“And people talk when she does stand up, apparently. I am not responsible for people talking.”
“But you are responsible for breaking my heart, Antonia. I have paid you obvious attentions, I have broached marriage with you, and you must admit a match between us has many advantages. Many.”
Antonia was torn between the desire to end Peter’s hopes once for all, and the certain knowledge that he was making sense. She stared spinsterhood in the eye, Papa had always liked Peter, and days at the library were not a life.
She might have discussed her circumstances with the Earl of Casriel, who had once also offered for her. He was a sensible fellow, a gentleman to his bones, and he’d keep Antonia’s confidences. When she’d rejected his suit, he’d insisted they remain friends.
And his dancing was lovely, though he’d married shortly after courting Antonia—a love match, of course.
Max Haddonfield wasn’t courting anybody, but he’d given Antonia a reason to hesitate where Peter was concerned.
“I have not broken anybody’s heart, Peter, and I don’t care for manufactured drama. In point of fact, you have broached marriage, but you have never courted me, never sought my permission to pay your addresses, never presented yourself as a suitor rather than a cousin spouting platitudes and practicalities.”
He consumed another three bites of omelet. “You are saying I have not courted you. Fair enough. Let the courtship begin. I’ll call upon you this afternoon and we can take the coach out for the carriage parade. The park is much less crowded this time of year, and—”
“I am not free this afternoon.” And you still have not asked if you can pay me your addresses. “As it happens, I must go out shortly.”
Antonia was not about to leave Peter running tame in her house, though, so she poured herself another cup of tea from the fresh pot Miller brought in.
“Tomorrow then,” Peter said. “Weather permitting. You can’t call me out for a shortcoming and then leave me no opportunity to make amends. That’s not sporting, Antonia.”
And courtship was not a sport. Not a game to be played under the mistletoe. “Tomorrow, weather permitting, you may drive me about the park.” If Aunt Emily came along, Peter would have to keep his talk of courtship to himself.
He gulped down the rest of his tea and rose. “I shall count the hours until then, my dear. The minutes and the seconds as well. If it’s courtship you want, it’s courtship you’ll get.”
Miller’s brows rose nearly to his hairline. Peter bowed, blew Antonia a kiss, and sauntered out with a piece of buttered, jam-topped toast in his hand.
The silence in his wake could have toppled castles. “Does my lady have good news to share with the staff?” Miller asked after the front door slammed.
Brave of him. “No, I do not. My cousin presumes, and I haven’t the heart to dash his hopes.”
Miller collected Peter’s empty dishes and cutlery onto a tray. He was typically the most discreet of men, and he was making a racket to wake the dead.
“Just say it, Miller. I won’t turn you off, I promise.”
Miller lifted the tray and headed for the door. “He would. He’d turn me off on any pretext and enjoy doing it. He’d cut Mrs. Pritchard or Mr. Davenport loose with even more relish because he knows your housekeeper, your butler, the lot of us, are all loyal to you, my lady.”
Miller’s observation, offered with calm certainty, gave Antonia far more to think about than any mishap on the dancefloor could. Peter was a problem, marrying him looked increasingly like no solution at all, and yet, the alternative was to become an object of pity. What titled lady with a significant fortune could find no husband at all?
Every girl was raised to regard a family of her own as the fulfillment of her very purpose on earth. Antonia could reject that reasoning with the rational part of her mind, while still longing for somebody of her own to love.
Mr. Max Haddonfield wasn’t a solution either—he was a chemist of limited means and he wasn’t offering marriage, despite his luscious kisses—though Antonia would far rather dwell on Mr. Haddonfield than on Peter.
She was nearly at the library steps, Miller marching along a few paces behind her, when Miss Dottie trotted up to her side.
“Sister and I thought you should be warned, Miss Antonia. Mr. Kessler is inside, and he is not at all happy with you. He’s waving some letter about and stomping around like a peevish bullock. Lukey-pie bolted for the back hallway, and I don’t blame the poor dear.”
