Hazel deserved better than a man unraveling at the sound of her laugh. Greyson Thornhill, the man who prided himself on discipline above all else, suddenly wished that he had gone nowhere near that ballroom.
And at the very same time, he wished, even more desperately, that he had never left it.
Chapter Thirteen
Hazel had intended merely to acquaint herself with the layout of Callbury House, which was an entirely sensible task for a new duchess, or so she had told herself.
Yet as she wandered through corridor after corridor, with her hand brushing polished banisters and passing portraits of Thornhill ancestors who all looked equally stern, equally pale, and equally predisposed to brooding, she felt a faint tightness ease from her shoulders.
This didn’t feel like home. Still, it was not unfriendly, either.
She rounded a corner and paused. Before her stood a pair of tall carved doors, half-opened as though inviting her curiosity. A faint scent drifted from within: leather bindings, ink, and something warm and old that reminded her of childhood afternoons spent reading while her sisters attempted to set small fires nearby.
The moment she stepped inside, her breath caught.
The library was magnificent. It was a sweeping two-story room, with walls lined from floor to ceiling with endless shelves. A balcony encircled the upper level, complete with a rolling ladder that glided along the rails like something out of a dream. Soft rugs muffled her steps. An enormous fireplace stretched along one wall, its mantle crowned with sculptures of classical figures.
It was unexpectedly and achingly lovely.
“Oh,” Hazel whispered, hearing the sound soft and reverent as she drifted further inside. “My goodness.”
She approached the nearest shelf. Her fingers hovered over the spines: history, botany, mathematics, theology, poetry, travel, scientific treatises, fiction, both modern and decades old. It was as though every scholar in London had contributed a volume in hopes of pleasing the family who lived here.
Hazel tried to pick one.Anyone. But the sheer volume of hundreds upon hundreds left her almost dizzy.
“I need to categorize them,” she murmured, narrowing her eyes in instinctive practicality. “Alphabetically? No, by subject. Or perhaps by?—”
Then she saw it. It was a book near the top shelf, its spine a deep forest green trimmed with gold filigree, gleaming gently as though it had been waiting for her.
Hazel felt an entirely unreasonable, yet undeniable pull.
“That one,” she said to herself.
It was impossible to reach from the ground. Even standing on tiptoe gained her nothing but a crick in her neck and a firm understanding of her own shortness. That only left the ladder. Hazel eyed it warily.
“I am a duchess now,” she informed the empty room. “Surely I can manage a ladder.”
The ladder, of course, did not disagree.
She grasped the sides, tested her weight, then climbed one rung, then another. It creaked, not dangerously, but enough to make her reconsider all her life choices leading up to this moment.
“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” she muttered to the wood. “I’m absolutely certain you have held far heavier people than me.”
She ascended to the fifth rung. “Perhaps.”
To the seventh. “Hopefully.”
She stretched once more toward the green-and-gold spine, with her fingers trembling just shy of victory.
“Come now,” she muttered to the book, as though it might be persuaded by reason. “You and I both know I am more than capable of?—”
“What on earth are you doing up there?”
Hazel yelped, and the ladder wobbled beneath her in a most treacherous fashion.
“Oh heavens!”
Her foot slipped on the rung. The ladder lurched, and Hazel felt herself falling with a breath trapped in her throat. Only, she didn’t land onto the merciless floor, but rather into a pair of strong, steady arms that caught her as though she weighed nothing at all.
