Page 21 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

Amelia did not turn round immediately, using the extra moment to arrange her face into something less startled than she felt. For one ridiculous second, her mind supplied the memory of candlelight and dark eyes and a carriage far too small for two people who were supposed to dislike one another. Then sense returned.

"You know my name."

Sebastian's mouth shifted at one corner.

"Mr. Bell told me when you returned the book."

"So you were listening."

"I was standing beside the counter."

"Listening."

"Observing."

"That is a very elegant word for listening."

"I thought you appreciated precision."

"Only when it is deserved."

His amusement deepened.

"I would not have taken you for a man capable of noticing what a woman is reading over her shoulder without being invited to look."

"I was not looking over your shoulder. Mr. Bell is not, I think, in the habit of lowering his voice for the benefit of my discretion." Sebastian came round to stand properly before her now, and she found, with some annoyance, that daylight suited him rather better than candlelight had, there was no lamp to blame for the sudden unsteadiness in her own pulse. "You did not strike me as a woman who reads Gibbon for pleasure, given how thoroughly you disputed my own use of primary sources not a week past."

"I read Gibbon precisely because I intend to dispute his use of them as well, when I've finished forming the argument properly. Unlike some scholars, I prefer not to publish my conclusions before I have fully tested them."

"A fair point, delivered with considerably more edge than fairness generally requires."

"I find edge is the only tone certain scholars respond to." She lifted her chin, refusing to be the one who looked away first. "Have you reconsidered your position on women's natural unsuitability for rigorous thought, Your Grace, or are we destined to have this argument in every bookshop in London until one of us relents?"

"I have not relented. Nor I suspect, have you, which makes the argument considerably more entertaining than most I am subjected to."

"You are not subjected to this one. You are an active and enthusiastic participant, which is a different thing entirely."

"Is it." Something warmed in his expression, reluctant amusement breaking through the composure he generally wore like a second coat. "I confess I have thought a great deal, since the ball, about several of the points you raised. I have not yet decided whether I agree with all of them. I have decided I no longer find them easy to dismiss, which is, for a man of my temperament, a rather significant concession."

"How gracious of you to admit it, three whole sentences after refusing to actually say so directly."

"I said precisely what I meant to say."

"You said precisely as little as you could manage while still technically answering the question, which I have come to understand is rather your particular talent." She said it lightly, though something in his answering smile made her considerably less steady than the tone she'd aimed for. "You are working on a new paper, I take it, given the ink stains on your left hand that no amount of scholarly dignity has managed to disguise."

He glanced down at his hand with faint surprise, as though he'd forgotten it entirely. "A response to Whitfield's critique of my sourcing. It is proving considerably more difficult to argue than I anticipated."

"Perhaps because Whitfield is correct, and you have simply not yet permitted yourself to consider it."

"Perhaps," he said, and the word carried none of the defensiveness she'd expected, only a genuine, weighing consideration that surprised her more than any argument could have. A bell sounded somewhere near the front of the shop, and he glanced toward it, something shifting back into place behind his eyes, the careful public composure reasserting itself. "I am promised at my solicitor's within the quarter hour. I ought to go."

"Then go, Your Grace. I shall not keep you from your obligations."

"No," he said, with a faint, rueful smile that she did not entirely understand, "I do not imagine you would," and inclined his head, and left her standing among the shelves with her pulse considerably less settled than she cared to admit even to herself.

It was only after the shop bell had rung a second time, marking his departure, that she noticed the small stack of papers left behind on the reading table nearest where they'd been standing, several pages of close, slanted handwriting, ink still faintly fresh at the edges. She glanced toward the door. He was already gone, striding up the street beyond the window without a backward glance, entirely unaware of what he'd left behind.

I ought to have Mr. Bell send a boy after him. She thought it, and did not move to act on it, some contrary impulse holding her still until the moment for easy correction had passed, and by then, she told herself, it would be considerably more trouble to chase him down the street than to simply see the papers returned by more ordinary means. She gathered them instead, tucked them into her basket beneath the fresh volume of Gibbon, and told herself, quite firmly, that she had absolutely no intention of reading a single word of them before they were returned.