Chapter Twelve #2
A good thing, too, when she recalls the elderly woman who had been so insistent on seeing Chiron.
The way her eyes had roamed over the shelves—and not with the wistful envy or longing that another book lover might have, but with pure hunger.
As though she would have swallowed the whole bookshop had Cassandra not ushered her out.
If Lowell hadn’t taken the bookshop, she thinks, there would be someone else waiting behind him.
The bookshop, after all, must always have an owner.
Lowell pales with anger, though he masks it quickly by studying the empty gap on the shelf.
So he really thought she would hand over the bookshop.
With no questions, no conditions. Because Lowell already carries the authority of an owner.
Despite all her good intentions on the walk up to the estate, she catches his eye and smiles sweetly at him, twisting the dagger just a little.
“I’ve been so enjoying the challenge,” she says.
Lowell shoots her a distinctly undiplomatic glare. Then he turns away from her to the rest of the library. He walks methodically along the same shelves that Cassandra had meandered past. His head tilts this way and that; every so often, he pauses, an unidentifiable expression on his face.
Finally, he reaches the end of a row of shelves and stops. “Peaceful, isn’t it?”
For once, Cassandra can’t disagree with him. Lowell and his assistant notwithstanding, there’s a quality to the library that makes her think of easy duvet days, of the temptation to collapse into an armchair and read away the afternoon.
“Yet how quickly it’ll fall apart,” he says. “How long do you think this library will last? A month? Three months?”
Six weeks, Cassandra thinks, before the luxurious quiet disintegrates.
Before the magic runs careless and wild and the river reclaims its own.
She has been lucky, in some ways, that Chiron let his stock lapse.
But it’s a child’s question, posed by a more knowing mentor.
Insults don’t deserve an answer, so she doesn’t give one.
“I thought owners were above estate sales,” she says instead.
For a second, Lowell’s eyes flash. “Perhaps for some.” Then he snaps his fingers and his assistant straightens. “I think we’re done here, Aloysius.”
The assistant, Aloysius, scrambles to follow—taking the last volume of the Napoleonic Wars with him.
Cassandra pursues them as they walk down the hallway at an alarmingly fast rate, though neither of them are running. It’s just that Cassandra can’t keep up with Lowell’s long strides. But it gives her ample opportunity to see them turn the corner and collide into Byron.
Books and people go flying.
Lowell manages to sidestep the affair, but his assistant bears the brunt of it. A dozen pamphlets on monastic ink-makers scatter across the ground. Cassandra spies the book, halfway down the hallway. She lunges for it at the same time as Lowell, their hands slapping over the cover.
“This is mine,” Cassandra says though gritted teeth. “I found it first. And you—”
“Welcome to bookselling. Now, if you don’t mind—”
He tries to take the book out of her hand, but she places her other one on the cover. Half of her can’t believe she’s about to engage in a tug-of-war over a book. The other half of her can’t believe Lowell won’t let go.
Lowell sighs irritably. “What will it take for you to give up this book?”
Suddenly, Cassandra leans forward, so her jumper slips down one shoulder. And Lowell’s gaze follows, dragging to the edge of her neckline, the tease of bare skin. She tosses her hair back and looks up at him from underneath her eyelashes. Needs must, and Cassandra needs.
“Ask me again and maybe you’ll find out,” she says, in her softest voice.
Lowell chokes. His hand falls away. And she pulls the book into her lap.
He reaches to take it back, and she puts up a finger. “You’ve ceded your claim.”
Lowell looks at her for one deadly moment, during which Cassandra has to resist the urge to back away. He might be furious, but there isn’t a thing he can do about it—short of physically grabbing the book from her. Surreptitiously, she tries to pull her jumper back over her bra strap.
“Fine,” he says curtly.
She told herself she wouldn’t gloat, but a smile creeps over her face anyway. “Thank you, Mr. Sharpe.”
With that, she leaves him to hiss at Aloysius, and she brings her stack of books to the makeshift counter to pay for them. Byron follows close behind, shooting suspicious glances at Lowell.
“Everything okay?” she asks.
“Great, actually,” Cassandra says, and means it. “We got what we came for.”
After she pays—trying not to wince at the cost—they return to the entrance. Cassandra spots the problem a half second before Byron, and they exchange a slightly panicked look; it’s pouring rain outside, and neither of them have so much as an anorak. Cassandra looks at the books in her arms.
“Shit.”
Next to her, Lowell and his assistant are also leaving, each with a matching black umbrella at their side.
Lowell catches her staring, and his mouth presses together in a line that could be displeasure, or a suppressed laugh.
She waits for him to tell her that she’s an idiot for not bringing anything to protect the books.
She waits for a mocking, knowing sneer. She waits for him to demand the key to the bookshop. Because she’d deserve it.
Instead, he presses something into her hands. His umbrella.
“You’ll get the books wet,” he says bluntly.
Before she can thrust it back at him, he steps out from underneath the doorway. Within a second, he’s absolutely soaked, rain dousing his coat a heavy black. His assistant follows at a jog behind him, umbrella bobbing in the air as he valiantly tries to catch up.
Byron stares at his retreating figure, an inkblot in the rain. “What Victorian-ass novel did you pull that guy from?”
Even with the umbrella in her hands, Cassandra can’t bring herself to leave until she hears the revving of a car and gravel crunching underneath tyres.
Byron gives her shoulder a nudge. “Seriously, who the hell was that?”
“That,” she says heavily, “was Lowell Sharpe.”