Page 46

Ross: Still there?

I glance toward the archive room before replying.

Blaire: For another hour.

His answer comes less than a minute later.

Ross: East corridor in ten.

I delete the message before Amelia comes back to the table.

By the time I reach the corridor, Ross is already there, leaning against the window alcove with his jacket over one arm. He says nothing when I approach. He simply catches my wrist, pulls me into the shadow beyond the doorway, and kisses me once, hard and brief, before letting me go.

“That’s it?” I ask.

“For now,” he replies.

“You dragged me across half the house for that?”

Ross looks at my mouth. “You came.”

I hate how much that makes me smile.

The routine becomes almost effortless after that. We have lunch separately when other people are around, then somehow end up sharing dinner later. He stops by the library with questions he could easily send through staff, but now I know when the question is real and when it is only an excuse. He knows which days I stay late, which bakery near the estate I like, and that I hate raisins in anything pretending to be dessert.

I learn things too. He takes his coffee black after noon. He loosens his tie when he is irritated. If he is truly angry, he becomes quieter, not louder. He reads every document put in front of him, even when he already knows the answer. He checks his phone constantly during business hours and almost never when he is with me.

Around staff, we are careful. If Ross enters the library while Amelia or Margaret is present, he keeps his distance. One afternoon, while I am reviewing provenance notes with Amelia, Ross stops beside the table and places a folder near my hand.

“The revised correspondence from Vienna,” he says.

“Thank you,” I reply.

His fingers brush mine for less than a second as he lets go.

Amelia notices nothing.

I feel the touch for the next ten minutes.

Later, when I open the folder, there is a folded note tucked between the first two pages.

You’re distracting when you pretend not to look at me.

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.

Amelia glances over. “Everything all right?”

“Yes,” I say, closing the folder.

“Everything’s fine.”

Across the room, Ross is speaking to Margaret as though he has no idea what is sitting in my lap. He does not look at me once. That somehow makes it worse.

***

The next afternoon, the library settles into one of its quieter stretches just after lunch. Margaret is upstairs with Eleanor reviewing a set of family records, Amelia is tied up with an insurance call, and I have been left alone with a stack of correspondence and enough silence to make me too aware of my phone when it vibrates beside my hand.

Ross: East stairwell. Five minutes.