Another dismissive wave of her fingers that gave him the sudden urge to slap at them. “Who really cares about that when you’ve got a hero gallivanting over the globe to keep an ancient relic out of evil hands?”
Of all the . . . “I do.”
She laughed. “You would.”
“And what d-does that mean?”
Holding that strand of hair out of her mouth again, she grinned. “You know exactly what it means, Peter Holstein. It means you enjoy those deeper thoughts, which is obvious to anyone who has ever received a letter from you, I’m sure. You know, you should start writing letters to the newspaper, if you want to let your neighbors see who you really are.”
He wasn’t about to get distracted with that sort of suggestion. He glanced at her again and then back to the road, careful to keep his tension out of the reins or they’d either go galloping or come to a complete stop when he wasn’t paying attention. “And you . . . you don’t? Enjoy d-deep thoughts?”
“Well, not like you. I’m a simple girl, Mr. Holstein, from a simple world.”
A simple world? One in which she’d worked so hard to achieve a position not usually given to her gender? Hardly. Though for the life of him, he couldn’t quite figure how she’d managed the education required for such a job, given what he knew of her family. She must have had a benefactor. “You’re a . . . a librarian. You are r-required to enjoy depth.”
“Well, since you’ve put me so adeptly in a neat little box . . .” Rather than look offended, she let her lips twitch with amusement. Then her eyes went wide again. “Do you know what I absolutely hated in This Mad Caper? The villain. He was atrocious.”
Peter’s lips twitched to a mirror of hers. “He was . . . he was supposed to be.”
“No, no, not like that.” Eyes laughing, she leaned an inch closer. “He was a pathetic excuse for a villain, don’t you think?”
He lost all desire to smile, though he held its shadow in place. “How do you . . . how do you work that out?”
“He was an absolute dunce. It was no wonder at all that Locryn bested him, only that he didn’t manage to best him sooner.”
She was the dunce. “You’re . . . you’re out of your m-mind. Everyone l-loved Masters as a . . . as a villain.” Mostly. Aside from those few letters he’d received saying much the same thing she was saying, but those were by far the minority.
She rolled her eyes and leaned back again. “Only because everyone wants to think that the cleverest of thieves can be caught by even the stupidest of detectives.”
Now such bristling overtook him it was a wonder invisible spines didn’t slice through his shirt. “Locryn James is not . . . is not stupid.”
“Well, of course not. Hence why he deserves a better villain than that ridiculous Masters. Moriarty was a decent example, in The Adventure of the Final Problem. Perhaps Hollow ought to take a page from Conan Doyle.”
They were entirely different kinds of stories. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock was an actual detective. Locryn James was a swashbuckling adventurer. Not solving crimes. What need had he of a criminal mastermind? “That would . . . would not have f-fit the story.”
“I’m not suggesting he steal the exact personage, just the concept. Locryn is presented as being the best sort of hero. He needs the best sort of villain, then. And the best sort of villain is smart and subtle and so very tricky that you don’t even know he’s the villain, because he thinks himself the hero in his own story. Masters practically oozed darkness and acted as though even he thought himself in the wrong. It’s just stupid.”
The road ahead was clear and straight, so he turned his frown on her. “Well of c-course he knew it was . . . it was wrong. Everyone knows it’s wrong to . . . to steal an invaluable art . . . artifact.”
And why did she look so dashed exasperated? “Have you ever even met a thief? Hollow certainly hasn’t, or he would know well that thieves have reasons beyond compulsion or selfishness for stealing, most of the time. But he made absolutely no attempt to dig deeper into Masters’s motives. Into his psychology.”
She said psychology so wrongly it took him a moment to realize what she meant—she pronounced the P at the beginning, and the ch as the usual ch rather than like a k. “Psy . . . psychology. It’s pronounced psychology.”
The correction made her spine go stiff and her cheeks flush. “My sincerest apologies. A word I’ve read but never heard. But don’t think to deflect the conversation. I’m right, and you know it.”
