A cave. He straightened, his mind’s eye supplying those shadows where nature hadn’t yet. That was what he needed. Cold and stony and dark . . . and a perfect symbol. A cave like Plato’s, where truth lay just outside, but its light was too blinding for mortal eyes at first. A perfect analogy. A perfect device. Locryn would—
“Did you hear me, Mr. Holstein?”
He started, then took a step back when he realized Miss Gresham was only a few feet away. “S-Sorry. I was . . . was th . . . thinking of a novel.”
She smiled. Brown—her eyes were a brown as clear as the tourmaline Mother had once worn. “And whereabouts are those kept in this place?”
He motioned toward the door to his study, still open. His walls there were lined with books too, but they were ordered. More or less. With only a few stacked before the orderly lines, when his collection had outpaced his shelves.
She lifted her dark brows. “May I?”
“Of c-course.” He led the way into his study and motioned her toward the bookcases. “You are wel . . . welcome to b-borrow any. If you . . . if you stay.”
“How very kind, Mr. Holstein. And of course I’m interested in staying, if you’ll have me. Though, to be sure, I can make no estimation just yet on how long it will take me to catalog those books. And if you do intend me to read them to determine any family history, I will need instruction on what it is I’m looking for. That will, of course, add to the time needed.”
Twilight sunshine shafted through the window and landed on his typewriter. Beckoning. “I under . . . understand. It i-is a daunting t-task. But I c-can pay you f-fifty pounds for . . . for the job. And b-board in the . . . the c-cottage. M-Meals too.”
“Quite generous, sir. I happily accept the terms—though I daresay your Mr. Penrose will insist upon some sort of contract.” She pulled out a copy of The New Machiavelli. “A bit different from The Time Machine, I’ve heard. My brother said—why, it’s autographed!” She put it back, pulled out another, opened it, spun. “As is this one, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”
He slid over to his desk, noting that the other letters he’d left there were gone. No doubt the Teagues had spread the word on where he’d left them and the rest of the staff had slipped in to fetch theirs. They all knew he’d have one for them, right down to young Benny.
There came a series of sliding and thunking as she apparently withdrew and then replaced a whole line of books. His lips twitched up. On that particular shelf, she’d find the same thing, mostly. His favorites, all signed.
“Ah ha! This one isn’t. This Mad Caper by Branok Hollow.”
His favorite of the five Locryn James books, to be sure. Thus far. He pulled out his chair and darted a glance at the banded bundle of papers, to make sure they were still wrapped in that masking brown paper. “Mr. H-Hollow is . . . is a r-recluse, you know. N-No one knows w-where to r-reach him.” No one but his lawyer.
Miss Gresham stepped into view and leaned onto the edge of his desk, as comfortable as if it were her own. Which made his brows pull in. Certainly he wanted the assistance of someone capable, someone undaunted by the library—but that someone must also recognize boundaries.
And his desk was off-limits. “M-Miss—”
“It can’t be that hard to find him.” She was examining the book, flipping through a few pages. “With a name like Branok Hollow he is surely Cornish. Probably one of your neighbors.”
“Excel . . . lent deduction. You should . . . you should g-go back into the l-library and see . . . and see if you can find c-clues as to his . . . identity in there.” And give his poor exhausted tongue a break from trying to speak. And his fingers the chance to find their home on his typewriter keys.
“Here twenty minutes, and already you’re trying to be rid of me? Should I be offended, Mr. Holstein?” She fiddled with the earpieces of her spectacles and sent him what she probably thought was a charming smile.
Peter sighed. Gryff had no doubt alerted Mrs. Teague of their guest—she would be in soon to rescue him, to show Miss Gresham to the cottage. He could grant her a few more minutes now. Even if half of his mind was wandering up the Amazon, searching for that cave. Legend would no doubt say it had treasure within. But it would have to be a trap, of course. The true treasure would have to be without.
Treasure was never where one sought it.
Miss Gresham flipped another page. “I’m not the reader my brother is—novel reader, I mean. Of course.”
