CHAPTER FOUR

CONVERSATIONS BY CANDLELIGHT

Lucian spent the greater part of Friday convincing himself that he had no particular reason to go to the library after dinner.

This ought not to have required effort. He had, after all, managed eight years of disciplined solitude with only minor lapses into behavior that Mrs. Holloway called self-punishment and Dr. Vale called melancholic stubbornness. Avoiding one room in his own house because a woman with intelligent eyes had taken up residence in it should have been simple.

Instead, he found himself restless in a manner he disliked on principle.

He had spent the morning with Roth over estate accounts, the afternoon riding boundary lines the tenants knew better than he did, and the early evening enduring dinner opposite Miss Ashworth while speaking no more than was necessary. She had seemed distracted herself, though whether from fatigue or from some private thought he could not tell. He had asked about her progress in the library. She had informed him that his grandfather's shelving logic bore a striking resemblance to a fever dream. He had nearly laughed.

That, more than anything, had unsettled him.

Laughter had become dangerous at Greymont Hall. It altered the air. It suggested life where he had carefully cultivated something quieter and more manageable. He did not trust anything that threatened the equilibrium of the house, least of all when the threat wore plain grey gowns and spoke of Godwin as though political philosophy were suitable dinner conversation.

After the meal, Miss Ashworth had excused herself with her usual composure, claiming she wished to note several discoveries before sleep blurred them. Lucian had watched her leave the dining room with a ledger tucked under one arm, her candle throwing warm light over the dark knot of her hair.

He had remained where he was long after the port should have held his interest.

At half past nine, he gave up pretending he meant to read the correspondence before him, rose from his desk in the study, and crossed the house by the servants' stair as though stealth rendered the act less ridiculous.

The corridor leading to the library lay in near darkness. Most of the household had retired. Wind pressed intermittently at the long windows, and somewhere in the depths of the Hall old pipes knocked with arthritic complaint. Candlelight bled beneath the library doors in a thin gold line.

She was still awake, then.

He told himself he meant only to ensure she had not set some priceless manuscript on fire through overwork. That was a reasonable concern. Entirely ducal. Nothing at all to do with curiosity.

He opened the door quietly and stepped inside.

The library at night possessed a different sort of grandeur than it did by day. Morning made it scholarly. Evening made it secretive. The tall shelves rose into shadow beyond the reach of the candles, and the galleries overhead disappeared into darkness like the upper reaches of a chapel. Fire burned low in the grate. Pools of lamplight and candlelight illuminated islands of order amidst the great sea of books.

Miss Ashworth sat cross-legged atop the rolling ladder beside the philosophy shelves, a volume open in one hand, another balanced precariously on the rung beside her. Her spectacles—spectacles, God help him; he had not known she owned a pair—rested low on her nose as she squinted at a page. A loose strand of dark hair had escaped and curled against her cheek.

For one absurd instant, Lucian forgot why this was a bad idea.

Then the ladder shifted.

The book on the rung slid. Miss Ashworth startled, reached for it, lost her balance, and the larger volume in her hand tipped outward toward the floor.

Lucian moved before thought could interfere. He crossed the space between them in three strides and caught the falling book against his chest just as she steadied herself with a sharp intake of breath.

The ladder swayed once, twice, then settled.

Silence followed, broken only by the hiss of the fire.

Miss Ashworth looked down at him from two rungs above, wide-eyed behind the spectacles, one hand pressed to the shelf.

Lucian held an early edition of *The Faerie Queene* that would have lost half its value had it struck the floor.

"I see," he said after a moment, "that your cataloguing methods have expanded to include attempted murder of rare texts."

Color rose in her cheeks. She pushed the spectacles up and descended the ladder with more haste than grace. "I was not attempting murder. Merely manslaughter through inattention. And only because you materialized like a guilty conscience." She reached for the book, then seemed to think better of it. "Thank you."

He handed it over carefully. Their fingers brushed for the briefest instant. The contact was slight, almost accidental, but it landed with ridiculous force.

Miss Ashworth seemed to feel it too. Her hand stilled against the leather binding before she drew it back.

"You are working late," Lucian said, because one had to say something.

"So are you."

"This is my library."

She arched a brow. "And your house. By that logic, you may wander every corridor at midnight and call it duty."

"I often do."

"That explains a great deal."

He should have left then. The sensible course was obvious. Instead, he found himself taking in the little world she had built in his absence: ledgers stacked in neat columns, slips of paper marking shelves, a cluster of books awaiting repair, her discarded shawl draped over the back of a chair, the faint scent of lavender mixed with beeswax and old leather. She had made a place for herself here without disturbing the essential character of the room. He found that he minded less than he ought.

