The drawing-room was a gilded cage of polite murmurs and the clinking of crystal. Chloe felt the performative smile on her face begin to ache.
Caleb had finally moved on, having exhausted his arsenal of thinly veiled questions, and was now holding court by the fireplace, regaling a distant aunt with a story that was likely as fabricated as Chloe’s entire life history.
Alistair, standing stiffly beside her, had offered a quiet, “Well done,” that sounded more like a successful lab report than a compliment.
The adrenaline from her performance at dinner had curdled into a bone-deep exhaustion. She needed to escape.
“I think I might just… get a bit of air,” she murmured, giving Alistair’s arm a squeeze that was just on the right side of Clause 4b: “Acceptable Public Displays of Affection, Non-Verbal.”
He gave a short, jerky nod, his eyes darting towards his cousin with undisguised relief. “An excellent idea.”
Chloe slipped out of the room, the sound of forced laughter fading behind her. The grand hallway of the Finch estate was dimly lit, portraits of stern-faced ancestors watching her with what she imagined was deep suspicion.
She felt like a museum piece that had come to life and wandered out of its display case. She had no destination in mind, just a need for silence, for a space that wasn’t saturated with judgment.
Her hand trailed along the cool, polished wainscoting as she walked, her heels clicking softly on the marble. She passed one heavy oak door, then another, until one stood slightly ajar, spilling a warm, honeyed light into the hall.
Curiosity piqued, she peered inside.
And stopped.
It was a library. Not a modern room with a few curated books, but a proper, old-world library.
Two stories of floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves groaned under the weight of thousands of leather-bound volumes. A rolling ladder leaned against one wall, promising access to forgotten knowledge.
The air smelled of vanilla-tinged paper, aging leather, and beeswax. In the center of the room, a large desk was littered with open books, and a single green-shaded lamp cast a pool of light onto its surface.
It was a sanctuary.
And in the heart of it, silhouetted against the towering shelves, was Alistair.
He hadn’t seen her. He was running his fingers along the spines of a row of books, his head tilted with an expression of such reverence, such quiet contentment, that he looked like a completely different person.
The tension was gone from his shoulders. The anxious furrow between his brows had smoothed out.
Here, surrounded by his silent companions, he was finally, completely at home.
Chloe leaned against the doorframe, hesitant to intrude on such a private moment.
“You survived,” he said, without turning around. He must have seen her reflection in the glass of a bookcase.
His voice was different in here, too—softer, stripped of its usual academic formality.
“Barely,” Chloe admitted, stepping inside. The heavy door swung shut behind her with a soft, definitive thump, sealing them in.
“Your cousin is a bulldog with a thesaurus.”
Alistair finally turned, and a small, genuine smile touched his lips. “An apt description.
Thank you, by the way. For dinner.
You were… remarkably convincing.”
“It’s what you pay me for,” she said, the words coming out more automatically than she’d intended.
“Yes. Of course.”
The smile vanished, and the professional distance snapped back into place. The air grew stilted.
To fill the silence, Chloe gestured to the room around them.
“This is incredible. It’s like something out of a movie.”
The change in him was instantaneous. The light came back into his eyes, brighter this time.
“It’s a decent collection. Mostly 18th-century philosophy and early British novels.
My great-grandfather’s obsession.” He walked towards a shelf, his movements fluid and certain.
“Most people find it stuffy.”
“I find it peaceful,” she said honestly. “A room full of stories.”
That seemed to be the key. He looked at her, truly looked at her, for the first time all evening.
“That’s exactly it,” he said, his voice thrumming with a low, unexpected energy. “They aren’t just objects.
They’re vessels. Every one of these contains a life, a world, an idea that was important enough for someone to spend months, years, pouring it onto a page.”
He pulled a book from the shelf. It was bound in dark green leather, the title too faded for her to read from a distance.
He handled it with the delicate care a jeweler might afford a rare gem.
“This is what it’s all about,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “This is why I need the inheritance.”
Chloe stayed quiet, sensing they were moving far beyond the boundaries of their contract.
“It’s not for me,” he continued, turning to face her fully, the book held in both hands as if it were an offering. “I can live in my cramped university flat for the rest of my life.
But the Blackwood Library… it’s a public institution in the city. It’s like this,” he swept a hand around the magnificent room, “but for everyone.
It was bequeathed to the city a hundred years ago with a charter that it must always remain free. Free access to knowledge for anyone who walks through the doors.”
He started to pace, his academic stiffness replaced by a restless, passionate energy she found startlingly captivating.