“Of c-course.” Where had Benny put his fresh paper? He needed it always at hand . . . there. Some of it, anyway, on the floor at the corner of his desk. He leaned over to pull up a stack of it. And his books. He needed his books on the Amazon.
“Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good Austen or Brontë. But I don’t devour all these modern stories like Barclay does. Full of machines and science and whatnot. I’m of the mind that a book should have a bit of a love story in it. Don’t you think so, Mr. Holstein?”
His box of research books was there too. He flipped off the lid and drew out a few. Amazon. Andes. Alps—hmm. Perhaps next, Locryn should go to the Alps. Peter had at least seen them on one of his family’s holidays to Germany. Though he’d be wise to avoid the German side of things in his stories, unless he were making a point of it. Switzerland, perhaps.
Or perhaps he should make a point of it. Hollow could get away with saying what Holstein never could.
“Barclay always scoffs when I say such things. He says romance is not the point of literature. Though to my mind, it rather begs the question of what its point is. What think you, sir?”
He looked up even as he set his books on the desk. She seemed to actually be awaiting a response this time, her eyes wide and brows lifted behind her spectacles. “F-Fiction can . . . can . . .” It was no good. His mouth wouldn’t wrap around the words that came so easily to his mind.
He shook his head and positioned his chair better. He’d write her a note with his thoughts, that was all. After dinner, perhaps. Once he’d gotten this cave image down on the page.
Miss Gresham closed the book. “Well, you certainly seem to have a great appreciation for it—these shelves are nearly as bursting as the ones next door. Have you any Melville? Barclay has been after me to read Melville, insisting he’s one of America’s most brilliant writers of the centuries past, but I’ve yet to—”
“M-Miss Gresham.” He rested his fingers on the edge of the desk rather than the keys. He never wrote with another in the room. Never. And even if her voice was of a pleasant enough tone, this would never do. “Do . . . do you always t-talk so much?”
“I beg your pardon.” Though it wasn’t apology in her tone as she straightened. It was offense. “I am only trying—”
The shattering of glass silenced her. Peter leapt to his feet and rounded the desk, trying to pinpoint where the sound had come from. Down the passage somewhere. He hurried that way even as Mrs. Teague rushed from the opposite direction, both of them charging into the drawing room. The one with the wide, welcoming windows that looked out over the open expanse of the lawn.
Dusk was falling. The room was dark, though in here he could simply switch on the light. It showed him a hole spilling in night where the window should have been, a figure nearly out of sight on the lawn . . . and a stone wrapped in paper resting in the pieces of glass on the floor.
The shards crunched under his shoes as he stepped over to it and picked it up. His hands didn’t shake. His breath didn’t catch. But there was a matching stone in the pit of his stomach as he freed the paper from the one in his hands.
Mrs. Teague appeared on one side of him . . . and Miss Gresham on the other, both looking over his shoulder as he smoothed out the paper and read the words shouting up at him.
Go back to Germany.
Still his hands didn’t shake. His breath didn’t catch. But his jaw felt so tight he could barely stammer around it as he looked over at the wide-eyed librarian. “You . . . you start f-first thing in the m-morning.”
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He spun on his heel and strode from the room, the rock still in his hand.
Four
Tea sloshed from her cup as she poured it, but that was only to be expected. Dawn had barely streaked the horizon when the blasted birds had started tweeting right outside Rosemary’s window. And it had taken her two hours to get to sleep last night, what with that ridiculously soft mattress, free of lumps. The pleasant smell of flowers from the bedside table. And the unending, bizarre, utterly baffling silence of the night.
Sirens might warn of approaching monsters in the dark, but silence surely cloaked them.
“How does anyone live like this?” Willa poked a finger at the tea service. Serviceable and plain, but still beautiful. Free of chips. Elegant. Just like the birds, Willa had come with the first streaks of dawn, having apparently heard via the village gossip that a librarian had taken up residence in the cottage at Kensey Manor.