"What are you doing on a ladder at this hour?" he asked.

"Arguing with Aristotle." She set *The Faerie Queene* on the desk and removed her spectacles, folding them with care. "And with your grandfather, posthumously. He appears to have hidden metaphysics among natural philosophy and buried sermons in a section devoted to travel journals. I was trying to determine whether it was a system or merely spite."

"My grandfather believed in intellectual ambush."

"That would explain the Greek lexicon I found behind a volume on sheep breeding." Her mouth twitched. "I was beginning to suspect he shelved according to private amusement."

"Entirely possible." Lucian glanced at the open book on the desk. "What offense has Aristotle committed tonight?"

"Only his usual ones." She touched the page with one finger. "This copy includes marginal notes from at least three different owners, each of whom seems convinced redemption is either impossible, inevitable, or a matter of temperament. Since none of them agree, I was considering whether the debate belongs under philosophy or theology."

"At Greymont Hall," he said, "those are frequently the same thing."

She studied him for a moment, then leaned one hip against the desk. "Do you believe in redemption, Your Grace?"

The question was asked lightly enough, but he heard what lay beneath it. She always listened harder than she spoke. It was one of the reasons he ought to avoid her.

"That depends," he said, "on the crime."

"A cautious answer."

"A practical one."

"And if the crime is not legal?" she asked. "If no court would punish it, but the conscience does?"

He looked at her sharply. The candles threw uncertain light across her face, softening it, but her eyes remained clear and steady. Not prying. Merely asking the sort of question one asked in a library after dark, when books and quiet made honesty seem possible.

"Then conscience becomes the harsher judge," he said. "It does not concern itself with evidence or proportion. It simply repeats its verdict until one is tired enough to believe it."

A pause. The fire cracked softly in the grate.

"That sounds like experience," she said.

"You make philosophy alarmingly personal, Miss Ashworth."

"Only when it refuses to remain abstract." She glanced down at the page again. "I think people like redemption better as a concept than as a reality. It is comfortable to believe others may improve in the broad sense of humanity. Far less comfortable to consider specific people, with specific failings, and decide whether they may be forgiven."

"Including ourselves?"

Her gaze lifted to his again. "Especially ourselves."

There it was, that sensation again, as though some invisible instrument had found the precise frequency at which he might crack.

To blunt it, he moved toward the side table and reached for the decanter left there after dinner. Two glasses sat beside it. Mrs. Holloway had likely placed them earlier, anticipating his presence or hers or both. The woman had the unnerving habit of being right about things he preferred not examined.

"Will you take wine?" he asked.

Miss Ashworth hesitated just long enough to suggest she recognized the impropriety and chose it anyway. "If you're having some."

He poured, handed her a glass, and was perversely relieved when she accepted without fluster. The wine was claret, decent but not memorable. At present, he was grateful for anything that gave his hands occupation.

"I suspect," she said after a sip, "that this is what Gothic heroines mean when they find themselves in compromising situations."

"A duke, a library, and claret? Society would be scandalized."

"Society is scandalized by weather when it occurs in the wrong place." She turned the stem between her fingers. "Still, if anyone asks, we are discussing Aristotle."

"God forbid our reputations be damaged by the Greeks."

That drew a laugh from her, low and brief and entirely too pleasing. Lucian looked down into his glass as if the wine required study.

"You mock society," he said. "Yet you understand its rules perfectly well."

"One can understand a trap without admiring it." Her tone softened. "A woman in my position must understand it, or be crushed by it."

There was no self-pity in the words. Only fact.

"Lord Pemberton," Lucian said before he had decided to speak, "was not the first."

She did not pretend not to understand. "No."

The answer sat between them.

Lucian should let it remain there. Curiosity was not kindness. Digging at another person's bruises because one recognized the shape of them was a selfish impulse dressed in sympathy.

Yet he heard himself ask, "Did someone dismiss you for defending yourself before him?"

Miss Ashworth set her glass down very carefully. When she spoke, her voice had gone flatter, as if smoothing itself over dangerous ground.

"My third position ended because the eldest son of the house mistook isolation for invitation," she said. "He cornered me in the schoolroom when his parents were in London. I left before it progressed beyond threats and a great deal of righteous indignation on his part. The mistress of the house believed I had encouraged him. I was paid a month's wages and sent away before luncheon."

Lucian felt something old and ugly rise in him, hot as iron in a forge.

"Name him."

She looked almost startled. "Why?"

