Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 59827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Like I’m something he’s trying to figure out.
“I should—” I start.
“Should what?”
“Get back to the gallery.”
“Should you?”
“Veil—”
He reaches up slowly, giving me time to move away if I want. I don’t move.
His thumb brushes across my cheekbone, and then he holds it up to show me the dark smudge of ink. “You had ink on your face,” he murmurs.
When did I get ink on my face?
When did breathing become this difficult?
“There.” His voice drops lower. “Perfect.”
And the way he’s looking at me doesn’t feel like I was perfect before. His thumb is still on my cheek, his eyes still on my face, and I’m frozen, unable to move, unable to think, unable to do anything except stand here and feel the warmth of his hand and wonder what would happen if I just leaned forward, just closed the distance, just—
Don’t you dare, Evianne.
You just caught your fiancé cheating.
Remember?
I step back, and he lets me go immediately.
“I should—” My voice sounds strange, even to me. “I really should finish the gallery setup.”
“Of course.” His expression is unreadable now. Professional. “I’ll walk you back.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I insist.”
We walk back across the grounds to the Grand Gallery in silence, and his hand never touches my back again, and he keeps a careful distance between us, and I tell myself that’s a good thing. That’s what I wanted. That’s definitely what I wanted.
But when we reach the gallery entrance and he holds the door open for me, his eyes meet mine, and something in them makes my breath catch all over again.
“I’ll see you at dinner, Miss Evianne,” he says, and it sounds less like a statement and more like a promise.
The door closes behind me, and I’m left standing in the Grand Gallery with my heart doing things it has absolutely no business doing, and I realize with a sinking certainty that the Duke of Veilcourt is not done with me.
Not even close.
VEIL WALKED BACK TO the house alone, his hands in his pockets, his mind turning over everything he’d just observed.
She hadn’t asked about the value of a single item. Not the first edition Pride and Prejudice. Not the Mabie Todd Swan. Not the 1823 pen that most collectors would have killed to hold. When he’d told her the Swan was worth two hundred thousand pounds, she’d nearly dropped it in panic rather than handled it with the careful greed he’d seen from others.
And then there was the way she’d touched the books. Reverently. Like she understood that their value had nothing to do with what they’d fetch at auction.
And her mother’s letters. The way her voice had gone soft when she’d mentioned them, the way she’d looked away from him like she was afraid of showing too much. A social worker in Johannesburg who wrote to her daughter every Sunday with a fountain pen. It was the kind of detail that was either deeply genuine or brilliantly calculated, and Veil had spent enough years surrounded by calculated women to know that the line between the two could be razor-thin.
But most of all, he kept coming back to three words on a piece of paper.
This is inappropriate.
She hadn’t written something flirtatious. Hadn’t written his name, or a compliment, or any of the dozen things a woman angling for his attention might have chosen. She’d written a boundary. An honest, unfiltered, almost involuntary boundary, and then she’d turned around and looked up at him with wide eyes and parted lips and an expression that said she was fighting her own reactions and losing badly.
That wasn’t calculation.
Or if it was, it was a kind he’d never encountered.
Veil had been fooled before. By women far more polished than Evianne, women who’d perfected the art of seeming genuine. The last one, Charlotte, had spent three months appearing completely uninterested in his title before casually mentioning how much she’d always dreamed of living in a country estate. The one before that had actually cried during a conversation about his father, tears so convincing he’d nearly believed them, only to find her Instagram post the next day captioned “Afternoon tea with the Duke.”
So.
Evianne was either exactly who she appeared to be: genuine and guarded and completely uninterested in his fortune.
Or she was the most dangerous woman who had ever walked through his door.
Either way, Veil thought as he climbed the stairs, he intended to find out which. And the calligraphy workshop tomorrow would be an excellent place to start.
Chapter Three
THERE ARE AT LEAST forty people in this Regency writing room, all of them holding Hampton fountain pens, and I’m trying very hard not to notice that the Duke of Veilcourt just sat down directly behind me.
Don’t turn around.
Don’t acknowledge him.
Just focus on the instructor.
Miss Ida Laurens, a calligraphy expert flown in from London for this specific workshop, is standing at the front of the room demonstrating Spencerian script on a large easel. Her movements are fluid and practiced, creating elegant loops and flourishes that look effortless.