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as if a life wasn’t attached to it at all.
    “Mr. Briggs has noted here that you started a lending library on the premises. You should make arrangements to retrieve any of the books currently lent and—”
    “No.”
    Finally that sparked some emotion. Mr. Briggs’s assistant narrowed his eyes, and his smooth-shaven cheeks began to bloom with color.
    “No, Miss Wright?”
    “No, sir. Those books are not part of what is owed to the bank, nor to anyone. They were donated or purchased with charitable funds.”
    “I see.”
    “Did you charge your borrowers a fee?”
    “Whatever fees I collected were used to purchase more books. In that way, I hoped to make the lending library self-sustaining.”
    The young man glanced around her shop and expelled a pitying sigh.
    “If only you’d put the fees toward saving your shop, Miss Wright.”
    The coins she’d accumulated from the borrowers would never have made a significant impact on her father’s debt. But she wasn’t going to argue with Mr. Briggs’s assistant. The young man believed he’d won the point, and Jess was too busy willing herself to stop shivering and worrying over her future to mind conceding it to him.
    “Yes, perhaps you’re right.”
    Fisting her hand, she crinkled Kitty’s check, still folded in her palm. If Mr. Briggs wouldn’t accept the payment, she’d have to return the funds. They’d been given to support her father’s shop, and there wouldn’t be a bookshop anymore.
    There won’t be a bookshop anymore.
    It couldn’t be true. Father’s bookshop had always been here. She’d spent nearly every day of her life in it. An infant when her parents rented the space and started their bookselling venture, Jess didn’t remember a single day before Wright and Sons Booksellers existed.
    And she promised her father she wouldn’t let it founder. His last words to her had been about the shop, urging her to stay on, to keep it going, and to succeed in all the ways he’d failed.
    I trust you’ll fare better than I ever did, my girl.
    In four years she’d barely managed to keep the shop afloat. A bit had been paid to all of Lionel Wright’s creditors, but none of the outstanding debt had been cleared. Some days her burdens all seemed so heavy she would stand in front of her mirror, feet sore from standing, head sore from worrying, and swear she’d shrunk an inch under the weight. Now it was collapsing around her, the sense of loss a hollow, gaping pain. She’d felt it only once before—the day Father died after urging her to keep up his shop.
    “Miss Wright?”
    Jess looked up to find Mr. Briggs and his assistant staring at her. She’d forgotten they were still in the shop. The mild expression she’d come to expect from Briggs had settled on his whiskered face, but his assistant watched her warily, as if she might break into a fit of hysterics.
    Her mouth had gone dry but Jess managed a few words to send them on their way.
    “As you’ve requested, gentlemen, I’ll be out in one week. Would you mind seeing yourselves out?”
    Turning her back on the men, Jess approached the door of the small back room she used as an office. It was as much rudeness as she’d ever shown to anyone who’d visited Wright and Sons Booksellers. But she couldn’t face them, not when tears welled up and began sliding down her cheeks faster than she could swipe them away.
    The moment the bankers were out the door, Jack Echolls emerged from the back room and thrust a well-used scrap of cloth into her hand.
    “Dry your eyes, miss. We both knew this day was coming.”
    Yes. She’d feared it, dreaded it for years. Even while she’d been working to stave it off, the inevitability of the shop’s failure had always loomed over her. For the past four years, she’d only held it at bay, toiling as futilely as Sisyphus forever pushing a boulder up the hill.
    Jack pulled a straight-back chair from the office and Jessamin sat down hard, deflated, her whole body sagging