How would she summon the words again? Was that how Mr. C had heard the books?
The voices had been more unsettling than Max’s kiss, which had been glorious and a memory to treasure for a lifetime. She should certainly never engage in such seductive activities again. His friend was in the parlor right now, either driving Max to flee or luring him back to the city. For Lady Agnes’s sake, she hoped it was the latter.
For her sake. . . She needed to pretend to be The Librarian, the dispenser of all Malcolm wisdom.
If she could not hear the voices again, would the castle revert to the Crown, like a lost title? She shuddered at the thought.
She wished she could excuse herself from dinner as Mr. C often had. Zack, the footman, had finally returned, so she had a man who could serve so Max needn’t fear the maids. But it didn’t feel right to isolate herself when Max’s friends had come to his rescue so swiftly. She needed to encourage him to do what was right, didn’t she?
Of course, standing in her tiny cubicle, looking at her three plain gowns, she thought maybe her place was in the library, going over the books she’d pulled from the shelves, like the drab assistant she was.
She’d spent most of her life being overlooked, considered a workhorse who simply kept households running. Once her daintier sisters found husbands, Lydia had gladly helped with their wedding arrangements. She’d even made herself available whenever one needed her to help during their lying-ins. She had never resented their married status in the least—because she had the library. Once she’d discovered the library, she’d found her place and been content
But now. . . she fretted. Mr. C had never dressed for guests, but she sort of wanted to look like she’d tried. At least everything she owned was already dark so she needn’t worry about buying mourning. With a sigh, she added her bit of lace and rummaged in a drawer for her father’s gold watch. Perhaps she could wear it as she had the keys. It was gold anyway—almost like jewelry.
And then she worried that lace and gold weren’t appropriate for mourning. . .
Rolling her eyes at herself, Lydia brushed out her hair, curled it into a chignon, and fastened it tightly. Her hair had a mind of its own and bits and frazzles would eventually pop out all around her face, but at least she could start out neat. She pinched her cheeks, bit her lips, took a deep breath to be certain her buttons would hold, then marched down the stairs to the dining room.
Except everyone had gathered in the small parlor, and she stopped there instead.
“I’m sorry the drawing room isn’t quite ready,” she said, uncertain why everyone was here. “Did you find your rooms satisfactory?”
“You’re not a hotelier, Lydia,” Max said. “You’re the Malcolm Librarian. Let your housekeeper tend us. She and Mr. Folkston have been very helpful.”
“A librarian can be a hostess,” she corrected defensively. “Did your trunks arrive? Are you and Bakari settled in? I had a talk with Lloyd—”
“Yes, he told me. He’s with the boy now. And yes, our trunks arrived, thank you. I simply have to decide whether to work on the tower or go into the city and fight for my money.” The usually affable Mr. Ives almost snarled that speech. He took her hand and placed it on his arm. “Let us go to dinner before I start gnawing on the furniture.”
Lydia sent a helpless glance to Mr. Morgan and Miss Trivedi. They set down their half-empty glasses. Mr. Morgan wordlessly took his companion’s arm, but Miss Trivedi gave Lydia a sympathetic look and smiled.
“The warriors are arguing over battle plans,” she explained. “It makes them disagreeable.”
Did she even wish to ask what battle?
* * *
“I showed the boy the stairs up to the tower,” Max told his hostess as they strolled toward the dining room. “He’s thrilled with every part of this fortress. We’ll probably never see him again. Lloyd can’t possibly keep up with him.”
Max was actually pretty proud of the boy. People apparently terrified his son, but exploring castles was a fun game.
“Up until this past year, the place has been well maintained. I don’t think any part is truly dangerous.” Lydia hesitated in the formal dining room where plates were laid out. “And it’s usually easy to find the great hall and the way back to the tower. He should be fine.”
Max could think of a dozen ways a boy could find trouble without getting lost, but he refrained from mentioning them. He shouldn’t be taking his ill humor out on a woman who was trying to help.