“Happily, I should think.” Rosemary opened the little bowl by the teapot and let out an involuntary squeak. Sugar! And it wasn’t even Christmas. She scooped a heaping spoonful into her not-quite-steaming cup. “Have some toast.”
Willa had already taken a bite out of a slice slathered in marmalade and closed her eyes in bliss. “For a day or two, certainly. But don’t you think it would get boring? Never wondering what comes next? Never needing to work for anything?”
Rosemary’s gaze drifted to the middle of the small table in the cottage’s kitchen, where a shard of glass still sat. It had been stuck in the laces of her half-boots last night, and she hadn’t noticed until she’d had the lights on in here. “Oh, I daresay everyone wonders what comes next, now and then.”
Willa followed her gaze, and her brows knit. “I saw the window covered over with card paper when I walked up the drive. What happened?”
“Someone threw a stone through it.”
Her sister paused with the toast halfway back to her mouth. “Rosie, maybe this isn’t such a good idea. If you get hurt . . .”
As if she were afraid of random stones or the cowards who would throw them. No Cornish vandal could possibly intimidate someone from the roughest streets of London. Rosemary took a sip of tea and leaned forward. “A thousand pounds, Willa. One. Thousand. Pounds.”
Willa ran her tongue over her teeth. “It’s a fortune. More than we’ve ever brought in, combined. Even factoring in that diamond necklace Barclay lifted.”
“I know.” But that was the problem with stolen goods—they had to be fenced, and fences never paid full price. It was better when they had clients requesting specific things, but there were never enough of those. “We could find a place in a better neighborhood. Perhaps even all together. We’ve never all been together. We could send the little ones to school.”
Willa sat back, her eyes unfocused. “They could have a chance. A different life, if they wanted it.”
The words hung in the air like fog. How many times had they cheered for their life, their success in it, the fact that they were no worse off than the honest blokes in the factories and hadn’t had to work so hard to achieve it?
But they’d never really had other options—not really. If Jory could, though, and little Olivia . . . if they didn’t have to go through life ducking every time they heard a bobby’s whistle . . .
Willa reached for Rosemary’s cup, having not poured her own. “And with the greatest risks, right? Just be careful, Rosie. Even carefuller than careful.”
“I know. I will.” She picked up a slice of toast but then put it back down. Mrs. Teague had fed her last night, scowling the whole while, and had obviously slipped in this morning with the tray of food and tea. Rosemary hadn’t even heard her, which wouldn’t do at all. She must stay alert, on her guard. Rosemary Gresham, librarian. She couldn’t afford to slip, even for a moment. “I’d better head to the house. Get started. I’ve no idea what to do with that library, Will.”
Smirking, Willa polished off the last bite. “Maybe you should have sent Barclay here in your place.”
She snatched back her teacup and took a swig as she stood. “I am every bit the thief he is, and more. I read German.”
“Whoever would have thought it would prove useful a second time?” Willa stood too and grabbed a second piece of toast. “I’ll spend the day in the village, then come back here tonight to see you. Is there anything you need me to do?”
Give me a quick course on how books ought to be organized in a proper library? Rosemary downed the last of the tea from the dainty china cup and set it upon the table. “Nothing I can think of yet. I’ll let you know if there is.”
Willa paused with her hand on the door, surveying the kitchen much as she had twenty minutes earlier, when she first came in. “We could fit the whole family in this place—and they call it a cottage.”
Rather close to the thought Rosemary had entertained the night before when she’d followed Mrs. Teague over the darkened lawn and to the stone house set against the woods. It had five bedrooms—five! And electric lights. Hot water actually came from the tap when she turned it on in the bath . . . and the tub. The tub deserved to have sonnets written about it. In London, they shared a lavatory with the whole floor and counted themselves lucky if they managed to find time for a ten-minute bath—and that after hauling up their own hot water.
This had been pure bliss . . . and accounted for her lateness in retiring. Before the terrible quiet and too-comfortable mattress had kept her awake.
