Chapter Six
‡
When he and Magdalene arrived at the library to resume their search for Dukes, the men posted outside reported that no one had approached. Inside, Gomes snapped to attention. “Milord.”
“Anything?” Daunt asked.
“Nothing, milord.”
Daunt turned and gestured for Magdalene to enter. “You are dismissed. But there’s to be someone patrolling the corridors and this portion of the house.”
“Very good, milord.”
Five minutes later, he and Magdalene were back at work. An hour later, Daunt had to admit to an increasing sense of despair and urgency. They’d made hardly a dent in their search thus far.
They had mutually devised a system for inspecting the books: assess whether a volume was too small to be one of the Dukes, and if not, remove the book in case pages or even whole quires of one of the Dukes were somehow concealed inside.
The top shelves were the most work since they required a ladder, but once he was in rhythm, the work went reasonably well, if not as quickly as Magdalene’s. Lack of attention due to tedium was a risk. They both required frequent breaks to stretch or pace.
Tedium was an ever-present and increasing issue, because the contents of his father’s library proved to be of little interest to a bibliophile with their particular interests. He only occasionally came across a volume that merited further inspection at some time after they found the Dukes or else failed entirely.
Too often while he worked, his thoughts wandered to that post-ballroom interlude with Magdalene. They’d danced, and he could not say whether that had advanced his cause with her or not. Should he have kissed her? Had he been wrong to dance with her at all? The evidence tended to the negative, for nothing in her behavior toward him had changed.
The clock had just struck the half hour past eleven when Gomes announced himself again with a smart rap on the door. “Enter,” Daunt said.
He and Magdalene turned to see Gomes come in with one of the footmen from Plumwood. Per instructions, one of the men outside reached in to immediately close the door.
Magdalene descended the ladder she’d been standing on, her expression a mirror of his own alarm. Daunt turned one of the books perpendicular to the shelf to mark his place before he joined her.
“Good heavens, not again?” she said.
Every so often, rumors about Angus and his supposed possession of one of the Dukes heated up, and some fool attempted to gain entry to the house to locate and make off with the fabled volume.
A rather shocking amount of the time, the would-be criminal proved to be a young gentleman who’d had too much to drink, but once or twice the attempt had been quite serious. The Plumwood staff was well-trained in protection and apprehension.
While Angus was alive, these drunken escapades had been the subject of entertaining conversation after the fact. The perpetrators were inevitably intercepted well before reaching the rooms that housed his collection. Angus had had a set lecture for well-bred young men who’d put their brain on a temporarily liquid diet, but he’d had no compunctions about turning someone over to the authorities.
The Plumwood servant bowed and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Was anyone hurt?” she asked. Daunt rested his fingers on her shoulder, and she patted his hand. He did not like this, not at all. What if Magdalene had been alone in the house with no one to protect her?
“No, ma’am,” the servant said. “Nor was anything taken. Young Jack heard a window break downstairs and went to investigate. The intruder didn’t get past the storeroom. We’ve boarded up the window.”
“Thank goodness Ned is not at home.”
“Did you apprehend the fellow?” Daunt asked.
“No, milord. He went out the window right quick once he realized he was discovered, I’m sorry to say. He was gone before the rest of us arrived.”
“What matters,” Magdalene said, “is that no one was hurt.”
“Oh, but the intruder was,” the manservant replied. “Near as we can tell, that is. There was blood on the sill outside.”
Under his fingers, her shoulder radiated tension. “I’ll send an extra man or two to assist in guarding Plumwood until this is over.”
“Thank you, my lord. That is most welcome.” She clasped her hands before her. “Tell everyone at the house to be especially careful. No one’s life or safety is to be put at risk. I fear,” she said, “that we must expect other attempts.”
“Ma’am.”
“Beginning now, Gomes,” Daunt said, “everyone here is to be on alert for burglars or thieves. Believe nothing you are told except by myself or Mrs. Carter.”
Gomes’s lip curled. “I trust no one, milord.”
“Good man.”
