Chapter 1 The House That Listened #2
The room was silent for a moment, except for the soft pulse of rain against the glass. Constance had met men like Mr. Wroth often enough to know that they mistook her quietness for submission only once.
“I value both accuracy and instruction,” she said. “When the two conflict, I usually find that accuracy has the longer memory.”
The solicitor looked at her over his spectacles. A less disciplined man might have smiled. “Professor Sayer said you were exact.”
“Professor Sayer is kind.”
“He did not say kind.”
That almost made her laugh, but she suppressed it.
Her old mentor would have found the distinction fair.
Gilbert Sayer had trained her among parish registers, university bequests, disputed bindings, and private letters that had survived only because someone had forgotten to burn the drawer in which they lay.
He had told her that a good archivist was neither a servant nor a thief, but families would accuse her of being both if she found anything important enough.
Mr. Wroth opened the portfolio and withdrew several sheets.
“Here are the preliminary instructions. You will write your descriptions in a clear hand. Title, author, imprint, date, condition, binding, bookplate, annotations, insertions, and any sign of alteration. Lord Dacre takes particular interest in provenance.”
“Most collectors do.”
“Lord Dacre is not most collectors.”
“No collector believes he is.”
This time, the solicitor’s face changed, though barely. “You should take care, Miss Brown. His lordship appreciates intelligence. He does not appreciate levity at his expense.”
“Then I shall reserve levity for my own.”
The library door opened before Mr. Wroth could answer.
Lord Jasper Dacre entered as if the room had been waiting for him and had at last been relieved of suspense.
He was not tall in a dramatic way, but he possessed that particular masculine assurance which made height seem irrelevant.
The portrait in the hall had flattered him only slightly.
In person his face was sharper, his eyes paler, and his smile more persuasive because it appeared with such economy.
His dark blond hair was brushed back, his side whiskers trimmed with care, and his coat fitted so perfectly that Constance thought of a binding tooled by a master craftsman to conceal a damaged text.
“Miss Brown,” he said. “Forgive my absence. A political caller overstayed his welcome, which is a common parliamentary talent.”
Constance rose. “Lord Dacre.”
He took her hand with polished courtesy, not holding it too long, not releasing it too quickly. Everything he did seemed measured to be beyond criticism. “Professor Sayer writes that you have a rare gift for making dead paper confess its sins.”
“He may have put that more strongly than I deserve.”
“Sayer rarely puts anything more strongly than it deserves. He has made a reputation out of caution. Sit, please. I dislike making scholars stand in libraries. It reverses the proper order of the world.”
Mr. Wroth remained standing until Jasper looked at him. Then the solicitor gathered his papers with a slight inclination. “I have given Miss Brown the preliminary restrictions.”
“Instructions, Wroth. Restrictions make me sound like a gaoler.”
“As you wish, my lord.”
Jasper’s smile did not alter. “That is why I keep you, Lionel. You remember that I usually do.”
The solicitor bowed, but his face had become a little paler. He departed with the portfolio beneath his arm, closing the door behind him. Constance noted the small fact without yet knowing where to place it: Mr. Wroth feared Lord Dacre, or at least feared displeasing him.
Jasper moved to the table and lifted one of the volumes. “A Cranmer prayer book, 1549. Rebound, unfortunately, in the last century by a man with more enthusiasm than reverence. Still, one must forgive the dead their mistakes. They cannot be educated afterward.”
He placed it in front of her. Constance bent over the volume, grateful for the permitted object. Objects did not smile. Objects did not test the air in a room to see how much of it belonged to them.
“It has been washed,” she said after a moment.
“Washed?”
“The leaves. The edges are too clean for the age, and some marginalia has faded unevenly. Someone tried to improve its appearance. It lost evidence in the process.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Use. Ownership. Attention. The marks that show a book had a life before it became respectable.”
Jasper watched her as she spoke. His attention was intense, but not admiring in any simple way. “You dislike respectability, Miss Brown?”
“I distrust it when it requires erasure.”
“How severe.”
“Only with books.”
“I wonder.”
His voice remained pleasant, but the two words entered the room like a hand closing around a wrist. Constance looked up. His expression gave nothing away.
