“Well, they would have burned coal to heat their baths, so they may have mined these hills. But whoever built the vault beneath the ancient part of the tower wasn’t a poor soldier,” Max said, leading them on. “The original tower was built of impenetrable stone, not wood and wattle. It may initially have had wooden stairs, but at some point, they were replaced with iron. There’s an immense cistern, an impregnable well, and a sophisticated drainage system that fertilized and watered the fields.”
“Iron lodestone in these hills too.” Gerard added. “So you think your sophisticated Roman architect—not a soldier from the sound of it—mined silver in his sewage field?”
“Or coal to heat his bath,” Bran added helpfully. “To attract nubile blue-faced maidens. Shouldn’t we visit the maidens instead of talking about them?”
“Even I’m not drunk enough for blue faces,” Max said facetiously. “But if you’re wishing to leave to see Susan, she’s Richard’s mother.” He’d sent his son away once the hard drinking had started. “She’s looking for another rich husband. Except for the new steward, my mother conveniently did not invite any of her nubile maidens to this dinner.” For which he was most grateful.
“Will the maidens be here tomorrow?” Bran asked. “I’m only asking for Brendan. He needs to marry wealth.”
His silent twin punched him.
“I’m fairly certain none of Mother’s students or teachers are wealthy. Malcolms tend to marry money and spread the wealth around.” Max rose, happy to direct his companions to the hall, hoping Lydia would be there.
“Then why the devil did our forefathers and fathers keep marrying them?” Bran complained.
Max pounded his smaller cousin on the back, nearly toppling him. “You’ll find out once you meet the right one. Start earning your own way, my boy. Marrying for riches is outmoded.”
They entered the great hall to find his mother and the married ladies in a huddle, bent over books and writing material, no doubt plotting Max’s future. Lydia wasn’t with them. Neither was the brown wren. Susan, however, looked up eagerly.
Max was pretty certain he felt the tower tremble in warning. He fled in search of Lydia.
* * *
The moment Max stepped through the door at the top of the stairs, the wind died and the books settled. Lovely, Lydia thought. She was the cause of the disturbance. If the people who tested librarians saw the ominous wind, they’d heave her out on her head.
Max sat on the narrow step above her. “That gown isn’t really suited for these treads, is it?”
Lydia knew her smile was watery as she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I really wasn’t meant for finery. It’s nice to play dress up, but I’m still a steward, if only of the library. I’m not sure what I will do with myself if I hire your mother’s steward.”
“Is that what you’re crying about?” he asked in concern. “We don’t have to hire her. Your butler seems quite capable.”
“The Folkstons are good with the household accounts, but there is apparently far more to the estate than even I know. Have you looked at the maps on the desk?” Lydia untangled her lovely silk from the iron treads and took Max’s hand to stand.
Her heart and soul ached, but she couldn’t disappoint Max with her lack of confidence. Any woman in the universe would be thrilled to have him for husband and not need more. She, unfortunately, wanted what she’d never had—belief that she was good enough for a man like Max and for a library that needed magic.
“I’ve glanced at the maps. It appears the estate includes the entire hill the castle overlooks, which makes sense for a fortress. What is inexplicable is why they would build the entrance road on the most precarious side of what is otherwise a gradually sloping hill.” He lifted her up and straightened the long train of her gown so she wouldn’t trip.
“That’s not inexplicable to hermits,” she said, some of her humor returning with Max’s presence. “Mr. C liked keeping out strangers. But the map is covered in little numbers and circles. I don’t know what they mean, so I wasn’t sure what it’s saying.”
“Survey language, how many degrees latitude and so forth to mark your boundaries more clearly than the old oak by the broken fence,” Max explained.
Lydia lifted her petticoat and skirt to climb the last stairs to the suite. “Is it possible there might once have been a town on the sloping side? Like Edinburgh—the castle guarded the highest point and the town formed in its shadow?”
