Chapter 2
Miss Muriel Mitchell had never been more excited in her entire life.
She was at Heron House, and she had been given free run of the library!
Now, she knew that for some people, that wouldn’t be exciting at all. And some might say it was her rather short years which made it so exciting to her. She had little scope, some might try to argue.
She was not quite twenty, and she was to have a Season this year. In truth, she was really being dragged into it by her family, bless them.
She didn’t mind the whole concept of a Season, but a library?! Dear God in heaven, how glorious was a library! Balls and routs and card parties simply could not compare.
And this beautiful room packed with books that long predated the printing press also housed the latest, most popular books—it was not just any library.
The Heron House Library was a legend throughout all of England, and because she had dared to write a letter, she could be in it as often as she wished!
All because the Dowager Duchess of Westleigh and the Duchess of Westleigh had given her permission to spend as many hours as she pleased amongst the stacks and rows, carefully going through all the books and papers that had to do with the theater.
She loved the theater.
How she did! When she was allowed to go, that was.
Her favorites were the plays by William Shakespeare and Kit Marlowe. She loved the comedies by Wycherley and Sheridan too.
But Shakespeare was her favorite, even if Marlowe was a close second.
She had read his plays to herself almost nightly, playing all the parts, doing voices in secret, but there was something about the wild farcical comedies that made her grin and laugh and feel completely and totally alive, especially when life so often felt as if it wasn’t worth living.
Such a thing might be rather drastic to say, but really what was the point of it all? She did sometimes wonder. To get up, eat breakfast, put one’s clothes on, go about having meaningless conversations, just to get married, have children, and die?
Surely, great theater was one of the main points of it all. Great art, great literature, great music, and she was determined to understand it better than anyone else. Even if she couldn’t attend university.
It had taken her a great deal of courage to write the letter to the Dowager Duchess of Westleigh and the Duchess of Westleigh, asking permission to come and examine the papers and books there.
The duchess, much to Muriel’s delight, had given her a quick reply that she should come, that the house was full of ladies and gentlemen, and that there would be no need for her to be concerned if she did not have a chaperone, but she was more than welcome to bring one of her sisters along.
Muriel’s mother and father, who were but a lowly knight and lady, had not worried for a single moment about sending her to Heron House without a chaperone.
After all, it might be slightly notorious, but not for the reason that so many houses were. Yes, the Briarwoods all lived grandly and fully, but not a single one of them had been completely destroyed by any scandal.
No, no, they seemed to thrive on scandal, if there was any, and marriages always occurred. Perhaps her mother and father hoped that she might, in this adventure into the library, snare one of the last remaining Briarwood heirs.
The very idea was deeply amusing to her. The idea that one of those young, favored gentlemen might choose her was enough to make her chortle over a good cup of tea and a book.
There were a few of them, as she understood, but she was not interested in heirs at all.
Heirs were fine, men were fine, but she really preferred the friendship of ladies and of books.
At least, until just a few moments ago.
It had been quite shocking.
She had heard the strangest grunts and goings-on next door to the library.
Warily, she had put her writing utensils aside after making copious notes on some comments by Ben Johnson in one of his letters.
One of his real letters! Imagine! She had been able to touch the letter and read the real ink scrawled across the page.
It had held her attention fully until those odd noises.
And so, she had stood, gone to the door of the room next to the library, and opened it ever so slightly.
Inside, she had witnessed two older gentlemen who looked quite fit and two young gentlemen, both of whom were bare-chested, wearing only their breeches and shoes, their hair wild about their handsome faces, circling each other like two bulls in a pen.
And well, my goodness, she had not felt anything like that in her entire life.
Really, she’d been rather unimpressed by gentlemen over the last year when she’d been forced to interact with them in a sort of romantic way, or at least with the possibility of having intentions of romance. In her opinion, men were really rather a letdown.
They were fine to converse with sometimes, when they weren’t acting like they knew everything and trying to tell her about it.
She did have a brother. He was a good fellow, actually.