“A round table, just like King Arthur’s court!” Approving of this setting, Max pulled out a chair for Lydia against the back wall so she could watch the door, then appropriated the seat beside her. If maids were to be leaning over his shoulder. . . He wanted Lydia as shield.
Morgan set Miss Trivedi in the next chair and took the one beside her. The table was fairly large, but the plates had all been set on one side. Max wiggled uneasily at having a woman he didn’t know this close, but Miss Trivedi didn’t seem to notice.
Huh. Did that prove his theory that she was loyal to Morgan?—an interesting new angle to his preposterous gift. Could he detect which women were inclined to wander?
“Do we dispense justice like King Arthur’s court?” Morgan asked, indicating the round table. “Or do we need more knights?”
“More ladies,” Miss Trivedi said demurely, settling her napkin in her lap. “That’s the problem with all governments, they’re male. They only ever have one thought in their heads at a time and cannot perceive the ramifications of their decisions with any clarity.”
“It’s easier to make decisions if we don’t have to consult a thousand different opinions,” Max argued, using his own predicament as an example. “If we all agree someone is a usurper, we simply decide on how to remove him. We don’t care if his family suffers for it. That would stand in the way of decision-making.”
Lydia sat silent, pushing her soup around with her spoon.
“Both your uncle and your cousin have families,” Morgan pointed out the obvious. “If you have them jailed for fraud and take away all their assets, their families will suffer. And some of the assets may rightfully be theirs.”
Max couldn’t see Lydia’s expression, but he was pretty certain she was frowning, albeit still silently. The librarian didn’t like to express her opinions without a great deal of thought, it seemed.
“I will benevolently grant the families of my usurpers an allowance, as they have my mother.” Max was still furious and not ready to be rational.
“Do not most men of finance, particularly avaricious ones, keep books that show how much they have earned?” Lydia finally spoke, albeit slowly. “Would that not be a starting place in dividing what belongs to whom?”
“It won’t matter much if Max doesn’t stand up in court and accuse them,” Morgan said grumpily.
“And once investments are sold and the funds intermingled, it’s not quite that easy,” Miss Trivedi added. “But yes, there is probably a foundation that both families started with. And profits could be divided to some degree by applying a percentage based on what each family contributed. It would not necessarily be a fair division, only a means to start a conversation.”
“I’ll just cut off their heads and leave others to work out the money.” Max tucked into his excellent lamb broth. “If I have to expose myself to the city again, I want them to pay. I counted on those bastards to take care of my mother and my inheritance!”
“I do not understand your dislike of Edinburgh,” Miss Trivedi said, not eating the soup.
Lydia whispered to a young footman and had him take the lady’s bowl, leaving Max to try to answer. As if he could explain the impossible and not sound vain while he did so.
“Do you know anything about magnetism?” he asked.
“Lodestone and iron and such? Not a lot,” Miss Trivedi admitted.
“They are working on forms of electromagnetism now,” Morgan said. “It’s a fascinating science with a great deal of potential.”
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“There is research that shows the earth itself is magnetic, which is why compasses point north,” Max added. “I don’t think I contain lodestone or electricity, but I seem to possess a form of paramagnetism that, let us say, is extremely uncomfortable in crowds.”
The footman returned with a plate of mixed greens and set it before Miss Trivedi. The lady sent Lydia a grateful look and dug in with what appeared to be pleasure at eating weeds. Max glanced at his perceptive hostess. She knew a lot about people, simply from reading.
And listening—she had been paying attention even as she directed the servants. She looked up from her soup now. “Paramagnetism? You did not use that word earlier. Is this a scientific concept?”
“Scientists have discovered a number of elements can become magnetized if placed in a magnetic field,” Morgan explained. “But once that field is removed, the magnetism disappears.”
Lydia turned her huge indigo eyes to Max, and he twitched uncomfortably.
