Chapter 24 Thorne Books
Darcy opened the door for Mrs Thorne and held his hand out for her to precede him. Just as she crossed the threshold, a toddler of two or three years ran across the front of the shop on unsteady legs, crashed into her, and grabbed on to her skirt, holding on for dear life.
Mrs Thorne gave a laugh, which Darcy was happy to hear seemed to lack most of the tension she showed around him (understandably). “Good afternoon to you as well, Miriam.”
She then picked the child up, threw her in the air a couple of times, and ended up carrying her on her hip.
She pointed the child to Darcy. “Miriam, this is Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy, this is Miriam.”
The child looked at him carefully, then became shy and buried her face in Mrs Thorne’s shoulder, which brought a chuckle from the woman, and an accompanying one from Darcy.
Another young woman of around twenty, sitting at the same counter where Darcy first spied Mrs Thorne, looked up sharply at the introduction, though it was anybody’s guess whether she knew the name or just wanted to ensure her offspring was not in any sort of mischief.
Amanda said, “I will keep Miriam for a while,” not bothering to introduce the woman to Darcy.
“I will help Cook. We are having beef stew tonight.”
With that, the woman said, “Mr Darcy,” then curtseyed and left the room.
“She and her husband are partners in the business. We have worked together five years, and I would judge us successful, and they are a good part of it.”
He looked around and got the same impression of a large, well-organised shop. “If I may mention that first day without recrimination, Mrs Thorne, I was just turning to compliment you on the shop when—”
She laughed. “You may continue with the compliment and forget the rest. We are beyond that.”
Miriam still had her head buried in Mrs Thorne’s shoulder, but she was curiously peeking out from time to time at Darcy, then burying her face again.
Experience with Georgiana’s children, Bingley’s children, and even some of the Bennet sisters’ children had taught him that it was easy to frighten them by acting precipitously.
However, if he were wily and patient, and just left them alone, they would eventually decide he was big, but not noticeably bigger or more frightening than other adults.
The child would eventually reach out to him.
Amanda said, “All right, Mr Darcy. Tell me five books you love and five you hate.”
Intrigued, he named his five favourites, though when he finished the list, he could easily pick five others, and they would be equally his favourites. He named three books that everyone knew he loathed, and just to be fair, two more that Georgiana loved but he did not care for.
“All right, Miriam, shall we help this gentleman?”
The child was still clinging tightly, so she walked over to a wheeled cart and turned her around to sit on it.
“Hold on, little one!” she said breathlessly before pushing off with the cart at breakneck speed, or what must have seemed so, because the child vacillated between screaming and laughing.
While Darcy watched in bemusement, Mrs Thorne pushed the cart down one aisle and up another, slowing down only marginally at certain spots to pluck a book off the shelf and throw it on the cart atop a growing pile in front of Miriam.
Five minutes later, she appeared with the cart full and the child laughing her head off. “There you go, Mr Darcy. You can take the cart over to the fireplace, where you will see a nice chair. You may of course buy nothing, but if you are inclined towards purchase, you are limited to five.”
Not quite able to follow, Darcy started dividing his attention between looking at the pile of at least twenty books, then back at Mrs Thorne. “Only five? Why?”
She laughed. “Because I am doing you a great service—gifting you with the supreme pleasure of having to decide based on limited choices. I do this often. Rich men rarely need to choose. You have enough money that if you see twenty books that look interesting, you can just as easily buy them as not. Frequently, you then end up with twenty books gathering dust on your shelves, while you repeat the process in your next excursion. By forcing you to choose, I make it more likely you will read and enjoy those you take. I call it scarcity economy.”
“It sounds like I read too many law books, and you read too much Adam Smith,” he said with a laugh.
“Perhaps. I do read a great deal, on far more subjects than would be considered ‘ladylike’ in England, but—”
She seemed thoughtful for a moment, long enough for Miriam to start seeking attention, so Darcy bent over to be closer to eye level and smiled but made no other movement.
Amanda continued, “Aristotle famously said, ‘The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know.’ The world is a much bigger and more interesting place than my upbringing led me to believe.”
“That is the truth,” Darcy replied, then, before diving into a metaphorical rabbit hole, he returned to the original subject and asked simply, “What if I just write down the rest and buy them from your competitor, or sneak back in and buy them from your assistant?”
“That would defeat the purpose,” she laughed, “but I never force my wise counsel on anyone who does not want it. If you insist, you can buy every book in the shop.”
Then she grabbed the child from the cart. “Come along, Miriam. Let us see what Cook is up to. If a customer comes in, Mr Darcy, either yell at me or sell him something.”
With that, she picked up Miriam and walked away without looking back, while Darcy sat scratching his head in befuddlement.
Eventually, he gave up and sat in the admittedly comfortable chair and perused her selections.
The cart held at least twenty books on several subjects.
A quick glance suggested he was likely to enjoy about half, and half were completely unfamiliar.
He sat in the same chair for four hours, as customers came and went.
Contrary to Mrs Thorne’s instructions, he never had to sell anything, though he might have been willing to try if it came down to it.
The owner returned whenever anyone entered.
He wondered how she knew but assumed she had some system.
A bell on the doors was commonplace, but she did not have one.
Eventually, he just decided she probably had another desk where she could do her work and observe the shop at the same time.
The next month became terribly busy, between intense study of a few businesses he was considering, and attending entertainments among the local gentry.
