The Heiress he never met
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She didn't startle, which surprised him, she looked up slowly, unhurried, the particular composure of someone who had decided, somewhere in the last several days, to stop flinching every time a member of this family caught her doing something she shouldn't.
"The binding's already compromised," she said. "Someone rebacked the spine at some point, badly, with the wrong adhesive. It's drying out faster than it should. Gloves wouldn't save it at this point — the damage that matters already happened decades ago." She closed the book carefully, with a precision that looked less like guilt and more like habit, and set it back on the low shelf exactly where she'd found it. "I wasn't going to take it