Read Chapter 10: Ashworth's Library

The Duke of Ashworth’s library smelled of old leather, beeswax, and something faintly green—like crushed laurel leaves. Eleanor inhaled it as though it were oxygen after a drowning.

She had been invited. Properly. Through a note on heavy cream paper delivered by a footman in Ashworth livery, requesting the pleasure of Miss Wentworth’s company to view his collection of financial treatises, as she had expressed such an *uncommon* interest in the subject at the archery contest. A trap, surely. But a trap lined with books she desperately needed.

“My grandfather began the collection,” Ashworth said, leading her between towering shelves. His voice echoed softly in the high-ceilinged room. “He believed that a gentleman who understood money could never be cheated by it.”

“A rare belief,” Eleanor murmured, trailing her gloved fingers along the spines. Smith. Ricardo. A first edition of Mill that made her chest ache. “Most gentleman believe the opposite—that money is vulgar and understanding it is viler still.”

Ashworth laughed, a low sound that surprised them both. “You have met my peers, then.”

She turned to face him, and found him watching her with an expression she could not parse. Curiosity, certainly. But something sharper beneath it, like a blade hidden in a boot.

“May I ask what you seek in these volumes, Miss Wentworth?” He gestured to the shelves. “A lady of fashion rarely requires a working knowledge of bullion reserves.”

Eleanor had prepared for this. “My father’s letters are full of such talk,” she said, letting a note of filial devotion colour her voice. “I confess I read them to feel closer to him. Though the contents often escape me.”

“And yet you asked such pointed questions at the contest about railway speculation.”

*Foolish. Careless.* She smiled anyway. “I am an American, Your Grace. We are raised to ask pointed questions, and to apologize for them only if we must.”

He inclined his head, acknowledging the hit. Then he moved to a small reading desk near the window, where a stack of slim volumes sat beside a leather-bound ledger. Eleanor’s blood chilled.

“But I wonder,” he continued, picking up the ledger and turning it in his hands, “whether your interest is more than sentimental. You see, I keep a catalogue. Of the books, yes—but also of their readers. And of certain authors whose identities are… disputed.”

He opened the ledger. From where she stood, Eleanor could see columns of handwriting—names, dates, annotations. Her own name appeared in the margins of one page, and her stomach turned to ice.

“You catalogue people,” she said, keeping her voice light. “How terribly Gothic of you.”

“I catalogue mysteries,” he corrected. “And I find that mysteries, like compound interest, accrue value the longer they remain unresolved.”

Eleanor took a step toward the desk. If she could see the page—if she could learn which names he had already connected to which columns—

“Careful, Miss Wentworth.” His tone was almost playful. “You are approaching my ledger with the expression of a woman about to embezzle.”

She stopped. Laughed. “I was merely admiring your penmanship.”

“Liar.”

The word hung between them, soft and certain. Eleanor’s heart hammered, but she had been lying to powerful men since she was old enough to hold a pen. She raised an eyebrow.

“Your Grace, in America, calling a lady a liar is considered poor manners.”

“In England, we consider it an opening move.” He closed the ledger and set it aside, gesturing to a pair of chairs by the cold fireplace. “Sit with me. I have a proposition.”

She sat. The chair was worn velvet, and beneath the fabric she could feel the hard wood of the frame. No comfort. No give.

“I have been reading the Ellery column since it first appeared,” Ashworth said, settling across from her. “Whoever writes it has an uncommon grasp of market mechanics. Not a scholar’s grasp—the prose is too alive for that. But a practitioner’s.”

Eleanor smoothed her skirts. “I have read it once or twice. It seemed rather… saucy.”

“Saucy,” he repeated, tasting the word. “Yes. That is precisely the problem. A woman’s wit, dressed in a man’s confidence.”

Her pulse quickened. He was close—closer than he knew. But he was also guessing. No proof, only pattern.

“You believe the author is a woman,” she said, tilting her head. “And you intend to expose her.”

“I intend to meet her.”

“Why?”

Ashworth leaned forward. The firelight—what little there was of it—caught his face, deepening the lines around his eyes. He was handsome in the way old libraries are handsome: weathered, serious, quietly valuable.

