“So what did ye have in mind for tonight?” she asked, half curious, half guarded. Something about the look on his face gave her much-needed courage.
His gaze rose to her face at once. “Ye’ll see soon enough. Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“Ye ask too many questions,” he drawled, his teasing tone slightly aggravating.
Emma shot him a glare. “Ye think ye are so smug, do ye nae?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Was that another question?”
He opened the door and stood aside, then watched her as she entered, the rustle of her skirts disturbing the stillness in the room. A lone lamp threw a steady pool of light across his desk, and she watched him cross that pool without pause.
The scent of faint beeswax and ink filled her nostrils as she continued to watch him move rather slowly. One hand was tucked in his pocket, and the other hung at his side. Her eyes strayed to his leather trousers, the way they seemed to perfectly hug his behind.
She ground her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut for a minute.
Focus, Emma. Focus.
“Are ye coming?” His voice brought her back to the present.
She snapped her eyes open and watched him pause by another door at the far end of the study. Her eyes narrowed.
Another door.
How had she never seen it before? But then she had never been in his study long enough to examine the room.
Her eyes settled on him as he reached the door set in the paneling. He pressed down on the knob and pushed it open. The hinges gave a small creak as dust and leather rose at the first breath of air, clean and old.
He turned to her, a faint smile on his lips as she moved closer. “After ye.”
She stepped through, her eyes peeled as she moved further into the room. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, packed with books in brown and dark red, a few with thin lines of gold along their spines. A ladder stood in the corner, and a small fire burned low in the grate across the far wall.
Her eyes widened with each step she took, studying the books. There was enough here to read for a lifetime if she did nothing else. She inhaled the smell of old paper as she ran her hands over the spines, the shock on her face plain.
“This is all yers?” Her voice came small.
“Aye,” Jack responded, his hands tucked behind his back. “It was me faither’s and grandfaither’s. The rest I added when I had the money to acquire it.”
She swallowed, taking in more of the room as she walked. Her disbelief, for some reason, refused to fade. There was no way. There was no way a man like Jack Barkley had a library the size of a village square hidden in his castle.
Something about all of this felt too good to be true.
She turned to him, wide-eyed, as if a door had opened in him as well. “This was where ye wanted me to come?”
His left eye twitched. “Do ye nae like it?”
“Ye brought me to a library.”
“Aye. I ken.”
“Do ye? Do ye truly?”
A smile crossed his face as he leaned forward. He seemed to understand her surprise for what it truly was now.Unadulterated surprise.
“I thought ye might find some poetry ye’d enjoy,” he said.
The words sounded simple, yet they shifted the atmosphere.
