Rufus Mortimer came out of his office to meet us. His hair was in a loose half-bun and his shirt today was green, made of the same silky-looking material that clung so nicely to his muscles. Adele’s lips parted as she gazed at him. Yeah, he was hot. There was no doubt about that. He was also ridiculously possessive of his books, as she’d no doubt find out.

He studied each of us closely enough to find us in a crowd if we ran off with one of his precious texts. His brown eyes lingered on me a moment longer than all the others, and I wasn’t sure whether to preen that he remembered me or be alarmed that he thought I looked like the book-stealing sort.

The tour he gave was much more thorough than Callum’s. He ensured we were comfortable using the catalogue and showed us how to request a book from the bookstacks that filled a basement below where we were standing. Then he took us to the end of the library and the Rosea.

Adele’s lips parted once more because, holy hell, he was stupidly hot anyway, but when he started talking about the old book, it was as if he came alive. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as he told us how the book had been brought to the college by Roger Mortimer, the college’s founder. A mixture of myth and legend, Celtic Christianity and history, it remained an object of fascination to scholars around the globe.

“The case is climate-controlled, so you can’t open it these days.” The little moue of sadness he made had me wanting to kiss it off his face. His mouth was very mobile, the corners of his lips twisting up or down depending on what he was talking about. What was wrong with me? I should be concentrating on my doctorate and the resources he could provide.

Whatever was wrong with me had affected Adele and Hadiza too—the three of us were staring at his lips as though entranced. Thank God he didn’t seem to notice in his enthusiasm for the book. “A facsimile’s available if you want to read it. The dodgy Latin’s from the original, by the way.”

Like I’d know it was dodgy. Like I’d be able to read Latin. Still, I nodded as if I’d be prepared to put up with dodgy Latin to read his precious book. He didn’t get to see my carefully judged response because Callum was making like the world’s most annoying sheepdog and herding us away from the world’s hottest librarian.

“One more thing,” Rufus Mortimer said, and we all turned obediently. The delighted man who’d just been sharing the joys of his precious Latin text had disappeared. Now he was as terrifyingly intense as he’d been the previous night. “No food. No drinks. No bottles of ink. If you fold down the corner of a page or break a spine, you’re barred. Forever.”

Wow. I didn’t know he’d have the power to do that. His eyes burned with warning as they rested on each of us in turn.

“Right then. Thanks, Rufus,” Callum said, and shepherded us away.

“Bit draconian, isn’t he?” Tim asked us all as we walked through the sunlit quad behind Callum.

I didn’t know why I felt the need to defend the librarian after he’d been so strict with me, but I hadn’t liked the tone in Callum’s voice when he’d spoken to him. “Were you intending to dog-ear library books?” I asked Tim.

“Well, I’m certainly not now,” Tim said, a grin on his freckled face.