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M eredith was not supposed to be there.

The thought echoed through her mind as she traced her fingers along the leather-bound spines of the ancient texts surrounding her, their gilded titles catching the late afternoon sun that slanted through the Bodleian Library's towering Gothic windows.

She was meant to be invisible, seen and not heard, or better yet, not seen at all—a shadow among the stacks of Oxford's hallowed halls.

A distant clock from Tom Tower at Christ Church chimed four, its sonorous tones floating through the crisp autumn air.

Meredith paused in her sorting to watch dust motes dance in the golden light, each particle a tiny star in her own private constellation.

The library had become her sanctuary, even if her presence here hung by the most delicate of threads.

The Dean had agreed to allow her to remain on campus and even sort the books in the musty library she loved, but his conditions had been crystal clear, his thin lips pursed with disapproval as he'd delivered them, his fingers toying with the gold fob watch that dangled from his waistcoat.

She was to ensure she drew no attention to herself.

“Seen and not heard,” he'd pronounced, as if speaking to a particularly dim child rather than a woman who could read Latin and Greek, and had assisted her father with his lectures for years prior to his death. What an ignoramus.

Meredith’s jaw ached from clenching her mouth, holding back the torrent of words that threatened to spill forth whenever she recalled that conversation.

The Dean’s opinions about women in general, but especially in academia, where not something she could entertain with equanimity.

Speaking in that moment would only lose her the position, not gain her any favours.

Instead, she had smiled, nodded, and even offered him a curtsey, much to his delight and her own crawling dismay. The memory of his smugly paternal smile still made her stomach turn.

But here she was, still surrounded by books and learning and the love of knowledge that had been as much a part of her upbringing as breathing.

The library's familiar scent of leather, paper, and ink wrapped around her like a comfort blanket, even as the autumn chill crept through the ancient stonework, causing her to pull her modest spencer jacket more tightly around her shoulders.

Since the loss of her father, who had been a well-respected professor at the University, Meredith found herself determined to carry on his legacy in whatever way she could manage.

She refused to allow the matter of being female to deter her, despite the University and Society's rigid views on the matter.

Her father's voice seemed to whisper from every shelf: "Knowledge, my dear girl, is the only true inheritance that can never be taken from you."

From her small desk in the corner—barely more than a table, really, tucked between towering oak bookshelves that predated even Queen Elizabeth—Meredith could hear the murmur of male voices from the reading room beyond.

Students engaged in scholarly debate, their animated tones rising and falling like waves against the shore.

The occasional scrape of chair legs against the worn wooden floor punctuated their discourse.

How her fingers itched to pick up a quill and join their discussions! But that would surely see her evicted faster than she could say "bluestocking."

Her mother, of course, had other ideas about what constituted a proper inheritance for a young lady.

"Marriage, my dear," Lady Hartford had said, adjusting her cap in the mirror during one of her increasingly frequent visits to Meredith's tiny chambers. The gold embroidery on her fashionable Pomona green pelisse had seemed garish against the simplicity of Meredith's quarters.

"That's what you need. Not all these..." She waved a dismissive hand at the books crowding every surface. "...diversions."

Her mother thought she ought to have married by now, but Meredith didn’t know how that would be possible, considering her supposedly strange upbringing.

Being a gently born young woman raised by a gentleman who had such high regard for education that he taught his daughter as much as he possibly could made her less than ideal company for members of Society.

Or so she’d been told repeatedly by the matrons of the ton during the one disastrous Season her mother had insisted upon before her father's health had begun to fail.

Of course, her education had been cut short by her father’s untimely death, but now she was determined to pass on that blessing to other youngsters less fortunate than she had been.

There was no shortage of urchins running around the city, darting between the grand colleges in their ragged clothes, dodging carriages in the High Street and hawking wares in the crowded marketplace.

This fine institute of higher education that was the University of Oxford required a great number of low-paid workers who were surrounded by education and yet couldn’t afford schooling for themselves or their own children.

And then there were the girls.

While she was proud of the technical institute she and her dear friend had established to train young women, the girl children were the ones Meredith most wanted to educate.

It would change their lives considerably for the better, Meredith insisted to herself, although she couldn’t be certain anyone else would think so, considering how she was treated by most anyone who knew of it.

But Meredith understood there was a huge gulf between teaching little girls to read and do simple mathematics and asking to attend a school of law or medicine, as she had once dreamed. She wasn’t a fool.

Meredith was realistic enough to understand that the world wasn’t ready for women to be lawyers or doctors or anything else that Oxford University produced. But surely no one could begrudge a little girl being able to read and write—it would certainly help bring her and her family out of poverty.

Who wouldn’t want that?

“We need the poor in order to enjoy our wealth.”

Her fingers curled into her skirts once more, her knuckles white with tension, the urge to throttle the daft man who had uttered those words nearly overwhelming. Her breath came out slow and measured – barely controlled fury.

Her stomach turned just thinking about that particular conversation. No one would be able to convince her there was any benefit to anyone being so poor they could barely keep their family fed.

Meredith shuffled through her father’s notes, the familiar sight of his precise handwriting bringing both comfort and a fresh wave of grief.

