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Didn’t mean he wanted to spend weeks with his nose buried in books again, though.

Snatching up several more books, he carried them over to the long table and sat several chairs away from Miss Hastings. He stole another peek at her. What was she doing here alone? As plain as her clothes were, there was wealth in them. Seth knew clothes—especially women’s—and she was no pauper. Perhaps her chaperone had deposited her here and would collect her later. It would be easy enough to assume she would run into no trouble in a place like this. He snorted to himself. The stuffy academics who normally haunted this place likely hardly knew how to talk to a woman let alone do something scandalous.

“Shhhhh.”

He blinked. Did she really just shush him?

As an experiment, he opened a book, slapping down the leather cover hard on the desk. He eyed her from the corner of his eye. A scowl crossed her face and she glared at him.

“Shhhhh.”

By God, she really had shushed him. The gall of the woman. After all, he was hardly shouting or creating a ruckus.

He read through several pages before discarding the book. There was no chance he was going to find what he needed here. He picked up another and flicked half-heartedly through that. He sighed. This was no good. He was utterly lost. Maybe his idea of finding some legal loophole was folly, but if he did not at least try, he would regret it.

Especially when he was married to some woman he didn’t even like.

“Sir, I really must ask you to be quiet,” Miss Hastings snapped.

“My lord,” he corrected, his tone deliberately arrogant. Who did this stuffy young woman think she was? He knew she didn’t own the damned library. So what if she had an excellent legal mind and was the only woman allowed in here? It didn’t mean she had shushing rights.

A lone brow lifted. “Pardon?”

“I am ‘my lord’, not ‘Sir’.”

Her lips thinned. “If that is meant to impress me, it does not. I dine with eight and twenty lords many an evening.”

“Lucky them,” he muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

Seth pinched the bridge of his nose. He did not have time for this, and she knew this library inside and out. It would not hurt to have her on his side. Perhaps he could charm her into helping him. “Miss Hastings, is it?”

A flicker of hesitation crossed her face. Then she nodded curtly.

Seth rose and dipped briefly. “Lord Seth Templeton at your service.” He donned his most charming of smiles, one that melted the hearts of spinsters, bluestockings, widows, and virgins alike. It had never failed him.

That brow rose again. Her gaze fell to his lips, and he waited. Waited for the eventual softening of her expression, for the returning smile, for the blush in her cheeks.

It never came.

It never bloody came.

What in the devil was going on? Had his impending doom affected him in some way? Had it stolen his way with the ladies?

“I do not need you at my service, my lord,” she replied succinctly. “I need you to be quiet.”

He opened his mouth then closed it. Dear Lord, he really had lost his powers of seduction. Gone was his witty repartee, his ability to shoot back something to even the sassiest of women. He sank back into his chair and tugged through his mind to find a rejoinder. When several minutes of searching produced nothing, he gave up and settled back to digging through the books.

Miss Hastings, apparently entirely unperturbed by their brief conversation—if it could even been called that—went straight back to her studying. In the periphery of his vision, he could see her scrawling notes with a swift hand, her fingers working so quickly that he could not quite fathom how her mind could keep up with her hands. The scratch of the quill on paper riffled through the silent air of the library. Seth let his lips curl.

“Shhhhh.”

Her eyes wide, she snapped her head up. “Pardon?”

“You are being rather noisy I’m afraid. I cannot concentrate.”

Miss Hastings’ gaze grew cold. For someone with such a warm nutty shade of brown in her eyes, she was extremely good at the look. “I am not being noisy,” she hissed.