“Splendid,” Antonia said. “Just splendid. Two ambushes in one morning. What else could possibly go wrong?”
Chapter Four
When Max had returned to the ballroom the previous evening, Susannah had taken him by one arm and Della by the other. Five minutes later they’d introduced him to Henry, Viscount Hamblin, an older gent who professed to be an amateur chemist with a very great interest in “progress.”
Max had spent twenty minutes listening to his lordship impersonate a harbor cannon on the topics of power looms, coal mines, and steam engines. Those subjects had very little to do with chemistry, but they all connected to the science of amassing a fortune.
The price of escape had been acceptance of a dinner invitation for tonight at Lord Hamblin’s home. At midday, Max was still wishing he’d eluded his lordship’s hospitality.
“Don’t know when I last laid out your evening togs two days runnin’,” Dagger said, skipping along at Max’s side. “You will be a sar-tor-i-al wonder, you will. Should I fetch a posy for your lapel?”
“No, thank you. You shall fetch the day-olds and begin weighing and measuring them yourself. Mind you don’t eat any samples until I’ve checked your work.”
Dagger came to a halt, his gaze on the pickle vendor pushing his cart down the street. “You want me to do the measurements? All of them?”
“If you don’t want to do the calculations of diameter based on circumference, I can do those when I’m through at the lending library.”
Dagger speared him with a look. “I was supposed to help you at the library.”
“I’ll manage on my own. Measuring the samples is more important.”
“You don’t want me to see Lucifer. You think I’ll steal him.”
Max did not want Dagger making a bad impression on Miss Antonia. “A library is a genteel place, Dagger. It’s a wipe-your-boots and keep-your-voice-down place where little old ladies and hopeless prigs like Alfred Paxton make themselves at home. If you’d like to peek in on Lucifer, you should, but the longer we wait to collect the day-olds the fewer of them there are. A smaller sample size means our results are less trustworthy.”
“Which is why I’m not to gobble them all up. I know.”
Dagger apparently pondered his options for the remainder of the distance to Bootjack Street. The afternoon was cold, not the bitter, biting cold of January, but to a skinny boy, the warmth of the bakeries would appeal on such a day.
“I’ll say hello to Lucifer another time,” Dagger muttered. “Let him settle in a bit more.”
“I will give him your best regards, assuming I can pry him from the arms of his adoring friends.”
Dagger sprinted off before Max could remind the boy to keep his fingers to himself, but the warning would likely have done no good. Dagger picked pockets like some men smoked a pipe—compulsively, for comfort, regardless that it made their clothing stink and resulted in foul breath and congestion of the lungs.
Libraries were good places. Dagger would figure that out for himself when he could keep still for more than two consecutive minutes.
Max let himself into Miss Antonia’s domain, prepared to spread good cheer in all directions, but the two older ladies at their customary table weren’t even pretending to read.
“Up there,” the smaller of the two said, pointing to the mezzanine.
The other sister shook her head, as if a hopeless illness beset somebody in the house. “He is not a nice man, that Mr. Kessler. Not nice at all.”
<
br /> “He frightened the poor kitty,” the first lady reported. “What sort of man menaces a dear, helpless creature like that?”
Lucifer was dear; he was far from helpless.
Max unwound his scarf and pulled off his gloves, stuffing them into his tool bag. He let his footsteps reverberate on the spiral staircase and unbuttoned his coat with one hand as he went.
“Miss Antonia?”
“Back here.” Two words that conveyed a wealth of exasperation.
Max found her among the gothic novels, sitting on a low stool, surrounded by piles of bound books.
“Is something amiss?”
“Worse than amiss,” she said, snatching a book from the stack nearest her knees. “Good day, Mr. Haddonfield, though good hardly applies. Nobody told me I was to catalog and shelve new books, nobody told me why those boxes were sitting by the back door. Then along comes Mr. Kessler, waving a vile epistle from Mr. Paxton, and three boxes and one shouted sermon later, my post is imperiled.”