How had she managed to get through schooling and rub elbows with other librarians and scholars without hearing the word psychology? Shouldn’t she have been able to trace its etymology back to the original Greek? Though granted, in the Greek one would pronounce the p. Perhaps that was the problem.
And perhaps he was fastening onto it to avoid her actual point. “Well, have . . . have you?” At her blank stare, he clarified, “Have you . . . have you m-met a thief?”
Her laugh was a grunt. “Try living in London for twenty-five years without meeting one.”
She may have a point there. But . . . “And known it?”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Embarrassment apparently forgotten, she leaned closer again. “Masters all but shouts at Locryn in the beginning, ‘I’m a bad guy, keep your eye on me!’ But a real thief—a good one—wouldn’t do that, right? The good thieves are the ones you’ve got no clue are thieves until you realize an hour after meeting them that something’s gone missing. And even then, you think, ‘But it couldn’t have been that bloke. He was too nice.’”
He looked forward again, though he didn’t see much of the road before him nor the houses they passed. She might have a point, at that. Masters’s intentions had been known from the start. Mightn’t it have been more effective if he’d been subtler?
He was suddenly glad he hadn’t revived him in his current manuscript. Miss Gresham would probably much prefer the subtle methods of Rosita. And so would those other critics.
Her chuckle drew him back to the present, drew his gaze back to her. She was staring at him with the sort of smile that made him wonder if he’d forgotten to don some vital article of clothing that morning. “What . . . what is funny?” he asked.
“Oh, I was just thinking that you, Mr. Holstein, would make a most excellent thief, being so very unassuming.”
He snorted a laugh and watched the road again. An automobile was coming their way, and he gripped the reins tightly just in case the thing backfired and scared his horses. “I stole some . . . some plums once. From M-Mr. Arnold’s little orchard.”
“You didn’t! I bet you were all of seven.”
“Six.” And it had been Gryff’s fault—Peter never would have done it without being goaded.
Miss Gresham dropped her voice to a stage whisper. “Did you get caught?”
“No. But they w-weren’t ripe. Made me . . . made me so sick I swore never to st—steal again.”
Her laugh blended with the engine sounds of the motorcar that chugged past. “That’s too funny. Usually stolen fruit tastes so very much sweeter than what you can pluck from your own garden.”
Peter grinned. “Have you b-been reading Saint Augustine?” The theologian was certainly not the only one to talk of the sweet taste of stolen pears, but he was the most famous for it.
“Of course—but more to the point. What made you do it? The allure of that forbidden fruit?”
No, though that was the motivation he’d ascribed to Masters, that and the simple desire to possess something priceless. Had it been too weak? He shook his head. “Gryff.”
“Smashing! The barrister introduced you to thievery. Do the courts know about this?”
He chuckled again. When had he last laughed this much, but with the Penroses? “An . . . an isolated incident f-for him too.”
“Too bad. Handy thing to hold over his head were it not much too out-of-date to be valuable. Now—you know what would have made Masters better? He could have had something on Locryn.”
>
Something like what? Locryn was an upstanding chap. Mostly. But there were skeletons in the James family closet—he was exploring that now, wasn’t he? Yet again she may have a point. Not that he could change now how he’d written This Mad Caper. But maybe Masters would resurface in a later novel. Maybe Peter could deepen his character.
Another glance at his companion. “Like w-what, do you think?”
He had always rather assumed that if he’d asked someone to help him think up things for his story, no one would care to do so. That they’d wave him off, tell him it was ridiculous. Or perhaps that they wouldn’t feel qualified to answer, having so much less information about Locryn James than he did. And he couldn’t exactly share now, with Miss Gresham, the history he’d worked up for his adventurer as he wrote his first novel, pieces of which he sprinkled in here and there as he wrote. And, yes, pieces that he changed frequently as the character developed on the page.
