Chapter Text
Eloise hated summers.
Summer meant summer holiday programmes. Weeks of small gremlins invading spaces designed for quiet. She had spent her career in libraries, archive rooms, the back offices of community arts centres where the air conditioning worked and nobody expected her to be cheerful. Summers undid all of that.
She had more nephews and nieces than a generation with reliable contraceptives gave any family the right to, and she liked them well enough. When they could string a sentence together… when they weren't sticky. This didn't paint her in the best light. She preferred to think of it as treating children like people, which meant acknowledging that some people were arseholes, and children were just smaller people with less impulse control.
The twins across from her were a case study.
Oliver had a tissue pressed to his nose. The bleeding had stopped ten minutes ago but he was milking it, tilting his head back with theatrical suffering every time Eloise glanced in his direction. Amanda had a split lip and a picture book open in front of her, pages unturned for the last five minutes. The sulking was impressive and coordinated. They had clearly done this before.
They'd been fighting over, something… Eloise had stopped tracking the details three incidents ago. One of them shoved, one of them bit, and now here they sat, her problem until their father arrived.
She had never met the man, but she had a portrait assembled. The Crane twins had a reputation, which meant their father did too. Staff room gossip painted him in broad strokes: strict, controlling, the type who scheduled their television time in fifteen minute increments. Patricia called him handsome in a disheveled sort of way. Marjorie agreed, with a blush. Eloise had rolled her eyes and gone back to her cataloguing.
Father doesn't let us prefaced half of the twins' stories, usually for things no reasonable adult would permit anyway. Eloise suspected this made him a parent with functioning judgment rather than the tyrant they implied, but there was an odd rehearsed quality to it. The slight pause before Father.
For the moment she just had to keep them from drawing blood again until Strict Father arrived, and then she could return to her desk and her cataloguing and her blessed, blessed quiet.
"Miss Bridgerton?" Amanda had her chin propped on her hand, book still open to the same page. "Are you going to tell Father we were fighting?"
"That's generally how this works, yes," said Eloise, browsing Goodreads on her laptop, trying to look busy.
"But you could not."
"I could not." Eloise kept her voice pleasant. "But I'm going to."
"But…"
"You bit your brother."
"He deserved it."
"I did not." Oliver's outrage was muffled by the tissue.
"You said my drawing looked like a potato!"
"It did look like a potato!"
"It was a portrait of you, so."
Eloise pressed two fingers to her temple. This. This was why she worked in the back. Why she ran her activities in the archive room where children came to her in small, manageable groups and left before they could get restless. Three years running she had requested full exclusion from summer programmes. Three years running, denied. But she had carved out her corner and disciplinary meetings were not her corner.
Marjorie called in sick. Patricia had a dentist appointment. Somehow Eloise drew the short straw, which she suspected was not a straw at all but a targeted conspiracy by colleagues who had met the Crane twins before. There was a knock, and the door opened.
Eloise expected a suit. Possibly a clipboard. A man who colour coded his calendar and considered spontaneity a character flaw. The twins had told her once that he timed their baths with a stopwatch. That he made them eat vegetables in alphabetical order. That he had confiscated Amanda's favourite stuffed rabbit for "disciplinary reasons" and refused to return it until she completed a formal written apology. Eloise had no idea how much of this was true.
The man in the doorway was not that. He was tall. Broad. Rumpled in a way that suggested he'd dressed in a hurry and never recovered. His t-shirt had been washed too many times, soft and thin, and she could see the shift of muscle underneath when he moved. Dirt on his hands. Curls shoved back from his forehead, brown and unruly, fighting a losing battle. Stubble darkening a jaw that was sharper than it had any right to be. His nose turned up slightly at the tip, softening everything else, making him look almost approachable. And he looked tired, genuinely tired, in a way that made her want to do something stupid like offer him tea and sympathy.
He scanned the room like bracing for impact. His eyes found the twins, then Eloise, and stayed there, just a beat too long, something flickering there before he dragged his attention to the tissue at Oliver's nose and the split on Amanda's lip. He closed his eyes. Breathed out. The exhale did something to his chest, his shoulders, the way his shirt pulled across them. Eloise looked at the desk. The desk was her friend.
"Right." His voice was lower than she expected. A little rough. "Which one of you started it?"
"Oliver," Amanda said.
"Amanda," Oliver said.
"Helpful." He crossed the room in three long strides, crouching in front of Oliver first, tilting his chin up to examine the nose. His hands were careful, practical and… big. "Still bleeding?"