But generally speaking, men did not live up to the great heroes of novels or plays in her estimation.
Poor things. She supposed it wasn’t really their fault.
After all, books and plays and great literature did set quite a high bar for them to meet.
But looking at that one particular young man with his dark hair and muscled chest and the sheen of sweat upon his golden skin, well, all the knowledge and reason and feelings she had about gentlemen had completely evaporated from her mind.
Except for the fact that if there was a young man who did qualify as a demigod, well, this gentleman was it.
It was quite true that the other gentleman was most fine to look upon, but this one, dear God in heaven!
He was sublime. His powerful muscles strained as he wrestled with the other man.
His breeches clung to his massive lower limbs.
Each dappled hollow of his back made her long to reach out and touch it.
Sweat dewed his velvety skin, and his dark hair flew out about his handsome, chiseled face.
And when he had met her gaze as she had peered at him and he had winked, she had not been able to breathe. Her entire body had lit up with a level of excitement no book had ever produced.
The tingling sensation that had traveled through her was indescribable.
Not once had she ever experienced such a thing, except for a vague tinge of it when reading some of the more exciting novels written in the last few years that she and her sisters loved to read by candlelight, giggling and praying their parents never knew.
That wink, that devil-may-care look that seemed to bespeak a thousand promises of fun and mischief and pleasure? That was the first look she had felt was truly worthy of the literary heroes that she enjoyed so well.
But it had startled her so intensely that she’d slammed the door shut and backed away from it, panting.
Now, she stood in the center of the room, a hand pressed to her breast, willing her misbehaving heart to stop pounding with the same ferocity as a horse’s hooves on race day.
After all, she was not here, despite her parents’ hopes, to find a husband.
No, she was here to engage with the great books in the library, the papers there, the letters, and the various rolls of scripts that had been collected by the family to keep the history of the great plays of the century of William Shakespeare and thereafter.
No family had as many great historical documents about the theater as the Briarwoods did.
She sucked in a shuddering breath and tried to smooth her hands down the front of her pale, simple gown. To her great irritation, her hands trembled.
The fabric was a practical wool and a trifle scratchy, since winter was still upon them. It was cold, even though a fire crackled in the hearth nearby.
Icy rain slashed down outside, and it was so dim within the library that she had actually lit a candelabra on her desk so that she might be able to make notes without straining her eyes.
She turned to look at the open books there and the papers scattered about, as well as her profusely covered diary with notes and ideas about the theater from the last two hundred and fifty years.
She swallowed, desperate to get her thoughts and body to behave, to return to their usual calm.
This was quite a surprise. She had come to Heron House, ready to be transformed by the works and literature here. She had not come to be transformed by interactions with a gentleman.
She licked her lips, straightened her spine, and then strode to the desk. There, she poured herself a glass of water and drank it rapidly.
She felt hot, unseasonably, uncharacteristically hot, given the fact that the whole house was cold.
She gazed at the nearest window, with its heavy damask curtain pulled back.
Rain pounded against it, hard and lashing. The sound of it was like a thousand pebbles. She’d been lost in her work, ignoring the sound until now.
She was desperately glad she did not need to be outside. Yes, in her mind, January and February were the perfect months for libraries. One could not go out into the wild woods or have a good walk in Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, or even St. James’s. The mud was horrifying.
The roads were a state, but a library was a treasure trove, a promise of worlds awaiting. Worlds that were far better than the ones outside in the rain. They were certainly superior to the ton.
She placed her glass down, looked to her work, and wondered how the devil she was ever going to get his face out of her head. That handsome, remarkable face. But she would. She was made of stern stuff. She loved books far more than any gentleman, and she…
Well, she had a purpose, didn’t she?
One of these days, her mother and father were going to insist that she actually put a great deal of work into finding a husband, and so she needed to make good use of this particular time when she had relative freedom.
Right now, her older sisters were in the business of finding husbands. And she was quite glad of it, honestly, because if they were in the business of finding husbands, she really just had to be in the business of not getting into trouble.
