Chapter 1
Arrogance is supposed to create distance, but Vance used it like a grappling hook. When a man wins the world and comes back to rub your nose in it, he usually maintains an aloof, elevated posture. Not Vance. He marched into my family bookstore, dripping with metropolitan glamour, and proceeded to lean over the mahogany counter until our foreheads nearly knocked together. He mocked my curated stock with razor-sharp condescension, yet his boots remained stubbornly welded to the spot right in front of mine. He wasn't lording his superiority over me; he was cornering me with an intensity so suffocating it felt almost frantic.
“Take a step back, Vance,” I said, not budging an inch myself. “You’re breathing on the calfskin.”
He didn't move. If anything, he dipped another half-inch forward, the heavy lapel of his tailored charcoal coat brushing the worn edge of my cedar counter. Up close, he smelled of the capital: expensive bergamot, damp city slate, and the faint, cold metallic tang of an autumn train ride. It was a stark, aggressive intrusion into a shop that had smelled of beeswax, hide glue, and centuries of dried rag paper since before my grandfather took the lease.
“Calfskin is durable, Julian,” Vance murmured, his voice low, gravelly, and far too resonant for the quiet room. “It survived the nineteenth century. I’m fairly certain it can survive an old friend saying hello.”
“We were never friends.”
“Rivals, then. Colleagues.” His mouth curled into that familiar, asymmetric smirk that used to drive me to distraction across the seminar tables at the institute. Five years had sharpened the angles of his jaw, carving away the softness of his youth to leave behind something cut from polished granite. “Though colleagues implies a certain parity. And looking around this dusty mausoleum, I’m not sure we’re operating on the same plane anymore.”
He tapped a gloved finger against the glass display case. The gesture was deliberate, almost rhythmic. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Then by all means,” I replied, my voice level and dry, “take your elevated plane back to High Street. The train leaves at four. If you hurry, you won’t have to breathe provincial air for another minute.”
He didn’t take the bait. He didn’t spin on his heel and stalk out to show me his broad, immaculate shoulders. Instead, his dark eyes—hooded, rimmed with the exhaustion of travel, yet burning with an unsettling, predatory focus—remained locked onto my face. Not just my eyes, but the lower half of my face. He tracked the movement of my mouth with an intensity that made the skin along my collar prickle with heat.
“Still prickly,” he said softly. “Still guarding your paper fortress like a dragon with a hoard of damp mold.”
“I’m running a business, Vance. Unlike you, I don’t rely on speculative capital and municipal patronage to keep the roof over my head.”
I reached down to slide a stack of loose vellum sheets toward my binding bench behind the counter, fully expecting him to step back to let me move. It was the natural, civilized rhythm of two grown men navigating a small room.
He didn't budge.
To reach the bench, I had to brush directly past him. His body was a wall of heavy wool and sheer heat. When my shoulder caught his arm, I expected him to recoil or offer a haughty snort. Instead, his left hand shot out. His bare fingers—he’d stripped off the right glove, leaving the left bare—gripped the brass rail of my counter with such white-knuckled ferocity that the metal gave a faint groan.
His knuckles were bone-white. The tendons in his wrist twitched beneath his starched French cuff.
I paused, half-turned, watching him. “Are you going to let me pass, or are you planning to be a decorative pillar for the rest of the afternoon?”
Vance’s smirk returned, instantaneous and razor-thin, wiping away whatever momentary strain had tightened his brow. “A pillar? Don’t flatter yourself. I’m simply admiring the craftsmanship. You always did have a sentimental attachment to obsolete joinery.”
He didn't step back, but he pivoted on the heel of his boot, rotating his entire frame in one rigid, unbroken arc so that his chest remained less than a foot from mine. The movement was strange—heavy, planted, almost nautical, like a deckhand bracing against the swell of an unseen tide.
“You’re crowding me,” I said plainly.
“It’s a small shop.”
“It’s four hundred square feet. The center aisle is completely clear.”
“The light is better over here.”
I glanced up at the high arched windows facing the street. The afternoon light was gray, filtered through the salt mist rolling off the bay, but it fell squarely across the middle tables, illuminating the gilded lettering of the folios I had laid out for sale. Where we stood, behind the high mahogany counter, the shop was pooled in warm, amber shadow from the single green banker’s lamp humming above my ledger.
“The light is miserable over here,” I retorted. “You’re blocking the only lamp.”
“Then turn on another one.” Vance’s voice dropped, shedding a layer of its metropolitan polish, carrying a rough, commanding edge that scraped against my nerves. “Or don’t. You always claimed you could blind-tool a spine in the dark.”
“I can. That doesn’t mean I want you standing in my pocket while I do it.”
I moved around the bench, setting the vellum sheets down beside my press. The shop was dead quiet save for the tick of the longcase clock in the corner and the muffled roar of the surf three streets away. I kept my back to him for three seconds—just long enough to reach for a bone folder—and in those three seconds, I heard the rustle of his coat.
He hadn’t stayed at the counter.
When I turned around, Vance was right there. Two paces away. In the narrow, private corridor behind the workbench where no customer had ever set foot.
My temper, usually slow and deliberate, flared hot behind my ribs. “Vance. Out. Now.”
He tilted his head. In the dim amber glow, his features looked carved, almost severe. “You haven’t offered me tea.”
“I’m not offering you a seat, let alone tea. Why are you here? You didn't ride five hours on the coastal line just to critique my joinery.”
“Maybe I missed you,” he said smoothly, the words dripping with casual, insolent mockery. “Maybe the capital was full of brilliant, charming scholars who lacked your particular brand of stubborn insubordination.”
“You never missed anyone in your life. You collect people who serve a purpose, and you discard them when the ink dries on the contract.” I crossed my arms, holding the bone folder against my palm like a blunt weapon. “What did you buy, Vance? Whose estate did you scavenge?”
The silence that followed was heavy. Vance didn't look down at the floor, nor did he look around at the shelves towering on either side of the narrow passage. His eyes stayed glued to my mouth, then flicked up to my eyes, then back down to my mouth. There was a faint sheen of sweat along his temples, despite the chill in the air and the damp breeze rattling the shop’s leaded panes.