"No."
"Good." He shifted to Amanda, turning her face gently toward the light. "Teeth intact?"
"Yes."
"Also good." He straightened, and now he looked at Eloise properly. The full attention of it landed like a physical weight. "I'm sorry. I'm Phillip Crane. Their uncle."
Uncle. Eloise looked at the twins.The twins looked at the ceiling.
"Eloise Bridgerton." She stood, because sitting while he loomed felt like a disadvantage. It did not help as much as she'd hoped. He still had several inches on her. "I'm covering for Patricia today. She usually handles the, ah, disciplinary conversations."
"Lucky you."
"Blessed."
His mouth twitched. Just the corner.
"I apologize in advance for whatever they've done." He lowered himself into the chair across from her desk, careful, like he was trying to take up less space and failing. "What's the damage this time?"
"Biting," Eloise said. "And shoving. And a dispute over whether a potato portrait constitutes an insult."
"It was a potato," Oliver muttered.
"It was you," Amanda shot back.
"Both of you, quiet." Phillip didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. There was something in his tone, a low firmness, that made both twins go still. Eloise felt it in her own spine. "You're already in trouble. Don't dig."
"Can we go?" Amanda. She had closed her book and was looking at Phillip with calculated innocence. "We said sorry. We'll be good. Can we wait in the car?"
"You didn't say sorry."
"We were about to."
"You were not."
"We were, from the inside."
Phillip pinched the bridge of his nose. It was a gesture that looked worn in, habitual as if he did it several times a day.
"You cannot wait in the car. It's July. You'll cook."
"The community garden," Eloise said. "It's fenced, only one gate, and it's visible from here."
Phillip considered and nodded.
"Ten minutes," he said. "You stay where I can see you. You do not touch any plants. You do not argue. You do not make me come out there."
They were gone before he finished the sentence, the door swinging shut behind them with a bang. Eloise watched them through the window, two small figures reached the garden gate, went through it and did not immediately start fighting. Small mercies. Phillip exhaled and something in his shoulders loosened.
"Uncle," Eloise said. He looked at her. "They told everyone you were their father."
"Ah. That." He rubbed a hand over his jaw, the rasp was audible. "I think it started because they didn't want to explain. People ask questions when you say uncle. They don't ask questions when you say father." He glanced toward the window, where the twins were crouched over something in the garden. "Their parents died two years ago. My brother. Car accident. The twins don't like talking about it, so they just... don't."
"I'm sorry."
"It's fine. It's not a secret, just not something they want to explain to every new adult." He shrugged. "And they're in a phase. A lying phase. Everything is a story. I'm half convinced they forget what's true sometimes. Their therapist says it's normal. A control thing. They'll grow out of it." He didn't sound entirely convinced. "Most of the lies are harmless and obvious. Amanda told her teacher she was raised by wolves until age five. Oliver told the dentist he'd never eaten sugar."
"They told me you time their baths with a stopwatch."
"Did they."
"And that you make them eat vegetables in alphabetical order. And that you confiscated a stuffed rabbit and demanded a written apology."
"The rabbit thing is half true. She drew on the walls in permanent marker. I told her she couldn't have it back until she helped me repaint." He paused. "She wrote me a letter instead. Very formal. I still have it." Something loosened in his face, almost a smile.
"And the stopwatch?"
"Complete fiction."
"Alphabetical vegetables?"
"I cannot even imagine the logistics."
Eloise laughed. Short and surprised.
“I suppose there are stories about me too,” said Eloise.
"They said you keep a dungeon in the basement for late book returns." The corner of his mouth gave him away. "Oliver was very concerned, said you hate children and torture them with boring books without pictures.”
"I don't hate them!"
"No?"
"Hate is a strong word. I find them..." She considered. "Exhausting."
"That's fair. Did they say something else about me?”
"Not really, just outlandish stories around you being strict and controlling and having no sense of humor."
"The first two are fair. The third one I'm working on." He stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. Mud on his boots. "They said you threw a book at Oliver's head."
"I did not throw a book at his head."
"I know you didn’t."
"I slid it across the table. He failed to catch it."
"Aggressively?"
"The slide or the failing?"
"Either." He laughed. Low, warm, surprised out of him. She was keeping count now. That was one. "They like you." He was watching her now, something warm and wry in his expression. "The twins, they talk about you constantly."
"They told you I throw books and despise them."
"They told me you're mean and scary and you once made Amanda cry and you never let them do anything fun." He smiled. It was crooked, more on one side than the other. "That's how I know they like you."
