The library became Thea’s world within three days, and she found she didn’t mind.
She’d worked in fine houses before—the widow in Bath had maintained a respectable collection, and the family with six children had owned books even if none of them bothered to read—but nothing had prepared her for the scale of Greymont Hall’s library. Ten thousand volumes, the Duke had said, and if anything, that seemed a conservative estimate.
The task should have been daunting. Instead, it felt like coming home to a place she’d never known existed.
She began methodically, starting with the shelves nearest her desk and working outward in concentric circles. Each morning, she would arrive shortly after dawn—she’d never been one for sleeping late, and the house’s quiet morning hours felt sacred somehow—and begin the careful work of examination and notation.
Pull a book. Note its condition: Excellent. Good. Fair. Poor. Catastrophic.
Record the title, author, date of publication if discernible, edition if notable.
Categorize by subject: Philosophy. History. Natural sciences. Poetry. Fiction. Agricultural reform. Medicine. Theology. Architecture. Botany. Travel narratives. Books on beekeeping, falconry, cheese-making, the proper maintenance of water mills. Someone—presumably the Duke’s grandfather—had been curious about everything and indiscriminate in acquisition.
Note any marginalia, bookplates, inscriptions. These provided glimpses into the books’ previous owners, little windows into the past. A woman named Catherine had written in the margins of a volume of Wordsworth: This perfectly captures how I felt watching the sunrise over the moors this morning. The handwriting was elegant but sad somehow, each letter formed with care as though the writer had nothing but time.
Set the book carefully aside for the next phase: cleaning, minor repairs if needed, proper shelving according to the new system she was developing.
Repeat.
The work was meticulous, occasionally tedious, and Thea loved every moment of it.
She loved the smell of old paper and leather bindings. The weight of centuries in her hands. The quiet scratch of her pen across the ledger pages. The way afternoon light filtered through the high windows and turned the dust motes golden. The satisfaction of completing a shelf, of seeing order emerge from chaos one volume at a time.
The library asked nothing of her but attention and care. It didn’t judge her circumstances or pity her isolation. It simply existed, patient and immutable, offering itself to be understood.
She could breathe here.
Of course, she wasn’t entirely alone.
The Duke appeared with irregular frequency, often enough that she began to expect him but never so predictably that she could prepare. He would materialize in the library doorway—she never heard him approach, and she’d begun to suspect he moved through his own house like a ghost—and stand there silently until she noticed him.
The first time it happened, she’d startled so badly she’d nearly dropped the medieval psalter she’d been examining.
“Your Grace! I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Clearly.” He’d moved into the room with that same silent tread. “I apologize for disturbing your work.”
“You’re not disturbing anything. This is your library.” She’d set the psalter down carefully, hyperaware of the ink stains on her fingers and the dust she could feel on her face. “Did you need something?”
“No.” He’d paused, seeming to search for words. “I wanted to see how the work progresses.”
She’d gestured to the shelves she’d completed, the neat stack of ledgers accumulating on her desk, the books arranged in their new temporary organization awaiting final shelving. “Slowly but steadily. I’ve catalogued approximately four hundred volumes so far. At this rate, it will take months to complete the full collection.”
“Good.”
The word had been quiet, almost to himself, and before she could respond, he’d turned and left as silently as he’d arrived.
That had been the first visit. Others followed, each brief and purposeful in a way that suggested purpose was an excuse rather than a reason. He would ask about her progress, examine her cataloguing system, pull a volume from the shelf and quiz her on its contents like a particularly demanding tutor. Once, he’d brought her tea himself, setting the cup on her desk without comment and leaving before she could thank him.
She began to understand that the Duke existed in a state of perpetual internal conflict. He wanted connection but feared it. Craved company but couldn’t quite allow himself to enjoy it. Would enter a room as though drawn against his will, then leave abruptly as if remembering some urgent business that always proved to be an excuse for retreat.
