Chapter 3
I stood pinned between the press and his retreating shadow, rubbing my forearm where his fingers had left five distinct, aching points of pressure.
“You’re out of your mind,” I said, my voice shaking slightly, caught between lingering anger and a sudden, prickling sense of unease. “Blackwood Hall hasn't been heated in three years. The damp alone would kill the paper.”
“I’ve had coal delivered,” Vance said, keeping his back half-turned to me. His knuckles rested on the table, supporting his weight. He didn't turn around to face me; instead, he tilted his head, his ear angling toward me, waiting. “I’ve hired local braziers. The archive room is sealed and dry.”
“And you think I’m just going to shut down my shop for three weeks because Vance Montgomery snapped his fingers?”
“I know you will,” he said. He didn't turn around. He reached out to pick up a brass pallet from the felt, but his fingers misjudged the distance by half an inch, knocking the metal tool against the wooden tray with a sharp, echoing *clack* before his hand closed around it.
He picked it up, rolling the brass handle between his fingers, his expression completely neutral, as if the clumsiness had been entirely intentional.
“You won't let another man touch the Mercator, Julian,” he said softly, staring down at the tool in his hand. “You’d rather choke on your own pride than let me bring an appraiser from the capital.”
He was right. God damn him, he was completely right. The Blackwood cartographic holding was the kind of collection an antiquarian saw once in a lifetime, if he was blessed. To have it sitting four miles away, rotting in an unheated manor house under the careless supervision of an ambitious salvage broker, was torture.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said, the words bitter on my tongue. “Eight o’clock. If the room is damp, I’m walking out. If the sizing is ruined, I’m taking the train to London myself to file a complaint with the antiquarian guild.”
Vance didn't answer immediately. He stood entirely still, the brass tool held tightly in his fist.
“Eight o’clock,” he echoed. His voice was lower now, stripped of its brassy veneer. “Don’t be late.”
He set the tool down. He didn't drop it; he lowered it slowly, deliberately, until the brass met the green felt without a sound. Then, with that same heavy, flat-footed stride, he turned toward the front of the shop.
I watched him go.
He didn't walk down the wide, open center aisle between the display cases. Instead, his shoulder brushed against the high, dark bookshelves lining the left wall. His left hand—the bare one—trailed lightly along the leather-bound spines on the second shelf, his fingertips grazing the gold-stamped titles with a faint, whispering rustle.
*Whisper. Whisper. Whisper.*
It looked like the habit of an affectionate bibliophile, someone who loved the tactile grain of old paper and morocco leather. But Vance had never been a romantic about bindings. In the academy, he had treated books like currency, like ammunition, like stepping stones to the next prize.
At the front door, he stopped. The afternoon sun had broken through the maritime fog, casting a sharp, blinding stripe of white light across the threshold and the glass pane.
Vance stood in the shadow just before that band of light. For two long seconds, he didn't reach for the brass door handle. He just stood there, his back straight, his shoulders rigid beneath his tailored coat, his silhouette black against the glare.
“Vance?” I called out, my voice echoing slightly in the quiet room.
He didn't turn his head. But at the sound of my voice, his left shoulder dropped half an inch, the tension draining out of his neck like air from a punctured lung.
“Don't forget your bone folders, Julian,” he called back, his tone smooth, mocking, and effortless once more. “I’d hate for you to find yourself without the proper tools.”
His hand reached forward, seized the brass latch, and threw the door open. The street bell chimed violently overhead—a bright, brassy clatter that made him flinch, a sudden jerk of his head that he quickly smoothed into a nod toward an imaginary passerby.
He stepped out onto the cobblestones, moving into the gray sea light, his dark coat sweeping behind him as he turned toward the headland.
I stood behind the counter for a long time, the silence of the shop rushing back in to fill the space he had vacated. My forearm still throbbed with the dull, phantom ache of his fingers.
I looked down at the brass counter rail. Right where his hand had gripped the metal, the cold polish was smudged with a streak of hot, evaporating moisture.
A conqueror returning home to mock his rival. That was what Vance was. That was what he had always been: a brilliant, arrogant bastard who couldn't enjoy a victory unless someone was there to witness it.
Then why had his hand felt so cold when he grabbed me?
And why, when I told him to step back, had he looked at me like a man standing on the edge of an open grave, terrified that if he moved his feet, the ground would simply disappear?
I shook my head, untying my apron with sharp, irritated jerks. It was a game. Vance had spent five years in the capital learning how to manipulate high-society syndicates; he was just testing my defenses, using invasive intimacy to rattle me before the appraisal began.
I would go to Blackwood Hall tomorrow. I would inspect his precious fourteenth-century vellum, I would take his ten thousand pounds, and I would keep my distance.
Because whatever game Vance Montgomery was playing, he was playing it far too close to the edge.
The road to Blackwood Hall was nothing more than a rutted scar through gorse and salt grass, carved along the spine of the coastal bluff.
By half past seven, the wind was tearing off the Atlantic, carrying a freezing spray that stung my cheekbones and soaked through the heavy tweed of my overcoat. In my right hand, I carried my wooden field box—fitted with jars of wheat-starch paste, bone folders, Japanese mending tissue, and micro-spatulas. It weighed fifteen pounds, balanced against the gale by sheer habit.
The manor loomed out of the sea fog like a beached galleon. It was a sprawling, brutalist pile of black granite, its rooflines jagged with broken balustrades and empty chimney stacks. Lord Blackwood had died in the master bedroom while rain dripped through the ceiling three floors above him; his heirs hadn't set foot on the property since the funeral, preferring to let the damp eat the wainscoting while London solicitors diced up the remains.
I didn't expect the front door to be unlatched, but when I set my knuckles to the iron ring, the heavy oak slab swung inward on greased hinges without a creak.
“Wipe your boots, Jules. I’m not paying you to drag the beach across the parquetry.”
The voice cut through the cavernous foyer like a lash.
Vance stood at the base of the grand staircase, fifty feet away, framed by two dead candelabras. He was stripped of his heavy traveling cloak, wearing a tailored waistcoat of charcoal wool over an immaculate white shirt, the cuffs rolled precisely twice to expose his forearms. He looked entirely out of place amidst the peeling wallpaper and graying plaster—a sleek, razor-edged predator lounging in a ruin.
