Chapter Five #2
Instead, he heard himself ask, “What draws you to agricultural economics?”
She stopped.
Slowly, she turned back to him. In the clear morning light, he saw her face fully for the first time: not beautiful in the conventional sense, yet compelling. Strong features, intelligent eyes, a mouth that suggested thoughts held firmly in reserve.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The books,” he said, nodding toward the shelf. “Treatises on estate management. Rural improvement. Most young ladies favour lighter reading.”
“I am not most young ladies.”
“No,” he murmured. “I had begun to suspect as much.”
She searched his face, wary, as though determining whether the words were mockery.
At last, some of the tension left her shoulders.
“I was raised on an estate,” she said quietly. “Before—things changed. I learned to manage accounts because someone had to. The land followed. One cannot study one part of a household without understanding the rest. How choices affect tenants. Crops. Families.”
“Your father taught you?”
“My father taught me to value thought,” she said. “The practical matters, I learned because necessity required them.”
“And you learned well,” he said before he could stop himself.
She looked away. “It does not matter. The estate belongs to my uncle. What I know is… surplus. A curiosity with no application.”
There was bitterness beneath the measured words, carefully contained but present.
Sebastian found himself wanting to know more—about her father, about Thornfield, about the circumstances that had reduced a baronet’s daughter to borrowing books in secret and speaking of her education as though it were a source of shame.
He wanted to know about her.
The realisation startled him. He had spent years cultivating indifference, armouring himself against curiosity about the endless parade of people who moved through his life.
It was easier that way. Safer. People wanted things from him—his title, his wealth, his influence—and caring about them only made it harder to see their wanting for what it was.
But this woman wanted nothing from him. She had tried to leave the moment he entered. She was not angling for his attention or manoeuvring for his favour. She was simply... there. A person with thoughts and interests entirely separate from his existence.
It was, he realised, rather refreshing.
“You should keep it,” he heard himself say.
“Keep what?”
“The book.” He nodded toward the volume she still held. “You clearly intend to read it. I see no reason why you should not.”
“Your Grace, I cannot—”
“You can,” he replied gently. “Lady Marchmont’s collection is for use. I, at least, give my approval.”
The logic was thin, and he knew it. He found he did not care.
Her gaze dropped to the book. Something flickered—hope, quickly smothered.
“Why are you being kind to me?” she asked.
The question was blunt—almost rude in its directness—and Sebastian appreciated it immensely.
“I am not being kind. I am being curious. You are reading books I have read myself, and your notes suggest genuine engagement with the material. I find that… interesting.” He hesitated. “I find you interesting.”
The moment the words escaped him, he knew they were a mistake. Her expression shifted—not quite closing, but becoming more guarded—and he saw her draw back into herself like a snail retreating into its shell.
“You should not find me interesting, Your Grace.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am no one,” she said, without self-pity.
“Because even this conversation skirts propriety. You are here in pursuit of a wife amongst the young ladies of good family, and I am here to arrange my cousin’s hair and ensure her sleeves sit properly.
” She lifted her chin a little. “We both know our roles. It would be wiser to perform them.”
She was right. Entirely right. Everything she said was sensible, proper, and exactly what a woman in her position ought to say.
And yet—
“What if I am tired of performing?”
The words startled him as much as they startled her. For an instant, something unguarded passed between them—too brief to name, too swift to claim.
“Your Grace—” she began.
“Forgive me.” He took a measured step back, restoring the distance he had allowed to slip. “You are quite correct. We have our roles. I overstepped. Keep the book, Miss Ashwood. Let us call it a secret between fellow readers—nothing more.”
She hesitated. He saw the struggle—the cautious instinct to refuse, the yearning instinct to accept—before she gathered the volume to her chest with quiet care.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said, very properly. “You are… very good to allow it.”
“I am not certain goodness has much to do with it,” he replied, a touch wryly. “Curiosity, perhaps. Respect, certainly.”
A faint, almost incredulous breath escaped her. “Respect?”
“For your mind,” he said simply. “It would be a pity to see it starved for want of books.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“Sebastian.”
