Morning pressed itself faintly against the windows, the light thin as breath on glass. I woke with the lingering warmth of yesterday's moments in the library still curled inside me like a forbidden ember. The house, ever listening, shifted around my room with a kind of contemplative hush. Neither approving nor displeased, merely aware. As though it had found a new rhythm in me, one I had not meant to give.
I dressed slowly, my hands unsteady in their small, private tremor. Every movement echoed the memory of his touch. The way Dr. Vale's breath had caught when he realized how close we were. The warmth of his fingertips as they traced, with trembling restraint, the outline of my shoulder. The impossible, devastating moment before he kissed me.
"I know I shouldn't," he had whispered.
And then he had.
I felt the aftershock of that moment now, hours later, like a violin string plucked too delicately to be heard but not too softly to be felt.
The house felt it too.
When I opened my door, the corridor lay in an unusual stillness, as though the walls had paused in their perpetual settling. Dust motes drifted in the narrow band of light leaking from the eastern windows, suspended like notes on an unwritten score. I walked quietly, but each step seemed to announce my presence more loudly than usual. My heartbeat felt too quick, too visible. The house did nothing to interfere with my path, but it observed. I sensed its attention the way one senses a sleeper turning over. Faint, shifting, but present.
I told myself I would not see him today. I told myself I must not. I tried to thread routine into my movements like armor. Morning roll, reading exercises, gentle arithmetic. The children were perceptive in ways that unnerved me. they would notice any fracture in my composure.
But even through the lessons, I felt the day bending toward him. Each moment stretched with a lingering anticipation, the kind that made me look up whenever footsteps approached the classroom door. Even though I knew none of them were his.
After the midday meal, Mrs. Harlow announced it would be a day of quiet pursuits. "Your classroom is needed for repairs," she said, though she did not elaborate on what demanded attention. The house, perhaps, had made some decision it had not shared.
When I stepped into the corridor, the hall breathed a little deeper. I felt the faintest whisper of intention tug me toward the west wing. The library.
Of course.
Yesterday's scattered books still awaited restoration. The bindings that had cracked with age, their spines collapsing in my hands like exhausted bodies. I had promised myself I would return to them when I had the time. And Dr. Vale had mentioned so casually it had felt like a caress. That he wished to guide me through which volumes needed urgent tending.
It was not a summons.
But it was something close.
I should not have gone.
But I did.
The library greeted me as a cathedral might greet a lapsed believer. Quietly, with no accusation, only the soft gravity of its presence. Dust lay in gentle swaths across the long tables. A few books waited in a neat stack where I had left them, their pages splayed open, their covers loosened like old garments.
Sunlight, pale and diffused, filtered through the high arched windows and cast long bands of muted gold across the carpet. The scent of old leather and faint, persistent dampness enveloped me.
Here, the house's attention sharpened. It did not close in around me, but it circled. A cat moving languidly around a pair of legs, deciding whether the change in scent required concern.
I crossed to the worktable. The tools lay exactly as I'd arranged them. Glue, twine, fresh cloth, spine boards. I ran my fingers along the grain of an oak book press and felt its age like an old pulse.
A sound whispered behind me.
Not a footstep.
A shift of temperature.
I turned.
He stood in the doorway.
Dr. Vale's presence always struck before his voice, like the moment before lightning decides to reveal itself. Today was no different. He leaned one shoulder against the frame, hands clasped behind him, watching me with an expression that wavered between restraint and longing so sharply it hurt to meet it.
"I thought I would find you here," he said, his voice low, almost a confession.
"You asked me to attend to the books," I said, though we both heard the weak defense in it.
"I did." His gaze flicked to the scattered volumes. "But I did not expect you… so soon."
A silence settled between us. It was not uncomfortable. It was charged, like the tight breath before rain.
"Is it wrong that I came?" I asked.
His jaw flexed, once. "Not wrong," he said softly. "Only dangerous."
The house creaked overhead, a long, contemplative sound.
He stepped inside, the library door falling shut behind him with a muted sigh.
I felt the floor tilt beneath me. Not literally, but in the way a shift in gravity tilts a heart.
We worked side by side at first.
Or we pretended to.