When the servants departed, Magdalene returned to the shelves and took down a book. She stood without looking at the volume she held. “I should have anticipated this. I was too focused on Vaincourt.” She gestured in a motion meant to encompass the entire library. “I assumed, wrongly, that if indeed Mrs. Taylor is after the Dukes, she would concentrate her efforts here when, in fact, she made it perfectly clear she was interested in De Terris Fabulosis and that she wrongly believes Angus had it.”
“Why only the one volume?”
She scowled at the book in her hands. She opened it and fanned the pages. “Nothing.” With a deep sigh, she returned the book to the shelf and took out another. “I also wrongly assumed she knows the Bibliomania Club is searching for the Dukes, but I now believe she hoped I would tell her why the members scattered to the winds after your most recent meeting.”
“I’ll have the servants on the lookout for her. Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll have them scour the guests for injured women.”
“Do you really think she attempted the break in herself? She might have hired someone.”
“Anything is possible.” Daunt smiled. “Half the women here shall be limping tomorrow.”
“They did not have the most graceful Lord Daunt as their partner.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was meant as one.” Her cheeks turned pink. She made a face at the book. “People ought to be honest and forthright. They should not tell lies. They should not pretend to befriend someone or imply they are in love when they are not.”
“You expect too much of our fellow men. And women.”
“She must think me a fool to believe even half of what she told me. The only reason I listened to her at all was my concern for you.”
“My supposed melancholy, you mean.”
“I suspect she was lying about everything except her interest in De Terris Fabulosis.”
“Likely.”
“I am obliged to consider that possibility.” She looked at him, eyes snapping with anger. Her fingers around the book turned white. Daunt took it from her. “If I didn’t believe she’d steal something else while she was there, I’d let her search Plumwood as much as she likes. Angus does not have De Terris Fabulosis or any other Duke.”
He curled a palm over the nape of her neck and pulled her close. “My dear. Whoever she is, whatever she intends, know this: Foolish people believe foolish things.”
“You only say that to make me feel better.”
“Yes, but it happens to be true.” Daunt did not move when she took a step closer and laid her forehead against his shoulder. More than anything, he wanted this to mean more than her need for comfort, but he did not entirely trust his ability to assess the wisdom of doing anything but holding her close.
After a few moments, she looked up with that fierce expression he knew so well. “There is only one way to end this, Daunt, and that is to find the Dukes.”
“Indeed.” He released her, and for a moment, she stayed where she was. Too near for him not to be perilously close to losing his head. He would not act rashly.
“Thank you for being kind to me, Daunt.”
“You deserve nothing else.”
“You as well.” She gazed at him, and had she been any other woman, he would have kissed her.
He set her back, and they returned to searching for the Dukes. An hour passed with no luck. From time to time, they exchanged idle conversation, but it was distracting for them both. In the main, they worked in silence.
Magdalene was now nearly three-quarters of a shelf ahead of him. She finished her fifth shelf and took out her pocket memorandum and made notes. “I have finished level one, shelves one, three, five, seven and nine. Nothing. You?”
“Level one, the evens through six, with eight partially done.” They weren’t making enough progress. Hands on his hips, he calculated the hours that going through the rest might take. It might as well have been a hundred years.
They worked in silence another hour, with neither of them saying a word. They logged their progress and examined books; turning pages was becoming a numbing experience.
Not long after the clock struck one, she stepped back from the shelves she was inspecting, stretched, and yawned. “Would it be too much trouble to ask for coffee? I brought a supply, if you haven’t any on hand. Tea will do, otherwise, but you’ll find me fast asleep on the floor without refreshment of some kind.”
He returned the book he’d just checked to the shelf and yawned too. “I sent Gomes to Badding to be sure we had coffee on hand for you.”
“Did you really?”
“I knew you would be here and that you prefer coffee. Having some to hand was the least I could do.” From the angle between them, he had a view of her sharp cheeks and her nose. She was not, by any measure, an attractive woman, and yet, there was such determination in her, such ferocity that he could only imagine what it would be like to kiss her, to take her to bed. “You shall be pleased to know I have everything on hand to make your coffee à la Turque. Exactly as you like it.”