"So I may know whether to shoot him or merely avoid his acquaintance."

That earned him the smallest ghost of a smile. "Since I imagine ducal murder creates paperwork, I shall spare you. Besides, he is insignificant. Lord Pemberton was worse, because he had practice and a wife trained to despise any woman her husband noticed. The other was merely stupid."

"That is a generous distinction."

"Not generous. Practical." She drew a breath. "It is easier to survive when one refuses to grant monsters grandeur. Most men who behave badly are not diabolical. They are simply entitled and dull."

Lucian stared at her.

"You say these things," he said slowly, "as if they ought to comfort me."

"Do they not?"

"No. They make the world seem squalid."

"It often is." She tipped her head. "But not entirely."

He should not have asked it, but the question came anyway. "And Greymont Hall? Is it squalid, or merely Gothic?"

"At present? Drafty, overlarge, and full of books no one has properly loved in years." Her expression changed, gentled. "And less lonely than it wishes to appear."

The words landed harder than any accusation could have done.

Lucian turned away, taking two steps toward the fire lest she see too much in his face. The flames had sunk to glowing coals. Shadows gathered at the edges of the room. Beyond the windows, wind worried at the dark.

"You speak," he said, "as though houses have intentions."

"Don't they?" she asked from behind him. "This one certainly does. It creaks in disapproval, sighs at odd hours, and keeps secrets in the walls. I have lived in enough lodgings to know the difference between a house and a home, and Greymont Hall is trying very hard to decide which it means to be."

He let out a breath that might have been amusement if he had been a man given to amusement. "And what is your verdict, librarian?"

"Undetermined." He could hear the smile in her voice now. "The cataloguing is incomplete."

Against his will, he smiled back at the fire.

When he turned again, she had moved closer to the desk lamp, one hand resting beside the Aristotle volume. The candles lit her from one side and left the other in shadow, an arrangement that made her look less like a governess and more like some minor scholar from one of the portraits, clever and underappreciated and determined to be neither docile nor ornamental.

"You are very certain of your own mind," he said.

"That is because other people have spent years trying to tell me what it ought to contain." She picked up the book and closed it gently. "One becomes possessive under such circumstances."

"And if someone disagrees with you?"

"Then I enjoy the argument. Unless they are tedious. In that case, I endure it politely while planning their literary improvement."

"By force?"

"If necessary." Her eyes glinted. "I have already considered assigning Mr. Roth a novel."

Lucian nearly laughed outright at that image. Roth would rather swallow nails. He caught himself at the precipice of the sound and felt, absurdly, as though he had come too close to a cliff edge.

Miss Ashworth saw it. He knew she did by the way her expression altered, not triumphant, not even surprised, merely attentive, as though she had witnessed something fragile and understood the privilege of it.

That attention was dangerous.

He set his glass aside. "It grows late. You should sleep."

"That," she said mildly, "is a retreat if ever I heard one."

"An observation."

"A retreat wrapped in civility is still a retreat."

No one spoke to him this way. Not Roth, not Dr. Vale, not even Lady Margaret when she was at her sharpest. They criticized, advised, exasperated. Miss Ashworth identified him with unnerving accuracy and offered no apology for it.

"You presume a great deal," he said.

She did not flinch. "Do I?"

The sensible reply would have been yes. A cutting dismissal would have reestablished order. Instead, honesty, reckless and uninvited, rose to meet her question.

"Yes," he said. Then, because he had already gone too far to recover elegantly: "And you are usually right."

Silence followed. Not strained. Something far worse.

The air seemed to narrow around them.

Miss Ashworth's fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on the spine of the book. "That sounds exhausting," she said softly.

"What does?"

"Being right about painful things."

He looked at her and, for one unguarded instant, forgot every reason not to.

She was too close. Not by any objective measure; a desk still separated them. But close enough that he could see the faint scatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the tiredness at the corners of her eyes, the pulse beating low in her throat. Close enough that if he leaned forward, or if she did, the distance would become something else.

The thought struck him with the force of a physical blow.

His body registered it before his conscience did. Desire, clean and immediate and profoundly unwelcome, moved through him like a match put to dry tinder.

Miss Ashworth went very still.

Perhaps she saw it. Perhaps she felt the same shift in the room. Perhaps it was only his own damned imagination, making conspiracies of candlelight and silence.

He took one step back.

It might have been enough, had she spoken then of something ordinary. Books. Weather. The absurdity of his grandfather. Instead, she said, "Your Grace…"

Only that. Nothing more.

But the words held question and caution and something perilously akin to understanding.