It would have been easier to dismiss him as simply cold or imperious. But Thea had seen too much loneliness to mistake it for anything else. The Duke of Greymont, for all his titles and land and ancestral pride, was profoundly, desperately alone, and working very hard to convince himself he preferred it that way.
She recognized the strategy. She’d employed it herself.
Their dinners continued with the same cautious regularity as his library visits. Every evening at seven, they would sit at opposite ends of the small table Mrs. Holloway insisted on using instead of the vast formal dining room, and attempt conversation that rarely progressed beyond superficial pleasantries before lapsing into a silence that somehow felt less awkward than the talking.
Thea learned to read the silence. When it felt comfortable, she would occasionally venture a comment—about a book she’d discovered, or the weather, or the remarkable persistence of the fog that seemed to breed in the valley like mushrooms. When it felt brittle, she remained quiet and focused on her meal, giving him the space he clearly needed.
The Duke, she was discovering, spoke more through absence than presence. What he didn’t say often mattered more than what he did.
But the house spoke volumes.
On her fourth morning, Thea had ventured beyond the library, exploring the corridors and rooms that sprawled through Greymont Hall like the branches of some massive, petrified tree. Mrs. Holloway had told her she was free to go anywhere except the North Tower—”Old tragedy, dear, and His Grace is particular about it”—and Thea had taken her at her word.
She’d discovered the portrait gallery first: three generations of Greymonts staring down with varying degrees of severity. The current Duke’s father looked like his son might have, if all warmth and humanity had been surgically removed. His mother—Marianne, the painting was labeled—possessed a distant sadness that made Thea want to know her story.
There was another portrait that caught her attention: a young woman in her early twenties, beautiful in the fragile way of spun glass, wearing a wedding dress and an expression of profound resignation. The brass plate read: Catherine Greymont, Duchess of Greymont, 1814.
The late Duchess. The Duke had mentioned her death briefly during their first dinner, a passing reference that closed rather than opened conversation. Looking at the portrait, Thea understood why. Catherine’s eyes held the same sadness as Marianne’s, the same sense of being trapped in a life that fit poorly.
She’d stood before the portrait for longer than she should have, trying to reconcile the Duke’s careful solitude with the fact that he’d been married, that a woman had lived in this house and died here, that grief or guilt or some combination of both had driven him into the isolation he now maintained so fiercely.
“She was lovely, wasn’t she?”
Thea had spun around to find an older woman standing in the gallery entrance, elegant despite her years, silver hair perfectly coiffed, eyes sharp with intelligence and something that might have been amusement.
“I’m sorry,” Thea had said. “I didn’t mean to intrude. Mrs. Holloway said—”
“That you could explore freely. Yes, she told me.” The woman had moved closer, studying the portrait with an expression Thea couldn’t quite read. “I’m Margaret Greymont. The dowager duchess. And you must be the librarian everyone’s talking about.”
“Miss Ashworth.” Thea had curtsied automatically, old training taking over. “I hope my presence hasn’t caused too much disruption.”
“Disruption?” Lady Margaret had smiled. “My dear girl, you’re the most interesting thing to happen to this house in eight years. Of course everyone’s talking about you. They’re terrified you’ll leave before you’ve properly settled in.”
“I have no intention of leaving.” Thea had glanced back at Catherine’s portrait. “Was she…” She’d paused, uncertain how to phrase the question delicately.
“Unhappy?” Lady Margaret had supplied. “Yes. Desperately so. As was my grandson. They married for duty, you see. Their fathers arranged it. Neither of them wanted the match, but neither had the courage to refuse it. And then she died, and Lucian convinced himself he’d killed her through sheer force of their mutual misery.”
The blunt honesty had left Thea momentarily speechless.
“I apologize,” Lady Margaret had continued. “I’ve shocked you. I tend to speak too plainly in my old age. One of the few privileges of widowhood.” She’d linked her arm through Thea’s with surprising familiarity. “Walk with me. I want to know everything about the woman who’s managed to make my grandson voluntarily join someone for dinner.”