“We can speculate all we like, but short of digging up a mountain, I guess we’ll never know. You need a book from the ancestors who built this place,” Max said.
And just like that, Lydia heard the call. She froze and glanced down all the dark stairs. Why did the damned library only answer Max’s questions?
Grimacing, knowing this was her duty, she bundled up her skirts and petticoat and descended the stairs over Max’s protests. The book hummed and sang and by the time she reached the last landing, she practically heard a chorus of demand.
But only one book pushed from the shelf—an ancient tome of faded, cracked leather. Even without opening it, she knew it was in Latin, in washed-out, crabby script. To prevent tripping on her long skirt, she placed the book in the apron she made by holding up her gown, and returned upstairs, where Max watched with interest.
His fascination enhanced the fluttery feeling in her midsection, even though she wasn’t thinking about coupling.
“Bedtime reading?” he suggested, taking the book and opening the door.
“Not tonight. My Latin is too rusty. I feel as if I could sleep for a week.” She loved the easy familiarity of talking with Max, his acceptance of her need for a book, and having his strong hand at her back. He made her feel feminine and delicate, even when she knew she was not.
“Will you tell me now why you were weeping?” He set aside the book once they entered their small parlor and reached to unfasten her heavy necklace.
“Because the books are angry with me.” She didn’t have any other way of explaining it.
“I don’t know how that’s possible. Is there anything I can do?” He added the necklace to the table with the book.
Lydia rubbed her nape and stretched her neck. “I think it’s because I can’t hear them.”
“Frustrated books! Only fair, given how many times they’ve frustrated me.” He massaged her aching muscles. “Does this mean you’re not angry with me? I tried not to linger too long, but you were gone by the time the others were prepared to leave the table.” He began working the fastening of her gown.
Max’s insecurity with women’s emotions rendered him human and increased the fiery fluttering she didn’t know how to identify. So Lydia swung around and kissed him, thrilling in the power to do so anytime she wished. “Not you at all. You are my rock. But I am terrified I’ll lose you once it’s discovered I’m no librarian. If I have to leave this tower, will you sail to Burma?”
Max responded with alacrity, covering her with kisses. “It’s you I want, not a stack of stones. If you don’t have a library, maybe you can go with me to Burma.”
The notion excited and horrified her equally. “I don’t know who I’d be without books,” she protested.
He pushed her toward the bedchamber. “There is a whole universe out there you haven’t set eyes on.”
“There’s a whole universe in here that you haven’t seen,” she retorted, although she still felt weepy that she might never see it all either.
While she stepped out of her gown and petticoats, Max crossed the room, yanked back the draperies, and opened the door on the tiny balcony. “The castle’s tower is inside an even greater edifice. Come look.”
Lydia grabbed a robe against the cool night air and joined him. Darkness spread across the hillside, obscuring the trees in the distance.
Max gestured at the sky. “The stars are different everywhere. You could travel the world and never see this exact piece of sky. Or that field or those trees. You can allow yourself to be confined by these
walls or you can go outside and find rooms full of flowers and people and animals you’ve never met. That world is every bit yours as this tower.”
Admiring the beautiful star-studded sky, Lydia leaned into him, enjoying Max’s hard arm circling beneath her breasts. “And it’s nice to occasionally explore that outside tower, even as it’s amusing to learn the various neglected rooms in the main part of the castle. But like visiting foreign lands, I’m just visiting those places. Home is my library.”
He hugged her tighter. “For me, the world is my home. But the best room in my home is wherever you are. So if you need this library to be home, I will find a way to save it. Once I do, they can’t send you away.”
“That’s quite preposterous, and you know it.” But she kissed him again. “I love that you say these things though.”
“Tomorrow, you will be mine and will read Latin to me,” he whispered into her hair. “Tonight, we will pretend this room is the only world we know.”
Could she make Max her whole world? Lydia feared she couldn’t, but for tonight, she accepted his offer.
Twenty-five
“My word, all of Edinburgh must have been invited,” Max’s bride-to-be marveled, watching the latest arrivals from the parlor window of their tower suite.