I removed the cracked spine from an encyclopedia so old its map still insisted the world was larger in some places and absent in others. Dr. Vale stood close enough that the warmth of his arm brushed mine whenever he reached for a tool. His breath touched the edge of my cheek when he leaned to examine a torn page.
"Careful with that one," he murmured. "It's older than the house itself."
I smiled faintly. "I didn't think anything here could be."
"If something can outlive a house," he said, his voice a shade quieter, "it is only memory."
His nearness wrapped around the moment like velvet. I felt myself breathing more shallowly, as though the air had thickened. My fingers trembled; I tried to disguise it by smoothing the cloth binding.
He saw.
Of course he saw.
"Elizabeth," he said, and my name in his voice undid me.
I looked up.
His hand reached toward my jaw. Hesitant, reverent but he stopped before touching me. The pause vibrated with all the things he ought not do and all the things he wanted anyway.
"We cannot keep doing this," he said.
"We can't," I echoed.
Neither of us moved away.
The house shifted with its attentiveness. Dust fell in a soft, silver drift from a high beam, as though the air had exhaled.
Dr. Vale stepped closer.
"I haven't stopped thinking about you," he said. "Not since the garden room."
I swallowed. "Nor I."
The admission loosened something dangerous between us.
His forehead touched mine. Barely, like a question. His breath warmed my lips. My hand rose to steady myself on the table, but the book press wobbled under my fingers. He caught my wrist before I could pull back.
"Elizabeth," he whispered, "if I touch you, I won't be able to..."
"You shouldn't," I breathed.
"No."
His lips brushed mine.
A single, impossibly gentle kiss.
And then.
He kissed me as though he had been waiting years instead of days. His hand slid to the back of my neck, pulling me closer with a tenderness that felt like it might ruin me. I pressed into him, the taste of him deepening, warming, unfurling something inside me I had not realized was tethered so tightly.
My back met the edge of the table. Nis body followed, anchoring me to the moment.
We might have stayed there, losing ourselves in the hush of the stacks, if not for the sudden sound of movement outside the door.
Footsteps.
Voices.
The clatter of pots carried in echoes from the kitchen hall.
He froze.
I felt his breath falter against my lips.
"They're coming this way," he whispered, pulling back, though his hands refused to leave my waist.
My pulse hammered in the hollow of my throat. The footsteps grew louder—two women, speaking briskly, discussing something about herbs for the evening meal.
If they entered the library—
Vale's eyes swept the room in a flash of panic so uncharacteristic it startled me. Then he grabbed my hand.
"Here."
He pulled me toward the far corner, where the back shelf jutted in a crooked angle that nearly met the wall. A small alcove, barely deep enough for one person.
We pressed into it together.
His chest to mine.
My breath caught beneath his.
The door creaked open.
The kitchen women entered, their voices abruptly louder.
"Missed one of the jars yesterday. Mrs. Harlow says—"
I could not hear the rest; my pulse drowned everything. Vale braced one hand behind me against the wall, the other at my waist, shielding me from view should either woman glance this way. His breath trembled against my jaw. I felt the wild, unsteady beat of his heart through his coat.
"Don't move," he murmured.
As if I could.
The women walked further in, debating ingredients, rummaging through the low shelves at the room's front. One turned halfway toward our direction. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Vale's hand tightened at my waist. steadying me or himself, I could not tell.
After a long, perilous minute, the women left, the door clicking shut behind them.
Only then did we breathe.
He leaned his forehead against mine again, eyes closed, his voice barely a breath.
"This is madness."
"Yes," I whispered. "Yes, it is."
"And we can't stop."
"No."
He kissed me again. Softly this time, with a trembling restraint that nearly undid me more than his earlier fervor.
When he finally drew back, he did so slowly, as though afraid the act itself might shatter something fragile in his hands.
"We have to be careful," he said. "The house… it notices."
"I know," I said. "I feel it watching."
"Not unkindly," he added, glancing at the ceiling. "But with the vigilance of something that has lost more than it cares to lose again."
His words left an unexpected ache in my chest.
We returned to the table. Our tasks, our tools, our false composure. But nothing in the room was the same. Not the light. Not the air. Not us.
When I finally left the library, the house felt impossibly silent.
Listening.
As though it understood something had changed. And would not soon change back.