And surely, a library was a good place to not get into trouble.
So, after giving herself a quick talking to, she pulled her chair back, sat down on it, and turned back to her work with determined focus.
Until, much to her shock, she heard the snick of a door. Surely not…
It was a maid, of course.
It had to be a maid bringing her fresh water or going to stoke the fire. Perhaps it was even the dowager duchess coming to ask how her work was going. Mercy, the duchess, was particularly interesting and kind, having a love of books herself, the publishing of them as well as the reading of them.
Muriel did not look up. She thrust the possibility of him away. It was not the gentleman. It was certainly not. Nor did she wish it to be.
She was simply here to do as she had long desired! She was the luckiest of people to get to be in this library. That’s what she needed to focus on. Not provocative, soul-shaking winks.
If she was determined, such thoughts would disappear from her head.
“I’m Perseus Briarwood. Who are you?” a voice rumbled from across the room, as if she was some forest or fairy creature that had stumbled into the house and not just a wallflower.
She closed her eyes and nearly dropped her pen, which would have been a terrible crime! She caught it just before ink spattered over the documents she had been perusing.
It was him. It had to be him, for surely only such a voice could match the gentleman with such a wink. There was something about it that was deep and merry and seductive. She sat a little straighter, determined not to look at him.
“I am Miss Muriel Mitchell, a guest of the dowager duchess and Duchess Mercy.”
“I see,” he said softly. “How wonderful for you. Are you enjoying it, being a guest?”
She sniffed. “How could I not? The library is magnificent.”
“No arguments there,” he said as he slowly strode in. “Our library is the best in the country.”
She fought a laugh, for his words mirrored her own thoughts almost exactly. “That would sound like arrogance, except for the fact that it is without a doubt the truth.”
“I haven’t an arrogant bone in my body,” he replied.
She turned at that. “I cannot believe it,” she replied.
“Oh no, it’s true. Many Briarwoods are quite arrogant, but not me. I’m a realist.”
“Are you?” she asked, blinking. He was so dashedly beautiful. Did he know how beautiful he was? Surely, he did.
He towered over her even from across the room, his dark, damp hair skimming his forehead and cheeks. It caressed the collar at his throat. He wore no cravat. Only a coat and an open waistcoat.
For some reason, this seemed terribly scandalous. She had only just seen his naked chest and been quite inspired by it.
But this romantic deshabille? It did things to her. She longed to stroke the muscles of his throat, to touch the hollow at the base of it, to caress his clavicles—
“Miss?” he prompted.
She cleared her throat. “Yes? You were going to explain how you’re a realist,” she managed.
His lips turned in a deliciously wolflike smile.
“When I see a lady such as yourself in the library, I have to know what you’re doing here because it’s not the usual place for a young lady who’s not family or who is not being courted by one of the gentlemen here. Will you tell me what you are about?”
She lifted her chin. “I’m certainly not being courted. I am merely fascinated by theater and Shakespeare and all of the historical collection your family has.”
“Well,” he said softly, “then you’re most definitely in the right place. You love to study theater?”
She nodded.
“Do you love to go to the theater?”
She nodded again.
“And do you love to act?” he asked.
She let out a shocked sound. “Sir, such a question is intensely foolish. How could a young lady like myself love to act?”
“How could a young lady like yourself not love to act?” he asked. “I can see it. You do,” he murmured.
Her lips parted, startled by his claim. “How can I love something I have never done?”
He gasped. “You’ve never acted?” he asked, his brows arching with surprise. “When you have such a great love for the theater?”
“No,” she affirmed. “Besides, how do you know that I’m not interested in scenery or the workings of the stage behind the set?”
He bowed to her. “How right you are, Miss Mitchell, and how very rude of me for making assumptions about your person,” he said. “But I’ll tell you this. I know someone who would love to be on the stage when I see them, and you are such a person”
It was the most arrogant thing she’d ever heard.
It was also true, and it was completely impossible.