The October afternoon lay heavy over London, the kind that smelled of rain even when the sky was beginning to clear. Low clouds dragged their shadows across Bloomsbury's terraces; the pavements shone like inked slate.

Henry Blackwell had always liked this hour of the day, the moment between the city's working rhythm and its evening restlessness. It was when he could walk the streets without bodyguards at his shoulder, without the ritual choreography of his lieutenants and drivers. A tall man in an ordinary coat, a figure no one looked at twice.

He had not come to the shop as a customer in years. Blackwell's Rare Books was technically his, one of the respectable enterprises he had inherited a decade ago along with an empire he had never wanted. His father's funeral had been barely over before the knives came out. Henry had survived because he was quicker to see the pattern, because his instincts for when to negotiate and when to strike were sharper than his father's had ever been.

By thirty he had cleaned the syndicate of the old guard. By thirty-five he had turned it into something that no longer splashed blood in alleyways but moved through boardrooms, private auctions, and encrypted accounts.

The work had made him harder than he liked to admit, but not unthinking. He had drawn his own lines: never harm the innocent, never use violence where intellect could suffice, never betray those who had kept faith with him.

Yet as he stepped into the bookshop that afternoon, the scent that greeted him was vellum, beeswax polish, and rain-damp oak. When he was a boy his father had brought him here once to buy a set of Latin commentaries, telling him that a Blackwell ought to know the ancients if he was to rule modern men. Henry had learned the lessons, but somewhere in the years of ambition and blood the quiet love of texts had survived.

He shrugged the rain from his shoulders and let the door close softly behind him. Brass-rimmed lamps glowed over the polished counters; the high shelves smelled of dust and history.

Henry climbed the narrow iron stair to the upper gallery. From here he could see the whole shop without being seen in turn. It was a vantage he preferred; it had saved his life more than once.

The plain charcoal suit sat easily on his broad shoulders; the first strands of grey at his temples caught the pale autumn light. His eyes were the one thing that rarely softened: clear, cool blue, trained to read a room in seconds.

He told himself he had come today to check the accounts. There had been a new acquisition, a fragment of Plutarch's Lives. The truth was subtler. He had been restless these past weeks, preparing for the visiting fellowship at Oxford. The decision to step into the role of scholar again had felt like opening a door onto the man he might have been.

The bell over the shop door chimed lightly. He glanced down.

Then she entered.

Her umbrella dripped quietly against the mat as she took in the vaulted shelves, the brass lamps, the glass-fronted case where the fragment of Plutarch lay. She moved with the unconscious care of someone who respected the past, and when she spoke to the clerk her voice carried the unguarded warmth of a teacher.

Henry stayed very still, one hand resting on the railing. For the first time in many months, he was not thinking of the next meeting or the next potential betrayal.

From the gallery he watched her follow the clerk to the display case. Watched her bend close to the parchment, her breath fogging the glass before she caught herself. Watched the slight frown that came as she noticed the mistranslation on the catalogue card.

Henry's fingers tapped once against the wood of the rail. He had made a decision. He slipped his coat back on and made his way down the narrow iron stair.

He paused a polite distance behind her, close enough to speak without raising his voice.

"Not quite what you expected?" he asked, his tone light, an academic's curiosity rather than a stranger's intrusion.