“But the building is crumbling. The roof leaks.
The original manuscripts are suffering from damp. The city council wants to sell the land to developers for luxury condos.
They see a dilapidated building. I see… a lifeline.
A place where a kid from a rough neighborhood can discover Dickens. Where a retired factory worker can research his family tree.
Where a student who can’t afford textbooks can find everything she needs.”
He stopped in front of her, his eyes blazing with a fire she never would have guessed was in him. “It’s a repository of our collective memory, and they want to turn it into a parking garage.
My inheritance is the only thing that can fund the trust to save it. To restore it.
To digitize the archives and make it a resource for the 21st century while preserving its soul.”
He fell silent, a faint flush on his cheeks, as if he was embarrassed by his own outburst. He looked down at the book in his hands, suddenly awkward.
“Apologies. I tend to get carried away on the subject.”
Chloe was speechless for a moment. She had seen him as a problem to be solved, a client to be managed.
A collection of awkward tics and rigid clauses. But the man standing before her now was driven by a purpose so pure and fierce it almost took her breath away.
He wasn’t trying to save a dusty building; he was trying to save a soul—the soul of a city.
“Don’t apologize,” she said, her voice soft. “I get it.”
He looked up, skeptical. “You do?”
“My business,” she began, surprised to find herself wanting to share something real, something not from their pre-approved list of anecdotes. “My partner, Bethany, she thinks it’s all about the money.
Bigger parties, flashier events, more champagne, male strippers…” She wrinkled her nose. “But that’s not why I started it.”
She walked over to the desk, running a hand over its smooth, cool surface. “A few years ago, I was a bridesmaid for a friend.
Her mother had just passed away, and her father was a mess. The morning of the wedding, the florist delivered the wrong bouquets, her dad couldn’t find the rings, and my friend just… fell apart.
She sat on the floor of the hotel room, in her slip, and just sobbed that she couldn’t do it, that her mom was supposed to be there.”
Chloe leaned against the desk, the memory still vivid. “So I kicked everyone else out.
I found the rings, I fixed the bouquets with ribbon from the gift bags, and I sat on the floor with her and just let her talk about her mom. We cried, and then we laughed.
And an hour later, I walked her down the aisle. She was radiant.”
She met Alistair’s gaze across the quiet room. “Afterwards, she told me that for that one hour, I had created this little bubble of safety where she could just be a daughter who missed her mom, so she could go back out there and be the bride.
That’s why I do what I do. It’s not about pretending.
It’s about creating a space where real emotions are manageable. It’s about getting people through the door to their own happiness.”
The silence that followed was different. It wasn’t awkward or stilted; it was thick with unspoken understanding.
The vast, intimidating library suddenly felt intimate, a small bubble of safety all their own. The contract, Matilda, Caleb, the money—it all dissolved, leaving just the two of them.
Two people who had concocted a ridiculous, elaborate lie in service of a desperate, heartfelt truth.
Alistair looked at her, his expression unreadable but intense. The space between them seemed to shrink, charged with a strange new current.
He saw her, she realized. Not the charming professional, not the fake fiancée, but Chloe.
And she saw him, the passionate, deeply feeling man hidden beneath a shell of logic and tweed.
A flicker of something—warm, unnerving, and entirely unplanned—passed between them. It was a connection so sudden and so potent it felt like a physical shock.
The intensity of the moment was too much. It was Alistair who broke it.
He cleared his throat, the sound unnaturally loud in the hallowed quiet. He carefully placed the green leather book back on the shelf, his movements precise and overly deliberate.
“Well,” he said, adjusting his glasses, which didn’t need adjusting.
“Clause 7c. We should not be out of sight of the family for more than twenty minutes. It could arouse suspicion.”
The spell was shattered. The vulnerable, passionate man was gone, and Dr. Alistair Finch, her client, was back in his place.
Chloe felt a pang of disappointment so sharp it surprised her. She pushed herself off the desk, her professional mask sliding back into place.
“Right. Of course.
The contract,” she said, her voice brighter, falser, than it had been moments before.
They stood there for another beat, two feet apart, a chasm of newfound awareness between them. The easy camaraderie of their shared confession had been replaced by a dense, humming discomfort.
They had seen behind each other’s curtains, and neither of them knew what to do with the knowledge. Their simple business arrangement had just become infinitely more complicated.
“We should go back,” Alistair said, already moving toward the door, not quite meeting her eye.
“Yes,” Chloe agreed, following him out of the sanctuary and back into the lion’s den. “Showtime.”