VEIL WALKED BACK TOthe 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 LEASTforty 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.