Lucian could not bear understanding. Not from her. Not when it tempted him to answer in kind.

He grasped the first shield at hand, which was severity.

"This has gone on long enough," he said, hearing the coldness enter his voice and hating himself for welcoming it. "You are overtired, Miss Ashworth, and I have indulged the conversation more than is wise."

Hurt flickered across her face so quickly he might have imagined it.

"I see," she said, and now her own tone had cooled. "Then I thank you for the indulgence. I shall try not to overtax your charity in future."

The formality of it was worse than reproach.

He ought to explain. That it was not the conversation he feared but its ease. Not her boldness but the way he responded to it. Not impropriety in the social sense, though that was real enough, but the far more dangerous impropriety of wanting her company, her mind, the dry twist of her mouth when she said something cutting and accurate.

He explained none of it.

"Good night, Miss Ashworth."

She inclined her head with maddening composure. "Good night, Your Grace."

Lucian left the library without looking back.

He did not stop until he reached the portrait gallery.

Moonlight and weak corridor candlelight rendered the ancestral faces spectral. His father sneered from one canvas with the same elegant cruelty he had worn in life. His mother stood eternally sad beside her painted garden. Catherine, in her wedding portrait, looked as if she had known from the first exactly how her marriage would end: not in violence, not even in scandal, but in slow mutual damage conducted under the banner of duty.

Lucian braced one hand against the wall and breathed through the familiar rush of self-disgust.

What precisely had he imagined might happen in that library? That he could stand too close to a woman who depended upon his employment and somehow remain honorable by force of intention alone? That because he had not touched her beyond the catching of a book, because he had not spoken a word explicitly improper, he was innocent?

He knew better.

Wanting was where the corruption began. Men like his father had taught him that. Men with power, titles, and appetites large enough to confuse possession with affection. He had built his life in opposition to that example, stone by stone, silence by silence. He would not become careless now because a clever woman had made him laugh and looked at him as if he were still redeemable.

Redeemable.

Aristotle could go hang.

"You look," came Lady Margaret's dry voice from the far end of the gallery, "like a man who has either seen a ghost or behaved like an idiot."

Lucian straightened too quickly. "Grandmother. I thought you retired."

"At my age, one rests. One does not retire. It suggests surrender." She came nearer, her cane tapping lightly on the floorboards, though she used it more as punctuation than support. Her silver hair gleamed in the candlelight. "Well? Which is it? Ghost or idiocy?"

He should have lied. Instead, perhaps because the evening had already destroyed his appetite for falsehood, he said, "Probably both."

Lady Margaret glanced toward the corridor leading to the library and then back at him. Her eyes sharpened with terrible maternal intelligence. "Ah," she said. "The librarian."

"Do not begin."

"My dear boy, I began months ago. You are only now catching up." She stopped before Catherine's portrait, studied it for a moment, then looked at him sidelong. "Did you frighten her away?"

"No."

"Did you try?"

Lucian said nothing.

"Idiot, then," Lady Margaret concluded. "Useful to know. Good night, Lucian. Do try not to spend the next decade punishing yourself for a conversation. It is tedious in a man of your age."

She moved on before he could reply.

Lucian stood alone among the dead and considered, not for the first time, that his grandmother was a menace to all forms of self-deception.

Eventually he made his way to his room, where sleep proved as evasive as reason. He undressed, lay in darkness, and stared up at the unseen canopy while the house settled around him.

From somewhere distant, deep in the Hall, a door closed softly.

He thought of Miss Ashworth extinguishing lamps in the library, gathering her ledgers, climbing the stairs to the east wing with that determined set to her shoulders she wore whenever she was hurt and meant no one to notice. He thought of the brief spark when their fingers had met on the book's spine. He thought of the way she had said his title near the end, quietly enough that it had almost sounded like his name.

This was precisely what he had feared when he placed the advertisement.

Not scandal. Not gossip. Not even temptation in its simplest form.

Hope.

Hope was the most dangerous vice of all. It crept in under the guise of conversation, of companionship, of one laugh where no laugh had been heard in years. It made a man imagine impossible things, like warmth returning to cold rooms or a life altered without being ruined by the alteration.

Lucian had learned the cost of hope thoroughly enough. He did not intend to pay it again.

Tomorrow he would be distant. Polite, certainly. Fair. But distant. He would keep their conversations to books, their dinners brief, their paths as separate as the house allowed.

It was the only sensible course.

Which was why, lying awake while wind moved through the chimneys and moonlight silvered the edges of the curtains, he already knew he would fail.