Max slid down along the bookshelves to sit opposite her in the cramped space between the rows. “Do you need your post?”
She might. Her best finery was well made but hardly à la mode. She’d worn no jewels at the Chalfont’s ball, and genteel sources of employment for young women were few and far between.
“I could find another post eventually. The issue is that I abhor failure.”
Max took the book from her—a worn copy of Mrs. Burney’s Evelina. “Perhaps it’s Kessler who has failed. Failed experiments can teach us a lot, though they are disappointing.” Antonia looked tired to him, in a prim, annoyed sort of way. He wanted to kiss better whatever disquiet bothered her, and yet, he knew how out of sorts failed experiments left him.
“What sort of librarian doesn’t know that new books must be shelved, Mr. Haddonfield?”
“The sort who is purposely kept in the dark about that aspect of her duties.”
She took back the book. “Mr. Kessler will return tomorrow. He has given me a last chance, he says, and if these books aren’t all correctly shelved by tomorrow morning, he will have no choice but to dismiss me.”
“Then let’s be about it,” Max said. “I came here today intent on building a hinged flap on the bottom of the library’s back door, so the cats can come and go without requiring you to leave a window open. I can shelve books instead.”
“Haven’t you a job, Mr. Haddonfield?”
“I have a vocation, and it can wait a few hours. Where does Evelina go?”
Antonia explained the system to him, and Max was soon arranging novels on shelves, and rearranging them as the shelves filled. The afternoon wore on with Antonia occasionally trotting down the steps to wait on a patron.
Part of Max had been hoping that last night’s kiss had been a wayward impulse, a little indulgence between adults who found themselves in a private circumstance.
“No such luck,” he muttered, using his folding knife to open the last box of books. These were donations, like the other two boxes, books that were far from new, but still valuable. Miss Antonia was downstairs chatting with Miss Dottie and Miss Betty as they prepared to leave—Max had been introduced when he’d fetched an afternoon tea break for the ladies.
Max enjoyed the simple sound of Antonia’s voice. She was well educated, her diction that of the upper classes. She read French easily, and she worked with the steady focus of a woman with inherent self-discipline. Max had caught her staring at his mouth, though, and caught himself stealing glances at hers.
And at her hands, her hips, her everything.
“I’ve locked up,” Antonia said. “I can finish the final box on my own.”
“No, you cannot. The streets are already dark and I’d be no sort of gentleman if I left you here alone with all these books yet to catalog.”
She settled onto her stool with a weary sigh. “You are very dear, Mr. Haddonfield, but you are also a distraction.”
“I am?”
“You needn’t sound so pleased. I might work more quickly if every three minutes I wasn’t recalling your kisses.”
Max took a book from the box. “Only every three minutes?”
“Oh, very well. Constantly. You are like a tune that won’t leave my head. I have matters to consider, work to do, but there you are in my imagination, with your sweet caresses and—I am making a cake of myself.”
Max kissed her on the cheek. “I am distracted as well, but I refuse to give Kessler the satisfaction of winning by cheating. Sooner begun is sooner done, Antonia, and I want very much to finish this task and move onto more interesting endeavors.”
She smiled at him, seized a book, and went back to her shelving.
Max went back to being distracted.
To share a task with a man was an odd sort of waltz, one Antonia was enjoying. Mr. Haddonfield occasionally read her passages at random, sometimes silly, sometimes profound. He had an ear for lovely prose, and an ability to sink into the activity put before him.
Antonia, by contrast, resented that a lot of musty books interfered with her enjoyment of his company. She silently reveled in the faint scent of fresh baking wafting from his direction, and loved how he stopped what he was doing to greet the cat and scratch its chin.
“He left when Mr. Kessler started ranting,” Antonia said. “I thought perhaps Lucifer had removed permanently to more peaceful surrounds.”
“Not when the weather’s turning wintry on us. He likes it here.”
“For the most part, I like it here,” Antonia said, diving into the final box for another armful of books, except the box was empty. “Mr. Haddonfield, we have finished.”