“What a brilliant, brilliant man you are.”
“Make a note of that in your pocket memorandum.”
She took out her pencil and opened her memorandum. “Lord Daunt,” she said as she wrote, “is brilliant.”
“Twice over.”
“Twice over.”
He rang for a servant, and when he’d made the request, he said, “I’ll have Gomes make coffee a standing order until we’ve found the Dukes or run out of time.”
“Excellent idea.”
They went back to work, this time chatting about the books they’d found or discussing a title that deserved a closer look when there was time for such a digression. The coffee soon came with a tray of food both savory and sweet. They sat, and she rested her head on her folded arms. “You do the honors,” she said. “I’m too tired.”
He served them both, and after some coffee and a few bites of food, she returned to her more usual state of alertness. “Do you want the last bit of ham?” he asked.
“No, thank you.”
“What about the cheddar?” He ate the ham.
“That was a good cheddar,” she said.
He walked to her side of the table with a portion of the cheese. He held it up to her mouth. “Here.”
She leaned over and ate it. He held her gaze longer than was absolutely necessary. Too quickly, she flipped a page or two before closing the book she held. She returned it to the shelf and selected another. Her fingers were long and slender. She still wore her wedding ring. “I owe you an apology,” she said.
“For what, pray tell?”
“For believing for even a moment that you and Mrs. Taylor were lovers. It was wrong of me.” She spoke quickly and to the books before her. “It’s just that she’s quite beautiful. I don’t mean to pry. Forgive me, Daunt.”
“There is nothing to forgive. I have had lovers in the past, though not half as many as you are imagining right now.”
“Only a hundred, then?”
“There might have been a hundred and fifty.” He took a breath. “Magdalene. My dear. Allow me to answer the other question you are not asking me.” She lifted her eyes to him. “I am careful, always careful.”
“Angus said women adore you and that you adore them.”
“I do.” Magdalene always approached a subject head on. The tendency led to blunt conversations he so enjoyed having with her. Now, though, the subject was personal, and there was a good deal of risk in proceeding. But perhaps the bigger risk lay in taking no chance at all. “None of that means I am profligate or indiscreet or intemperate. I am none of those things.”
She opened a book so the pages would fan out. She had more to say, he could feel it. Softly, she said, “Do you have any children?”
Her question was a door left ajar that had been tightly closed until now. If he went through that opening, the personal intimacy he’d always wanted was within reach. His truthful answer might destroy all his hopes. He could lie. A lie would be easy. A lie would protect them both.
“I have a son,” he said. “He’s a year younger than Ned. He lives in Sussex with his mother. I acknowledged him from the start. There was no question of that. He’ll start public school soon.”
“Do you see him very often?”
“Several times a year.”
Her eyes stayed wide. “Do you love his mother?”
“I’ve never loved any of them,” he said. This was not the time, most assuredly not the time, to tell her he’d only ever been in love with her.
She replaced another book on the shelf, but left her hand on the spine. “Have you ever been in love?”
“Yes.”
A smile curved her mouth. “I’m glad to hear that. I should hate to think you’d never been in love. Tell me about her. What’s she like? Is she beautiful? The woman you love, I mean. Why haven’t you married her?”
“Where to start with all that?” He did not bother to check more books. “She is amusing and accomplished. Her intellectual gifts astound. She follows her own path through life. Her character is unassailable, but she does not care what anyone thinks about her varied interests. There’s no subject she is not interested to learn about and capable of mastering should she put her mind to it.”
“I think I would like her a great deal.”
“I’ve never met a more fascinating woman in all my life.”
“Have you known her long?”
“For many years.” He held her gaze. “Is she beautiful? I suspect I know what others would say, but I say she is.”
“Does she collect books?”
“She does. Our interests there intersect quite neatly.”
“I do not understand, Daunt.” She drew her eyebrows together. “You adore her, that’s plain. You are handsome, and generous, and amusing. I cannot imagine any woman not falling to your considerable charm. Why aren’t you married?”
He shrugged. “She loves someone else.”
“Oh.” She let out a soft breath. “I am sorry. What a foolish woman she must be.”