“You are the magnetic field?” she asked. “Ladies are the elements? And if they are removed from your presence, they forget your existence?”
“Possibly.” He applied his attention to his soup rather than the uncomfortable conversation.
“Ladies are drawn to you?” Miss Trivedi asked in amusement. “And this is a problem?”
Max gritted his teeth, but once the footman removed his bowl, he had to reply. “If I may sketch a mental picture. . . Have you been inside my mother’s School of Malcolms?” When she nodded, he continued. “Imagine if you will what happens if a magnetic field that attracts females enters those doors.”
Miss Trivedi’s fork hovered over her plate as she considered this. “I am not a particularly imaginative person, but I can recall what happens when one man has too many wives. It is sometimes very ugly.”
“In that case, at least, the wives know why they’re jealous of each other. In my case, there is no logic to the catfights. Do not ask me to repeat the experience, please. Women aren’t as docile as they are portrayed in literature.” Max sat back so the footman could set a nicely browned pheasant with accouterments in front of him. Grateful for the distraction, he said, “Marta is brilliant. Does she always cook like this?”
Lydia studied her plate with interest. “Most generally, we eat from a buffet and it’s nothing more than soup or stew. I didn’t know she had this in her.” She gave him a mischievous look. “Maybe she’s fallen under the spell of your magnetism and wishes to keep you here.”
“Go ahead, laugh, but it’s a good thing courtrooms are run by men. If I’m to sue my relations, we have to keep women from the courtroom audience. And I need to avoid my mother’s house, preferably by not letting her know I’m here. I might manage a courtroom, nothing more.” Disgruntled, Max hacked at his dinner.
Miss Trivedi tucked into the potatoes and other vegetables she’d been served.
Morgan hummed in appreciation, apparently of both Max’s decision and the bird. “We might manage a closed courtroom. But we’ll need to pry the books from your uncle’s hands to prove his guilt first. I can’t do that. You must.”
Max grimaced and conceded. “Fine. I will give you my power of attorney. You may tell my mother that I am on my way home. I’ll give you a letter asking her to sign a power of attorney to you as well. Take it as far as you are able without me.”
“What about Bakari?” Lydia asked. “Will you be sending him to school?”
“Not yet.” Mentally saying farewell to his Burma job, Max stabbed a potato. “I’ll stay here and study your tower and try to figure out what he’s good at. Maybe if he starts school with some talent that gives him confidence, he’ll feel better. And we’ll know by then if he has cousins to help him.”
“He needs to meet them first,” Lydia warned.
“Which means meeting their mothers,” Miss Trivedi added, obviously enjoying his predicament.
Because meeting young ladies had worked so well the last time he’d been here, Max thought gloomily. But he’d been only eighteen then. Running away had been the only solution he’d known. Although he’d spent most of these past years in sparsely populated areas, he’d learned a few tactics. He simply despised the necessity of hiding.
He glanced at Lydia, who was studiously picking apart her dinner without looking at him. If he had to go out in civilized society, he needed a shield of respectability. How could he go wrong with a woman who looked like a queen and kissed like an angel?
All he had to do was persuade her to leave her tower of books.
Ten
After dinner, Lydia left Max working with Mr. Morgan and Miss Trivedi on plans to pry financial information from his uncle and cousin. She had a funeral to plan, guests to prepare for, and a stack of books calling to her.
The staff knew what to do. They simply needed to be reassured about the change in circumstances and that Lydia approved of their work. She was a vicar’s daughter, accustomed to church social gatherings, not aristocratic assemblies. Anything the servants suggested was fine with her.
With that task accomplished, she returned to the library, swept up a few tomes from the pile she’d found for Max, and retreated to the hidden study inside the stacks. She didn’t want Max catching her by surprise. She didn’t want to be kissed again—much. She just wanted to be left alone to explore whether or not she might be able to fulfill the librarian’s duties sufficiently to scrape by until she either learned how to hear the books or a more qualified person could be found.