Willa narrowed her eyes and leveled a finger at Rosemary’s nose. “Don’t get spoiled. Even with a thousand pounds, we’ll not be that well off.”
“I know.” But she smiled as she grabbed up the linen jacket that matched her new dress. It was somber, beige, even had a border of the most boring brown plaid. But it was similar to what she’d seen other women wearing when she’d gone in search of Mr. Hall. “But it makes for a nice little holiday, doesn’t it?”
Willa grinned and opened the door.
The morning air was cool and damp—nothing unusual. But there were no traffic sounds. No crowds pushing their way toward the factories. And it smelled of . . . of . . . Rosemary sniffed. “What is that?”
Willa sniffed too. “Grass? Flowers?”
Bizarre. Rosemary enjoyed walking through a park, of course, but to be hit in the face with the scent of green life the moment she stepped out her door would take some getting used to. “It’s so quiet.”
“Even the village is—though not compared to this.”
They walked a few steps together before Willa turned toward the driveway. Rosemary lifted a hand to wave good-bye. “Have a good day, Will.”
Striking out along the brick path that led toward the kitchen, Rosemary adjusted the bothersome spectacles she’d nearly forgotten to put on and wished for the sound of the tube chugging by.
The kitchen door stuck, but she employed a hip to get it open and then collided with the rock-solid glare of Mrs. Teague, who stood beside a woman she’d been introduced to last night only as Grammy. The cook.
Rosemary produced a smile. “Good morning. Looks as if it’s going to be a beautiful day out there. To whom do I owe the thanks for the lovely breakfast tray?”
“Mr. Holstein for ordering it sent out, that’s who.” Mrs. Teague sniffed and spun away.
Grammy—who looked an awful lot like Mrs. Teague, now that Rosemary saw them both in morning’s light—offered a small smile but turned back to her pot.
Well then. She didn’t really want to linger here anyway. “Thank you. Now don’t mind me, I’ll just slip through to the library.”
No one stopped her, though she did hear the housekeeper mutter something about watching her. Rosemary aimed a departing smile at the older woman and wiggled her fingers in farewell. Let her watch. She didn’t intend to lift the silver, and the woman certainly wouldn’t be hovering over her shoulder in the library to notice anything she was interested in.
The manor house wasn’t so big that she could really get lost, especially ha
ving been shown this ground floor last night. She easily found the hallway with the library and Holstein’s study, the drawing room with the broken window, and a few other anonymous rooms. She headed for those terrifying double doors at the end of the hall.
Then paused outside Holstein’s closed study door. An unmistakable click-clacking came from within. The typewriter. Whatever he was writing, he was going about it quickly. Click, clack, ding, slide. And then again.
Rosemary shook her head and continued to the library. Much as he had done yesterday, she paused outside for a fortifying breath, then pushed open one door. A search of the wall showed her no convenient switch for producing light, and the lamps had no cords. But they were filled with oil, and matches lay nearby.
She took a few minutes to light each and every one she found sitting on tables or stands, that click-clack-ding echoing, muffled, through the room. Then she turned to the wide table that someone had cleared off for her. Though that only meant moving the stacks of periodicals from its top to the floor beside it.
Really, what did one family need with all this?
She picked up the valise she’d left in here last night, set it on the smooth tabletop, and paused.
A folded piece of paper rested in front of the single chair, Miss Gresham scrawled across it in an elegant but decidedly masculine hand. Warily, she reached out. A summons from the barrister? Or perhaps instructions from the master of the house?
She flipped it open, sinking down into the chair when she saw that the page was more than half filled with the neat, looping hand. Her gaze returned to the beginning.
Confession: I have trouble expressing myself in speech. A deduction I daresay you have made already on your own. But you raised an interesting question tonight about the point of literature, and I did want to discuss it.
I am by no means an expert, of course, but love of the written word runs deep in my family—also no great mystery to you, having seen the library. But I do hold fiction in especial esteem. Fiction is a way to express mankind’s deepest heart. His fears. His hopes. His failings. His successes. Fiction is truth . . . in a pretty wrapping.
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