Chapter 5
“Vance?”
I glanced up.
He hadn't moved an inch from the hearth. He stood entirely rigid, his head tilted forward, his jaw clenched so tightly the tendon stood out like a cord. His eyes weren't on the tables; they were staring blankly into the middle of the room, fixed on a patch of empty Persian rug.
“Julian,” he said. His voice was oddly flat, stripped of all its brassy polish.
“What?”
“Don't do that.”
I blinked. “Don't do what?”
“Don't drop your voice to a whisper and stop moving.” His words came out fast, sharp, like small stones flung against glass. “If you're going to examine the chart, speak. Describe what you're seeing.”
I set the loupe down on the table with an irritated click. “I'm working, Vance. Conservators don't recite poetry while they assess mechanical damage. It requires focus.”
“I didn't ask for poetry. I asked for an appraisal.” He took a step forward, away from the hearth. His boot caught the fringe of the heavy rug; his foot dragged, stumbling forward half an inch before his weight shifted with a violent jerk, catching himself against the corner of the nearest empty table.
The brass inkstand on the table rattled.
He didn't look down at his feet. He gripped the edge of the oak table with both hands, leaning his full weight onto his palms, his shoulders hunched high around his neck.
“I need to know the timeline,” he rasped, lifting his chin, staring directly across the empty air at me. “I have buyers waiting in Antwerp. If the gold is flaking, that changes the reserve price. Speak aloud, Jules. Every flaw. Every tear. Don't hoard the diagnosis inside your head like a miser.”
The sheer hostility of the demand was absurd. Yet, watching him grip the table until his knuckles turned the color of lard, a strange prickle of unease settled in my stomach.
“Fine,” I said slowly, keeping my voice steady, resonant, and loud. “The vellum is cockled along the outer margin. There is mild foxing near the cartouche. The iron gall ink has begun to bite through the substrate at the forty-fifth parallel.”
As I spoke, Vance’s shoulders slowly dropped. The rigid tension in his neck unwound by microscopic increments. He pushed off the first table, moving toward me.
He didn't take the direct path across the open floor between the two tables. Instead, he traced the perimeter of the oak furniture, keeping his hip pressed against the edge of the first table, sliding his palm along the wood until he reached the gap, then crossing the three feet of open floor in a single, oversized stride that brought him directly to my side.
He planted himself flush against the edge of table two, his shoulder bumping mine as he crowded directly into my workspace. He leaned down, his heavy wool coat brushing against my linen apron, his face barely four inches from my cheek.
“Keep going,” he murmured.
The heat coming off him was suffocating, smelling of expensive soap, cedar, and that cold metallic tang from the storm. Up close, I could see the dark, bruised circles beneath his eyes, and the minute, frantic fluttering of his lower lids.
It was too close. It was deliberately invasive, designed to put me on the back foot just as he had done five years ago in the seminar halls.
I stopped moving my tools. I laid the bone folder down on the green felt, crossed my arms over my chest, and turned my head to meet him squarely.
“Step back, Vance,” I said, each word level and uncompromising. “I need two feet of clearance around the vellum, and I don't work with someone breathing down my collar.”
His brow furrowed, a flicker of defensive irritation crossing his features. “The light is behind you. If I stand on the other side of the table, I’m in the shadows. I want to see what you're pointing at.”
“I don't care about the shadows,” I countered, not yielding an inch. “You're leaning on my elbow, and your coat is hovering over fourteenth-century sizing. Take two paces back to the end of the table, or I pack my kit right now.”
We locked eyes. The silence stretched between us, thick with five years of buried rivalry and unresolved friction.
For a second, I thought he would sneer, push his weight further into my space, and dare me to walk out. But as my gaze held his, immovable and dead serious, Vance’s jaw tightened into a hard, stubborn knot.
He yielded.
He didn't step back smoothly. He pushed off the table, taking two rigid, exaggerated steps back toward the corner of the long refectory table. When his heels came down, his boots hit the floorboards with that heavy, resounding *thud*, and the instant he reached the carved corner, both of his hands dropped onto the timber, gripping the wood to arrest the slight, imperceptible sway in his frame.
He stood there, separated from me by four feet of polished oak, his knuckles white against the dark grain.
“Satisfied?” he scoffed, his lips curling into an arrogant, brittle smirk that failed to hide the rapid rise and fall of his chest. “Still guarding your precious little perimeter, Jules. Still terrified of letting anyone close enough to see you sweat.”
The barb was familiar, but seeing him anchored to that wooden corner like a man clutching the rail of a listing ship, something shifted in me.
I wasn't intimidated by him. I had never been intimidated by him. Five years ago, I had let his caustic brilliance push me into silence, retreating into my bindery while he rode off to conquer the capital. But I was no longer a student fighting for a fellowship, and he was no longer an untouchable golden boy.
I picked up my bone folder, twirling the polished ivory between my fingers, and took two slow, deliberate steps toward his end of the table.
I closed the distance myself.
I stopped when our chests were barely a foot apart, entering his space on my own terms. The air between us spiked with electric, sweet-heat tension, hot and thick as resin.
“I was never terrified of you, Vance,” I said softly, holding his gaze. “And I’m certainly not terrified of you now.”
Vance’s smirk faltered. His dark, unfocused eyes flicked down to my mouth, then to the exposed hollow of my throat above my open work collar. A sudden flare of heat burned in his gaze—hungry, intense, completely stripped of mockery.
“Aren't you?” he whispered, his voice dropping into a register so low and gravelly it resonated against my ribs. “Your pulse is hammering against your collar, Jules.”
His left hand rose from the corner of the table. His long, elegant fingers hovered in the empty space between our bodies, trembling with a fine, exhausting vibration. He didn't lunge forward. He didn't seize my shirt or pin me against the oak.
Instead, he paused, his fingers suspended an inch from my skin.
“Tell me to step away, Julian,” he murmured, his breath brushing my lips, smelling of clove and bitter chicory. The arrogance in his tone was paper-thin now, cracked open to reveal the raw, desperate question underneath. “Say the word, and I’ll walk to the other side of the room. Tell me to back off.”