They’d walked the portrait gallery together, Lady Margaret providing acidic commentary on various ancestors (“That’s Reginald. Gambled away half the estate. Total wastrel. Lovely man, though—my favorite uncle.”) and gently but persistently extracting Thea’s history in return.
Thea found herself telling the dowager duchess more than she’d intended: her father’s death, the debts that consumed her inheritance, the years of genteel poverty disguised as employment, the desperation that had driven her to accept a position in the remote north where no one of consequence would ever discover how far she’d fallen.
Lady Margaret had listened with an intensity that suggested genuine interest rather than polite obligation.
“You’re exactly what he needs,” she’d said finally, cryptically. “Though neither of you knows it yet.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My grandson.” Lady Margaret had patted Thea’s arm. “He’s convinced himself he’s content with isolation. That wanting nothing means risking nothing. But humans weren’t meant for complete solitude, Miss Ashworth. We’re social creatures, even those of us who claim to prefer our own company. Lucian has been dying slowly of loneliness for eight years, and he doesn’t even recognize it.”
“With respect, Your Grace, I’m here to catalogue books, not to provide companionship to the Duke.”
“Of course you are.” Lady Margaret’s smile had been knowing. “But there’s no rule against doing both, is there?”
Thea had extricated herself from that conversation as politely as possible and returned to the library, unsettled in ways she couldn’t quite articulate. The dowager duchess, for all her kindness, had seen too much and said too plainly what Thea had been trying very hard not to acknowledge.
That she was drawn to the Duke. Not in any romantic sense—she was far too practical for that, and her experience with men who held power over her employment had taught her the danger of such feelings. But there was something compelling about his carefully maintained distance, his flashes of dry wit that emerged when he forgot to be severe, the way he touched books with a reverence that matched her own.
She recognized in him a kindred spirit: someone who’d learned to armor themselves against further hurt, who’d chosen isolation not because they wanted it but because it felt safer than the alternative.
And safety, Thea understood, could become its own kind of prison.
A week into her employment, the routine had settled into something almost comfortable. Mornings in the library, cataloguing and cleaning and slowly bringing order to centuries of accumulated chaos. Afternoon tea, which Mrs. Holloway insisted on bringing regardless of Thea’s protests that she didn’t need such attention. Evenings at dinner with the Duke, their conversations gradually extending beyond pleasantries into something almost resembling actual discourse.
He’d begun asking her opinion on various books: what she thought of Godwin’s political philosophy, whether she preferred Pope or Dryden, if she’d read the new Walter Scott novel everyone in London was apparently obsessed with.
She’d answered honestly, defending Godwin with more passion than was strictly proper, choosing Dryden for his clarity and Pope for his wit (“Surely I’m allowed to have both?”), and admitting she found Scott overly romantic but couldn’t stop reading him anyway.
“Overly romantic?” The Duke had raised an eyebrow. “Coming from a woman who’s read every Gothic novel in my collection?”
“Gothic novels aren’t romantic. They’re atmospheric. Completely different.”
“Are they?”
“Absolutely. Romance suggests optimism about human nature. Gothic literature is predicated on the opposite—that we’re all haunted by our pasts and doomed to repeat our mistakes.”
He’d gone very still. “You believe that?”
Too late, she’d recognized the trap she’d walked into. “Not entirely. I think we have the capacity to change, if we’re brave enough. But courage is rare.”
“And cowardice is common.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” He’d refilled her wine glass, his expression unreadable. “You’re right, though. Most of us are too frightened to change, even when we know we should. We convince ourselves that our cages are of our own making, therefore we must want them.”
The conversation had shifted after that, back to safer topics, but Thea had lain awake that night thinking about cages and courage and the peculiar intimacy of speaking truths to someone who understood them.
