by Edith Layton
She glanced up at that, and their eyes met.
There was a moment’s silence.
“Well,” he said finally, as they stared at each other and Alfred looked back and forth at the pair of them, “thank you for the book. I suppose I’ll go, then. Thank you again.”
His gray eyes were brilliant with light, with interest, with curiosity and more that Joy could no longer bear to see, because there was nothing she could say to express her own interest and curiosity.
“You’re welcome,” she said softly.
He frowned, inclined his head in a semblance of a bow, turned, and began to leave.
He turned round again quickly. “But wait,” he said. “Don’t you need my name? You can’t just send me out with your merchandise. I’m Paget. Niall, Lord Paget. And you…? Miss…?”
“I am Alfred Minch,” Cousin Minch said smoothly. “This is my niece, Miss Joy Ayres. Do come again.”
Joy murmured, “Yes, do.”
Lord Paget started to speak again, then with a last reluctant look at Joy, he left. The door closed, the little bell on top of it jingling. It was the only sound in the sudden silence of the shop.
“Well,” Alfred said, rubbing his hands together. “Well, well. Paget, is it? Of the Somerset Pagets. He is the baron no doubt. I shall have to look him up, but I believe I know the family. A very good family,” he muttered, “lots of money, extensive lands… You liked him, my dear?”
She laughed. It wasn’t her usual pleasant laughter. “How could I? I don’t know him. He might be a cruel man, a callous one, a drunkard—a who knows what? And a married who knows what at that. But what difference does it make? I’m only a clerk in a bookshop, cousin, and he is a nobleman.”
“‘Only a clerk?’” Alfred echoed in shock. “You are an Ayres!”
“Yes, of course, and much good it does me,” she said bitterly, before she could stop herself, because the injustice of the world seemed very hard this morning.
She bit her lip and swallowed all the other words that came to her. They were too traitorous, ungrateful, self-pitying to utter aloud. How could she tell him she wasn’t the kind of woman a baron—much less one that looked, spoke, and acted like Lord Paget—might ask out for a carriage ride, could ask for a dance at a ball, or would one day ask for more. If he were free and unwed—and maybe even if he weren’t. But she said nothing more, because none of it was Alfred’s fault, and even if it were, nothing she could say would change it.
“Yes, my name is important,” she said instead, her voice unsteady. “I mean, anyone would want to buy a book from an Ayres, I suppose.” She turned her head sharply as an unstoppable tear coursed down her cheek. It wouldn’t do to get the merchandise wet.
There was another moment of silence.
“Yes. Well,” Alfred said in an altered voice, “best make a note of the transaction, my dear. We don’t want to make any more mistakes, do we?”
It was as good as a lecture. Joy blinked the tears from her lashes, and quickly bent to make a mark in her notebook.
*
It was cold enough for snow outside, but the parlor the two men were in was snug, the fire in the hearth casting a ruddy glow that matched the wine in the glasses the two gentlemen were holding. The younger gentleman stopped drinking and stared at his companion, his lips opened in a gasp of dismay.
“You returned the book?” he asked in horror. “Before I could go with you? Oho! So you did notice her. I thought so. Damn you for a cool customer, with that care-for-nothing expression of yours. You’re cool, but not dead. Who but a dead man could resist such a honey? Hair like sunshine, eyes like forget-me-nots, and a form not even that ghastly frock could hide. But now I have to nip round to the shop and make a better impression on her, and quick!” He swallowed the last of his wine as if he meant to set out that instant.
“No, Arthur,” his cousin said quietly. “You will not. She’s not a game we’re playing, nor am I considering trifling with her. Nor will you.”
Arthur sat down abruptly, his wineglass dangling from his fingertips. He stared. “You’re serious. Damn me for a blind man! Well, it’s about time. Turned thirty, with nothing to show but a flirtation with wedlock. We all thought you’d ask for the Edgerton chit last Season, but you took off and left the field clear for Hamilton. Wise move, that. Who’d have known? Once she got a ring on her finger, it loosed her tongue; she hasn’t stopped gabbling since she said, ‘I do.’ Hamilton’s got a bride and a headache, and so say all. But how did you know?”