“And half the empire,” he added, draping his wedding clothes over his arm and kissing Lydia’s rosy cheek. His goddess looked even more delicious when the sun rose and highlighted her glorious hair. He battled the need to kiss her all over one more time. . . “I invited my old schoolmates, remember. And I daresay my mother extended an invitation to every Malcolm or Ives in existence.”
“Well, she only had two weeks to prepare, so maybe not quite all,” Lydia said in amusement. “This lot is too early to have arrived by the Edinburgh train. Perhaps the one from Glasgow?”
“Possibly. Or they rode up yesterday and stayed the night in the village. I need to sneak down to the guest room and pretend I slept there before Lloyd shows up.” He leaned over her shoulder to admire the procession of carts and horses on the rough drive. “They won’t all want to stay the night, will they?”
“If they mean to attend the reception, they might. The ceremony was scheduled late to allow time for the city guests to arrive. Do you recognize those two officious gentlemen wearing suits?”
Max muttered an obscenity as he located the pair.
Lydia glanced at him in curiosity. “Not invited guests?”
He groaned. “My step-uncle and his son. Mother may have invited them, if only to rub their noses in fate. And they probably came from the baron’s place. Isn’t that his carriage following?”
“Crowley has people with him. I don’t recognize them,” Lydia whispered. “Surely the trustees wouldn’t send someone to test me today, of all days?”
“They’re probably old friends of Mother’s,” he said reassuringly. “I’ll clear the rest of the evidence of my existence from the suite. You can invite your family and your nosy Malcolm friends up, and you can hide until this afternoon. The bride needn’t play hostess. Mother will be in her element, greeting guests.”
Max wouldn’t have her fretting on their wedding day. Basking in Lydia’s grateful smile, he gathered up his possessions, then slipped down the hidden stairs to the guest room. He didn’t have to put on starched linen and tails just yet.
While his Ives cousins slept off last night’s excesses, Max went in search of his sons. He found them in the breakfast room—alone. Even the ladies hadn’t come down yet.
“We have a responsibility to entertain our guests,” he informed them, slapping together toast and ham and anything else that would go on toast.
His sons looked interested, if rightfully wary.
“Mr. Lloyd said we were to stay out of the way until the wedding,” Richard said. “But I’m old enough to help.”
“Excellent. We need to keep the ladies and the gentlemen apart, just the way we did last night.” Max thought that would work out as nicely for him as it did for Lydia, if the new arrivals meant her harm. “The ladies will want to gossip and the men will want to do things, like hunt or explore or play cards.” Max was making this up on the fly. It wasn’t as if he had much experience at civilized entertainments. He just knew his gender.
“We can take them to the library to read,” Bakari suggested.
The boys had never seen the journal library, only the reference one in the guest wing and the one passing itself off as a billiard room. “You may ask if they’d like to see the guest libraries if you wish. We do not want them expecting to see Miss Lydia’s private one.”
“But most of them will want to drink and play games, won’t they?” Richard said.
“And eat,” Max agreed. “I believe the ladies have already ordered al fresco dining for early guests. Laddie will direct the gentlemen to the outdoor buffet. Mrs. Folkston will lead the lady newcomers inside to refresh themselves. That’s where you come in.”
Praying to all the omnipotent spirits who had kept him alive this long, Max ate his breakfast and outlined his hasty plan to separate out his uncle and the baron and anyone who might cause Lydia grief. Giving the boys free rein to enlist any of the current guests who might drag themselves out of bed early, he left them bolting down food and making impossible plans.
He’d far rather be digging a sewer than playing host to financiers and aristocrats. He figured he’d make a royal ass of himself before the day grew warm. But Lydia didn’t mind if he was an uncivil ass, he reminded himself. And if she didn’t, no one else mattered.
