Chapter 6: A Calculated Encounter
The scent of the museum—cold stone and that lingering, intimate heat—clung to Selina for days. It was in the folds of her dress, in the memory of her gloves. She’d wake in the night, the solid pressure of the pillar against her back as vivid as the warmth of his mouth. It was unacceptable.
A week after the Egyptian Gallery, she decided to reset the balance of power.
She knew he frequented the London Library on St. James’s Square in the afternoons. Research, he’d once offhandedly mentioned. For his work. She didn’t know what his work was, precisely, and that irritated her too. So she planned a raid. A surgical strike.
She chose a severe grey walking gown, high-necked, unadorned. Armor. Her hair was pinned with ruthless efficiency. She arrived at the library an hour before his usual time, securing a velvet armchair near a tall window where the weak London light fell in a precise rectangle on the Persian carpet. She had a prop: a weighty volume of Dryden’s letters. She did not read a word.
The reading room hummed with a quiet, masculine energy. The soft clatter of a quill, the dry whisper of a page turning, the occasional cleared throat. The air was a familiar tonic of aged paper, leather bindings, and beeswax polish. She positioned herself perfectly—in his likely sightline, but appearing utterly absorbed.
Her heart, traitorous thing, began a slow, heavy rhythm when the door opened at half-past two.
He entered with that same unsettling ease, shrugging off his overcoat and handing it to an attendant. He wore a dark green jacket today, and it made his eyes look sharper, greener. He scanned the room, his gaze passing over scholars, over shelves… and landing on her.
There was no dramatic pause. His expression didn’t change. But she saw the faintest flicker in his eyes—recognition, then a swift reassessment. He’d expected to be the hunter. Finding himself the observed changed the game.
He walked over, his footsteps muffled by the carpet. “Lady Selina. A surprise.”
She looked up slowly, as if pulled from deep thought. “Mr. Burke. Not entirely. One does come to a library to read.” She gestured to the empty chair opposite hers. “Please, don’t let me disturb your work.”
He sat, leaning back and studying her. The quiet of the room made their conversation feel dangerously exposed, a play performed in whispers. “Dryden,” he noted, glancing at her book. “A safe choice.”
“Is there an unsafe choice?” She kept her voice light, conversational. “Poetry, perhaps. Or Gothic novels. I understand you’re something of a critic.”
A small smile touched his lips. “I have opinions.”
“On my work, I recall.” She closed the Dryden with a soft thud. “You found it ‘afraid.’ I’ve been considering that. I think you mistook narrative restraint for cowardice. My heroine makes a choice for stability, for a partnership of minds. You dismiss that as a cage. I find that rather brutish.”
He raised a brow. “Brutish. Because I think passion has value?”
“Because you think it’s the only value. You reduce a complex decision to a simple animal impulse.” She folded her hands in her lap, the picture of reasoned debate. “It’s a common enough failing in amateur criticism.”
He laughed, a short, quiet sound. The scholar at the next table glanced over, annoyed. Burke lowered his voice further, leaning in. “You’re trying to piss me off.”
“I’m attempting to have a literary discussion. You’re the one who brought my personal correspondence into it.” She held his gaze, her own icy blue and steady. “Tell me, does your philosophy extend to all art? Should every symphony end with a cacophony? Every painting depict only chaos?”
“I think art that lies is worse than no art at all,” he said, his voice losing its playful edge. “You wrote a truthful letter. Then you wrote a careful book that sanitized that truth. That’s the cage. Not the marriage. The dishonesty.”
The word dishonesty hit her like a slap. It was too close. It vibrated in the air between them. She looked away, out the window at the grey street. A hansom cab clattered past.
“You know nothing of my honesty,” she said finally, her tone cooler than she intended.
“I know the woman who kissed me back in a public museum isn’t the woman writing safely about tidy drawing-room flirtations.” He paused. “The scarab amulet you were looking at that day. Do you know what they symbolized?”
She refused to look at him. “Rebirth.”
“Transformation,” he corrected softly. “The courage to push through the dark earth and become something new.”
The silence stretched. The clock on the mantel ticked. Selina felt the careful scaffolding of her composure tremble. She had come to unsettle him, to show him she was untouchable behind her wall of intellect. Instead, he was dismantling her brick by brick with nothing but words.
“Why are you here, Selina?” Not Lady Selina. Just her name, spoken quietly in the hallowed quiet.
She turned back to him, summoning every ounce of her society training. “I told you. To read.”
“You haven’t turned a page since I sat down.”
“You’re distracting.”
“And you’re a terrible liar.” He said it without malice. A simple statement of fact. “You came because what happened at the museum scared you. Not me. The fact that you wanted it. You’re here to prove to yourself that you can sit across from me and feel nothing. How’s it going?”
Her gloves felt too tight. She could feel the ghost of his hand brushing hers. The memory of the pillar, solid and unyielding at her back. She wanted to throw the Dryden at his head.
“It’s going precisely as I intended,” she lied smoothly, rising from her chair. She gathered her book and her reticule. “This has been… diverting. But I have a committee meeting.”
He stood when she did, a reflex of manners. “Let me walk you out.”
“That won’t be necessary.” She adjusted her gloves, a deliberate, slow motion. “I believe our conversation is concluded. You may return to your research. Maps, wasn’t it? Plotting routes?”
He just looked at her, his expression unreadable now. A man who’d seen his opponent retreat and knew it was a strategic withdrawal, not a surrender. “Until next time, then.”
“There needn’t be a next time, Mr. Burke. We’ve exhausted our topics of mutual interest.” She gave a small, polite nod, the exact one she’d use to dismiss a tedious vicar at a garden party.
She walked away, feeling the weight of his gaze on her back every step to the door. Her spine was rigid, her head high. Only when she was out on the square, the brisk air hitting her face, did she let her shoulders slump a fraction.
She had been cool. She had been composed. She had weaponized words and left him sitting there.
So why did she feel like she was the one who had just lost everything?