"That's a strange metric."
"They're strange children. They don't talk about people they're indifferent to. They talk about people who interest them. And they lie about people they want to impress."
"They want to impress me by telling you I'm a monster?"
"They want me to think they're handling a monster. Bravely and against the odds." He shrugged. "Their therapist calls it narrative building. I call it being relegated to a subplot in my own household. I don't even get to be the villain.”
Eloise laughed. She hadn't meant to. It came out sharp and surprised and she covered it with her hand, which was ridiculous, it made her feel like she was sixteen and not absolutely in control of herself.
"Well, I'm the monster. Maybe act three reveals you were pulling my strings all along."
"The twist."
"It's only good structure."
Phillip was watching her. That same steady attention, unhurried. Like he had nowhere else to be. Eloise leaned back in her chair. Through the window, Amanda was pointing at something while Oliver dug in the dirt with a stick. Not fighting. Miraculous.
"What do you do? When you're not wrangling small playwrights?" asked Eloise, forgetting she was supposed to eat with one of her sisters and that she had been very against conducting this meeting.
"Botany." He said it like an apology. "I'm a botanist. I work at the university, mostly, but I consult for the council on their green spaces. Native planting. Soil restoration. Exciting things like that."
"That explains the dirt." He pulled his ankle up to check, the movement graceless.
"Ah. Yes, I came straight from a site. Didn't have time to clean up, you people called and said there was an incident."
"An incident. Is that what they called it?"
"They used the word altercation."
"Patricia likes to sound official. Makes the parents take it seriously."
He smiled. It reached his eyes this time. She watched the lines at the corners deepen, the way his whole face opened up, and she wanted to make him do it again. Repeatedly. For an extended period of time.
"So," he said, clearing his throat. "Botany is boring. What…?”
"Botany isn't boring,” she said with too much conviction, interrupting him mid sentence.
"Most people glaze over when I mention soil restoration."
"Any job sounds that way when you describe it technically. I love plants. I have..." She counted in her head. "Eleven? Twelve, if the calathea on my windowsill hasn't finally given up."
"Calathea."
"My mortal enemy. I've killed three. All pink ones. They spite me and then they die."
"They need humidity and filtered light. And they're dramatic about both."
"Such divas."
"Calatheas. Same thing." He was smiling, genuinely warming his face. "I could help. If you wanted."
"You consult on municipal green spaces and you're offering to save my dying houseplant?"
"Consider it community outreach."
"To my windowsill."
"It's a start, and… what do you do when you're not supervising biting incidents? Besides murdering calatheas."
"This is what I do. I work here. Librarian. Archivist. Occasional reluctant child wrangler."
"Reluctant?"
"I requested exemption from summer programmes. Three years running."
"And yet."
"And yet." She gestured at the room. "Patricia had a dentist appointment."
"Do you like it? The work."
"I like the archives. Old documents. Things that don't talk back." She paused. "That sounded less misanthropic in my head." He laughed. Low, warm, surprised out of him again. She was keeping count now. That was two.
"You're not what I pictured," he said. "When they described you."
"Mean and scary and making children cry."
"They also said you had grey hair and a mole on your chin. With a hair growing out of it. So either they were lying or I'm in the wrong room," he said mockingly looking around.
"I'm twenty eight."
"I can see that."
Something in the way he said it. His eyes moved over her face, unhurried, and she had the sudden urge to know what he was cataloguing. What he was noticing. Whether he was doing the same inventory she'd done when he walked in.
"How old are you?" she asked.
"Thirty. Why?" She didn't answer. Let the silence sit the way he had earlier. His mouth curved. Neither of them looked away.
Through the window, Oliver had abandoned the stick and was now trying to climb the garden fence. Amanda was watching with the detached interest of someone hoping for a fall. Eloise should probably mention it. She did not.
"They're going to hurt themselves," Phillip said. He didn't move.
"Probably."
"I should intervene."
"Probably."
Neither of them stood. Oliver got one leg over the fence, wobbled, dropped back down. Amanda looked disappointed.
"You seem like you're managing,” spoke Eloise again.
"I'm faking. Convincingly, apparently. I had no idea what I was doing when they came to me. Still don't, mostly." He stretched his arms over his head, shoulders rolling, and his shirt rode up just enough to show a strip of stomach. She looked at the desk again, yes such a good friend the desk.
"You'd be surprised how far faking gets you. I've been pretending to understand the Dewey Decimal System for six years."