He wasn’t a man who wasted time on fear, but he was having a hard time convincing himself that conversing with stuffed shirts was necessary. Yanking on a ratty country tweed coat over an old waistcoat and leather breeches, Max set out to act as host for the wedding breakfast and bodyguard for his bride. If he meant to steer this lot to the courtroom to identify him, he needed to play nice.
“Schoolmates,” he muttered as he left by the garden door. “Courts. Judges. No murdering of uncles,” he reminded himself as he walked toward the gathering guests.
“Or barons,” he added, noting the man Lydia had identified as Lord Crowley studying the sloping field at the back of the castle. Max headed for the stable, where a number of gentlemen were admiring each other’s horseflesh.
Out of pure spite, Max stood there, waiting for his elegantly attired guests to either recognize him or mistake him for a servant.
A less stylish gentleman standing to one side studied Max surreptitiously. Max returned the favor. There was something familiar about the slouching shoulders and skinny frame—
When the visitor pulled out thick spectacles, Max grinned. “Percy! I didn’t think you’d come.”
His old classmate pushed his wide-framed spectacles up his nose just as he used to twenty years before. Stepping up now that he was recognized, he held out his hand. “You haven’t shrunk and you still dress like a coachman, Dwarf.”
The mention of the ridiculous nickname swiveled a few heads in their direction.
“You came in on the Glasgow train?” Max asked. “Have you breakfasted? Or are you just waiting on those other well-fed idiots to finish bragging about their steeds?”
More of the braggarts pivoted to study him.
“A bite wouldn’t be amiss,” Percy admitted. “I was trying to determine if any of the braggarts might be you.”
Max chortled and held out his hand to another almost-familiar stranger who dared approach. “And I suppose you’re all here to see how I managed to persuade any woman to marry me?”
“We’re more interested in how you managed not to get yourself killed.” One of the horsemen joined in. “I can still take you in the ring if you’re as obnoxious as I remember.”
“Dingo! Did no one ever teach you not to antagonize your host? And I thought I was uncivilized!” Max shook hands all around, desperately attempting to place faces with names while retorting to insults. Dingo wasn’t the man’s name, of course, but as scho
olboys, they’d lived by irrational sobriquets.
“I’m more interested in the castle than why you’re alive or need us,” Percy said diffidently. “My students will want to hear all about it. That tower is a perfect example of medieval architecture at its best, even if it has been mutilated for modern use.”
Opportunity knocked. Vowing to make Percy godfather to his next-born, Max swung his arm to indicate everyone join him on the gravel drive back to the untended lawns. A few gardeners had arrived these past weeks to clip and mend, but it was much too late to return the landscaping to any former glory.
Max pretended he didn’t see his uncle and cousin conversing with more officious gentlemen on the far end of the buffet. He helped himself to ale and regaled his guests with castle history and lies while they worked their way through the generous repast the kitchen had provided.
Decked out in newly acquired suits, his sons worked the crowd, directing the gentlemen to the stable, to a tour of the “Roman cellar,” to the guest door and library. Mrs. Folkston—also garbed in new finery—discreetly guided female guests to the main entrance and accommodations.
A man nearly as broad and dark as Max stepped up to introduce himself. “I’m Simon Blair, Drew’s cousin. My wife and your bride are acquainted. I’ve built mines. How filthy will I get if I poke around a bit below the tower? Olivia won’t appreciate mud.”
“Maxwell Ives, pleasure, sir. I’ve heard about you. The front section of the tower should be safe, but once you wander deeper, I make no promises. Maybe after the ceremony? I’d love to have an expert opinion.”
Blair slapped him on the back and moved on, bringing Max face-to-face with his uncle.
Max waited to see if his uncle might acknowledge that Max really was his nephew. From the look on his uncle’s face, Max assumed hell would have ski slopes and ice-skating rinks before that happened.
Refusing to allow ugliness to mar his wedding day, Max regaled the rest of his audience with the growing fiction of a wealthy Roman engineer building the first tower with plumbing and baths and the proceeds of a silver mine.
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