The name slipped out before he could prevent it. She stared at him, startled, and he wondered what madness had possessed him to offer his given name to a woman he scarcely knew—and ought not to be speaking with at all.
“I—I should not,” she said quietly.
“No. You should not.” His voice was equally low. “Nor should I have offered it. But—” He hesitated, aware of how thin the ice beneath them already was. “I am… very tired of ‘should.’”
A faint, uncertain breath left her. He softened his tone.
“In public, of course, you must call me ‘Your Grace.’ Nothing else would be proper. But here—in this room—between one reader and another—” He allowed the words to find their shape. “Sebastian will suffice.”
She was silent for a long while. He saw caution first, then surprise—and, fleetingly, something that looked very like longing—before her expression steadied into composure.
“If we are to abandon propriety so far,” she said at last, “then—Cecilia.” Her fingers tightened on the book’s spine. “But only here. Only in this room. Between… fellow scholars.”
“Between fellow scholars,” he agreed, the words almost a vow.
They stood in the clear morning light, surrounded by thousands of books, and looked at one another. Something loosened in his chest—something he had not known was bound; something warmed that he had not known was cold.
Dangerous, whispered reason. Impossible. Leave now.
He did not leave.
Instead, he said, “The book you have borrowed—I read it several years ago. The author’s arguments on tenant welfare are compelling, but his proposed implementation is flawed. I should like to hear your thoughts when you have finished.”
Her expression flickered—surprise, and then something very like quiet pleasure. “You would discuss economics with me?”
“I would discuss anything with someone who wishes to engage rather than merely agree.” He moved toward the door, lest he say—or do—something still more reckless.
“I am often here in the mornings, before the day’s activities begin.
Should you happen to return a book, and wish to share your impressions… ”
He allowed the sentence to fade. The invitation hung between them—dangerous, unspoken, undeniable.
She did not accept it. She did not refuse it.
“Good day, Your Grace,” she said softly. “Sebastian.”
His name, spoken in her voice, sounded different than he had ever heard it—softer. Truer.
“Good day, Miss Ashwood. Cecilia.”
He left before he could change his mind—before he could remain and talk for hours—before he could do any of the things he suddenly, achingly wished to do.
Yet as he walked back to his rooms, her face lingered in his mind. Her voice. The way she had said his name.
Between fellow scholars.
He was in trouble. He knew he was in trouble. This grey-clad, sharp-minded, entirely unsuitable woman had found her way beneath his guard in the space of a single conversation.
He ought to avoid her. Ought to stay away from the library, attend to the eligible young ladies his mother had selected, fulfil his duty, and forget that Miss Cecilia Ashwood existed.
That was what he ought to do.
It was not what he was going to do.
***
Cecilia made it back to her room before her knees betrayed her.
She sat on the edge of her narrow bed, the borrowed book pressed against her chest, and made herself breathe slowly, carefully, until the rushing in her ears subsided. Her thoughts were a tangle of alarm and wonder and something else—something she refused, for the moment, to name.
Sebastian.
He had given her his name. The Duke of Ashworth had looked at her—truly looked—and had spoken to her as if her thoughts were worth hearing, as if her mind were not an inconvenience to be tidied away. As though, for a brief moment, she had mattered.
It was madness. Utter madness. He was one of the most eligible men in England, circled by ambitious mamas and artful daughters. She was nothing—less than nothing—an unprovided dependent in a grey dress, tolerated for her usefulness and dispensable the instant that usefulness waned.
There could be nothing between them. Even conversation was dangerous; discovery would mean scandal for him and ruin for her. A whisper, a raised brow, a single ill-timed sighting—
She would lose everything.
She knew this. She understood it with perfect clarity.
And yet.
I find you interesting.
No one had found her interesting in five years. No one had looked at her the way he had looked at her—with curiosity, with attention, with something that felt almost like recognition. No one had asked what she thought or invited her to share her opinions.
She had been invisible for so long. Useful but unseen, present but unacknowledged. And then this man—this impossible, inappropriate, entirely unsuitable man—had walked into the library and looked at her as though she were worth seeing.
What if I am tired of performing?