But the tomes meant little to her. She listened to the whispers, found pages mentioning the tower, and marked them with the supply of bookmarks she’d created for Mr. C. She would have to read the pages to Max to see if they meant anything to him.
Discouraged, she set the books aside and wandered into the stacks, concentrating on the words librarian and instructions, to see if that stirred the whispers enough to hear. It didn’t. Ownership did nothing either. She flipped through the ancient directory but mostly it listed the authors of the journals and occasionally made reference to the author’s gift. Nothing screamed This is how you find a librarian. She’d have to hope that the solicitors knew more than she did.
She settled on a step near the shelf containing Mr. C’s journals. Perhaps if she started with reading how he became the librarian. . .
* * *
Descending from his tower suite, showing his son the secret passage, Max discovered Lydia sound asleep on the library stairs. One well-turned ankle dangled from below her skirt, a book rested precariously in her lap, and her temple reposed on a stack of tomes. If he could paint, he’d paint Portrait of a Beautiful Librarian.
“She’ll hurt herself,” his son whispered in concern.
It was a long way down if she tried turning over on a circular iron stairway.
Max didn’t know where Lydia’s room was. He supposed he could go down the outer stairs, opening doors to see if any looked likely. But it was far easier to deposit her where she belonged.
She stirred when he lifted her, but she had to be terribly exhausted. She didn’t wake.
Max was unaccustomed to taking care of anyone but himself, but it was becoming obvious that the librarian needed someone to take care of her. She couldn’t do it all—be the librarian and her own assistant and steward of all she surveyed. They’d have to work that out in the morning. For now, he carried her up the stairs and deposited her on the spacious bed obviously intended for her.
“Where will you sleep?” the boy asked, again with concern. The lad had more compassion than Max would ever learn.
“I’ve been sleeping on the ground and on ship decks for years,” he assured him. “I’ll sleep in the other room with you, if that’s all right.”
They caught Lloyd just entering the parlor from the outer stairs, apparently ready for his own bed. Max grimaced. There was a snag.
“I put Miss Wystan on the big bed,” he informed the valet. “She fell asleep on the stairs, and I didn’t know what else to do. If
you can direct me to her chamber, I could sleep there, but I don’t know how she’ll react if she wakes up to you and my son in the suite.”
Lloyd nodded and squinted his eyes in thought. “She really does belong here. It’s expected. I can take one of the cubicles. They’re all furnished. I’ll just need to remove my things.” He looked at Max expectantly.
Max could take the guest room he’d been using. It was perfectly adequate. Morgan and Miss Trivedi had been given rooms elsewhere.
But he’d already caught one of the maids turning down his covers and leaving a bottle of whisky on his night table. He really wanted an entire locked tower between him and the household. Besides, their trunks were here.
Max gestured vaguely at the parlor. “I’ll sleep with the boy in here tonight. We’ll work out better arrangements in the morning.”
Lloyd didn’t seem fond of that idea, but ever the obedient servant, he gathered up his few personal articles, carefully locked the door to the little closet leading to Lydia’s bed, and departed. As soon as he was gone, Max picked the lock and opened the door so the boy could use the washroom. Max knew he was an honorable man, in his own way, but he respected that not everyone else appreciated his ability to resist a beautiful woman.
Almost resist—he opened the chamber door and verified that the lady slept soundly.
“She’s like a beautiful princess,” Bakari murmured in awe. “Like in the fairy tales.”
With her golden-sunset hair tumbling over her porcelain cheeks and lace collar, Lydia did indeed resemble an untouchable princess. For perhaps the first time in his life, Max felt regret at walking away.
* * *
Lydia blinked awake at her usual hour of dawn. She frowned at the ceiling that had suddenly developed delicate flowers and colorful birds. Finally realizing it was a canopy and not a ceiling, she hurriedly scrambled from a bed almost as large as the room she’d been sleeping in.
How did she end up in Mr. C’s room?
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