Most of his new acquaintances knew about the bookshop, but not much about the owner, save that she was a widow and not to be trifled with intellectually.
She was regarded as honest to a fault. She was perfectly willing to tell any person of any status when she thought they were wrong and why, but also more than willing to admit that she did not know, or change her mind based on new information and reasoned arguments.
On some subjects she would even say she did not know and did not want to, while recommending some other shop.
Her choices for his five books had been quite good, and he ended up reading most of them at least twice, thus proving the efficacy of her system.
On the Saturday when he planned to visit her shop, he stopped at the same coffee house.
He had no idea whether he just liked their coffee (which was excellent), or he was being superstitious and considering that part of his Thorne Books ritual.
He was trying to work it out when the talisman theory got a boost from the entrance of Mrs Thorne.
Darcy stood, left his hat on the chair, and approached her with a bow. “Good morning, Mrs Thorne.”
She looked him up and down, paused just a moment as if trying to judge if he had recovered from his madness, then curtseyed. “Good morning, Mr Darcy. I see you found the best coffee in Old Town.”
Feeling bold, Darcy smiled. “And perhaps the best company?”
“Miriam is back at the shop,” she laughed, then took pity on him, “but, if that was an invitation, I will accept.”
With a smile, he led her over to the table and pushed her chair in for her. It was obviously unnecessary, but the courtesies never hurt.
They had barely sat down when a waiter delivered two bowls of soup, a basket of bread, and a tub of butter.
Darcy looked confused, so Amanda said with a laugh, “It is not magic. I come here for my midday meal most days. Aiden knows what I like and assumes anyone eating with me will have enough sense to like the same thing.”
“Am I to understand that you are in charge of my reading and my eating now?”
She laughed along with him, then just took her spoon and tucked in, so Darcy joined her. He had to admit it was excellent.
About halfway through the meal, she asked, “When you have formal dinners in your probably very grand dining room, do you ask your diners what they want?”
He chuckled. “In that analogy, you are the mistress and I the guest?”
“Not really. More like the housekeeper, I suppose. You are the guest in this neighbourhood, and I am the one who knows what is available. In the extremely unlikely scenario that we find ourselves eating in—what was that village again? Lambton—then I would take your advice.”
The teasing tone of the rejoinder made him laugh with her. A few more minutes passed with both eating their meals, and he asked curiously, “Pray let me know if I pry too much.”
“You can be assured that I shall without qualms.”
“You mentioned England in passing, and your accent places you as originating in the south. Do I miss the mark?”
“Ah, so you want gossip, is it?”
Darcy looked embarrassed, so she said, “I am only teasing. You state the obvious. Any Englishman could make the same conclusion. I imagine you would have been shocked to find me named O’Flannery or MacGowan?”
“That might have been unexpected,” he chuckled.
“I am from England. I left after my marriage ended.”
“Do you ever go back?”
“No, I have a buyer who is half bloodhound. We move a lot more books than you might think for our little shop. Much of what we buy never even makes it here. Quite a lot of my custom is done via the post. My buyer is particularly good at working out who among the gentry has a good library, is likely to die soon, and has relatives who are likely to need or want money more than books. It sounds a bit mercenary, but we always pay fair value. I really have no need to return.”
Darcy nodded, and they finished their soup with more common conversation. He found he liked Mrs Thorne quite a lot and was happy for the acquaintance. When they finished, they went to the shop and he asked the proprietress to repeat the earlier experience, with the same success.
A month later, Darcy felt a tugging on his trousers and looked down to see Miss Miriam staring at him pensively.
Having worked out an adequate system, he simply picked the child up, placed her on his lap next to the book, and gave her his pocket watch.
He judged that would give him twenty minutes of peace before he might have to entertain her, which was just enough time to choose between the last two books he had examined.
Her system of forcing him to choose only five books nearly drove him mad the first month, but by the time she removed the restriction, he found it a useful practice.
He had a trunk gradually filling with books for the Pemberley library, and another with those destined for others.
Bingley was making a belated entry into the world of the written word, and Georgiana and her husband were not afraid of a bit of ink themselves.
He had never quite reconciled with his father-in-law, and only saw him rarely, but his cousin Richard devoured books at the same rate Darcy did.
He occasionally wondered how much of the Darcy library would have to be recovered from the Matlock library.
Darcy occasionally thought it was time to start worrying more about the Pemberley nursery than the library, so he went to house parties and balls among his new and old associates.
He met several ladies who were perfectly suitable, some whom he even liked, but none who made him want to drag her three hundred miles or more from her family.
He was not opposed to a Scottish bride, per se.
If he found the right lady, she would not be the first Scottish Darcy bride—or even the first from Edinburgh.
Darcy attended the balls, danced with the ladies, got to know them, but never quite went past the first few dances.
After three months, he had gotten past the stage where Mrs Thorne started every time he appeared, and she gradually became less guarded in her conversation.
The first couple of weeks she always seemed nervous, almost skittish, as if she thought he was not quite stable or trustworthy.
She would be bright and energetic sometimes, but always somehow—he could not quite come up with the word—but closed was the best he could do.
He still knew basically nothing about her past, as she never volunteered anything and he did not ask, but she did intrigue him.
Like many schemes that occasionally do not work as specified, his plan to entertain Miriam either fell apart or succeeded brilliantly when both fell asleep in the warm summer sun.