He rose, the cat in his arms. “About damned time, pardon the emphasis. Shall we finish the lemon cake and warm up the leftover tea before facing the elements?”
Antonia really, truly ought to be getting home. She typically sent a ticket porter to fetch the coach at the end of the day, but who knew if porters were to be found after dark?
“I ought not to tarry.” Though when would she have another chance to spend a quiet quarter hour with a man she thoroughly enjoyed? Why not be a bit daring? A bit independent? She’d been alone with Mr. Haddonfield for the last hour, and a pleasant hour it had been too.
Unlike the time she’d spent with Peter first thing in the day.
“You were willing to toil away all day to appease Kessler’s demands, Antonia. Take ten minutes to sit with me and enjoy a snack.” The cat rubbed his head against Mr. Haddonfield’s chin. “With us, rather.”
Lucifer’s purring was audible from two yards away, and beyond the curtained windows, the street was quiet. Sometime during the afternoon, Mr. Haddonfield had dropped the Miss before Antonia’s name, and she liked that too.
Liked it rather well. “I suppose the cake will get stale if we don’t eat it.”
“A terrible waste.” He set the cat down gently. “Miss Dottie and Miss Betty would disapprove.”
He’d charmed them into taking tea with Antonia at midafternoon, and they’d regaled her with tales of court life back in “Dear Old George’s day.”
Antonia picked up the cat, gave the shelves one last look, and headed for the stairs. “How do you suppose Miss Dottie and Miss Betty came to be haunting libraries when, in their youths, they were the toasts of polite society?”
“Their youths were some time ago,” Mr. Haddonfield said, collecting the boxes and following Antonia down the steps. “Fortunes wane, families decline. A small competence becomes even smaller when it must last for decades.”
Something in his tone caught Antonia’s ear. “Has your family fallen on hard times, Mr. Haddonfield?” The Earl of Bellefonte did have the family name of Haddonfield, but that signified nothing. Mainwarings, for example, were thick on the ground in some counties.
“You and I have shared a hundred gothic adventures, Antonia. Please call me Max.”
His smile reminded her that they’d also shared some lovely kisses—not that she was about to lose tra
ck of that memory.
“The boxes can go in the back hallway, Max.”
He strode off, giving Antonia a candlelit view of his retreating form. He was stunningly well made, and he moved with the inborn grace of a man comfortable in his own skin. He’d brought a bag of tools with him to the library. Antonia could not imagine any gentleman of her acquaintance knowing how to use a bag of tools, much less carrying them about himself.
“Clearly, I do not know the right gentlemen,” she muttered to the cat.
“When Lucifer replies, you’ll want to keep that to yourself,” Mr. Haddonfield—Max—said. “Now, about that lemon cake?”
Antonia swung the kettle over the coals glowing in the hearth and took the lemon cake down from the mantel.
“Have you blown anything up lately?” she asked, taking a slice and passing the rest over.
“Not in the sense most people use that term. Shall we sit?”
The library had one comfortable place to sit—a sofa before the hearth. The sofa occupied the warmest spot in the whole building, because it was situated under the mezzanine’s overhang. With the curtains on every window closed, the effect was surprisingly cozy.
Antonia took a corner of the sofa and let the weariness of the day settle over her. “In what sense do you blow things up?”
“The baking sense. We enjoy leavened bread and use yeast to give other products lightness. The yeast gives off gas when mixed with the wet elements of bread dough—or we see bubbles form in something like malt wort—and heat expands that gas as the item bakes. This all takes time, though, and yeast can impart a characteristic flavor. It also doesn’t like salt, and beyond a certain quantity, doesn’t like sugar either.”
“This is what you’re studying? The properties of yeast?”
“I’m researching the properties of yeast and experimenting with other possible sources of leavening. The ideal agent will be cheap, have no taste, and work quickly. I’m also experimenting with different preparations of yeast, and I find that some work more quickly than others.”
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