“I never said I did.”
“Always the gentleman, ain’t you? And usually right. But this bookshop charmer, pretty as she is, ain’t got a cent, that’s clear. I know you’ve got enough blunt to ask a beggar to marry you, but it ain’t done, Niall, damn me but it’s not.”
“I’m not doing it,” Niall said mildly.
“But you’re thinking about it.”
“Am I?” He stared into his glass, as though seeing the future in its claret depths before he drained it. “At any rate, thinking is not doing. And money is the least of the attributes I look for in a wife. And, before you start tossing wedding bouquets my way, I remind you that pretty is not necessarily virtuous, kind, or considerate. I don’t know her and am not likely to. After all, I’ll be leaving Town as soon as I can. I only came to collect you and Aunt, and bring you both home for the holidays, which I’ll do as soon as the doctor gives her leave to go.”
“Do you good to get out of the country,” his cousin protested. “You’ve been gone from London too long.”
“Did me better to get the estate back into good heart,” Niall said, holding up a long hand and turning it so his cousin could see the ridge of newly won calluses on his palm. “Hard work shook the nonsense out of me,” he mused, flexing his hand. “Uncle George neglected the place shamefully. It is our family seat and deserves some respect. I inherited a wreck and tried to put it right for the family, and found something very right about it for myself. The longer I worked with my hands and not just my mind, the more I came to enjoy myself.”
He wore a bemused smile as he went on. “Believe it or not, I find I like the countryside, raising cattle instead of Cain, worrying about sheep and not faro tables, draining ditches instead of wine bottles, spending the night with a good book instead of just another bad woman.”
“Putting up fences instead of merely fencing?” Arthur said with a grin.
His cousin laughed. “Yes, I suppose I do wax lyrical, and thank you for stopping me before I started composing sonnets to the chickens.” Then he grew serious. “Who’d have guessed? I enjoy the quiet life, Arthur. But I’m no hermit, nor monkish in the least. I haven’t changed that much. I also find I’d like to share the quiet.”
He shrugged. “So yes, I confess, I’m thinking of taking a wife and settling down at last. I’ll be back in the spring to make the rounds and find out what the possibilities are. Don’t worry, I’ll canvas Almack’s, ton parties, all the tedious rest, to see what acceptable young females are available.
“In the meanwhile, my interest in Miss Ayres is only human. She is a pretty creature and an appealing one. But we don’t have to collect every pretty female we see. There are other ways to prove we’re men, and leaving her alone is an excellent way to prove we’re actually gentlemen.”
“Who’d have imagined you’d turn so sober and sensible?” his cousin lamented, rising to pour himself another glass. “I hope it’s not catching. I always followed your lead, Niall. I patterned myself after a Corinthian, a top of the trees fellow, a man about town. But I tell you right now, it ain’t for me—I don’t fancy myself knee-deep in mud and pulling radishes! I’ll follow my own way now, thank you. But what are you going to do if that fair-haired angel of the bookshop turns out to be afraid of cows and allergic to turnips?”
“My wife, when I take one, will not exactly be living in a cow byre,” Niall said patiently. “The Hall has more than thirty rooms, all have ceilings, and most of those were p
ainted by Adams. It is just barely possible to remain civilized outside of London, you know. And as for Miss Ayres and her possible dislike of cows or turnips, I won’t have a chance to find out.”
“Well, then. Why be a dog in the manger?”
His cousin’s eyes turned the color of steel in ice. “I said she’s not to be trifled with, Arthur.”
His cousin gave him a bright look, and bowed from the waist from his chair. “Done! So be it. I’ll leave her alone…this year.”
*
Not all the work of the bookshop ended with the day. Alfred never left the shop before he tallied his numbers, making a neat record of what had been sold and what had to be ordered. Then there was the ritual of locking his money away in the safe that he kept in an alcove in the back room, behind a stack of volumes on a shelf that swung out from the wall if the hidden button was pressed, and which then opened to the right combination of numbers that only he knew. Joy believed that was the best part of his day, because he lingered there so long each evening. Tonight, he seemed to be taking even longer.
