Chapter Seven #2
“There is.” Edmund set aside his own book, warming to the argument despite himself.
“The ground floor is organised by era of acquisition, my grandfather’s collection is in the east wall, my father’s additions in the west, and my own selections near the windows.
The upper gallery is arranged by subject, with the sciences on the left and the humanities on the right.
Poetry is in the alcove near the fireplace because it deserves the best light. As far as fiction is concerned.”
“It is scattered in utter disarray, like autumn leaves caught in a sudden gust?”
“It is arranged by emotional weight rather than alphabetical order.”
Helena stared at him. “Emotional weight.”
“Light comedies near the entrance, for casual reading. Dense philosophical novels in the back corner, for days when one wishes to think. And the books that are likely to make one weep are on the highest shelf, where one must be deliberate in retrieving them.” Edmund felt his ears warm.
He had never explained this system to anyone before.
It sounded absurd when spoken aloud. “It makes perfect sense if you understand the underlying logic.”
“The underlying logic being that you are a secret romantic who organises his library by feelings?”
“I prefer the term ‘emotionally systematic.’”
Helena’s lips twitched. She was fighting a smile, he could see it, the way she pressed her lips together, the slight crinkle at the corners of her eyes. And something in his chest expanded at the sight.
“May I sit?” she asked. “Since we are both here, and the library is apparently arranged by secret feelings, I may as well attempt to find my treatise from a seated position.”
“Please.”
She moved to the chair across from his, not near enough to touch, but close enough that he could catch the faint scent of something floral. Lavender, perhaps, or the soap she used. He filed this information away with everything else he had catalogued about her.
They sat in silence for a moment. Helena picked up a book from the table beside her, a volume of poetry he had been reading earlier in the week, and examined the spine.
“Wordsworth,” she observed. “I would have expected something more serious from you. Milton, perhaps. Or Donne.”
“I like Wordsworth.”
“So do I. Though I confess I find his later work somewhat self-indulgent.” She opened the book, flipping through pages with the casual familiarity of a woman who had handled thousands of volumes. “My father preferred Byron. He said Byron understood that poetry should be felt, not merely admired.”
“And what do you think?”
She looked up at him. The fire cast warm shadows across her countenance, softening the sharp angles that usually made her look like a woman perpetually braced for battle.
“I think poetry should make you feel something,” she said slowly. “Whether that feeling is admiration or devastation or simple recognition. A poem that leaves you unchanged is not worth the paper it was written on.”
“And novels?”
“Novels should make you forget yourself.” Her voice had warmed, and Edmund realised with a start that he was leaning forward, drawn toward her like a plant toward sunlight.
“The best novels are the ones where you surface after hours of reading and cannot quite remember who you are, because you have been living inside someone else’s mind. ”
“Which novels do that for you?”
She told him. He argued. She argued back. What began as a tentative exchange became a genuine conversation, opinions exchanged, disagreements aired, the delicious friction of two minds that saw the world differently but recognised the shape of each other’s thoughts.
Helena was brilliant. Edmund had known this, had seen her dismantle Mrs Dawkins at the assembly, had watched her identify the discrepancy in the household accounts.
He had noted the sharp precision of her mind in every interaction.
But he had not known how exhilarating it would be to actually converse with her.
To follow her logic down unexpected paths.
To be challenged, and surprised and forced to defend positions he had never questioned.
She was telling him about a novel she had read years ago, a gothic romance that her father had disapproved of and her mother had secretly borrowed from a lending library, when she stopped mid-sentence, her eyes narrowing at a character she was describing.
“, and the hero, if one can call him that, spent three hundred pages being tormented and mysterious and utterly insufferable, only to be redeemed at the last moment by the affection of a woman who had absolutely no reason to forgive him. As though a brooding countenance could compensate for a lack of true character, or a tragic figure struck in the candlelight serve as absolution for a lifetime of folly.”
She delivered this assessment with such precise, devastating finality that Edmund could not help himself.
He laughed.
Not the polite laugh he produced in ballrooms, but the measured sound that signaled amusement without actually expressing it.
This was something else entirely, a genuine, surprised, helpless laugh that escaped before he could catch it.
It burst out of him like something that had been trapped for years, echoing off the library’s high ceilings, filling the space with a sound he barely recognised as his own.
Helena stared at him.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” she said. Her voice was strange, soft, wondering, as though she had just witnessed something extraordinary.
Edmund’s laughter faded, but the warmth of it remained in his chest, spreading outward like sunlight. “Neither did I.”