#anywhere

Oh, the Fiona needles...

Zara slipped away without being seen, a trivial task. A touch of effort is taken to find just where the Liam lordling has gone to read.

She knows exactly where his study is.

No need for haste - she squirms for entry, staying hidden. Her desire is to observe, not to BE observed.

He is, indeed, reading The Book.

He's slung the jacket of his zoot suit over the back of his desk chair, and his vest is unbuttoned. His fedora is on the desk.

Zara watches intently, trying to parse his mood.

Sober; he reads as if he'll remember it.

No visible reaction in his expression?

He is taking this reading very seriously.

He's about....1/4 of the way through?

She settles in to watch.

Occasionally, he will stop and look off, thinking, but then back to it.

The story is quite good at images!

Occasionally, as he reads more, a look of... discomfort?

Zara twists her hair, anxious. Every twitch of his mouth, every twist of eyebrow or narrowing of eyes is catalogued.

By the time he's halfway through, he is taking 'breaks' to think more often. He stares off and seems troubled.

The plot itself is a bit derivative - love triangles, mysteries, great grey moors and political intrigue. Where the book shines is in the characters. The Vicar, the Earl, and the Lordling are all written with sympathy.

August pauses to stroke and rub his forehead.

Who wouldn't love the gentle Vicar? Kind and scholarly, but his illegitimate heritage making him rebuffed and bullied by the local gentry. The heroine, a foundling, falling in love with him from afar, before becoming friends (after a shanda involving spilt tea and the foundling's eccentric inventor uncle...) Two misfits, finding each other and supporting each other...

His expression is increasingly grim.

Lord Ezekial Islington might be oddly familiar, too - gaunt and dark, the shadow to the Vicar's sunshine... who is entangled in intrigue and unsavory fellows, and would take the heroine with him...

And between the two, the country earl - Hunter Buchanan - a friendship that grows, with the heroine as blind to his affection as the Vicar is to hers.

Well, no wonder the Fiona have been eating this up...

Oh yes; it certainly rings a bell or two.

The heartbreak of learning of the Vicar's fiancé - across the sea, unknown, but somehow worthy of his love where the heroine was not. The slow realization of Islington's toxic pull, of how embracing him would mean corruption, and the regret that no amount of care from her part could change him - she could only save herself. The slow growing of feelings for Buchanan, rebuffing him as a friend until she nearly lost him... and realizes the depth of that loss!

August looks positively stern.

In the end, the heroine chooses her Hunter. The Lordling is entangled in his own dark plots. And the Vicar... is none the wiser of the heroine's crush, as news arrives that his fiancée shall be setting across the sea.

August finishes reading, in the small and wee hours. He removes the bookmark and puts the book on the side table next to his seat.

He exhales, long and slow. The fingertips of one hand rest on the book's cover.

And his fingers tap, drumming slowly, as he thinks.

Dark eyes watch from the shadows, unseen and silent.

Finally, he moves. He rises and jots a note for himself, tucking it under a paperweight to come back to. He picks up the book, and heads for the door.

Zara waits.

And he slips out, shutting the door behind him.

The sluagh checks the note.

A little frown. A touch of concentration, and Octa is sent to watch after the Liam and report. Zara must decide what to do with this note...

Octa is able to report The Liam went to his chambers, apparently for the night.

She frowns.

And the note? The note is slipped into her pocket.

Disheartened, the sluagh escapes the study.

And the hold, too. Off to her river, to slip into the dark water under the full moon.

---

Zara swims for an hour in the dark

when she sees a figure landing near the bank

She hides in the reeds. There may be a rumpled pile of chiffon on the banks...

Herman/Earl lands and says "Love. "

"...aye?"

He finds the Chiffon, then hears the whisper, and he sits down at the side of the shore "I grew worried " A truth, "One minute you were there... the next your trip to get a drink took.. hours."