She could hear him humming from where she sat at her desk. She sometimes fancied that he wished his coins and bills a tender good night each evening, telling them to be fruitful and multiply before he forced himself to leave them. She bent to her own work. Before she left the shop, she also had to balance the tally of books borrowed with the names of those who had taken them.
She sat back, rubbing her neck, stretching it to get the kinks out. Done. She glanced out the window and saw nothing but black. It was the beginning of another long winter’s night, and she was at last free. Now to dinner, a chat with her cousins, a scratch exchanged with the cat, and her cold, cold bed.
“Woolgathering, my dear?” Cousin Minch asked, suddenly appearing at her side.
“Yes,” she said absently. “I suppose I am. but I’m done for the night.” She rose. “Shall we go?” They always left together so he could lock up.
“All done?” he asked.
“Why, yes,” she said, wondering if she’d forgotten anything.
“Are you sure?” he persisted. “Are you feeling quite all right?”
The tabulations were done, her shelves neat, all papers put away. Was he actually worried about her? She felt a little rush of warmth. “I suppose I’m a little distracted. Christmas is coming, it makes me sentimental, nostalgic,” she invented, never mentioning “defeated” and “despairing,” which was what she truly felt. It had only a little to do with Christmas and a lot to do with attractive, well-mannered men of polish and sophistication. They ought not to wander into dim bookstores to give drab little women ideas they could do nothing about, whatever season they appeared.
“Yes, so I thought,” Alfred said gently, holding out a book. “Because you never put this away, did you, my dear?”
Emily’s Evil Suitor was in his hand. Lady Gray’s reject.
“So I didn’t,” Joy said in vexation. Lord! She was sure she’d put it back in the lending library after Lord Paget had returned it to her. The man really had addled her wits. Joy took the book, automatically riffling through it. “I’ll just put it away now.… Oh!”
She always searched a book before she returned it to the shelf. It was one of the first lessons Cousin Alfred had taught her. One never knew what the previous owner had used for a bookmark. He looked for old letters that might have antiquarian value. She ran the lending library and looked for things a reader might have forgotten, too, but that could be returned. In her time she’d found lottery tickets, stubs and receipts for everything from laundry to greengrocers, personal correspondence, pressed flowers, and even now and again a pressed spider, caught by accident. This was different. Very different.
“‘Oh!’ Indeed,” Alfred said in a slow thoughtful voice, looking over her shoulder. “Oh, my, my, my.”
Joy took the banknotes from between the pages, riffled more pages, and took out some more. She shook the book over the desk and watched another two slide out. “Oh, my!” she said, when shaking the book only made the pages tremble. “Oh, dear,” she said, taking all the notes in her hands and rapidly estimating the small fortune she held. “What are we to do?”
Cousin Minch’s smile curled at the edges.
*
“Lady Gray cannot be disturbed,” the butler said, and then relenting because of the obvious dismay in the young woman’s eyes, added, “She is doing well, but is resting on her doctor’s orders.”
Joy nodded. “I understand. But it is important that I ask her a question.”
“If it is important, her man at law is Mr. Farrow, in Simpson Street. Or you might ask her nephew, Lord Paget, or his cousin, Mr. Dane. They both visit here daily.”
“At what time?” Joy asked humbly.
“I cannot say. If it is imperative you ask at once, Mr. Dane has rooms at the Albany and Lord Paget is staying at the Pulteney.”
Joy bit her lip. He’d just named the most exclusive apartments for gentlemen in London, and the best hotel in the city. It was important. But she didn’t know if it was imperative enough for her to dare beard either gentleman in his den. Especially when she had no other female with her to observe the rules of propriety if she did dare. But since cousin Clara was filling in for her at the shop, there was no one to go with her but the cleaning woman, and she only came on Tuesdays.