“Because,” he said, “the column has begun to predict events that have not yet occurred. And some of those predictions have been… manipulated.”

Eleanor’s blood went cold. *Finch. The bonds. The missing letter.*

“The railway column,” she said carefully. “I read that one. It recommended Great Northern.”

“Yes.” His voice was flat. “And then the promoter disappeared, and the bonds collapsed. Two hundred investors lost their money in a single week. Someone knew the column was coming and acted before it appeared. Someone used Ellery as a pawn.”

*Thaddeus Finch*, Eleanor thought. *And whoever bribed Jarvis to steal my letter.* The pieces were beginning to arrange themselves into a shape she did not like.

“If the author is innocent,” Ashworth continued, “she deserves the chance to clear her name. If she is complicit, she deserves the gallows. Either way, I will find her.”

“And if she is merely a woman who wanted to be heard?” Eleanor asked. The question came before she could stop it.

Ashworth studied her for a long moment. Something shifted in his gaze—not suspicion, exactly, but recognition. As though he had heard a note in her voice that he had been waiting for.

“Then I would say,” he said slowly, “that she has chosen a dangerous instrument for her voice. And that I admire her nerve.”

Eleanor felt herself flush. She looked away, toward the shelves, and seized on the first distraction she could find.

“You have Donne,” she said, rising. “I noticed the poetry section earlier. You are a man of hidden depths, Your Grace.”

“I am a man who likes the shape of ideas,” he said, rising with her. “Whether they come dressed in ledgers or in sonnets.”

She walked to the shelf and pulled down a slim volume. The cover was worn, the pages gilt-edged. She opened it at random and found herself looking at a love poem she had memorized at sixteen, when she had believed such things mattered.

“‘Batter my heart, three-personed God,’” she read aloud, and then stopped, laughing. “That is not—that is a love poem, in its way. But not the way I meant.”

“You read Donne for comfort?” Ashworth asked. He had come to stand beside her, close enough that she caught the scent of his soap. Sandalwood. Something sharper beneath.

“I read anything with words in it,” she said. “Comfort is a secondary consideration.”

“Then what do you seek, Miss Wentworth?” His voice was low. “In the books, in the letters? What are you looking for?”

She closed the volume. Turned to face him. He was taller than she remembered, and closer.

“The same thing you are looking for,” she said. “The truth. And perhaps—the freedom to speak it.”

Something flickered in his expression. Admiration, she realized with a jolt. Genuine admiration, unguarded for a single unguarded second.

“You are remarkable,” he said quietly. “I have met few women who can discuss bullion and Donne in the same hour.”

“And fewer still who can keep your interest past the first course,” she replied, daring herself.

He smiled. It transformed his face completely, softened the sharp edges of his suspicion into something almost warm.

“I suspect, Miss Wentworth, that you are hiding something,” he said. “I do not yet know what it is. But I find that I am enjoying the discovery far more than I anticipated.”

Eleanor’s heart seized. She had been named. Not as Ellery—not yet. But he had seen the gap between her public face and private self, and he intended to examine it.

She smiled. It cost her everything.

“I suspect, Your Grace, that you are accustomed to being right,” she said. “And that it will be a very great pleasure to prove you wrong.”

She turned and walked toward the door before he could respond. At the threshold, she paused.

“Thank you for the books,” she said over her shoulder. “I shall think of you when I read about bullion.”

She left him standing in the library, surrounded by his catalogue of mysteries, his ledger now holding a new notation beside her name. She did not need to see it to know it was there.

*Miss Eleanor Wentworth. Suspected of secrets. Worth watching.*

And beneath that, in ink that had not yet dried:

*She knows more about money than she pretends.*

Eleanor reached the carriage and climbed inside before her legs gave out. She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the rapid thud of her heart through her bodice.

He was close. Too close. And the dangerous part—the part she could not confess even to herself—was that a small voice inside her was beginning to want him to find her.

*Focus*, she told herself. *Jarvis expects payment by noon. Your column is due Thursday. A man has disappeared. And now a duke is cataloguing you.*

She had hours, not days. And no money to buy either.