But Rosemary Gresham leaned back in her seat and set her mouth in a look of contemplation. “Well now. He’s a gent, so there’s no lack of possibilities. The challenge to the writer would be, I think, making the reader understand how wretched certain things are, even if society turns a blind eye. Hollow could actually change some opinions on the culture, like Dickens did, don’t you think? If he pointed out the unfairness of how the rich are treated, as opposed to the poor. Perhaps Locryn or his family hurt someone in Masters’s family, if he were of humble origins. A sister who was used and discarded. A house of flats torn down, putting them out of a home.”
“But M-Masters was not from a poor . . . a poor family.” He regretted it the moment he said it—in part because Miss Gresham apparently was and in part because he oughtn’t to have said it so clearly, as if he knew.
Her shrug said she thought nothing of his claim, anyway. “Who’s to say, really? We know precious little about him. The reader may make assumptions based on the clothes he wears and his pattern of speech, but they’re just assumptions. It would have been properly delicious to be proven wrong.”
It would have been, at that. Could be still in the future. “Good . . . good point.” He steered them around a rut in the road and adjusted his hat a bit to keep the sun out of his eyes but still allow it to warm his face. There was nothing like these first warm days of summer. “And many options.”
“Far too many, if Hollow had gone that direction. Schools barred to him. A parent or someone who died because the doctor wouldn’t see them, having no funds—though, granted, I don’t know what those would have to do with Locryn in particular. But there could have been some decision-maker in the James family.”
She went on. And on. And on, as the miles stretched out behind them. And for once, it wasn’t the incessant talk that made something inside go tight. It was the fact that she never seemed to run out of injustices. And he hadn’t an answer for a single one of them.
Perhaps Masters had come from this world of which she spoke. And perhaps Hollow did need to address it. After all, as she pointed out, Dickens had single-handedly rewritten the consciousness of a nation with his discussion of the situation of orphans in Oliver Twist. Maybe . . . maybe God meant for Peter to do the same. Maybe that was in part why this librarian had been the only one with gumption enough to tackle his library and not some stuffy chap as silent as he.
Marazion was in sight when Miss Gresham’s list led her to pause for a second, look out at the approaching town, and then say, “I wonder what Locryn will do if war is declared.”
A question he had asked himself already. “Sign up, I . . . I think. Locryn James can find ad . . . adventure in or out of uniform.”
Her gaze was a skewer, sharp and hot. “And what would you do, Mr. Holstein?”
Another question he had asked himself already. But its answers weren’t so easy. A sigh eased past his lips. “I don’t . . . I don’t know. If I were m-more like Locryn James, I . . . I would. If I c-could give orders.” But what men would ever listen to him? And how would he even communicate? No army wanted a stammerer in any position of command, but he knew well that his skills lay more in the thinking positions than in the doing-with-his-hands ones.
And that was assuming he wasn’t arrested or relocated for his German heritage and was even allowed to help his country.
“For now, I . . . I pray it c-can still be a . . . avoided. But if not . . .” He turned them down the street with the inn at which he’d park the curricle. From here, the old castle on the island was visible. Gleaming in the sunlight and promising a nation that she would survive through the centuries, no matter how feeble his efforts to keep her strong. “If not, then I shall . . . I shall do whatever England asks of me.”
Simple words. But they echoed inside him. What if England asked that he go quietly along to whatever internment camp they sent Germans? Would he do that for his country? Readily, happily? Leave the only place he’d ever called home without an argument?
And what if Jasper succeeded in achieving an end even worse than that and had Peter arrested for espionage? Would he sit quietly in a cell rather than make waves? Could that possibly be what God asked of him?
No. It didn’t sit right. Not when it was so opposed to justice and truth. His duty, to God and country, was to prove who he was. An Englishman, born and bred. Loyal.