She could, of course, go see Miss Cummings, Lady Turnbull, Mrs. Holcombe, Mrs. Crab, or some other client instead. All who had borrowed Emily’s Evil Suitor—it was a popular book. But Lady Gray had it last, and so the notes must be hers. They had to be returned at once. It was more than a matter of honesty. That was what had concerned her—until cousin Minch had weighed in.
“Lady Gray might have misplaced them,” he’d said. “She is, after all, getting older, and older people tend to forget. Then they go to all lengths to cover their lapses. Reasonable enough. But will her nephews see it that away if we delay? One doesn’t want to be accused of theft!”
“But we can simply ask the ladies when they come back,” Joy protested, envisioning herself on Lady Gray’s doorstep, perhaps facing her unnerving nephew again.
“That we cannot,” Alfred said sternly. “Then the matter will become a guessing game, and who knows whose wild guess will win the prize? A claim to have left some banknotes must be a sufficient claim to ownership, because perhaps the poor creature forgot how many she’d left! So I strongly suggest you do not mention it to the ladies ensemble, but rather broach it to them singly, and not in the shop. No, there’s nothing for it, my dear. You must travel to their homes to ask such a personal question, and you must begin with Lady Gray.”
Joy hesitated. It would be lovely to get out of the shop, to actually visit, like real company, with the ladies who so enlivened her days. Because she suddenly realized that due to her situation and long working hours, they were actually her only friends. Then again, it might be embarrassing or disheartening—since she wasn’t sure she’d be considered a friend outside the shop.
“Don’t you think it mightn’t be a better idea if you went?” she asked Alfred.
He looked appalled. “Me? A man calling on a gently bred female and asking about her money?” He gave the word an inflection suggesting it was something intimate, almost carnal. But, Joy supposed, money was that to him.
So here she was let out of the shop on a glorious bright winter’s morning, but not enjoying it at all. She had to find the rightful owner of the notes and return them as soon as possible. Cousin Minch hadn’t even put them in the safe in the meantime, lest he be accused of trying to hide them. Instead, expecting Joy to solve the mystery at once, he wore them tucked in an inner waistcoat pocket, next to his heart.
Joy pondered her next move. A sudden cold breeze on her neck made her turn, look up, and then up some more, into a pair of widening, interested gray eyes.
“Good morning, Miss Ayres!” Lord Paget said with surprised pleasure. “What have we done to deserve your company?” He answered himself in
chagrin. “Never say Aunt sent for you to deliver another book! I told her I’d be her errand boy, there was no need for her to bother you—unless, of course, she wanted to discuss the book with you, but even so, I’d have been happy to come collect you and bring you here. There was no need for you to inconvenience yourself.”
“No, no,” she said nervously, because he was so close, looming over her. “That’s not it at all. You see, my cousin Alfred sent me because…” She hesitated. Alfred had said she mustn’t name the treasure, because then anyone could claim it. She plunged on, “…because someone left something of importance between the pages of the book you returned yesterday. Since your aunt was the last to have it, I’m here to find out if it’s hers. If not, I’ve promised my cousin to visit each and every patron who ever rented the book. After all, your aunt said she’d already read it, so she mightn’t have looked in it at all, and so it might belong to one of the previous borrowers.”
“Ah,” Niall said thoughtfully, “I see. And since what was in the book was valuable, and I assume there’s no name on it, you dare not identify it. That’s up to the owner to do, isn’t it?”
“A game!” a voice said from behind him. Joy saw Lady Gray’s other nephew standing on his boot toes behind Paget’s broad shoulders, bobbing about, trying to get a look at her. “Oh, capital!” he crowed. “Any clues? No, of course not, where’s the fun in that? You think it could be Aunt’s? I doubt it. She doesn’t forget anything. And something of value? Then, never. Never known anyone to value so much, have you, Niall?”
“Agreed,” Niall said, watching Joy so steadily her cheeks grew pink. “But I’ll ask her at once. Hampton,” he told the fascinated butler, “I’m going up to my aunt to make inquiries. See that Miss Ayres is made comfortable in the salon while I do. Arthur!” he said sharply, “where are you going?”