Chapter one
Beatrice
It was not unusualfor Beatrice Montgomery to be carrying a stack of books taller than she was.
It was unusual for her to drop them.
She stared at the pile of books around her feet and sighed. It hadn’t been a good day, and dropping all the books didn’t make her feel any better about the rest of it. She began picking them up carefully, smoothing out wrinkled pages where books had fallen open.
It was a clear sign of how flustered she was. As the first librarian in their tiny town in the Northlands, she took her job seriously, and dropping books was not part of that responsibility.
Beatrice took a deep breath as she began to stack the books on her desk. She would have to put them away later. It was almost time for her meeting with Lord Alexander Dunham, the local noble who had established the library after his mother passed. Lady Dunham had been a great reader, but, apparently, he was not, since he’d filled an entire building in town with her books.
At least he had the good sense to share the books with others, rather than keeping them locked away where no one would read them.
Lord Dunham didn’t usually ask her to meet with him in winter. Her spring and fall walks to the estate were a welcome, enjoyable activity…but it was cold out, and Beatrice was not looking forward to this trip.
Beatrice grabbed her cloak and began to tie it around her neck just as the door opened.
“Hello, dear,” Eugenia’s cheerful voice said as she popped her head in. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“I was just leaving,” Beatrice admitted, “but I can always stay an extra moment for my favorite patron.”
Eugenia smiled. “And that’s why you are my favorite librarian.”
“I'm the only librarian,” Beatrice muttered as she undid her cloak. Eugenia never stayed a short amount of time. Lord Dunham would have to wait, and he couldn’t be upset with her because she was just doing the job that he paid her to do.
“I finished the latest one,” Eugenia said, holding out the mystery novel that Beatrice had lent her. “Have you read this one yet?”
“I haven't,” Beatrice admitted. “You are far ahead of me, Eugenia.”
“I suppose that’s what happens when you don’t have much to do,” Eugenia said with a mischievous grin.
“Yes, I suppose that would make a difference,” Beatrice admitted. It wasn’t that she was terribly overworked, but she certainly had more to do than Eugenia, who seemed to spend most of her day running around town, poking her nose in everybody's business.
Fortunately, everyone in town seemed to enjoy Eugenia, even if she was a bit meddlesome. She liked to think she’d named halfthe babies in town and matched multiple couples. She had even been in the library when she’d first seen Caspian and Sophia for the first time, as she regularly reminded Beatrice. Their love story had been so adventurous, it belonged in a romance novel—and Eugenia was convinced that it was all her doing.
But no one would dare to tell her that Sophia and Caspian had been a thing long before her involvement. She was a cantankerous old woman when she wanted to be, and nobody wanted to get her in a mood.
“I don’t suppose you’ve gotten anything new?” Eugenia asked, returning from browsing the shelf closest to the door, even though she’d already read all the books shelved there.
Beatrice grinned. She’d had her father pick up the next book in the series on his last run to Riyel.
The fact that he was a trader going back and forth between Riyel and the Northlands was very convenient for her.
“I might have a surprise for you,” she admitted, sitting back behind her desk.
Eugenia grinned and clapped her hands together as she bounced on her feet, her soft gray curls bouncing around her face. “You spoil me,” she said, her eyes twinkling.
“It’s my job,” Beatrice said with a grin.
Eugenia gave her a look, but Beatrice pretended that she didn’t see it.
It wasn’t her fault if she spent a little of her salary on buying the new books that Eugenia loved so much. Lord Dunham was a more than generous employer, and while the library was full of books, it had been lacking some of the newer ones that she’d had her father purchase.
She’d brought her own books—at least some of them—into the library when she became the librarian, and Eugenia had fallen in love with them. What was not to love? They were good books. She saw no harm in buying a few more of them for the library.
“So, where were you off to this morning?” Eugenia said as she signed her name to the list of people who had taken a book out.
