They were introduced, as all great love stories demand, at the most inconvenient possible moment — mid-sentence during a lecture on Romantic Poetry that neither of them had especially wanted to attend. Edmund had arrived late. Cecelia had taken the last aisle seat. He sat beside her. She did not move her coat.

He asked for her notes three weeks later. She gave him a different book entirely — one she had been meaning to recommend to someone worth recommending it to. It took him until the dedication page to understand what that meant. He called that evening. They have been talking ever since.