The small desk in the corner that the University had allocated her matched almost exactly the dimensions of the closet they had graciously allowed her to use as a bedchamber in exchange for her work amongst the textbooks.

Both barely large enough to turn around in, but both infinitely preferable to the alternative.

That alternative sat waiting in London: her mother's new home with Lord Hartford, all polish and propriety and suffocating expectations.

Mama had barely waited for her mourning period to end before remarrying.

Not that there was anything drastically wrong with his lordship, Meredith admitted grudgingly, but his ideas about women's education made the Dean seem positively progressive by comparison.

Mama, of course, wanted her to live with her and her new husband, but Meredith couldn’t stomach that idea.

Lord Hartford had a lovely home in Grosvenor Square, in the centre of fashionable London, with plenty of space.

But it was much too far from the source of knowledge that felt as though it were the source of her life.

Meredith took a deep breath to steady her rising temper.

The scent of old paper and ink, even dust, helped to settle her roiling feelings.

From where she sat, she could hear the murmurs of the students as they debated whatever they had been studying that day, their voices occasionally rising when a particularly contentious point of philosophy or natural science was raised.

She only wished she could join in the conversations, but that would surely have her evicted.

Oh, some of the gentlemen were open-minded enough to converse with her, but then there were the unsavoury ones who thought her presence there was an invitation she had no intention of extending.

For that reason, she needed to be exceedingly careful.

That and the ever-present risk that the Dean would send her packing on the next mail coach.

Her father would have been supportive of her efforts to educate the poor children of Oxford.

If he had lived long enough, he would have backed her cause, which would have made everything so much easier.

As it stood now, Meredith felt as though she were fighting an uphill battle, trying to convince everyone of the validity of her idea when she needed support and allies.

But on a happier note, she was about to take a break very shortly. She would be traveling to her friend’s wedding—a house party of all things.

Her mother would be delighted, Meredith thought with an eye roll, as she reached for the letter she had received from her friend and tucked away with the rest of her notes. She reread the letter and tried to identify the feelings she was experiencing.

She was happy for Faith, truly she was, but she was going to miss her friend intensely.

Faith had been of a very similar station as Meredith, being the daughter of an Oxford professor as well as being gently bred. Faith didn’t have a mother, though. Now she was about to have a whole new family of her own.

Meredith refused to believe the emotions she was feeling were anything close to jealousy. She was happy for her friend, truly she was, but Meredith knew that her own life was getting just that much smaller with the loss of her friend’s presence here at Oxford.

Of course, they would still be friends, but they wouldn’t see each other on an almost daily basis as they had up until Faith moved with Jasper to finalize their wedding preparations.

The biggest loss of all – Faith would certainly not be present to help her with the school Meredith wanted to open, as had been their intention before Jasper came into the picture.

Faith had been instrumental in establishing the Henderson Technical Training Academy here in Oxford.

Meredith had helped, of course. But that school was for grown women, teaching them skills they would need.

Meredith didn’t wish to disparage that school in any way, but her true desire was to teach little girls the fundamentals of education – reading and arithmetic – subjects that could lead them to further study later in their life, even on their own.

Not that she was jealous of Faith’s new role , she thought with another eyeroll.

Meredith couldn’t begrudge Faith her happy new life with the scholar she had helped with his important invention for mining safety.

Jasper seemed like a fine gentleman. Meredith was also excited to meet the other scholarly gentlemen Faith always talked about in her letters, her future husband’s friends.

The only trouble was that Lord Chilton Loring was going to be at the wedding as well, according to Faith’s latest missive. Just thinking about the baron sent a chill through her, with his laughing eyes and dismissive attitude toward the very education she held so dear.

Meredith’s stomach threatened to relieve itself of its contents when she remembered just how cavalier he had been about attending Oxford.

"What good is all this knowledge if you can't enjoy yourself?" His words echoed in her memory, spoken with that infuriating smile that suggested he found the whole business of learning rather amusing. "Life isn't meant to be all work, you know."

The man had every advantage, every opportunity, and he treated it all as though it were some grand jest. Did he not know how many would give anything for the chances he so casually dismissed?

She had once tried to engage him in a discussion about one of her father’s lectures, only for him to wave a hand and say, “Ah, but isn’t it all just theory in the end? More fun to let someone else do the thinking, don’t you think?”

That had been the moment she realized Lord Chilton Loring was irredeemable.

She still remembered the way he had laughed— laughed!— when a tutor scolded him for failing to turn in his essay on time.

“Ah, but I had a much better evening,” he had said with an infuriating grin.

The memory still burned. She had spent countless nights studying by candlelight, knowing that no degree, no formal recognition, would ever be granted to her. Yet here was a man who had everything handed to him, and he treated it all as an amusement.

And yet, for all his irreverence, people liked him. They gravitated toward his effortless charm, his ability to turn a dull moment into something light-hearted. That was what made him so dangerous. He wasn’t just foolish—he was likable—and likability could excuse far too many sins.

And she was going to have to be pleasant to the insufferable boor at Faith and Jasper’s wedding. The thought curdled her stomach once more as she glanced through the window at the spires of Oxford, darkening now against the fading afternoon light.