Chapter 3 The Library Begins to Speak #3
“She does not like my being here.”
“No.” Helena looked at her directly. “But do not flatter yourself. She dislikes most people being anywhere.”
This time Constance did smile. Helena’s mouth moved almost imperceptibly, not quite answering it. The moment was brief, and because it was brief, it mattered.
“I found an older bookplate under the Dacre plate in your devotional volume,” Constance said. “Only part of the name remains visible. Elinor M., perhaps. The rest is obscured.”
Helena looked down. “I thought as much.”
“You suspected it?”
“When I was a girl, before my marriage, I was told that great houses were made of lineage. After I entered one, I discovered they are more often made of correction. A name removed here. A date improved there. A marriage made respectable by forgetting who suffered inside it.”
The words were spoken quietly, but they sounded as if she had kept them for years in a locked drawer. Constance wished to answer as a woman, not as a cataloguer. She chose caution because Helena’s eyes already contained regret at having spoken.
“Correction leaves traces,” Constance said. “It is rarely as perfect as people hope.”
“And you find traces.”
“Yes.”
“Then you should be careful what gratitude you expect from those who made them.”
Before Constance could answer, a bell rang somewhere in the house. Helena’s shoulders did not move, yet some part of her attention shifted toward the sound at once. Constance noticed it because everything in Helena had seemed arranged not to notice anything.
“Does that bell concern you?”
“No,” Helena said too quickly. Then, after a pause, “Not yet.”
The library door opened again, and the atmosphere altered before Jasper entered.
It was not that Helena became submissive.
She did not lower her head or step back in any obvious way.
The change was subtler and worse. Her stillness hardened.
The woman who had spoken of corrected names vanished behind the wife expected to be looked at.
Jasper came in carrying a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. “Helena. I had been told you were taking chocolate.”
“I had finished.”
“Had you?”
The question was small. It had no reason to be cruel, which made its cruelty more exact. Helena inclined her head. “Yes.”
Jasper set the parcel on the table beside Constance’s notes.
“Miss Brown, a bookseller in Holborn has sent me a pamphlet he thinks belongs to the Dacre pamphlet volumes. Most booksellers think anything with a D on the flyleaf belongs to me, which shows a touching faith in providence and poor understanding of ownership. Examine it when you can.”
“I will.”
He did not move his hand from the parcel. “Not now. When you can.”
Constance met his eyes. “Of course.”
Jasper turned to his wife. “You are pale.”
“It is morning.”
“I have seen other women survive morning with more color.”
“Then you must ask them for instruction.”
The sentence was mild. The silence after it was not. Jasper smiled, but the smile stayed away from his eyes. “You forget yourself, my dear.”
“Not often enough to trouble you.”
For one second, Constance believed he might strike her.
Not because he lifted a hand. He did not.
It was because the possibility entered the room fully formed, like a familiar guest. Helena knew it.
Jasper knew she knew it. Marianne, had she been present, would likely have found a word for decorum and nothing for fear.
Jasper picked up the parcel again and held it out to Helena. “Take this to my study. Put it on the small desk, not the main one. Miss Brown is occupied, and I dislike having servants handle new acquisitions before they are examined.”
Helena did not move for half a beat too long. Then she crossed the distance and took the parcel. Their hands did not touch. Jasper had arranged the exchange so that they need not, and somehow that felt more intimate in its hostility than touch would have been.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes, what?”
Constance looked down at her notes, though every word in the room had become visible.
“Yes, Jasper.”
“Good.”
Helena left with the parcel held against her gloved palms. Jasper watched her go. When the door closed, he turned back to Constance as if nothing had passed.
“My wife is delicate today. Do not let her melancholy infect your work.”
“I had not thought melancholy contagious.”
“You have not been married.”
“No.”
“Then accept the instruction of those who have endured the condition.”
Constance’s hand rested on her pencil. She kept it still. “I accept instruction more readily when it comes without contempt.”
Jasper’s expression brightened, not with pleasure exactly, but with interest. “You are bolder in the morning.”
“I am clearer in the morning.”
“Clarity is useful, provided it remains within its task.” He tapped the closed catalogue. “The family pays you for books, Miss Brown.”
“And the books, Lord Dacre, appear to be full of family.”
For a moment, his face showed nothing. Then he laughed. “Take care. Sayer may have made you too exact for comfort.”
“I was not engaged for comfort.”
“No,” Jasper said softly. “No, perhaps you were not.”
He took the key from his chain and unlocked a drawer beneath the west cabinet, not the cabinet itself. From it he removed a narrow stack of cards bound with black ribbon. He placed them at the far end of the table.
“These are selected shelf cards from my father’s later system. You may compare them against the printed catalogue, but only in this room. They are not to be copied entire. You may note discrepancies.”
“Why not copy them entire?”
“Because I have not invited you to reproduce my father’s disorder. I have invited you to correct it.”
“Correction without full record creates another disorder.”
“Then you must learn to make intelligent omissions.”
There were moments when men told the truth because they believed women would mistake it for instruction. Constance placed the cards beside her notebook. “I shall note what is necessary.”
“I am sure you will.”
He left then, satisfied or pretending to be.
Constance waited until his footsteps faded before touching the cards.
The top one bore the same shelf mark she had copied the night before from Helena’s devotional book.
The handwriting was older than Jasper’s and less disciplined.
Beside the mark, in faint ink, were three words: Lady Elinor’s book.
Under that, in Jasper’s sharper hand, someone had written: removed.
Constance copied both notations exactly. Then she sat back and allowed herself one long breath. The library had begun to speak. The trouble was that every voice in it had been interrupted, overwritten, or taught to whisper.
At noon, Roland Dacre arrived with a gust of wet air, expensive scent, and cheerfulness too bright to be believed.
Constance heard him before she saw him, his voice carrying across the hall as he greeted the footman by the wrong name and laughed as if the error itself were a favor.
He appeared in the library doorway moments later, having apparently decided that doors applied to other members of the family.
“Ah,” he said. “The famous Miss Brown. Jasper has imported learning into the house. How very brave of him.”
Constance rose. “Lord Roland.”
“Not Lord, only Mr. Dacre unless you wish to irritate my brother, in which case I encourage the higher title. He has so few amusements that do not involve correcting people.”
Roland was handsome in a softer register than Jasper, with light brown hair, hazel eyes, and a smile practiced on creditors, ladies, and servants alike.
His clothes were fashionable, but one cuff showed wear at the edge, and one glove had been mended by a hand that either lacked skill or had not been paid enough to use it.
He looked around the library as if he had once belonged in it and had since discovered that belonging carried debts.
“My brother here?”
“I believe he expected you at noon.”
“Expectation is a form of vanity. Has he been unbearable yet, or does he reserve the better performance for family?”
“I have been here too short a time to classify performances.”
“Wise answer. You will need many of them.” Roland came to the table and glanced at the shelf cards. His expression altered before the smile recovered it. “My father’s cards. Good God, Jasper must be in a generous mood. Or a dangerous one.”
“Are the two connected?”
“With Jasper? Usually.” He touched one card with a finger, then withdrew his hand when he saw her watching. “Do not let him persuade you those little cards are harmless. My father never wrote anything down unless he wanted later generations to misunderstand him with proper documentation.”
“That is a severe judgment.”
“It is a family talent. Severity, I mean. Judgment less so.”
Jasper’s voice came from the doorway. “Roland, you become more eloquent as your accounts grow uglier.”
Roland turned, smile widening. “Dear Jasper. I would pay my accounts merely to deprive you of the pleasure of mentioning them, but then we should both be bored.”
“Miss Brown is working.”