“You will find,” he continued, “that the Dacre collection is unusually rich in domestic bindings, theological controversy, women’s devotional texts, family presentation copies, legal tracts, and private pamphlets never intended for broad circulation.
My grandfather had an appetite for preservation.
My father had an appetite for order. I, perhaps, have inherited both appetites and improved upon them. ”
“That is what I am here to determine.”
He laughed softly. “Not whether I improved upon my ancestors, surely.”
“No. Whether preservation and order are telling the same truth.”
Jasper stood very still. Then he smiled. “Professor Sayer chose well. I do like a woman with a mind, provided she understands that a mind is a tool, not a weapon.”
Constance touched the edge of the prayer book. “That depends on the hand using it.”
For a moment the rain seemed louder. Jasper’s gaze stayed on her face, and she had the curious sensation that he had learned something about her and decided not yet to punish it.
“Indeed,” he said at last. “You will dine with us tonight. Not as a servant, of course, and not precisely as a guest. The English household is deficient in categories for useful women of education. We must improvise.”
“I would not wish to intrude.”
“You will not. My wife is fond of quiet people, or at least accustomed to them. My sister prefers anyone who can explain a book without pretending to enjoy it. My brother will be bored by you, which is Roland’s way of acknowledging a person has substance.”
There was affection in his words, but it had been sharpened too finely. Constance wondered whether his family noticed when he cut them with politeness, or whether long exposure had made them mistake the blade for ordinary silver.
The door opened again. This time it did not open widely.
A maid entered carrying a tray with tea.
She was young, though not girlish, with steady eyes, brown hair tucked beneath a cap, and hands reddened by work.
She came no farther into the room than necessary.
Her gaze went first to Jasper, then to Constance, and then, for a brief instant, toward the closed door behind which Mr. Wroth had gone.
“Agnes,” Jasper said. “Where is Lady Dacre?”
“In her sitting room, my lord.”
“Still?”
The maid’s fingers tightened upon the tray. “Yes, my lord.”
“Tell her Miss Brown has arrived. She will receive her before dinner.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The maid set down the tray. One cup rattled faintly against its saucer. Jasper looked at it. Agnes stilled the cup with one touch and lowered her eyes.
“You may go.”
When she left, she closed the door with the care of one handling something breakable. Constance did not look after her. She had learned that servants were often safest when strangers did not advertise having seen their fear.
Jasper poured tea. The act should have been hospitable. It was, in fact, exact. “Agnes Flint is devoted to my wife. Devotion is a charming quality in a servant until it becomes judgmental.”
“Does devotion often become judgmental?”
“In women, frequently. Men more often convert it into ambition.”
He handed Constance a cup. She accepted it. “And collectors?”
“Collectors convert devotion into possession. That is our great virtue and our great sin.”
He seemed pleased with the sentence. Constance wondered whether he had said it before.
They spoke for another quarter hour about cataloguing methods, shelf marks, rare bindings, water damage at Dacre Court, the conditions under which manuscripts might be handled, and whether she would require assistance.
Jasper answered with knowledge and elegance.
He knew books well. That made him more troubling, not less.
A brute who hated books could destroy them honestly.
A cultivated man could make destruction look like care.
At length Mrs. Harrowby returned to show Constance to her room. Jasper rose when she did.
“Rest a little, Miss Brown. Dacre House is not always kind on first acquaintance, but it rewards attention.”
The phrase followed Constance into the hall. Dacre House rewards attention. She had the sense, not altogether pleasant, that the house also punished it.
Her room was on the third floor at the back, modest but comfortable, with a narrow bed, a washstand, a writing table, and a window looking over wet roofs and the dim line of the garden wall.
Her trunks had been placed at the foot of the bed.
A fire had been lit, though it struggled against the damp.
Constance removed her gloves, flexed her chilled fingers, and looked around with the quick inventory of a woman accustomed to borrowed rooms. No adjoining door.
One bellpull. One wardrobe. One small mirror with silvering damaged at the edge.
A Bible in the drawer. A crack in the plaster above the mantel in the shape of a branch.
She unpacked only what she needed: a dark dinner dress, fresh cuffs, her brush, her notebook, and Professor Sayer’s last letter. She had brought it not for sentiment, she told herself, but because it contained useful advice. That was only partly true.