Chapter Text
In which Miss Eloise Bridgerton discovers that books, it seems, do not remain where one so carefully places them.
She could have sworn the shelves had been perfectly arranged the previous evening, when she returned a particularly absorbing volume before retiring to bed. Yet now several books leaned at odd angles, one even lying upside down, as though someone had been browsing where no one ought to be.
What troubled her most, however, was that this was not the first occurrence. For several mornings now, Miss Bridgerton had returned to the library to find the shelves most curiously disturbed, volumes shifted, tilted, or quite improperly placed.
What Miss Bridgerton did not yet know was that the disturbance came not from mischief, but from quiet devotion.
For in the stillness of night, when even the chandeliers slept, John, the Bridgerton footman with a fondness for the written word, would quietly enter the library hall, borrowing a book before returning to his duties at dawn.
And though Miss Bridgerton did not yet know the culprit, she was most certainly determined to discover who, exactly, had been meddling with her books.
After all, Eloise Bridgerton had never been known to ignore a mystery.