Now, at the end of her first week, she sat at her desk in the library as afternoon faded into evening, recording the details of a 1623 First Folio she’d discovered tucked between a farming manual and a collection of sermons. It was in remarkable condition, and she was terrified of damaging it.
“You look as though you’re handling an unexploded munition.”
She looked up to find the Duke standing in the doorway, still in his riding clothes, his hair disheveled from wind and his cheeks touched with cold. He looked younger somehow, less controlled, and Thea felt something uncomfortable flutter in her chest that she absolutely refused to acknowledge.
“It’s a First Folio,” she said instead, gesturing to the book. “1623. Complete, as far as I can tell. Worth more than I’ll earn in a lifetime.”
He crossed to the desk, peering over her shoulder. She was acutely aware of his proximity, of the scent of horse and leather and cold air that clung to him.
“Grandfather’s prize possession,” he said quietly. “I’d forgotten we had it.”
“You forgot you owned a Shakespeare First Folio?”
“I forget I own a lot of things.” He reached past her—carefully, not touching—to turn a page. His hand was elegant despite its size, long fingers that moved with precision. “The advantage of inheriting vast quantities of objects you had no hand in acquiring. They cease to feel like yours.”
“Does the house feel like yours?” The question emerged before she could stop it.
He withdrew his hand, straightening. “Sometimes. Mostly it feels like I’m haunting it rather than living in it.”
“That’s—” She’d been about to say “sad” but caught herself. “Poetic.”
“You mean melancholy.”
“Yes. But poetic as well.” She closed the Folio carefully, wrapping it in the soft cloth she’d been using. “Your Grace, may I ask you something?”
“You keep asking permission to ask questions. It’s becoming a habit.” But his tone wasn’t unkind. “Ask.”
“Why did you really need a librarian? Not for cataloguing—I’m not naive enough to think that’s essential. But why bring someone into your home after so long alone?”
For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer. He moved to the window, looking out at the darkening gardens, his reflection ghostly in the glass.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Roth kept insisting the library needed attention. Mrs. Holloway kept suggesting I was becoming too reclusive. Lady Margaret—” He paused. “You’ve met her, I assume?”
“Yes. She’s formidable.”
“That’s one word for it.” A flicker of something that might have been affection crossed his face. “She visited three months ago and told me I was wasting my life. We had a rather spectacular argument about it. I told her to mind her own business. She told me I was my father’s son after all, too proud and stubborn to accept help when I clearly needed it.”
“That seems harsh.”
“It was accurate.” He turned from the window. “The next day, I wrote to Roth and told him to place the advertisement. I think I wanted to prove her wrong. That I could have someone in the house and remain unchanged. That I wasn’t my father, using isolation as a weapon against everyone around him.”
“And?” Thea asked quietly. “Are you unchanged?”
He looked at her then, really looked at her, and she saw something in his eyes that made her breath catch. Not desire, exactly, though there was an element of that. Recognition, perhaps. The acknowledgment of seeing and being seen in return.
“No,” he said. “I don’t think I am.”
The moment stretched between them, fragile and loaded with possibility. Thea knew she should look away, return to her cataloguing, maintain the professional distance that was the only safe ground between them. But she couldn’t quite make herself move.
It was the Duke who broke first, clearing his throat and stepping back. “I should dress for dinner. I’ll see you at seven.”
“Of course. Your Grace.”
He left, and Thea sat very still, listening to his footsteps fade down the corridor, trying to identify the emotion currently making it difficult to breathe.
Hope, perhaps. Or fear.
Most likely both.
Outside, fog was rolling into the valley again, wrapping Greymont Hall in its familiar grey embrace. Inside, the library settled into its evening quiet, and Thea carefully placed the First Folio in the locked cabinet where the most valuable books were stored, her hands steady despite the turbulence in her chest.
She had nine months remaining on her contract. Nine months to complete the cataloguing, save her salary, and move on to whatever came next.
Nine months, she was beginning to suspect, that would prove either her salvation or her undoing.
Possibly both.
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