her mother reaching for her smelling salts.
"All of the above," she said without hesitation. "And I believe they should be allowed to pursue careers in medicine, law, and scholarship without being dismissed as monsters of nature or accused of neglecting their feminine duties."
"Good Heavens." But he was smiling as he said it, a real smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look years younger. "You truly are dangerous."
"Utterly so," Eveline agreed cheerfully. "My mother lives in constant terror that I'll corrupt some innocent young lady with my radical notions and bring scandal down upon the family name."
"And have you? Corrupted anyone, that is?"
She pretended to consider the question seriously. "Not yet, but I remain optimistic. I've been working on my friend Harriet, but she's proving remarkably resistant to enlightenment. She still believes women were put on earth primarily to provide agreeable companionship and produce heirs."
"How disappointing of her."
"Terribly so. Though I haven't given up hope. I plan to lend her a copy of Mary Wollstonecraft's work and see if that doesn't shake her faith in feminine submission."
Adrian's eyebrows rose. "You have a copy of 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'?"
"Naturally. Don't you?"
"I..." He paused, looking genuinely taken aback. "I confess I do not."
Eveline looked at him disapprovingly. "How can you call yourself well-read if you haven't studied Wollstonecraft?
Her arguments regarding female education are particularly compelling.
She posits that women appear inferior to men only because they've been denied the same educational opportunities, not due to any inherent mental deficiency. "
"A revolutionary concept," Adrian said dryly.
"Hardly revolutionary. Merely logical. Though I suppose logic and feminine nature are generally considered mutually exclusive by most gentlemen." She gave him a pointed look. "Present company excepted, I hope?"
"I begin to think," he said slowly, "that present company might be the exception to a great many rules."
The rain chose that moment to lessen, the sound of it against the windows fading to a gentle patter that suggested the worst of the storm had passed.
Eveline felt a stab of disappointment that was entirely unreasonable because she should be pleased to have an excuse to escape this increasingly dangerous conversation with a man who looked at her as though she were something fascinating rather than merely tolerable.
"I should take my leave," she said reluctantly, clutching both books to her chest like armor. "The weather appears to be clearing, and I have... obligations."
"Of course." His formal mask was sliding back into place, she noticed with regret. "Forgive me for keeping you so long with my conversation."
"You didn't keep me," Eveline said quickly. "I chose to stay. The conversation was... illuminating."
"Was it?" There was that hint of amusement again, warming his grey eyes. "I'm gratified to have provided illumination."
She had to leave now, while she still could. She should purchase her books, make some polite farewell, and walk out of Hatchard's back into the world where ladies didn't engage in philosophical debates with mysterious strangers or read love poetry aloud in bookshops.
Instead, she found herself lingering, reluctant to break whatever spell had woven itself around them during their verbal sparring. "Will you... that is, do you often frequent Hatchard's? For your reading material, I mean?"
The question was barely proper, skating the very edge of what a lady might ask a gentleman she'd just met. But she had to know if there was any possibility of encountering him again, she had to leave herself that small hope even as she told herself she was being ridiculous.
His smile was slow and knowing, as though he understood exactly what she was really asking. "On occasion. When the weather drives me to seek shelter, or when I'm in need of... intellectual stimulation."
Heat flooded her cheeks at his tone, which somehow managed to make "intellectual stimulation" sound distinctly improper. "How practical of you."
"I'm a very practical man, Miss Eveline." The way he said her name sent shivers down her spine that had nothing to do with the dampness of her clothes. "Though I confess today's encounter has been anything but practical."
"No," she agreed. "It hasn't."
They stood there for another moment, the air between them charged with possibilities neither was quite bold enough to voice.
Then the shop bell chimed again, admitting a group of chattering ladies who brought with them the uncomfortable reminder that they were in a public place, engaging in the sort of intimate conversation that would fuel weeks of gossip if observed by the wrong people.
"I fear I must take my leave," Eveline said, stepping back with visible effort.
"Yes," Adrian agreed, but his eyes followed her movement with unmistakable regret. "You must."
She turned toward the front of the shop, then paused and looked back. "The Herodotus," she said, holding up the volume she'd selected. "Do you think it will prove as illuminating as our conversation?"
His smile was enigmatic. "I suspect, Miss Eveline, that you'll find illumination wherever you choose to look for it."