She watched him so long and so steadily that he thought for a moment she would question his resolve. Scoff. Perhaps even declare his efforts, whatever they may end up being, as laughable. Or to see through to his other thoughts, other questions. But she said nothing. Just eventually followed his gaze toward the castle, sucked in a breath so filled with awe that he couldn’t help but smile, and stood even before he brought the horses to a halt. “Oh, it’s stunning. And we can really walk over to it?”
“Tide is g-going out now. We can . . . we can take the causeway and have p-plenty of time to explore the c-castle before . . . before we have to walk back.”
She beamed down at him. And he realized with an uncomfortable start that she did in fact have the same charming smile he’d attributed to Rosita.
Good thing he was no Locryn James.
She would admit it—Rosemary hadn’t expected to enjoy being out with Peter Holstein for a full day, away from all the books she could conveniently pull forward when conversation lagged. But as they turned back up the drive to Kensey Manor an hour before sunset, she smiled. It had been a lovelier day than she could have expected. St. Michael’s Mount was even more beautiful than the painting had indicated. They’d toured the castle grounds along with other holiday-goers, and he’d purchased them a meal back in Marazion as the tide ate up the brick-and-stone causeway connecting the island fortress to the mainland. And the drive back had been more musing about the fictional worlds from books they’d both read.
She was used to Barclay, who thought it his sworn duty to mock all of her literary ideas, even if it was one she’d heard him espouse before. She’d rather expected Holstein to dismiss her just as fully, if not in so many words—likely without any words. Instead, he’d seemed to think about whatever she said, often adding to it.
It had been a good day. She’d have to write to Willa and Ellie and tell them . . . tell them what? That while they were at home worrying over Liv, she was out having a jolly good time with her employer, who was likely a German sympathizer?
“Are you all . . . all right, M-Miss Gresham?”
He’d stopped them outside the main house, gotten out, and now stood with a hand stretched up toward her while she sat there staring straight ahead like a ninny. Rosemary sighed, smiled, and accepted the help down. “Sorry. Just thinking about Olivia. And realizing I scarcely had all day, which . . .”
“Everyone needs a . . . a distraction from sad things. Es—especially when there is n-nothing they can do about them.”
Was that why he’d asked her out today? Probably. And she was grateful for it, even as she rather wished it hadn’t worked so well. It was a credit to him that he’d thought of it. Just not to
her. “Well, I thank you, sir, for a beautiful day. I had a lovely time.”
The sun, sinking toward the earth in a proper blaze of glory, painted his face in golds and roses. He smiled. “So did I. Good night, Miss . . . Miss Gresham.”
“Good night, Mr. Holstein. See you tomorrow.” At his nod, she gave one of her own and turned toward the path that would lead her to the cottage.
She halted in the wilds of the garden and sank onto the stone bench, still sun-warmed. What made people friends? In all honesty, she wasn’t sure. Her friends were all the ones she’d claimed as family—people in like circumstances who had tossed their lots together in hopes that they’d find something better than what they could hope for on their own. If her parents had never died, she never would have met Willa or Retta or Elinor or Lucy. She would have gone to work in the factories, she would have guarded her handbag in the tube, she would have looked askance at every unsavory-seeming character in the streets. She would have been honest, and she would have been afraid, and she would have been every bit as poor as she was now. Perhaps more so.
She certainly never would have found herself in a place like this. Wondering why she wanted to count as a friend a man she intended to hand over to Mr. V. Wondering if she’d still get paid if he were wrong, if Peter Holstein wasn’t loyal to Germany—or if she’d just be declared incompetent and sacked. Wondering if Mr. V would even ask back what he’d given thus far.
They’d never be able to repay him if he did that. It had already been sunk into the hospital bills. The clothing. The trip here.
Blast it all. She had to prove Holstein a traitor, and she’d do well to keep that in mind while they were chatting about books and castles and debating the merits of Cornish pasties as they’d done while eating them in Marazion—he’d been right that Jenny’s were the best, but she’d seen it as her duty to defend Pauly’s meat pies as every bit as delicious.
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