"I gather it’s important to understand it?"
"Meh, no one does. It's a collective delusion."
He laughed again. Three. She was going to stop counting at some point. She was going to stop tracking the way his throat moved when he did it, the way he tipped his head back just slightly, the curl that fell across his forehead. At some point.
"I should go," he said. He did not move. "Collect them. Take them home. Have a conversation about biting that neither of us will enjoy. I'm keeping you from your work."
"You're keeping me from cataloguing a donation of 1970s parish newsletters. Please. Keep me longer."
"That bad?" His eyes crinkled.
"Fourteen boxes. Handwritten indices. Someone's been dead for six years and their family just got around to cleaning the attic."
"My condolences."
"For them or for me?"
He stood. She wished he hadn't. Sitting, he'd been approachable. Standing, he was all of it again: the height, the shoulders, the way he took up space without seeming to notice. He looked down at her, and she looked up, and neither of them said anything for a beat too long.
"Thank you," he said. "For not throwing books at them. I've wanted to throw books at them. Heavy ones, so I get the self control you have”
"I don't have children. But I have siblings, and I've wanted to throw books at all of them."
"How many?"
"Seven." His eyebrows went up.
"Seven."
"I'm the fifth. It was chaos. Still is, mostly."
"That explains a lot."
"What does it explain?"
"You're not intimidated by them. The twins. Most adults are, they smell weakness." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "You don't have any."
"I have plenty. They're just not child friendly." He smiled. Not the crooked one. Something softer, more private. Like she'd said something that mattered without meaning to.
"I should get your number," he said. Then, quickly: "For the programme. In case something happens. In case they…"
"Bite someone again?"
"Or worse. They're creative."
"You could call the front desk."
"I could." He didn't move. "That seems inefficient."
"Does it?"
"Multiple steps. Transfers. Hold music. I've been on hold with this place before. It's Vivaldi on a loop."
"You're making a case for efficiency."
"I'm making a case."
Eloise opened the desk drawer. Found a pen. Found a sticky note, yellow, slightly curled at the edge. She wrote her number in careful print, her handwriting was terrible when she rushed and she was not going to rush this. She held it out. He took it. His fingers brushed hers, just for a second, warm and rough.
"For emergencies," she said.
"Biting emergencies."
"Exclusively."
"I'll add you to my contacts. Under what?" He looked at the number. Folded the paper once, then again, and slipped it into his back pocket.
"My name, presumably."
"Too obvious. I was thinking something descriptive. Mean Library Woman. Brutal Book Thrower."
"I didn't throw the book."
"Oliver says otherwise."
"Oliver is eight and a documented liar."
"Fair point." He tilted his head, considering. "Eloise, then"
Through the window, Amanda was waving. Big, exaggerated arcs of her arm. Oliver had given up on the fence and was now lying flat on his back in the grass, staring at the sky.
"Your children are signaling," Eloise said.
He crossed to the window. He rapped on the glass twice, gestured toward the door. Both twins scrambled up. A minute later, the door swung open. They filed in, grass stained and slightly sweaty, and Phillip talked to them in soft hushes, one hand on Oliver's shoulder, the other brushing grass off Amanda's sleeve. He looked like such a dad. Eloise added that to the list of things she was apparently attracted to now.
"We're sorry," Amanda said to Eloise. Flat. Rehearsed.
"For what?" Phillip asked.
"For fighting."
"And?"
"And biting."
"And?"
"And lying about Miss Bridgerton throwing books at my head." Oliver sighed.
"I did not throw a book at your head." Eloise looked at him.
"It was near my head."
"You asked me to pass it to you. I passed it."
"Aggressively."
"I'm going to aggressively pass you out of this programme."
Phillip laughed. Short, startled. Both twins looked at him with identical expressions of betrayal.
"You're supposed to be on our side," Amanda said.
"I'm on the side of accuracy. She didn't throw the book."
"She slid it."
"Across the table. Like a normal person."
"It made a sound."
"Books do that. Go wait by the car," Phillip said. "I'll be there in a minute."
They went, grumbling. The door closed behind them. He turned back to Eloise.
"I'll call you."
"For biting emergencies.".
"For whatever emergency I can manufacture."
He left. The door swung shut behind him. She watched through the window as he crossed the car park, as the twins ran to meet him, as Amanda grabbed one hand and Oliver grabbed the other and they pulled him toward the gate, talking over each other.
He looked back once. Just once. Quick, like he couldn't help it.
She pretended she hadn't been watching.